Supreme Commander

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Eisenhower read to Castellano his message to Badoglio, which was then being encoded for transmission. “I intend to broadcast the existence of the armistice at the hour originally planned,” Eisenhower’s message began, and that hour was 6:30 P.M., that day, less than twelve hours away. “If you or any part of your armed forces fail to cooperate as previously agreed I will publish to the world the full record of this affair.” Eisenhower refused to “accept” Badoglio’s message postponing the armistice, pointed out that an accredited representative had signed it, and warned: “The sole hope of Italy is bound up in your adherence to that agreement.” Athough Eisenhower was sure that the Italians had sufficient troops near Rome to hold the city, on Badoglio’s “earnest representation” he was canceling GIANT II.

  In his last paragraph, Eisenhower let out all the stops. “Plans have been made on the assumption that you were acting in good faith and we have been prepared to carry out future operations on that basis,” he declared. His voice rising, he continued to read to the quaking Castellano. “Failure now on your part to carry out the full obligations to the signed agreement will have the most serious consequences for your country. No future action of yours could then restore any confidence whatever in your good faith and consequently the dissolution of your government and nation would ensue.” Eisenhower then dismissed Castellano, sending him to Tunis with the hope that he could do something to bring Badoglio around. The whole explosive scene probably made Eisenhower and his deputies feel better, but it had little practical value, since Badoglio was not there to see it. If Badoglio was to relent, Eisenhower’s message alone would have to persuade him.30

  With the message on its way to Badoglio and Castellano properly terrified, the next step was to make sure GIANT II had been canceled. AFHQ had sent a message to the division headquarters in Sicily, but it would take so long to encode, transmit, and decode that a quicker method was needed. Eisenhower therefore sent Brigadier General Lyman Lemnitzer by plane to Sicily. The pilot got lost, and only when he almost crashed into Mount Etna was he able to identify his location. The 82d’s commander, Major General Matthew Ridgway, was meanwhile waiting near a radio. Eisenhower was scheduled to broadcast the armistice at 6:30 P.M. and that broadcast was the 82d’s signal to go. Sixty-two of the 150 troop-carrying planes were already circling into formation to prepare to go to Rome when Lemnitzer landed. GIANT II was off.31

  At 6:30 P.M., on schedule, although no word had been received from Badoglio, Eisenhower went on the air on Radio Algiers. “This is General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander in Chief of the Allied forces,” he began. “The Italian government has surrendered its armed forces unconditionally. As Allied Commander in Chief, I have granted a military armistice.” The terms had been approved by the Allied governments, he added, and “the Italian government has bound itself by these terms without reservation.” The armistice became effective “this instant. Hostilities between the armed forces of the United Nations and those of Italy terminate at once.” Finally, “Italians who now act to help eject the German aggressor from Italian soil will have the assistance and support of the United Nations.”

  When Eisenhower finished, technicians at Amilcar quickly turned their dials to pick up Radio Rome. No announcement came from Badoglio. After waiting ten minutes, Eisenhower told the technicians to broadcast over Radio Algiers the text of Badoglio’s proclamation. This had been cleared earlier with Eisenhower and declared that an armistice was in effect. It ordered Italian soldiers to cease all acts of hostility against the Allies while urging them to “oppose attacks from any other quarter.”32

  That finished it. There was nothing more Eisenhower could do. He had gambled heavily, and now he had entered the waiting period before an invasion, that maddening time when he could only sit and pray. Clark’s men were on their way to the beaches. The Germans were undoubtedly moving to take Rome, which would clear their transportation routes to get reinforcements down to Salerno. No one knew what Badoglio was going to do or even where he was; presumably he and the King, along with other government officials, would flee Rome.

  Eisenhower had always insisted on announcing the armistice before the invasion, hoping that this would induce the Italians to at least commit acts of sabotage against the Germans. He recognized, however, that the terms the Allies had insisted upon were hardly likely to induce the Italians to become wholehearted advocates of the Allied cause. All the Allies had given the Italians was a crushing set of terms depriving them of all authority, all independence, and even the basic means of defense. In return, the Allies would not even recognize them as co-belligerents. But except at Taranto, no plans for co-operation had been made.33

  From the first, however, Eisenhower had not expected much positive help from the Italians. He had told Churchill all along that there was “no fury left in the Italian population.” What he absolutely had to have was passive neutrality. If the Italians chose to ignore the armistice announcement, pulled another double-cross, and fought beside the Germans, AVALANCHE would be a bloody failure. The situation was risky enough as it was, since Clark was invading with less than four divisions, while the Germans had almost twenty divisions on the mainland, and their ability to rush reinforcements to the Salerno area was greater than that of the Allies. It all hinged on Badoglio.

  CHAPTER 19

  Salerno

  While the landing craft plowed forward through the Mediterranean, carrying Clark’s men to their landing sites around Salerno, Eisenhower and his AFHQ staff sat beside a radio, waiting to hear whether Badoglio would broadcast over Radio Rome. Finally, at 7:45 P.M., Badoglio came on and announced the armistice.*

  Eisenhower grunted his satisfaction. He had “played a little poker,” as he put it, and won. By the time the Italians realized that the Allies had only a few divisions available for operations in Italy, it would be too late to back out.** He had done everything he could. It was now up to Clark—really, the men of the British X and the American VI Corps—and there was nothing the commander in chief could do until the situation on the beach clarified. Eisenhower was getting better at these waiting periods. This time, instead of fidgeting, he went to sleep.1

  When he awoke at 6:45 A.M. the news was good. Clark’s first waves had gotten ashore successfully, even though the Germans had pinpointed the general site of the landing. Secrecy was minimal because Salerno Bay was the only point between the toe and Naples with beaches that would support a landing, and the Germans knew that the Allied land-based fighter aircraft could not operate north of Naples. The enemy had assigned the 16th Panzer Division to the defense of the region. The defense was a mobile one, designed to hold up the Allies until the German divisions in the south of Italy could extricate themselves from combat with the Eighth Army and come to the aid of the 16th Division. Von Kesselring’s plan was to bring together every force he had and, on the third or fourth day of the invasion, drive the Allies into the sea.

  Eisenhower hoped to upset Von Kesselring’s plan by putting pressure on him at so many different points that concentration of forces would be impossible. The Allies already had Eighth Army coming north from the toe, and Clark was ashore at Salerno. In addition, Eisenhower had directed the British 1st Airborne Division into Taranto as soon as Badoglio announced the armistice. By early morning on September 9 the 1st Airborne was on its way. The 82d Airborne’s operation at Rome had been a part of this over-all plan, but it of course had been abandoned. Still, on the morning of September 9, the situation looked bright.2 An important factor was Italian neutrality, now insured thanks to Badoglio’s announcement. AFHQ could even begin to hope for active Italian assistance, which might be considerable, for even though the Italian Army was ill equipped, it did contain 1,700,000 men.

  But the hope that something could be accomplished by the Italians soon died. After announcing the armistice, Badoglio, the King, and the leaders in the government spent the next few hours debating whether or not they should leave Rome. They had hoped that the Germans would accept the armist
ice, and some even dreamed of the Germans agreeing to an Italian demand that they lay down their arms. But when the Germans made it clear that they would fight their way into Rome if necessary, the government panicked. At 5 A.M., as Clark’s men came ashore, the King, Badoglio, and the most important military leaders piled into private automobiles and fled the capital, headed for the south and safety under Allied protection. No one bothered to send any orders to units in the field, and for the most part the Germans merely disarmed the Italian soldiers. Within a matter of days the Italian Army ceased to exist and Italy was an occupied country.3

  Much of this was already known to Eisenhower by noon of September 9, when he dictated a long situation report to the CCS. He said that information received from Castellano indicated that nothing could be expected from the Italians. On the positive side, the Italian fleet had started out of Taranto and the British 1st Airborne had started in. Eisenhower was also rushing troops to Brindisi, for the Germans seemed to have no ground strength on the heel. Montgomery was making progress from the toe, but he was not moving fast enough to hold the Germans in the area, so Eisenhower expected them to turn up on Clark’s front shortly.

  At the main point, Salerno, the initial success was already beginning to give way to disturbing developments. The British X Corps, to the north, had three separate beachheads, one at Maiori, eight miles west of Salerno, another at Salerno itself, and a third to the south. The American VI Corps had one beachhead, twenty-five miles to the southeast, around Paestum. Beach conditions had forced the dispersal of troops. The immediate object was to link up. Resistance everywhere was heavy, but it was especially marked on the VI Corps front. It was beginning to look as though the link-up would be difficult to achieve and once made difficult to hold. Clark wanted to rush the 82d Airborne into the beachhead, and Eisenhower was trying to find landing craft with which to to the job.

  “I feel that AVALANCHE will be a matter of touch and go for the next few days,” Eisenhower told the CCS. If he had enough landing craft to put another division ashore immediately “the matter would be almost a foregone conclusion,” but as it was “we are in for some very tough fighting.” Eisenhower admitted that he looked for a “very bad time in the AVALANCHE area,” but declared that he believed that “the enemy is sufficiently confused by the events of the past 24 hours that it will be difficult for him to make up a definite plan.…”4

  It was a poor prediction. Even though German divisions in central Italy were fully engaged in disarming the Italian forces there and though those in southern Italy had long distances to march, over poor roads, Von Kesselring’s reaction was swift and strong. After building up his forces to the north of the beachhead to protect his communications with Naples, he concentrated on the center of Clark’s line to prevent the British and Americans from meeting. By nightfall of the tenth, although both the British and Americans had made some progress inland, they had not achieved a firm link-up. The ground just to the left of the Sele River was disputed, with the situation highly fluid. The next day Von Kesselring got five additional divisions into the area and prepared to destroy the Salerno beachhead.

  Von Kesselring attacked all through the day of September 12, driving the Allies back. The fighting continued throughout the night and into the next day. The American commander decided to strengthen his left flank in order to close the gap between his corps and X Corps. He began shifting troops northward. While this sliding maneuver was going on the Germans attacked the exposed troops along the north bank of the Sele River. They overran an American battalion, forded the river, and drove southeast for a ford on the Calore River. In the process the Germans inflicted heavy losses on the Americans, scattering many units. If they got across the Calore they would be loose in the American rear areas along the beaches.

  Eisenhower did what he could to rush reinforcements to Clark. Since there were no landing craft available, he had a part of the 82d Airborne dropped into the beachhead. He urged Montgomery to speed up his movement, which would have the effect of putting pressure on Von Kesselring’s left flank. Constant prodding had some effect on Montgomery, but real improvement came when Eighth Army got to better terrain. Initially it had only one mountain road to move on, and every bridge was blown, every defile blocked. It had traveled only forty-five miles in the first seven days in Italy; it covered twice that distance during the next week. Clark had constructed a small airfield in VI Corps beachhead, capable of handfing fighters, but German artillery on the high ground inland dominated the area and the airfield took a constant shelling. Eisenhower nevertheless rushed planes in, willing to take the losses in order to get some air protection. He prepared another infantry division to go into the beachhead as soon as landing craft were available.5

  As a result of some fervent pleas to the CCS and after many refusals from them, Eisenhower finally secured eighteen additional LSTs, but they were of no immediate help. They had been transiting through the Mediterranean on their way to India, and were loaded with steel rails. Eisenhower cursed every minute it took to unload them. “If we could have had the use of these for the past two weeks,” he complained to Wedemeyer, “we would be sitting rather well in Salerno Bay.” By the same token if he had had the three B-24 groups he had begged for, there would have been no crisis. “I would give my next year’s pay for two or three extra heavy groups right this minute,” Eisenhower said on the afternoon of September 13.6

  It was the most dangerous moment of the entire war for the Allied armies in Europe. An army of two corps, with four divisions, was on the verge of annihilation. AFHQ received a message from Clark that indicated that he was making plans to put his headquarters on board ship in order to control both sectors and to continue the battle in whichever one offered the greatest chance for success. The message made Eisenhower almost frantic. He told Butcher and Smith that the headquarters should leave last, that Clark ought to show the spirit of a naval captain and if necessary go down with his ship. The Fifth Army should emulate the spirit of Stalingrad, Eisenhower said, and stand and fight. He wondered if it had not been a mistake to give Clark the command—perhaps he should have selected Patton. The message from Clark, it turned out, had been garbled in transmission, and Clark had no intention of withdrawing.7 Still, it left everyone a little shaken.

  Eisenhower managed to keep up a front, no matter how bad the news. “My optimism never deserts me,” he declared on September 13th. He thought the efficiency of the air forces, the fact of the Germans unsureness about the possibility of another attack still farther north, and the fighting quality of the allied troops would eventually turn the trick.8

  Eisenhower’s confidence stemmed in part from the command structure, which was geared to quick decisions and rapid action and could concentrate enormous fire power on one spot in a hurry. Eisenhower’s deputies were with him at his advanced command post at Amilcar. He had insisted on this after the HUSKY experience, when they had been divided, and the new arrangements worked well. “We meet daily and it is astonishing how much we can get done to keep our staffs operating at full tilt to execute needed projects,” Eisenhower told Marshall on September 13. Everyone was currently working on saving the beachhead at Salerno. Tedder had his air forces “flat out” in support, while Alexander was prodding Montgomery. Cunningham was rushing capital ships into Salerno Bay, where they could fire in direct support of the ground forces. Eisenhower and the staff completely juggled the scheduled movements from the Mediterranean to OVERLORD, put into Salerno men who had been loaded to go to England, built up the 82d Airborne on the beachhead to full strength, and sent the 8th Indian Division into Brindisi.9

  The situation was still uncertain, but Eisenhower thought Clark could hold on. If he did not, Eisenhower told Marshall, “I would … merely announce that one of our landings had been repulsed—due to my error in misjudging the strength of the enemy at that place.” But he had “great faith that even in spite of currently grim reports, we’ll pull out all right.”10

  Even as Eisenhower was
dictating, the American G.I.s were proving him correct. At the critical point, along the Calore River, American artillerymen stood to their guns and prevented a German breakthrough. The situation was still critical but not desperate.

  All the next day, September 14, the Germans attacked. Eisenhower sent a note of encouragement to Clark, told Tedder to put “every plane that could fly” over Salerno, including all the Strategic Air Forces, and supported Cunningham in his decision to bring the ships up close to shore so that they could pound the Germans.11

  While the battle raged, Eisenhower dictated a memorandum for the diary. He admitted that, when the CCS withdrew his B-24s, Alexander and others had wanted to call off AVALANCHE. The decision to go ahead “was solely my own, and if things go wrong there is no one to blame except myself.” Eisenhower did point out that in the end all three deputies supported AVALANCHE, but he was not building up an excuse for the record. His deputies, as well as the staff at AFHQ and at Fifth Army, had “striven in every possible way” to make AVALANCHE work, and “I have no word of complaint concerning any officer or man in the execution of our plans.” Eisenhower thought the position could be held because “I think that our air force will finally disorganize the attacks against the Fifth Army.…”12 Shortly after he dictated the memorandum, word came in that the German attacks had failed and the situation was stabilizing. The combined Allied air and naval bombardment had stopped the enemy. Eisenhower, like most soldiers, tended to give the credit to the air forces. In speaking of the battle later, he would usually praise the fliers in the highest terms, then add almost as an afterthought that the Navy had done well too. In fact, although the air attacks were more spectacular, with planes sweeping out of the skies and swarming over German positions, or dropping bombs from on high which the G.I.s could watch coming down, it was the naval fire that was decisive in the victory. While the air forces were dropping 3020 tons of bombs, the naval forces—mostly Royal Navy—delivered more than 11,000 tons of shell in direct support of the ground forces on the beachhead, and the naval fire was immeasurably more accurate.13*