Italy’s Sorrow: A Year of War 1944–45. James Holland

1943, General Alan Brooke had toured the Italian front on his return from the Tehran Conference, meeting with Generals Alexander, Montgomery and Clark, and other commanders. Already depressed about the slow Allied progress in Italy, Brooke saw nothing to improve his mood. Monty, he had thought, looked tired and in need of a rest, while it seemed as though there was no real plan for the capture of Rome, the goal for which they were supposed to be striving.

      This was not quite true. Back in October, Alex had begun to formulate ambitious plans for Italy, recognising the need for the Allies to force their way north of Rome, clear of the Apennines, and break out into the Po Valley and the plains of the north. While he had not conveyed this far-sighted strategy to the Allied chiefs, just a few days later he had presented a very clear picture of Allied prospects and had urged greater ambition and direction in Italy. Churchill had been so impressed that he had cabled this ‘masterly’ document in full to Roosevelt and Stalin. But at this stage the Tehran Conference was still over five weeks away. Alexander and his commanders could only be expected to do so much without clear policy and direction from the top.

      As far as Brooke had been concerned, it was clear to him that Alex had not been ‘gripping this show’.31 His comments had been an expression of his disappointment and frustration at Allied progress thus far in the campaign; throughout the war, generals not doing as well as hoped were often accused of ‘lacking grip’. Sometimes, the accusation was justified; sometimes not. Certainly what Brooke failed to appreciate was that fighting on a battlefield such as Italy, with its horrendous geography and, in winter, truly atrocious conditions, had less to do with fire power – or even air power – and more to do with manpower; and in this area the Allies did not have the overwhelming advantage needed by any attacking force. Even by May 1944, when Alex would at last begin the great battle for Rome, the Allies had only twenty divisions available in Italy to pit against Kesselring’s twenty-six.

      The ‘division’ tended to be the military unit commanders used when analysing their strength, and at full strength usually meant around 14,000–17,000 men. However, although German and Allied military units were similar in composition, only recently had the Allies closed the gap in terms of tactics and training. Not until Alexander and Montgomery’s arrival in North Africa did British forces begin to work out how to beat German forces on the ground, and in this they were greatly helped by the massive material contribution of Britain’s new ally, the United States.

      America was not a naturally warring nation, and its people were insular and inexperienced in the ways of continental politics and warmongering. However, America did have three important factors in its favour: it had enormous resources of manpower, a rapidly expanding and large-scale industrial capability, and a willingness to learn. Britain, on the other hand, could claim maybe only the last of these attributes. These three potential war-winning facets had been clearly demonstrated in the final six months of the campaign in North Africa. US equipment – from tanks right down to the tiniest nuts and bolts – had given the British Eighth Army technological parity with Germany for the first time and had played an important part in the victories at Alamein and those that had followed. In Tunisia, American greenness had been horribly shown up during their first battles with German troops, but despite several knocks and one particularly humiliating setback, they had bounced back, and in the closing stages showed how much they had progressed and learned.

      Yet just as the Allies seemed to have caught up with the Germans, they had found themselves flung against topography and conditions that required a different, almost retrogressive, approach. The possession of high ground has been an advantage in warfare since the dawn of time, and in Italy the German defenders were able to choose where they defended, making the most of the best observation points. Guns, mortars and machine-gun posts could be hidden whilst maintaining a clear view of the enemy, while troops could hide amongst rocks, caves and in cellars that were often a feature of the countless towns and villages that dotted the mountains. Kesselring had discovered that a rearguard of only company strength could hold up an Allied division for as much as a day, taking pot shots, and then silently slipping away under the cover of darkness. The Allies could not pass through the valleys until the surrounding high ground was taken – otherwise they would have been sitting ducks as their massed equipment tried to rumble along the few metalled roads that would support them. This meant assaulting often viciously steep slopes, where they would find the Germans dug in on the reverse side where they were impervious to all but a few lucky mortar strikes.

      In the winter the situation had been made worse because only the very best roads – which were few and far between – could be used; the rivers were high and difficult to cross; and the Germans had flooded the low ground of the Liri Valley that lay beneath the Monte Cassino massif.

      So it was that while the ground was largely impassable to trucks, tanks and other vehicles, the onus lay with the Allied ground troops, the foot-sloggers, to make any significant progress. Around Cassino, and at Anzio, they had been all but halted. Suddenly the men had to unlearn the lessons of this new, highly mechanised war and return to the tactics of the 1914–18 war – a life of perpetual bombardment, trenches and dugouts and night-time patrols into no-man’s-land, and morale-sapping battles that achieved small pockets of ground in return for all too many casualties.

      Yet from the Allied point of view, these small gains were important. They had kept up the pressure on the Germans so that Kesselring had been forced to keep troops at the front at all times. It would also make their task that much easier when the big offensive was finally launched at the beginning of the summer. The Anzio bridgehead, for example, seen as a failure back in January, now gave Alexander a huge advantage, forcing Kesselring off-balance in his efforts to protect both fronts. It also meant that Alexander had the launch pad for a double blow, a right and then a left punch, when the battle began.

      By the beginning of May 1944, an already severely overstretched Germany had pushed around half a million troops into the peninsula, which was precisely what the Allies had hoped for when first considering Italy. And, as Alexander pointed out, ‘All this was achieved without our once having that numerical superiority usually considered necessary for offensive operations, with a mixed force of many nationalities and with little opportunity of flexibility in their employment.’32

      Even so, there was still a feeling during those long winter months of 1943 and early ’44 that Alexander and his forces had lost a sense of direction. Because of the lack of shipping – above all – the landings at Anzio had had neither the scale nor conviction ever to cause a significant breakthrough, while the battering at Cassino suggested the Allies were not using what resources they did have to the best of their potential, despite the enormous limitations imposed by both weather and geography.

      There had been a number of changes amongst the command in Italy as 1943 had given way to 1944. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, had been given command of OVERLORD, and Montgomery had left Eighth Army to command Eisenhower’s land forces into northern France. Eisenhower had in fact specifically asked for Alex as his commander, but had been overruled by Brooke, less because of his doubts about Alex but more because he had believed it would have been a mistake to remove both senior commanders in the theatre in one stroke. Furthermore, he had recognised that no other British general got on better with or was more highly regarded by the Americans; and while it was now recognised that OVERLORD was predominantly an American show, it was equally considered that the campaign in Italy was being largely run by the British. In the interests of future Allied policy in the Mediterranean, Brooke had understandably wanted the most popular British general to help maintain influence over their American ally.

      General Alexander had also been kept on as battlefield commander in Italy. General Sir Henry ‘Jumbo’ Maitland Wilson, at the time British C-in-C in the Middle East, had been appointed Supreme Commander in Eisenhower’s place, which had been a sound decision. The role of the Supreme Commander was largely political and administrative. It was far better that Alex remain in command of the battle. He did, however, have a new Eighth Army commander in Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, and, crucially, he had a new Chief of Staff in Lieutenant-General John Harding.

      Harding, an experienced staff officer and commander,