The Italian campaign of World War II, also called the Liberation of Italy following the German occupation in September 1943, consisted of Allied and Axis operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to 1945. The joint Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) was operationally responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre and it planned and led the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, followed in September by the invasion of the Italian mainland and the campaign in Italy until the surrender of the Axis forces in Italy in May 1945.
The invasion of Sicily in July 1943 led to the collapse of the Fascist Italian regime and the fall of Mussolini, who was deposed and arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III on 25 July. The new government signed an armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943. However, German forces soon invaded northern and central Italy, committing several atrocities against Italian civilians and army units who opposed the German occupation and started the Italian resistance movement. Mussolini, who was rescued by German paratroopers, established a collaborationist puppet state, the Italian Social Republic (RSI), to administer the German-occupied territory. On 13 October 1943, the Allies recognized Italy as a co-belligerent in the war against Germany. Thereafter, the Italian Co-Belligerent Army and the Italian partisans fought alongside the Allies against German troops and the collaborationist National Republican Army; an aspect of this period is the Italian civil war. In the summer of 1944, after the Axis defeats at Cassino and Anzio, central Italy, including Rome, was liberated. Northern Italy was liberated following the final spring offensive and the general insurrection of Italian partisans on 25 April 1945. Mussolini was captured by the Italian resistance and summarily executed by firing squad. The campaign ended when Army Group C surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on 2 May 1945, one week before the formal German Instrument of Surrender. Both sides committed war crimes during the conflict, and the independent states of San Marino and Vatican City surrounded by Italian territory also suffered damage.
It is estimated that between September 1943 and April 1945, 60,000–70,000 Allied and 38,805–150,660 German soldiers died in Italy. The number of Allied casualties was about 330,000 and the German figure (excluding those involved in the final surrender) was over 330,000. Fascist Italy, prior to its collapse, suffered about 200,000 casualties, mostly prisoners-of-war taken in the invasion of Sicily, including more than 40,000 killed or missing. Over 150,000 Italian civilians died, as did 35,828 anti-Nazi and anti-fascist partisans and some 35,000 troops of the Italian Social Republic. On the Western Front of World War II, Italy was the most costly campaign in terms of casualties suffered by infantry forces of both sides, during bitter small-scale fighting around strongpoints at the Winter Line, the Anzio beachhead and the Gothic Line. Casualties among infantry in Italy were proportionally higher than they were on the Western Front of WWI.
Strategic background
The British, especially the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, advocated their traditional naval-based peripheral strategy. Even with a large army, but greater naval power, the traditional British answer against a continental enemy was to fight as part of a coalition, blockading with their navy and mounting small peripheral operations designed to gradually weaken the enemy. The United States, with the larger U.S. Army, favoured a more direct attack against the main German Army in northwestern Europe. The ability to launch such a campaign depended on first securing the North Atlantic convoy route to allow the build-up of forces in Britain.
The strategic disagreement was fierce as the U.S. service chiefs argued for an invasion of France as early as possible, while their British counterparts advocated attacks around the Mediterranean. There was even pressure from some Latin American countries to stage an invasion of Spain, which, under Francisco Franco, was friendly to the Axis nations, although not a participant in the war. The American staff believed that a full-scale invasion of France was required to end the war in Europe, which should be undertaken as early with no other operations that might delay it.
Eventually the U.S. and British political leadership reached a compromise in which both would commit most of their forces to an invasion of France in early 1944, but also launch a relatively small-scale Italian campaign. A contributing factor was Franklin D. Roosevelt's desire to keep U.S. troops active in the European theatre during 1943 and his attraction to the idea of eliminating Italy from the war, or at least weakening and narrowing its effort. The elimination of Italy would enable Allied naval forces, principally the Royal Navy, to dominate the Mediterranean Sea, securing the lines of communications with Egypt and thus Asia. Italian divisions on occupation and coastal defence duties in the Balkans and France would be withdrawn to defend Italy, while the Germans would have to transfer troops from the Eastern Front to defend Italy and the entire southern coast of France, relieving pressure on the Soviet Union.
Campaign
Invasion of Sicily
The initial plan was for landings in the south-east, south and north-west areas of Sicily which would lead to the rapid capture of key Axis airfields and all main ports on the island except Messina. This would allow a rapid Allied build-up, as well as denying the ports to the Axis. This was later altered to a reduced number of landings with more concentration of force.
The invasion (Operation Husky) began on 9 July 1943 with amphibious and airborne landings at the Gulf of Gela. Land forces involved were the U.S. Seventh Army, under Lieutenant General George Patton, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division and the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade under Major-General Guy Simonds, and the British Eighth Army under General Bernard Montgomery.
The original plan required a strong advance by the British northwards along the east coast to Messina. The Canadians took the central position, with the British on their right and the Americans on the left. The Canadian War Cemetery in Agira is testament to the sacrifice made driving the Germans from the rugged terrain. The Americans had the important role of pushing Axis forces out of mainland Sicily on left flank. When the British Eighth Army were held up by stubborn defences in the rugged hills south of Mount Etna, Patton's Seventh Army pushed northwest toward Palermo then directly north to cut the northern coastal road. This was followed by an eastward advance north of Etna towards Messina, supported by a series of amphibious landings on the northern coast that propelled Patton's troops into Messina shortly before the first British units. The retreating German and Italian forces managed to evacuate most of their troops to the mainland, with the last leaving on 17 August 1943. Shortly thereafter, American Colonel Fairfax Kirkwood Dillon received the surrender of the island.
The seaborne invasion, the first of its kind in the European theater, provided Allied forces with crucial experience in contested amphibious landing operations, coalition warfare, and large airborne drops.
Invasion of mainland Italy
Forces of the British Eighth Army, still under Montgomery, landed in the toe of Italy on 3 September 1943 in Operation Baytown, the day the Italian government agreed to an armistice with the Allies. The armistice was publicly announced on 8 September broadcasts by General Eisenhower and then by Marshal Badoglio. Although the German forces prepared to defend without Italian assistance, only two of their divisions opposite the Eighth Army and one at Salerno were available, with the rest tied up in disarming the Italian army.
On 9 September, forces of the U.S. Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, expecting little resistance, landed against heavy German resistance at Salerno in Operation Avalanche; despite lacking reinforcement from the north, the German 10th Army came close to repelling the landing. In addition, British forces landed almost unopposed at Taranto in Operation Slapstick.
Adolf Hitler was then persuaded that Southern Italy was strategically unimportant, and the Allies, with the new addition of Italy, hoped the Germans would withdraw north. For a while, the Eighth Army advanced easily up the eastern coast, capturing the port of Bari and the important airfields around Foggia. The main Allied effort in the west initially centred on the port of Naples, the northernmost range of fighter planes flying from Sicily. Anti-Fascist Forces began an uprising, the Four days of Naples, holding out despite German reprisals until the arrival of Allied forces.
As the Allies advanced, they encountered increasingly difficult terrain: the Apennine Mountains form a spine along the Italian peninsula offset somewhat to the east. In the most mountainous areas of Abruzzo, more than half the width of the peninsula comprises crests and peaks over 900 metres (3,000 feet) that are relatively easy to defend; and the spurs and re-entrants to the spine confronted the Allies with a succession of ridges and rivers across their line of advance. The rivers were subject to unpredictable flooding which impeded operations.
Allied advance on Rome
In early October 1943, Hitler was persuaded by his Army Group Commander in Southern Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, that the defence of Italy should be conducted as far away from Germany as possible. This would make the most of the natural defensive geography of Central Italy, whilst denying the Allies the easy capture of a succession of airfields ever closer to Germany. Hitler was also convinced that yielding southern Italy would provide the Allies with a springboard for an invasion of the Balkans, with its vital resources of oil, bauxite, and copper.
Kesselring was given command of the whole of Italy and immediately ordered the preparation of a series of defensive lines across the peninsula, south of Rome. The defensive Volturno and Barbara Lines were used to delay the Allied advance during the preparation of the more formidable Winter Line – the collective name for the Gustav Line and, west of the Apennine Mountains, the Bernhardt Line and Hitler Lines (renamed Senger Line by 23 May 1944).
At the end of 1943, the Winter Line halted the Allied Fifth Army's advance on the western side of Italy. Although the Gustav Line was penetrated on the Eighth Army's Adriatic front, and Ortona was liberated with heavy casualties by Canadian troops, the blizzards, drifting snow and zero visibility at the end of December ground the advance to a halt. The Allies' focus then turned to the west, where an attack through the Liri valley was considered to have the best chance of a breakthrough towards Rome. Landings behind the line at Anzio during Operation Shingle, advocated by Churchill, were intended to destabilise the German Gustav line defences, but the early thrust inland to cut off the German defences did not occur because of disagreements with the American commander, Major General John P. Lucas, who insisted that his forces were not too few for the mission. Lucas entrenched his forces, allowing Kesselring to assemble sufficient forces to form a ring around the beachhead. After a month of hard fighting against German and RSI forces, Lucas was replaced by Major General Lucian Truscott, who eventually broke out in May.
It took four major offensives between January and May 1944 before the line was eventually broken by a combined assault of the Fifth and Eighth Armies (including British, American, French, Polish, and Canadian corps) concentrated along a 30-kilometre (20-mile) front between Monte Cassino and the western seaboard.
In a concurrent action, Clark was ordered to break out of the stagnant position at Anzio and seize a large part of the German 10th Army retreating from the Gustav Line between them and the Canadians. But this opportunity was wasted when Clark disobeyed his orders and sent his U.S. forces to enter the undefended Rome instead. Rome had been declared an open city by the German Army so no resistance was encountered. The American forces took possession of Rome on 4 June 1944. The German 10th Army was allowed to get away and, in the next few weeks, may have been responsible for doubling Allied casualties in the next few months.
Allied advance into Northern Italy
After the capture of Rome, and the Allied invasion of Normandy in June, the U.S. VI Corps and the French Expeditionary Corps (FEC), which together amounted to seven divisions, were pulled out of Italy in summer 1944 to participate in Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of Southern France. The sudden removal of these experienced units from the Italian front was only partially compensated by the gradual arrival of three divisions, the Brazilian 1st Infantry Division, the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division, both in the second half of 1944, and the U.S. 10th Mountain Division in January 1945.
From June to August 1944, the Allies advanced beyond Rome, taking Florence and closing on the Gothic Line. This last major defensive line ran from the coast some 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Pisa, along the jagged Apennine Mountains between Florence and Bologna to the Adriatic coast, just south of Rimini. In order to shorten the Allied lines of communication for the advance into Northern Italy, the Polish II Corps advanced towards the port of Ancona and, after a month-long battle, succeeded in capturing it on 18 July.
During Operation Olive, launched 25 August, the Gothic Line defences were penetrated on both the Fifth and Eighth Army fronts, but without a decisive breakthrough. Churchill had hoped that a major advance in late 1944 would open the way for the Allied armies to advance northeast through the "Ljubljana Gap" between Venice and Vienna to Vienna and Hungary, forestalling the Red Army's advance into Eastern Europe. Churchill's proposal had been strongly opposed by the U.S. Chiefs of Staff, despite its importance to British postwar interests in the region, as they did not believe that it aligned with overall Allied war priorities.
In October, Lieutenant General Sir Richard McCreery succeeded Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese as the commander of the Eighth Army. In December, Lieutenant General Mark Clark, the Fifth Army commander, was appointed to command the 15th Army Group, thereby succeeding the British General Sir Harold Alexander as commander of all Allied ground troops in Italy; Alexander succeeded Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson as the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean Theatre. Clark was succeeded in command of the Fifth Army by now-Lieutenant General Truscott. Winter and spring 1944–45 saw extensive partisan activity in Northern Italy, taking the character of a civil war between the two opposed Italian governments.