Ike and Monty: Generals at War by Gelb Norman

Author:Gelb, Norman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Published: 2018-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen – Impasse in Italy

The decision to follow the conquest of Sicily with further operations in the Mediterranean had been made by the Combined Chiefs of Staff in May, before the Sicilian campaign had been launched. Once more, it had been decided upon despite Marshall’s complaint that such operations would delay the frontal assault across the English Channel needed to win the war.

But as had been the case with the decision on Sicily, the arguments appeared to favor Britain’s Mediterranean strategy over the War Department’s. It was still logical to employ the massive Allied forces congregated in the region to follow the Sicilian campaign with further pressure to force already tottering Italy out of the war. On the other hand, a cross-Channel invasion, involving vast redeployments from the region, would require months to organize. For the Western Allies to close down their part of the ground war during that time, bringing the momentum they had gathered in the Mediterranean to a halt, would have given the Germans a respite in the west and required the Russians to cope with the consequences.

The Americans were convinced the British were pressing their strategy primarily because of their long-term imperial, strategic, and commercial interests in the Mediterranean. But they felt obliged by the prevailing circumstances to accept that the invasion of France be delayed until the following year.

Eisenhower was to remain commanding general of the Allied forces in the Mediterranean. Churchill, urging an invasion of the Italian mainland, told him he looked forward to having Christmas dinner with him in Rome. The British were content for him to remain in charge so long as Alexander was working closely under him.

When a Sicily campaign had been under consideration, landings on Corsica or Sardinia instead had also been considered — and were preferred by Eisenhower. Either could be taken with a much smaller invasion force, and, being situated further north off the Italian coast, their capture would make it more difficult for the enemy to plan to repel a subsequent invasion of the mainland if one was to be made, as seemed increasingly likely. But Eisenhower was overruled, partly because Marshall clung to a hope that the conquest of Sicily might end Allied adventures in the Mediterranean, while attacking elsewhere was certain to set the stage for further operations in the region (as happened with Sicily anyway). Unable to reach agreement on how to proceed in the area after Sicily, the Combined Chiefs of Staff left it to Eisenhower, as commander-in-chief on the spot, to make the decision.

The instructions he received were hardly specific. He was to plan operations “best calculated to eliminate Italy from the war and to contain the maximum number of German forces.”[301] It was a way out of an impasse on strategy without straining the American-British alliance rather than a deliberate expression of confidence in him as commanding general, though in effect it was that as well.

One night months before, shortly after his victory in Tunisia, when Churchill was to pay

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