Transcript World Wars: World War II

The Soft Underbelly of Europe
 From North Africa, the plan was to invade Sicily and
then on to mainland Italy and move up the so-called
“soft underbelly” of Europe.
 Victory in the
region would
also do a great
deal to clear the
Mediterranean
Sea of Axis
shipping and
leave it more
free for the
Allies to use.
 Sicily, invasion of (1943). HUSKY had been on the
agenda ever since
the Casablanca
Conference of
January 1943.
 The success of the TORCH landings in French North
Africa the previous November had encouraged
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill to plan for a
seaborne assault as soon as the Axis had been defeated
in Tunisia.
 Although TORCH had been virtually unopposed, Sicily
was reckoned to be a tougher nut to crack, with the
Italians fighting on their
home ground, stiffened by
good German troops.
 But the mood was optimistic.
 A blend of the battle-hardened men of Eighth Army
under Montgomery, the profusion of US war matériel,
and American troops of the Seventh Army under
Patton were considered enough to overwhelm the
island garrison and bring the war to mainland Italy.
 Amphibious ships and landing craft were the resource
that defined Allied military strategy in 1943-44, and it
took six months to assemble enough for the main
component of HUSKY, an operation involving 150, 000
men and 3,000 ships
 The two Allied armies were to attack on 10 July,
landing on two separate 40 mile (64 km) strips of
beach, in Sicily
a mutually
supporting
operation.
 July 5, 1943—U.S. under Patton and British under
Montgomery invade Sicily.
 Was the largest amphibious operation to that date in the
war.
 Difficult undertaking—Sicily fortified with 300,000
German and Italian troops.
 After a successful landing on July 9, German
counterattacks with Panzer Tanks…were beaten back by
U.S. and British Destroyers.
 Patton attacked west—in two weeks the U.S. had
captured the city of Palermo.
 Montgomery, after taking Syracuse in the east, gets
bogged down versus the Germans.
 Patton and Montgomery driving toward the most
important strategic point on the island…Messina.
 Messina is heavily defended by the Germans in
vicious fighting as they give ground.
 Patton becomes frustrated due to the slowness of the
campaign toward Messina.
 Patton cursed and berated, finally slapping and
threatening to shoot a private in a field hospital.
 Thought the private was a coward—actually had malaria
and fever.
 Patton was to be in trouble, but the incident was covered
up until after he had beaten Monty to Messina.
 The Sicily Campaign had yielded 31, 158 Allied
casualties.
 The Italian Campaign—July 1943-May 1945
 Allies had begun heavy bombing raids over Italy—
including Rome in 1943.
 The Italians had become sick of Mussolini’s military
government.
 In August, 1943, Mussolini
was removed from power,
then arrested and imprisoned.
 King Victor Immanuel
becomes Italy leader.
Mussolini with
Victor Immanuel III
 New Italian (King Victor Emmanuel) leaders wanted
to sign a peace agreement with the Allies.
 Surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on Sept. 8, 1943
 Germans refused to leave. Occupied Italy as they readied
for a defense of Italy at all costs.
 British invade Southern Italy first on September 3, 1943
and swept easily northward.
 September 9, 1943—Americans and British attack at
Salerno along Italy’s western coast.
 Met with heavy tank and artillery—vicious fighting
resulting in heavy losses.
 U.S. troops under General Mark Clark nearly withdrew.
 U.S. fighter’s and bombers attached to the Tuskegee
Airmen arrive and hammer German artillery
emplacements.
 Germans withdrew by September 15, 1943.
 Following victory at Salerno, the Allies moved north
and take Naples unopposed.
 Monty’s British forces capture airfields at Foggia and
turn them into Allied airfields.
 Along the Italian west coast—Germans now stiffen.
 Encountered fierce resistance by Germans dug into
rocky hillsides.
 Decision was made to try to flank the Germans 30 miles
south of Rome.
 During the early morning hours of 22 January 1944,
troops of the Fifth Army swarmed ashore on a fifteenmile stretch of Italian beach near the prewar resort
towns of Anzio and Nettuno.
 The landings were carried out so flawlessly and
German resistance was so light that British and
American units gained their first day's objectives by
noon, moving three to four miles inland by nightfall.
 The ease of the landing and the swift advance were
noted by one paratrooper of
the 504th Parachute Infantry
Regiment, 82d Airborne
Division, who recalled that
D-day at Anzio was sunny
and warm, making it very
hard to believe that a war
was going on and that he
was in the middle of it.
 The location of the Allied landings, thirty miles south of Rome
and fifty-five miles northwest of the main line of resistance
running from Minturno on the Tyrrhenian Sea to Ortona on the
Adriatic, surprised local German commanders, who had been
assured by their superiors that an amphibious assault would not
take place during January or February.
 Thus when the landing occurred the Germans were unprepared
to react offensively. Within a week, however, as Allied troops
consolidated their positions and prepared to break out of the
beachhead, the Germans
gathered troops to
eliminate what Adolf
Hitler called the "Anzio
abscess."
 The next four months
would see some of the
most savage fighting of
World War II....59,000
U.S. casualties.
 During March, all of April, and the first part of May 1944,
recalled one veteran, the Anzio beachhead resembled the
Western Front during World War I.
The vast majority of Allied casualties
during this period were from air and
artillery attacks, including fire from
"Anzio Annie," a 280-mm. German
railway gun which fired from the
Alban Hills.
 During March, shrapnel caused 83 percent of all 3d
Division casualties, and other units experienced similar
rates. The Anzio
beachhead became a
honeycomb of wet and
muddy trenches,
foxholes, and dugouts.
 In the winter of 1943-44, the Allies found themselves
confronting
the Gustav
Line, which
crossed Italy
south of
Rome.
 For much of its length the line ran along rivers, with
the Garigliano, Gari and Rapido strengthening its
southern sector.
 It crossed Route 6, the Rome-Naples highway, which ran
on to Rome
along the Liri
valley, between
the Abruzzi
and Aurunci
mountains.
 The entrance to the Liri valley was dominated, then as now,
by the great bulk of Monte Cassino which is crowned by an
ancient Benedictine monastery.
 Behind the monastery, the ground rose even more
steeply to form what the military historian John Ellis has
called 'a vile tactical puzzle'.
 In front of the hill stood the little town of Cassino, and
the rivers Gari and Rapido.
 On the Allied side was Monte Trocchio which was
known as
‘Million Dollar
Hill' for the
fields of view it
offered to
artillery
observers.
 It takes about two hours to reach its summit, and the view
is staggering. It was one of the strongest natural defensive
positions in
military history,
with the
monastery, like
some great
all-seeing eye,
peering down on
everything.
 The Allied plan for the breaching the Gustav line was
hurriedly conceived.
 On Churchill's insistence, it would use an amphibious
hook round the German flank, to be launched before
the landing craft
were withdrawn
for use in
Normandy.
 American divisions of 5th Army would attack at Cassino to
draw German reserves southwards.
 This accomplished, an Anglo-American corps would land at
Anzio, about 30 miles south of Rome.
 It was expected that the shock would provoke the Germans into
giving up the Gustav Line and falling back north of the Eternal
City.
 The first phase of the operation (the First Battle of Cassino)
comprised an attack across the Gari south of Cassino by the
US 36th Division, which was savagely repulsed.
 Then a longer thrust into the mountains north of Cassino
by the US 34th Division, and a heroic attack by the North
African troops of the French Expeditionary Corps on the
high ground further north.
 With German reserves duly
drawn south, on 22 January
1944 Major General John
Lucas's US VI Corps landed at
Anzio and Nettuno.
 The First Battle of Cassino dragged on until mid-February.
 'It was more than the stubble of beard that told the story; it
was the blank, staring eyes. The men were so tired that it
was a living death. They had come from such a depth of
weariness that I
wondered if they
would quite be
able to make the
return to the
lives and
thoughts they
had known.'
 The second battle began on 15 February, with the controversial
destruction of the monastery by heavy and medium bombers.
 On the one hand, it seems likely that there were no
Germans in the monastery at the time.
 Furthermore, the nearest Allied troops were too far away to
take advantage of the shock of the bombing.
 It was not until May that the Allies at last brought their
full might to bear on Cassino.
 They did it by moving much of the 8th Army from the
Adriatic coast, while 5th Army shifted its weight to reinforce
the Anzio beachhead, now under the command of Major
General Lucian Truscott.
 The new offensive, Operation Diadem, smashed
through the neck of the Liri valley by sheer weight, and
the Polish Corps took Monte Cassino
 Between the Liri and the sea, the French Corps made rapid
progress through
the Aurunci
Mountains, and
by the third week
in May the
Germans were in
full retreat.
 Although the Gustav Line was broken and Rome was
liberated, the hard-fought battle of Cassino was
indeed a hollow victory.
 “Soft Underbelly”
 7th Army
 Palermo
 Patton
 Mark Clark
 Anzio Abscess
 Tuskegee Airmen
 Monte Cassino
 Operation Diadem
 Gustav Line
Operation HUSKY
Sicily
Messina
Victor Emmanuel
Salerno
Anzio Annie
Million Dollar Hill
Lucian Truscott
Casablanca Conference