“The battles in Italy were near disasters, and the blame must rest on faulty planning and the senior commanders.”

By Andrew Sangster and Pier Paolo Battistelli 

THE ALLIED effort in the Mediterranean theatre of the Second World War one was marked by indecision, miscalculation, and in-fighting among generals. In our book Flawed Commanders and Strategy, we study some of these major issues, particularly those that emerged in the battle for Italy.

From the very start of the campaign, there was conflict between the British and Americans about the North African and Mediterranean strategy.

It took Churchill and his top general Alan Brooke to convince the reluctant Americans that first Operation Torch (the invasion of North Africa) was necessary, then later the landings in Sicily and not Sardinia. Even the plan to move up the leg of Italy was often contentious, especially when Operation Anvil (later Dragoon) for the invasion of southern France was proposed.

The Americans were persuaded that Nazism was the greater threat, despite Pearl Harbor, but they wanted to cross the English Channel and head for Berlin as early as 1943. U.S. generals remained suspicious of Churchill remembering his role in the disastrous 1915 Gallipoli campaign and his obsession with the Balkans. Some worried that the Americans were being used to safeguard the British Empire.

Roosevelt accepted that American troops needed to be bloodied however, which was demonstrated at the disaster of the Kasserine Pass. Later, U.S. general Omar Bradley admitted that Brooke was right in not crossing the English Channel too soon. And while both sides understood that working with allies is rarely easy, men like Eisenhower ensured it happened. Despite this, there grew an understandable degree of Anglophobia among American commanders.

This started during the invasion of Sicily, when the irrepressible and egotistical Bernard Montgomery, then still a general, insisted on a change of plan during Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, virtually pushing the Americans aside. And while succeeding in this manoeuvre, he never made his forecast progress, while General George S. Patton pushed east to take a welcoming Palermo, and Montgomery found Sicily was different from the North African terrain.

Although defeated, the Germans executed what has been dubbed their ‘mini-Dunkirk,’ as they managed to evacuate across the Messina Straits their own men, with many Italians and guns, to the relative safety of the mainland. This was a strategic disaster and should have been a central feature of Husky to trap the Germans on the island.

While Montgomery hardly endeared himself to his American allies, Patton found himself disgraced. His brutal instructions had, it was claimed, led two of his men to carry out massacres of Italian POWs, many of whom eagerly surrendered. He tried to cover this crime up but failed, later ensuring both men returned to duty. He was also in Eisenhower’s bad books for slapping sick soldiers in hospital beds. This debacle, and the massacres, made him appear to many to be no better than some Nazi generals. He was put on a side-shelf after some embarrassing public apologies and only reappeared again after the Normandy invasion.

In terms of invading Italian mainland, it was agreed that the main landing point would be at Salerno under General Mark Clark, with Montgomery landing on the toe of Italy to work his way up the east coast to arrive, as it were, behind Salerno.

Montgomery was annoyed at having the secondary role and has often been criticised for making slow progress. And although his column faced small dangerous roads, which the Germans had destroyed or cleverly booby-trapped, his progress by most observers was somewhat tardy. Montgomery’s imperious attitude helped inflame Anglophobia in Clark and Patton. In fact, later, after the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery’s arrogance could have dangerously unsettled the Anglo-American alliance.

However, Clark was hardly an ideal field commander himself. He lacked experience and was under the mistaken impression that the Allies would be welcomed in Salerno, that his troops would surprise the enemy and support from naval guns would not be necessary. The Germans, however, were ready, and Salerno was a near disaster, with Clark at one point considering an evacuation.

The subsequent battle up through Italy was to prove similarly bitter and protracted. The Germans had layers of mountainous, deep-rivered valleys on their side and had prepared several defence lines.

At one point, following Salerno, it was hoped Rome would fall in weeks, but it would be months and with the loss of many lives.

In late January 1944, Clark gave orders to cross the Rapido River. His officers warned him against the move, but he ignored their counsel. The losses were so heavy that the survivors lobbied for a Congressional hearing after the war, during which Clark was exonerated. The world at that stage needed heroes.

The well-known battle for Monte Cassino led to the bombing of the monastery on the Gustav Line. Although Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander was right that lives were more important than buildings, the heavy pounding inflicted on the abbey proved a disastrous tactic, not simply because the ancient edifice was destroyed, but the debris stopped transport and tanks and provided excellent cover for the enemy.

In addition, the bombing was not always accurate, and some Allied positions were hit. The German commander Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring once said that fighting in Italy was like fighting in a museum and made much of the propaganda by this Allied attack. It was also abundantly clear that the Germans had kept to their promise: they had not entered the monastery, although they were entrenched outside.

The Anzio landings, which took place in early 1944, were an effort to divert enemy forces from the Cassino, but for a time became known as Churchill’s famous expression of the beached whale. Again, although the beach commander, General John Lucas, has carried much of the blame, it should have been shouldered by Mark Clark and the top man Field Marshal Alexander. Alexander was a thorough gentleman, and most of the Americans appreciated his manners and friendly approach.

He has been criticized for not giving the direct and necessary command of leadership, even by Field Marshal Alan Brooke, notably in his war diaries. This reached a hiatus when Alexander ordered that Clark should, on the breakout, head for Valmontone, thereby trapping the German army and probably stopping the war in northern Italy.

Instead, Clark disobeyed Alexander, for whom he had no time, and took Rome instead. It’s possible that Clark was working under a hidden agenda passed down by his political masters, but it was a strategic error of vast proportions, and Alexander was simply bemused more than angry that his orders had been ignored.

The overall result was the continuation of the Italian conflict to virtually the end of the war in Europe with the loss of countless lives.

Our book is not about taking heroes off their pedestals, but it must be noted that the egotistical Montgomery fuelled Anglophobia with the hot-headed Patton. He had a similar effect on the inexperienced Clark. None of this was helped by Alexander, who tended to sit back and not be overly directive.

The German Perspective

By mid-1943, no one could foresee what was going to happen in the central Mediterranean. From the German point of view, the early phase of the Italian campaign was like a puzzle, one that would take months to solve. That the Allies would land in some place along the Mediterranean coastline was assumed; predicting where was impossible. A landing in Sardinia or the Balkans was expected, because of the British deception (Operation Mincemeat), and the belief that Sardinia could be used as a springboard for a landing in France.

If it was to be Greece or the Balkans, Hitler imagined the Allies might be trying to establish a second front to seize the Romanian oilfields and link with the Soviet armies advancing in Ukraine.

Sicily was also considered, the aim being to undermine Italy and to prepare a subsequent attack against the Italian mainland. This possibility, as Hitler anticipated, was a task for the Italians; Germany would only support their ally.

In 1943, Hitler appeared less concerned about Italy and the Mediterranean than he was with the Eastern Front. This was understandable because the struggle against the Soviets was consuming most of Germany’s men, materiel, and resources. That does not mean the Mediterranean was not taken into account. From a strategic point of view, it was of primary importance, the problem being that Germany had no troops to spare for the defence of a series of long stretches of coastlines, ranging from southern France to Greece. This thinking explained the reaction to the events that followed the Allied landing in Sicily on 10 July 1943.

It took only a few days to realize that the Italians were not capable of defending any part of the front, not even in their own country. This insight led to the first step of bringing in reinforcements and having the German units take command.

The fall of Mussolini just two weeks later, and his replacement by Field Marshal Badoglio, represented another major development. Suddenly, Hitler was facing a major strategic risk. An Italian collapse, or worse a volta-face, which might enable the Allies to strike directly at southern Italy and, from there, at the Balkans, turning his nightmare into reality.

Hitler’s first reaction to the Allied move against Sicily was to appeal to his most capable commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Rommel was given the task to prepare the plans to take over from the Italians in case of an Allied landing in northern Italy and of an Italian collapse. By the end of August, the Italians’ unwillingness to fight compelled Germany to disarm its army and to occupy the country.

This led to an unexpected duality in command: Rommel dealing with the northern part of the country, while at the same time Field Marshal Kesselring was in command of the German troops in the south.

Neither could predict any foreseeable events, and the only certainty was their mutual dislike of one another. Rommel, in command of the German troops in North Africa since February 1941, had already dealt with Kesselring, who in December of that year had been appointed Commander-in-Chief South. There were occasional moments of contact between the two German commanders, which led to friction and a mutual distaste.

Their first tussle had to do with Malta. Kesselring was determined to seize the island to free the sea lanes to Africa. Rommel focused instead on Tobruk, which would pave the way to the advance into Egypt and to Alexandria. Eventually Rommel won the game, with Hitler authorising him to advance into Egypt right after Tobruk had been seized. Whether Kesselring or Rommel were right in their strategies is a matter still debated by historians.

Most important, in the summer of 1943, was Hitler’s decision to appoint Rommel as Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group B, responsible for northern Italy. This move marked the prelude to a lack of co-operation with Kesselring, the opposite of what was required.

The first contrast arose at the moment of the Italian surrender on Sept. 8, 1943, which coincided with the Allied landing at Salerno. In his post-war memoirs, General Westphal, Kesselring’s chief-of-staff, could not help putting the blame on Rommel for the German failure at Salerno. Had he put at disposal even just one of his divisions, Westphal argued, the Allies could have been thrown back into the sea. Even though this may be viewed as just the product of hindsight, Westphal’s attitude was revealing about the existing acrimony with Rommel. This issue did not help Hitler in choosing between the two major commanders for the full command in Italy and for the future strategy in the entire Mediterranean.

Many people died in the battles for Italy, soldiers on both sides, civilians, and especially in the latter months in north Italy. Whether the overall strategy was right, especially after the fall of Rome, will always be a moot point. The occupation of Sicily deviated from the plans and the German escape to the mainland was overlooked. The landing in Salerno came close to failure and not helped by Montgomery’s slow progress up the eastern coast. Clark’s crossing the Rapido against his field-officer’s advice caused too many casualties, and the bombing of Monte Cassino made the problem even more difficult. The Anzio landing became known as the beached whale, and for a time Allied soldiers were pinned on the beach by German gunfire. Clark in breaking Alexander’s orders and taking Rome allowed a major Germany army, for the second time, to escape and fight on in the north. It could be argued that the battles for Italy were near disasters, and the blame must rest on faulty planning and the senior commanders.

Andrew Sangster and Paolo Battistelli are the authors of Flawed Commanders and Strategy in the Battles for Italy, 1943-45. Sangster holds his doctorate in Modern European History as well as degrees in Law, Theology, History and English. He has written several biographies including Lord Alan Brooke, Beria, Franco, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, a history of France from 1936 to 46 and an account of the main European Secret Services before 1939. Battistelli gained an MA degree in the University of Perugia, Italy, and was awarded a Ph.D. degree at the University of Padua, Italy, with a thesis on the German-Italian military partnership during WWII. Dr. Battistelli is active as a translator, a military history consultant, and author, publishing a number of books on different subjects of history related to WWII.