Italian Campaign (1943-1945) Strategic Waste or Success ?

[Jon G.]

Also see this thread:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=88543

[Jon G.]

...
1) Landing Italy and knocking Italy out of war and collapse of Mussolini's goverment were no doubt important both in political and moral sense. Italian Armed Foces were out of war which made Allied cause much easier. ( Surrender of Italian Navy was big bonus especially )

True, but in effect this was accomplished already before the Allies invaded Italy proper (i.e. they could have stopped after Sicily)

2) Tying at least 20 to 25 German divisions in Italy is also an important factor in sucess of Overlord , Invasion of France in June 1944. Not to mention all other strategic areas where Italian forces surrendered ( like Aegean and Adriatic Coast ) and Germans took over. This led to a further distribution of limited German Armed Forces. All these divisions to defend Italy and its former possesions might have been utilized to defend France in 1944 and made a significant difference in defeating Allied invasion in Normandy.

Yes, definitely. Italy offered the Allies the chance to engage and wear down German forces on the ground before the more serious business (in a war-winning sense) of D-Day came along. Although that only makes sense because the Allies had more resources than the Germans - something which was perhaps more evident in American strategy than in British strategy.

3) Capture of Foggia airfields in Central Italy made Strategic Bombing Campaign much easier. It opened up a southern front in Strategic Bombign Campaign of Allies against Germany.

4) Capture of Sicily and Southern Italian coastline made Mediterranean a complate Allied lake , complated the aims of Torch , made Allied shipping lanes secure in Med. and released thousands of Allied shipping free.

Both true, but re point 3), that basically means that the Allies would not have had to push for Rome, as they historically did, at great cost. Re point 4), that, too, was essentially accomplished already by the capture of Sicily.

...
1) It was brilliant defending territory for the Germans, and they could successfully bleed the Allied armies as they advanced through the boot of Italy. Because all the best units kept getting taken away for other operations (eg Dragoon, Overlord) the Germans had the upper hand for most of the time in Italy. It did not take a lot of units to defend, and the fact that the Allies could not use their amour to its full therefore meant Germany was able to fight on a front where tanks were not vital, freeing Panzers for other theaters.

Well, by that logic and if the alternative was not invading Italy at all, how many Panzers would that have released for other theaters? Defending Italy did keep two German armies (the 10th and the 14th) busy for almost two years.

2)It also offered Germany a win at a difficult time, eg repulsing attacks on Cassino could be used as great propaganda that the Axis is still strong.

The Cassino line only offered a propaganda win for as long as it remained unbreached. You can definitely argue that the final victory at Cassino was not worth the cost, but once the Allies won, it offered a propaganda win not just to the Allies as a whole, but also to the Poles, the Free French, the New Zealanders etc.

To a lesser extent it was also a good position for new units to train before being sent to other theaters.

That argument cuts both ways - in fact, it benefitted the Allies more than the Germans. There were plenty of places where German ground troops could gain experience in 1943; for the Allies (and perhaps especially to the Americans in 1943), ground combat experience in Europe was harder to come by.

I am sure there are examples of German ground units transferred from Italy post-September 1943, although I don't off-handedly remember any. The picture as I see it was more of German units sent to Italy never benefitting the German war effort elsewhere again.

3) By fighting in Italy, Germany was able to keep the Allies as far from the Alps as possible, which would offer them an easy way into Europe. It was worth the divisions sent there.

The Alps aren't an easy way into Europe. In fact, crossing the Alps south into Italy became an increasing problem for the Germans as the war moved north.

[Kingfish]

I am sure there are examples of German ground units transferred from Italy post-September 1943, although I don't off-handedly remember any.

Working off of fuzzy memory, the units I know which were transferred out were:

Hermann Goring Pz
16th Pz
3rd PzGr
15th PzGr
2nd FJ

I know there are more. Following Op Diadem and the capture of Rome the Germans brought in a fresh wave of infantry divisions to replace the heavily depleted formations.

[Jon G.]

Ah right. Thanks. I suppose I should have added a 'but in what shape?'-qualifier

From Lexikon der Wehrmacht, here are the OOBs of 10th Army and 14th Army, the two main German armies in Italy. Both armies stayed in Italy for the duration, but there were changes in the divisional make-up as you say.

[Gooner1]

German strength as at 5th May 1944 given in a presentation by General Jodl:

East: 3,878,000
Finland: no figure given
Norway: 311,000
Denmark: no figure given
West: 1,873,000
Italy: 961,000
Balkans: 826,000
Sum: 7,849,000

The troops in Italy must have had a huge divisional slice?

[Jon G.]

Interesting. So, if one was a Brazilian Economics student, one would instantly conclude that Italy took up 11.6% of Heer troops

Of course it's not that simple, but it does give an idea about the drain on German strength which Italy constituted. The German troops preoccupied in the Balkans can also be counted as an indirect effect of the Allied campaign in Italy. Put together, German troops in the Balkans and Italy make up nearly as many troops as the Germans had on hand in OB West to avert the impending Allied invasion there.

Regarding divisional slices, a sizeable proportion of Germans in Italy must have been preoccupied keeping roads and railroads open for traffic due to the intense interdiction effort spent by the Allied air forces over Italy.

[merdiolu]

Interesting. So, if one was a Brazilian Economics student, one would instantly conclude that Italy took up 11.6% of Heer troops

Of course it's not that simple, but it does give an idea about the drain on German strength which Italy constituted. The German troops preoccupied in the Balkans can also be counted as an indirect effect of the Allied campaign in Italy. Put together, German troops in the Balkans and Italy make up nearly as many troops as the Germans had on hand in OB West to avert the impending Allied invasion there.

Regarding divisional slices, a sizeable proportion of Germans in Italy must have been preoccupied keeping roads and railroads open for traffic due to the intense interdiction effort spent by the Allied air forces over Italy.

Not to mention to combat partizan/guerilla warfare , garrison duties and guard against commando raids...These were effective elements in Italy i Balkans and Aegean Sea.

[Steve]

Once Sicily had been captured and Italy was going to surrender the Italian campaign became pointless if its aim had been to knock Italy out of the war. If its aim was the tying down and attrition of German forces and now the liberation of Italy then there was a point to it.

The capture of Sardinia and Corsica enabled a landing to be made in the Gulf of Genoa or certainly higher up Italy than Calabria. The liberation of Italy could then have been achieved from the top down rather than from the bottom up. I think the Italians if able to choose between the two options would have voted to wait for top down. The allies landed at the bottom and Montgomery started moving his forces north against minor German resistance with all the speed of a racing slug. Italy would be ravaged almost from one end to the other.

As a previous poster has shown (see his link) the allies enjoyed a numerical superiority over German forces and (I don’t have the figures to hand) had a higher percentage of their resources devoted to Italy than the Germans. You also have to count air and sea forces in the numbers, and also the manpower necessary for the allied support tail that stretched from Italy through the Med. and North Africa to America and Britain. The tying down and attrition of allied resources was I would propose greater proportionally than the tying down and attrition of German resources.

The collapse of the German army once the allies were able to move into the north Italian plains was inevitable, the German army was in a state of collapse everywhere else and the war was almost over. If you remove the last few weeks of the campaign from the record then the German defence of Italy was a victory as it achieved their aims of reducing the allied advance to a crawl without on their part large expenditure of forces.

Did the allies achieve their aims? I do not know if liberating the Italians was an aim but it was something that would have come about anyway once Germany was beaten, It should not have been a main aim. Did they win the battle of attrition and tie down large numbers of German forces that could have been used elsewhere? I don’t think they did win since the cost of maintaining an allied soldier in Italy was probably much higher than maintaining a German one and it tied down larger numbers of their forces that could have been used elsewhere. They probably had to do something till the invasion of France in 1944 but that should have been done using Sardinia and Corsica. Would they have started the campaign if they could have known how it would run? I think that if they had used a crystal ball and foreseen the campaign it never would have gone ahead.

The German General Von Vietinghof who defended Casino found allied strategy hard to understand when they had the use of Corsica and Sardinia. The Soviets may have been the biggest gainers from the Italian campaign as most of the German forces committed to Italy would probably have found their way to the eastern front. It enabled the allies to claim there now was a 2nd front in Europe that the Red Army was not alone in fighting Germans so it had a political value. The blame for the Italian campaign can be laid at the British door.

[Tim Smith]

The tying down and attrition of allied resources was I would propose greater proportionally than the tying down and attrition of German resources.

Did they win the battle of attrition and tie down large numbers of German forces that could have been used elsewhere? I don’t think they did win since the cost of maintaining an allied soldier in Italy was probably much higher than maintaining a German one and it tied down larger numbers of their forces that could have been used elsewhere.

The Soviets may have been the biggest gainers from the Italian campaign as most of the German forces committed to Italy would probably have found their way to the eastern front. It enabled the allies to claim there now was a 2nd front in Europe that the Red Army was not alone in fighting Germans so it had a political value. The blame for the Italian campaign can be laid at the British door.

This is all true, but....

Because the Allies had more resources than the Germans, they could afford to spend more resources than the Germans. The Allied objective was to beat the Germans - not to beat the Germans ON THE CHEAP. The Allies were rich in resources by this time. They didn't need to wage war on the cheap. So whether it took 3 times as much resources for the Allies to kill a German soldier in Italy than it took the Germans to kill an Allied soldier in Italy is really irrelevant.

Invading Sicily and Italy in 1943 allowed the Allies to create a 2nd Front. The Allies chose this option instead of invading France in 1943, because the British didn't believe the Allied forces were ready to invade France in 1943.

The primary benefit of the campaign was indeed to help the Soviets, who greatly appreciated large numbers of German forces being tied down in Italy and the Balkans. Made the Russian steamroller roll a little bit faster towards Berlin.

Churchill was thinking in terms of postwar consequences for Europe of an overwhelming Soviet victory in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. But Roosevelt was not thinking the same way. All Roosevelt cared about was beating the Nazis as quickly as possible, after which 'the boys' would come home and America would be happy, and Europe could take care of itself again like it did after WW1. With hindsight that attitude was naive, but many Americans still thought that way at the time.

[Optiow]

1)Well, by that logic and if the alternative was not invading Italy at all, how many Panzers would that have released for other theaters? Defending Italy did keep two German armies (the 10th and the 14th) busy for almost two years.

2)The Cassino line only offered a propaganda win for as long as it remained unbreached. You can definitely argue that the final victory at Cassino was not worth the cost, but once the Allies won, it offered a propaganda win not just to the Allies as a whole, but also to the Poles, the Free French, the New Zealanders etc.

3)That argument cuts both ways - in fact, it benefitted the Allies more than the Germans. There were plenty of places where German ground troops could gain experience in 1943; for the Allies (and perhaps especially to the Americans in 1943), ground combat experience in Europe was harder to come by.

4)The Alps aren't an easy way into Europe. In fact, crossing the Alps south into Italy became an increasing problem for the Germans as the war moved north.

1) Yes, but it was worth it. They kept many more Allies at bay for those years, while inflicting significant losses on them. The costs were worth the result. The Germans kept the upper hand in Italy right up until 1945, with the exception of the destruction of the Gustav line, but the Germans escaped that and fought again.

2) Yes, that is totally true. But it was a win with a lot of casualties. So many other attacks had been forced back, and although it offered propaganda, the Germans halted the Allies again and again along the peninsula as they retreated to the Gothic line, where they held right up past 1945.

3) You have me there. But I can argue that the Allies did not take full advantage of that, and those that did gain experience lost a lot of men learning in both Sicily and Italy. It did give experience, but at a cost of many more lives.

4) But once they got over the Alps, they would have poured out into Europe. It would have been like Hannibal, only they were going the opposite way. Once the Allies got the Alps, the Germans would be hard pressed to hold them there. It was easier to hold them at the natural river defenses than to try and hold them in the Alps.

[Optiow]

I would argue it was a waste. True German troops were diverted there -- but so were Allied military pinned down in extremely
difficult terrain.

IMO, just with threats and commondo raids Hitler would have kept a large garrison in Italy (He did keep a full division
in the English Channel Islands till the end of the war -- he was known for never retreating once he had troops stationed
somewhere).

My personal feeling is that an invasion of S. France in late '43 / early '44 would have been a much better strategy
than the crawl up Italy.

That was his greatest mistake of the war. Not retreating. His fortress tactic was useless in most cases, and when it did work (1941 Russian front) it made him think he was a genius, and boost his ego for him to do it again.

~S. France was the right decision. Although I do think not enough resources were given to the Allies in Italy.

[Graeme Sydney]

I told you it was controversial .

I told you it was a close run argument

I told you it needed to be more cunning and economical to be a great success.

I still haven't changed my opinion. The criticism/alternate strategy that I feel had the most potential was the island hoping of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica etc. Going up the flank of Italy and then having amphibious options in southern France and/or northern Italy. I'm not absolutely sure that this would have tied in with the D Day timetable - there were real constraints on the availability of naval assets. I would have to study that in detail to come to a conclusion.

It was necessary. It did contribute to the defeat of Germany. It was well run and well fought. It could have been done better if the ideal defensive backbone of Italy had been avoided.

But hey, it's great value was as a training exercise to blood troops, Generals and staff. What would you expect .

Two values that are hard to assess is the PR/morale/propaganda and the political. It is not hard to assess these for what was done. It is hard to assess what would have happened in these areas if things hadn't been done. E.G. if the Allies had been sitting on Sardinia contemplating their next move rather than liberating Rome. I think the ways things turned out both in the shorty and long term shows that good choices (you might argue not the best choices) were made.

[merdiolu]

There is another factor to be considered. Marshall Pietro Bodoglio and his goverment would never agree a armistice with Allies in Sptember 1943 as long as Allies armies wouldn't land on Italian peninsula itself. Yes Mussolini was deposed on August but Italians were still wary of Germans. There would like to see a full Allied military support on their soil. Until then Italian Armed Forces were still fighting. In fact there was even a plan for landing 82nd US Airborne on Roma and capturing Italian capital. But this operation was cancelled at last moment. ( otherwise it would be an American Market-Garden ).

Allies simply didn't consider to land Southern France on 1943. There are several reasons for that I think. First Southern France was out of Allied air cover. And Luftwaffe still had a considerable force on Western Europe in 1943 though it was quite spent in Mediterranean. Battle of Atlantic was won in May 1943 but for Allies it would still take time to be sure about that. There wasn't enough divisions or logistical support massed either in British Isles or in Mediterranean to open up a full Second Front in Southern France. Moreover in General Marshall's and Eisenhower's perspective a Second Front on Western Europe should have been opened up on Northwest Europe so Allied armies could reach directly to German border in west and Ruhr Valley , heart of German war industry. İt was the shortest route to Germany by using good road/railroad network in NW Europe. Landing on French Riviera and going up on Rhone valley would take much longer and take much more force , resources and casaulties. And Marshall was quite sensitive that forces allocated to Med. Theater should be limited otherwise it would delay or harm OVERLORD.

[Delta Tank]

Another thread that you may want to look at:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6&t=153670

Mike

[Optiow]

Allies simply didn't consider to land Southern France on 1943. There are several reasons for that I think. First Southern France was out of Allied air cover. And Luftwaffe still had a considerable force on Western Europe in 1943 though it was quite spent in Mediterranean. Battle of Atlantic was won in May 1943 but for Allies it would still take time to be sure about that. There wasn't enough divisions or logistical support massed either in British Isles or in Mediterranean to open up a full Second Front in Southern France. Moreover in General Marshall's and Eisenhower's perspective a Second Front on Western Europe should have been opened up on Northwest Europe so Allied armies could reach directly to German border in west and Ruhr Valley , heart of German war industry. İt was the shortest route to Germany by using good road/railroad network in NW Europe. Landing on French Riviera and going up on Rhone valley would take much longer and take much more force , resources and casaulties. And Marshall was quite sensitive that forces allocated to Med. Theater should be limited otherwise it would delay or harm OVERLORD.

Well ti would not have been a good idea in 1943. Sicily was the logical option, followed by Italy to dispose of Mussolini. They would have had to travel for a long time and would have lost the element of surprise, plus the navy and air strength in the Med was not that strong. They would be going right past Italy, where Italian forces could move to intercept.