Warnings were dropped by air on Rome on 3 and 18 July, and on 19 July, 150 B-17s and B-24s from the Northwest African Strategic Air Force, accompanied by 240 B-26s of the US Ninth Air Force, dropped around 1,000 tons on the railway at San Lorenzo and Littorio, and the two airbases at Ciampino. Since the bombing of the marshalling yards was from altitudes of between 19,000 and 24,000 feet, there was extensive damage to the surrounding area. Only 80 bombs were observed to hit the target area around Littorio, and a post-raid interpretation showed that there was heavy damage to the Basilica of San Lorenzo and across 27 residential streets.178 The following day the Pope drove in his black Mercedes through Rome, the first time during the war that he had left Vatican City. The population greeted him with hysterical enthusiasm while aides distributed money among the crowd. There were over 700 dead reported by the emergency services, many in the working-class areas around San Lorenzo, the least Fascist quarter of Rome, but later estimates put the number killed between 1,700 and 2,000.179 When the king, Victor Emanuel III, visited the ruins he was met by a sullen crowd which blamed him for the war. ‘The population is mute, hostile,’ wrote an aide, ‘we pass through tears and an icy silence.’180
Rome’s symbolic status ensured that the raid would attract wide publicity. The Combined Chiefs sent Eisenhower instructions that he was to publish a communiqué promptly after the bombing, attesting to the fact that only military objectives had been hit, in order to avoid accusations that the ‘Shrine of Christendom’ had been violated.181 According to an OSS report, cities in northern Italy welcomed the fact that Fascists in Rome ‘were getting their medicine at last’, and there was evident dour satisfaction among populations already bombed that the cause of their ordeal was suffering too.182 The Papacy, which had appealed several times to turn Rome into an ‘open city’, used the bombing as the opportunity to launch a major diplomatic offensive over the months that followed to try to secure immunity from further attacks. The most significant consequence was the fate of the Mussolini dictatorship, for Rome also symbolized the heart of the Fascist regime. Mussolini had been meeting Hitler at Feltre in north-east Italy on the day Rome was bombed. A ‘pale and agitated official’ had interrupted the two men with the news and Mussolini had hurried back to the capital. The days immediately following the bombing witnessed an atmosphere of mounting political tension. In the evening of 24 July a meeting was summoned of the Fascist Grand Council to which Mussolini was to report on the state of the Italian war effort. That afternoon, Mussolini later wrote, the tension was so acute that ‘Rome turned pale’.183 At the meeting he admitted that he was for the moment the most loathed man in Italy, but defended his record. By the morning of 25 July there had been a palace revolt; senior Fascists, army commanders and the king withdrew their support, and Mussolini’s rule abruptly ended. The American Psychological Warfare Branch drew an obvious though speculative inference: the bombing of Rome on 19 July meant that by 25 July ‘the Government was out’.184
Did bombing bring about the collapse of Mussolini’s regime? A good case can be made that the sudden intensification of bombing in 1943 provoked a people already tired of war and fearful of its consequences to reject twenty years of Fascism and to hope for peace. The bombing from the winter of 1942–3 was on an unprecedented scale, 1,592 tons in 1942 but 110,474 tons in 1943, twice the tonnage dropped in the Blitz on Britain.185 From modest losses in the early raids, the destruction of housing escalated dramatically, 122,000 buildings by March 1943.186 Most of the operations were now carried out by American air forces which flew high and bombed with poor accuracy. The small town of Grosseto, for example, was largely destroyed when 24 B-17s were sent to attack an air force base but hit the residential districts, leaving 134 dead. Attacks on the airbase at Foggia, near the east coast, provoked an extraordinary crisis when bombs destroyed the town. After the raid on 31 May, some 40 per cent of the population fled, leaving shops and factories without manpower and services in disarray. The prefect reported that his city was a spectacle of desolation, ‘infested by the fumes from putrifying bodies not yet recovered’.187 The ports of the south were heavily bombed in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Sicily: 43 raids on Palermo; 32 on Messina; 45 on Catania. Naples was struck repeatedly throughout the war, small raids at first from Malta, but from the first heavy raid on 4 December 1942 there were repeated strikes that left 72,000 buildings damaged or destroyed by the spring of 1943. Neapolitans reacted to the bombing as a new war against the home front. ‘My war started,’ wrote one, ‘on the 4 December.’ The raid, recalled another, ‘grew infinitely in the memory … a monstrous roar of engines seemed to enter the room, in the brain, in every fibre of the body … everyone was resigned to die’.188 In Naples and elsewhere in Italy the raids exposed the failure of the regime to provide enough shelter space, to organize effective post-raid welfare, to train sufficient civil defenders or to mount a serious defence against Allied incursions. Protests dated from the first raids in 1941 against poor food supply, long queues and the inequality of sacrifice; the decline of support for a failing state long pre-dated the raid on Rome on 19 July 1943.189
The evolution of popular disillusionment with the regime can certainly be linked to the more general failure of the state to cope with the consequences of the new offensive. In the spring of 1943 at the Fiat works in Turin spontaneous strikes erupted between 5 and 8 March in protest at the failure to provide an indemnity for all bombed workers, and not just for those ‘evening’ evacuees who went back and forth to their families in the countryside. Mingled with protest at rising prices and poor food distribution, the strike movement spread to other factories and eventually as far as Genoa and Milan, until they petered out in April. In Genoa protests against the lack of shelters had already followed the first raids, when crowds of angry women tried to storm the bunkers belonging to the rich.190 During 1943 a stream of reports reached Rome from provincial prefects indicating the growing demoralization and hostility of the population, though only some of this was due to bombing and much to do with Italy’s ineffective war effort. A report from Genoa in May 1943 indicated that ‘public morale is very depressed’ due to food shortages and the complete incapacity of the Italian military, as well as the material and morale damage caused by the bombs. From Turin it was reported that workers could no longer see any point in working for a failed system but displayed instead ‘apathy and indifference’. Palermo, hit repeatedly by bombing in 1943, reported in May that almost all civilian activities were paralysed, the population terrorized and the streets deserted. Even the reports from Rome, not yet bombed, indicated a population that was now ‘mistrustful and desperate’, awaiting a political upheaval of some kind: ‘Faith in victory seems to be almost completely lost … the conviction of the uselessness of past and present efforts is almost general.’191 Iris Origo, listening to discussions going on around her in Tuscany, complained that it was all ‘talk, talk, talk, and no action’, reflecting a ‘dumb, fatalistic apathy’ among a people no longer willing to go on with the war, but unable to find a means to end it.192 Ordinary Italians turned to religion or superstition to help cope with the dilemma of being trapped between a remorseless bombing and a failed state. In Livorno (Leghorn) the absence of bombing until late May 1943 was attributed to the protection of the Madonna of Montenero (though it was also rumoured that Churchill had a lover in the city, which explained its immunity). In Sardinia a prayer was composed against the bombing: ‘Ave Maria, full of grace, make it so the sirens do not sound, the aeroplanes do not come … Jesus, Joseph, Mary, make it that the English lose their way.’193
The bombing of Rome was neither the occasion nor the cause of the overthrow of Mussolini, but a symptom of a state in the final throes of disintegration. In a body wracked with ailments, it is not always easy to identify the precise cause of death. Moreover, the fall of the dictator brought neither peace to the Italian people nor an end to the bombing. Indeed, a better case can be made for the argument that bombing accelerated the decision
of Mussolini’s successor, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, together with the king, to seek an armistice in early September to take Italy out of the war after the initial decision to continue it. At first the Allies were uncertain how to react to the news of Mussolini’s fall and bombing was briefly suspended. But on 31 July, after a four-day respite, Portal told Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, commander of the Mediterranean Air Force, to start bombing Naples and Rome again in order to pressure the Badoglio government to seek ‘peace terms’.194 BBC Radio Algiers broadcast the news to Italian listeners that bombing would start again on 1 August. Three million leaflets were distributed which suggested that abandoning the Germans was better than more ‘iron and fire’; another 6 million dropped in mid-August explained that as long as the government in Rome continued the war, so the bombing would continue.195
The situation was confused by the request from the Badoglio regime in late July to make Rome an open city. American bombing was halted while the implications were examined. On 2 August Marshall drew up the American War Department’s view of what constituted an open city – removal of all Italian and German forces, evacuation of all government agencies, cessation of all war production, and no roads or rail links to be used for military purposes – but a day later the War Cabinet in London rejected any idea of allowing Rome this status, even if the rigorous American demands could be met, as long as the war in Italy continued. On 13 August Eisenhower was notified that bombing could start again and Rome was bombed once more, the first of 51 further raids. The Pope again visited the damaged area accompanied by shouts from the crowd of ‘Long live peace!’196 Bombing spread out from Rome to other cities in central Italy. Pisa was struck on 31 August by 144 aircraft, leaving 953 dead and wide destruction in the residential areas of the city. Foggia was struck again, leading to its almost complete evacuation. On 27 August Pescara was bombed, with 1,600 dead. American intelligence reports suggested widespread rioting and anti-Fascist demonstrations once the bombing restarted.197 On 3 September Badoglio bowed to reality, despite the looming menace of German occupation, and signed an armistice. On 8 September news of Italy’s surrender was announced but for most Italians the war at the side of Germany was simply exchanged overnight for a war under German control.
‘CERTAINLY BOMB’: THE LIBERATION OF ITALY
The bombing campaign in Italy from September 1943 until the end of the war had not been planned for. The sudden collapse of Italian belligerency provoked an immediate and violent reaction from the large German armed forces now stationed throughout the peninsula. The Italian armed forces were disarmed, interned, and in most cases sent north to Greater Germany as forced labour. Italy became an occupied country, like France, with the difference that in this case a new Mussolini regime, the Italian Social Republic (usually known as the Salò Republic after the town on Lake Garda), was set up following Mussolini’s dramatic rescue by German special forces from imprisonment. It was in effect a puppet government, entirely subservient to the military requirements of the German Commander-in-Chief South, Field Marshal Kesselring, but a number of Italian airmen and soldiers remained loyal to Fascism and served alongside German forces. German leaders were not much concerned with the idea of recreating the Fascist state since their priority was to prevent the Allies from reaching central Europe, but for the Italian people Fascist government remained in place, widely unpopular and despised, until Mussolini’s death at the hands of Italian partisans in late April 1945.
For the Allies Italy presented both problems and opportunities. The priority from September 1943, after the conquest of Sicily and the first tentative landings on the toe of the peninsula, was to defeat the German armed forces and, if that could be done quickly, to liberate Italy and prepare to assault the German Empire from the south. If it could not be done easily, as soon appeared the case, Allied air forces would be used to support the land war and to bomb when necessary more distant targets. Even a limited presence on mainland Italy, however, presented the opportunity of raiding German targets from the Mediterranean which were difficult to reach from British bases. These differing aims required a reorganization of the confused mix of air force commands that had grown up with the expansion of the Mediterranean and North African air forces, both British and American. In early 1943 targets in Italy were hit by the Northwest African Strategic Air Force and the combined Tactical Bomber Force, made up of some RAF units and the American Twelfth and Ninth air forces. Other RAF units under Air Marshal Tedder formed the Mediterranean Air Force, which had operated chiefly in the desert war, but had begun to raid Italy after the defeat of the Axis in Tunisia in May 1943. In the autumn of 1943 these forces were amalgamated into the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (MAAF), including both British and American air units. The British component was limited in size; the American element was enlarged to create a Fifteenth Air Force for long-range bombing missions, first under General Doolittle (until he replaced Ira Eaker in Britain as commander of the Eighth) and then under Maj. General Nathan Twining. The Twelfth Air Force under the command of Maj. General John Cannon was assigned to tactical missions, including bombing, to replace the Ninth which was sent to support the Normandy invasion of June 1944. The overall command of MAAF, which was activated on 10 December 1943, was given to Eaker, who took up his post in January; his deputy was the British Air Marshal John Slessor. On 4 January 1944 the American component of MAAF came formally under the control of General Spaatz when he was appointed overall commander of all American strategic and tactical air forces in Europe, but in practice only the strategic Fifteenth Air Force was responsible to Spaatz, while the tactical air forces answered to the Mediterranean Supreme Commander, first Eisenhower then, from January 1944, General Maitland Wilson. The Fifteenth Air Force was activated on 1 November 1943 with its headquarters near the ruined town of Foggia. Its squadrons were spread over a dozen bomber bases from where they flew missions to Austria, southern Germany and the Balkans, as well as Italian targets. The RAF strategic force, composed mainly of medium Wellington bombers, was based at Brindisi.198
A clear distinction between strategic and tactical bombing was difficult to make, since there were occasions when strategic forces were needed to support the ground war or to destroy communication in the rear of German armies. For the rest of the time they were expected to raid German targets. In December 1943, for example, out of a list of 48 strategic targets for Operation Pointblank supplied by the American Economic Warfare Division, only seven were in Italy, and only two (both ball-bearing factories) were included on the list of priorities.199 In November 1943 the operations director at MAAF, Brig. General Lauris Norstad, ordered the tactical air forces to concentrate on supporting the ground war and bombing communications targets up to a line from Civita Vecchia (near Rome) to Ancona on the east coast; the strategic air forces, by this time principally the Fifteenth Air Force, were to bomb all communications targets north of this line, using either B-26 Martin Marauder medium bombers or their B-17s and B-24s when necessary.200 The line shifted with the fortunes of the ground battle, but not until 1 March 1945 did the tactical air forces assume responsibility for the whole area of northern Italy still under German occupation.201 The difference between a tactical and a strategic raid often made little difference to the population around the target, but the distinction was maintained in air force records. Out of 124,000 tons dropped on Italian targets in the first five months of 1944, 78,700 were deemed to be strategic, the rest tactical.202
Most of the raiding in the last 20 months of the war was carried out by American air forces. The statistical breakdown of air raids by the different Allied air forces is set out in Table 8.3 The American raids were generally larger than those of the RAF, since at Brindisi the British kept only a small number of Wellingtons for strategic tasks. By the end of the campaign in the spring of 1945 there were over 1,900 American heavy bombers based in the Mediterranean out of an overall total of almost 4,300 American combat aircraft. Heavy bombers flew a total of 18,518 sorties in 1943, 90,383 in 1944, th
ough some of their bombload was directed at German or Balkan targets. From 1943 to the end of the war, American heavy bombers stationed in the Mediterranean dropped 112,000 tons on Italian targets and 143,000 tons on Greater Germany and German-occupied central Europe; tactical bombers dropped another 163,000 tons on Italian targets, a grand total of 276,312 tons on Italy.203
Table 8.3: Raids on Italy by British and American Air Forces, 1940–45
(Of the 381 raids by the RAF Med., 135 were small raids mounted from Maltese bases.)
Source: Calculated from Marco Gioannini, Giulio Massobrio, Bombardate l’Italia (Milan: 2007), website appendix.
For the bomber crews flying in Italy the dangers were considerably less than in Germany, though the weather remained a persistent hazard despite the claim made by Harris that bombing could be conducted on all but 8 per cent of days in the Mediterranean in January and 5 per cent in July (compared with 51 per cent and 21 per cent lost days flying from English bases).204 In late 1942 the Italian Air Force had only 44 serviceable night-fighters, most of them biplanes incapable of effective intervention.205 The opposition from Italian anti-aircraft guns and fighters disappeared in autumn 1943, to be replaced with a large concentration of German anti-aircraft artillery around key targets. But the overwhelming air superiority enjoyed by Allied forces following the Axis defeat in Africa and the conquest of Sicily meant that there was little effective fighter opposition from the German Air Force, with the result that higher levels of accuracy were possible than could be achieved over Germany. Bomber Command raids in summer 1943 using H2S radar dropped between 70 and 87 per cent of bombs within three miles of their target, while most raids on Berlin at the same time could only achieve 30 per cent; not precise by any standard, but more concentrated and hence more destructive.206 By late 1943 there were only 470 German aircraft dispersed between Sardinia, mainland Italy and the Aegean. Maintenance problems meant a low level of serviceability, while numerical inferiority, a result of the diversion of aircraft to defend the Reich, provoked a constant attrition cycle that could not be reversed. By summer 1944 there were only 370 serviceable aircraft in the theatre, most of them single-engine fighters flown both by German and Italian pilots.207 American bomber losses in 1944 and 1945 were largely due to anti-aircraft fire or accident, 1,829 against 626 credited to fighter interception.208 Not for nothing was Joseph Heller’s anti-hero in Catch 22, a novel about the American air experience in Italy, afraid of the ‘goddam foul black tiers of flak … bursting, and booming and billowing all around’.209
The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 Page 72