Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

  The corridor between Army Groups Centre and North did not stay open for long. On 5 October a massive Soviet offensive cut the link and pushed Army Group North into the Courland peninsula, where it held a 100-mile front with the Baltic behind and on each side. The Red Army was now preparing for the last great offensive of the Russian War, one that would take it to Berlin itself.

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  In Italy, Operation Diadem, the fourth Battle of Cassino and the breakout from Anzio, had represented the last chance for a quick victory. However, Clark’s insistence on heading for Rome to secure a publicity coup before the British could get there, and in so doing allowing a gap to open up between his Fifth Army and Oliver Leese’s Eighth, enabled the Germans to slip through and prepare to delay the approach to their next major defensive position. Originally named the Gothic Line by the Germans when they began work on it in April 1944, then renamed the Green Line by Hitler in June and called by the Allies the Pisa–Rimini line, it actually ran two thirds of the way up the Italian peninsula from just north of Lucca on the west coast for 200 miles north of Florence through the Apennines to south of Pesaro on the Adriatic coast. Like the Gustav Line, it consisted of well-sited defensive positions with fixed concrete emplacements, anti-tank ditches, wire entanglements, minefields, cleverly concealed machine-gun positions with interlocking arcs and artillery and mortars that could dominate the approaches. As with all Allied pursuits in this war, the one from Rome was slow and ponderous, giving the Germans ample opportunity to pull back at their own pace. Kesselring now had nineteen German divisions, although most were seriously under-strength, with three in reserve and another three working on what for convenience we shall continue to call the Gothic Line. As for the Allies, there had been a continuing haemorrhage of troops and landing craft for Overlord, and now a further six divisions, including the North African mountain specialists of the French Corps, were withdrawn for Operation Dragoon, the landing on the French Riviera by the American Seventh Army supported by the Royal and United States Navies on 15 August and against which the British had argued strongly. On paper some of this loss of troops was made up by units of the reconstituted Italian Army supposedly now fighting the Germans, but, with the Allies having to provide them with logistic support and to clothe and equip them, not to mention their extreme reluctance to actually fight, the British at least found that the Italians could only be used as labour battalions or for static guards in rear areas.

  The next objective for the British and Americans was Florence, and to slow them up German tactics involved deploying mobile battle groups of a battalion or so of infantry in commandeered trucks supported by a few tanks. They would take up a defensive position and force the Allies to deploy, hold their position for a day or so and then slip away before a main attack came in. This proved an excellent delaying tactic and it was not until 4 August that the Allies closed up to the River Arno with Florence on the other side and no way across as the Germans had blown all the bridges except one. The German commander on the spot was not prepared to go down in history as the man who wantonly destroyed the Ponte Vecchio, built in 1345, but he rendered it equally unusable by demolishing the buildings at either end and blocking the approaches and exits with rubble. The Germans did not attempt to fight on the Arno for any length of time, but the Allied need to bring up bridging companies and get bridges across the river that would take armour added to the delay.

  North of the Gothic Line, Mussolini was attempting to establish a fascist republic run from Salo on Lake Garda. Its existence was entirely dependent upon German goodwill, and there was very little of that. Italian partisans, hitherto quiescent, were becoming bolder and murder of lone German servicemen and sabotage of roads and railways were becoming more frequent. The Germans were forced to take sterner and sterner measures to keep order, including the deportation of men of military age to Germany as forced labour and eventually the shooting of hostages and the burning down of villages where German soldiers had been fired upon. While there was not much else the Germans could have done, such measures inevitably provoked more murders and more sabotage. Mussolini and fascism had lost all credibility, even in the areas that he nominally controlled, while Allied troops were greeted by cheering crowds in the towns and villages that they entered, and the rate of Allied desertion duly went up. Desertion was an attractive option, with the prospect of sitting out the war in a remote village surrounded by Italian girls whose menfolk were interned in Germany and where the Chianti was cheap and plentiful, and, while there are no accurate figures as to how many American and British soldiers made up the bands of deserters, the situation was sufficiently serious for Alexander to demand the imposition of the death penalty for desertion, sanctioned by military law but not yet imposed in this war. Politicians, fearful of public reaction at home, refused.

  Alexander’s plan to breach the Gothic Line involved what he called the ‘two-handed punch’. Eighth Army would attack through the Rimini gap on the Adriatic coast, covered only by foothills and where the British armour could be used to best advantage, and when Kesselring was forced to move his reserves, and possibly redeploy troops from his centre as well, Clark’s Fifth Army would deliver the second punch, from Florence through the passes to Bologna. D-Day was to be 25 August, and, even though the move of Eighth Army to its concentration area on the east coast was a huge logistic task, involving 80,000 vehicles, prodigious road repair work by the Royal Engineers, including the construction of eighty Bailey bridges to allow tank transporters to operate a shuttle service, meant the whole operation was completed in fifteen days. For the second punch Clark had asked the American Chiefs of Staff for reinforcements for his severely depleted army. Italy had never been a priority for the Americans and it was even less so now. What Clark got was a regimental combat team* from an all-black division (the US Army was still segregated) and two battalions of the recently arrived Brazilian Expeditionary Force. Both these units and the one-third under-strength US 1 Armoured Division were placed in reserve. Wilson and Alexander had also asked for reinforcement for the British units, and they too got little response – a Greek mountain brigade* and 4,000 Poles who had been captured in German uniforms in Normandy and were prepared to turn their coats and join the Polish Corps under British command in Italy.

  The concentration of Eighth Army on the Adriatic coast came as a complete surprise to the Germans. Kesselring had nineteen divisions in and forward of the Gothic Line. To oppose them, Eighth Army had V Corps with an augmented armoured division, one Indian and three British infantry divisions; X Corps with one Indian and one New Zealand division, an armoured brigade and the Greek mountain brigade; and the Canadian I Corps with five armoured divisions and one infantry division and the Polish Corps. The American Fifth Army consisted of II Corps with two infantry divisions: IV Corps with a South African and an American armoured division, the black regimental combat team and Task Force 45, this latter a mix of American and British anti-aircraft and anti-tank gunners given some hasty infantry training; and XIII British Corps with a British armoured division augmented by a Canadian armoured brigade and one British and one Indian infantry division. Eighth Army attacked at 2300 hours from the River Metauro on 25 August in complete silence to maintain surprise, and met only slight resistance. By first light there were five divisions across the river; by 30 August they were over the River Foglia and into the advance positions of the Gothic Line and prospects were looking good. On 2 September, the Canadian Corps and V Corps advancing side by side were over the River Conca, and then it all began to turn sour. The German 1 Parachute Division, 26 Panzer Division and 29 Panzer Grenadier Division were strongly dug in on Monte Coriano and Gemiano, five miles to the south, and, when the British attacked on 4 September, they were not to be shifted. The impetus had now gone out of the Eighth Army attack and it was time to launch Fifth Army. On 8 September the Americans attacked, spearheaded by 8 Indian Division, and on 12 September they were overlooking the strongly fortified Futa Pass. Then the weather broke. The
autumn rains, not normally due for another month, were nothing short of torrential, and in the mountains, combined with mist and howling winds, any operation of war was made exceedingly difficult and air support impossible. Some progress was made on the Adriatic coast where aircraft could still fly and on 12 September V Corps and the Canadians between them took Coriano and three days later Gemiano fell to 4 Indian Division. On 20 September the Greeks entered Rimini but now the rains had turned the whole area back into the swamps from which it had been reclaimed in Roman times; glutinous mud prevented even tracked vehicles from moving off the roads, and there were precious few of those. Further operations in early October to get Fifth Army clear of the mountains succeeded but at terrible cost as the Germans withdrew at their own pace, making the Americans and their attached British units fight for every yard.

  On 10 October, General Leese was transferred to take over from Giffard as Commander Land Forces South-East Asia. He was thought to be too methodical and too slow for the dash that was expected in the Italian theatre, despite the inescapable facts that the weather, the lack of troops and the Combined Chiefs’ view of Italy as a backwater made it impossible for even the most dashing general – if one could be found – to employ methods other than those of slow, deliberate attrition. Leese’s replacement was Lieutenant-General Sir Richard McCreery, a cavalryman who had fallen out with Auchinleck, was reinstated as Alexander’s chief of staff after the Cairo Purge, was not thought highly of by Montgomery but survived to command X Corps at the Salerno landings. On the German side too there were command changes. Field Marshal Kesselring was badly injured when the staff car in which he was travelling collided with a gun and while he was in hospital Colonel-General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, who had been commanding Tenth Army, was temporarily in command of Army Group C. Neither change of command made much difference: the Allies were through the Gothic Line but exhausted and with a heavy bill of casualties who could not be replaced. Eighth Army had lost 465 tanks and was 7,000 infantrymen short of establishment, and McCreery had no option but to disband 1 Armoured Division, reduce 56 Division to a brigade and reorganize all infantry battalions into three rifle companies instead of four. The Germans too had not survived unscathed and of their ninety-two infantry battalions thirty had fewer than 200 men and only ten had more than 400.

  In December, Alexander ordered a further offensive, which made little progress in appalling weather and was called off with the Allies still short of Bologna and their line running from the east coast along the River Senio, north of Firenzuola, south of Monte Vergato across to Viareggio on the west coast. The proponents of the Italian campaign could argue that they had kept twenty or so German divisions away from the Eastern Front or from North-West Europe, but as it had also tied down around the same number of Allied divisions, there would seem to have been little, if any, advantage. As it was, the winter put a stop to any major operations by either side, and the front would not move again until the spring of 1945.

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  With the virtual destruction of the German Seventh Army in Normandy, the Allies now had to prevent the Germans from establishing a defence line on the River Seine, something which the Germans were in fact unable to do, being ordered to fall back while destroying everything of military value as they went. Eisenhower had hoped to avoid having to fight for Paris, mindful of the problems of street-fighting and the subsequent responsibility for feeding a city of several million inhabitants, but despite de Gaulle’s orders to the Resistance not to take military action, fearing as he did that French communists would seize control of the city, a general strike by Parisians on 18 August led to an armed rising the next day. General of Infantry Dietrich von Choltitz, Paris Military Commandant, had been ordered not to allow the city to fall into Allied hands except as a heap of rubble, but, with only around 20,000 mostly rear echelon troops, he could not have destroyed the city even if he had wanted to (which he probably did not). For political reasons, it was decided that Paris should be liberated by the French and so the Americans held back and von Choltitz surrendered the city to General Le Clerc’s French 2 Armoured Division and representatives of the Resistance on 25 August 1944. There followed a spate of lynch law where old scores were settled and numbers of people shot as collaborators – which some of them undoubtedly were.

  On 31 August the British seized the bridges over the River Somme at Amiens, on 3 September the Guards Armoured Division entered Brussels and on 4 September Antwerp fell to the British Second Army. On 1 September, Montgomery had ceased to command the Allied Land Forces when Eisenhower took on that responsibility in addition to his role as Supreme Allied Commander. It was only a recognition of the fact that the American Army had continued to grow, whereas the British were running out of manpower, and an acceptance that the American generals were increasingly critical of Montgomery, who, demoted to command of 21st Army Group, was promoted to field marshal as a sop. Eisenhower now had thirty-seven divisions – twenty-one American, twelve British, three Canadian and one Polish – supported by 7,700 tanks, 6,000 bombers, 5,000 fighters and 2,000 transport aircraft, and one of the major problems was the supply of food, ammunition, fuel and spare parts, most of which was still coming in through the artificial Mulberry harbour in Normandy. The Allies badly needed a major port, as well as the smaller ones captured by the Canadians as they advanced up the Channel coast, and, although Operation Dragoon, the American landings in the French Riviera, had captured Toulon and Marseilles, these were simply too far away. Although the Allies now had Antwerp, they could only use it when the Germans had been cleared out of the Scheldt delta on either side. Until that happened, the logistic machinery could not support offensives by all five Allied armies, two in 21st Army Group and three in the US 12th Army Group.

  Montgomery, supported by Bradley, urged that one northern thrust should be given maximum support to drive deep into Germany, take Berlin and end the war in 1944, with the added advantage of doing so before the Russians got too far into Europe. Eisenhower preferred a less risky strategy, envisaging a steady advance on a broad front, and in any case the American State Department was dismissive of London’s fears as to Russian intentions, seeing only further evidence of British deviousness and imperial ambitions. It would also have been unthinkable to let the British undertake the final thrust that would presumably seal Germany’s defeat while the American divisions were stuck in France. The result was a compromise: the role of 21st Army Group was now to advance through Belgium and Holland while Bradley’s 12th Army Group was to strike east against the Siegfried Line, the defences protecting the border of the Reich itself.A subsidiary aim of the British advance was to take out the sites from which the Germans were firing their Vengeance weapons against England. They had started bombarding London and the South Coast with the subsonic V1,anearly cruise missile carrying 1,800lb of high explosive, in June 1944, but the RAF and the Royal Artillery learned reasonably quickly how to shoot them down, although they did kill over 6,000 people. Much more serious was the supersonic V2,the first ballistic missile, which also carried a warhead of 1,800lb. There was no defence against the V2 other than destroying the launching sites, which were mobile, unlike those for the V1, which were fixed ramps. The first V2 attacks came in September 1944, and, although they came far too late to affect the result of the war, they were sufficiently worrying for the British government to cover up the fatalities caused by them – around 3,000 Londoners – until much later. Initially, the government reported the missile detonations as gas main explosions, and then as what they were but giving a location well beyond their actual point of impact. The Germans thus altered the range, causing the rockets to land well short of where they were aimed at.At one stage, this provoked Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour in Churchill’s government, to accuse the prime minister of deliberately decoying V2s away from the rich City of London and on to working-class housing in the East End. As it was, the missiles continued to fall on London (and on European cities too) until the last launching sites were over
run in March 1945.

  On 30 August, Lieutenant-General Courtney Hodges’s First US Army encircled and forced the surrender of six German divisions on the Franco-Belgian border and on 5 September Field Marshal Rundstedt was recalled yet again as Commander-in-Chief West, although there was little he could do to prevent Hodges driving his troops back to the German border at Aachen while Patton’s Third US Army took Verdun. However, any idea that German resistance might collapse, as some on the Allied side thought and hoped, was misplaced: the closer German units were pushed back to Germany, the harder they fought, and Allied intelligence reports noted that young officers taken prisoner still believed in final victory.