Great Battles of World War II: How the Allies Defeated the Axis Powers by Dudley Michael

Author:Dudley, Michael [Dudley, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
Published: 2017-08-11T04:00:00+00:00

The liberation of Europe after D-Day: 6 June, 1944

5

VICTORY IN EUROPE

OPERATION OVERLORD

SINCE THE SOVIET UNION had come into the war it had been urging Britain to begin a second front in western Europe. And when the US entered the war, they wanted to make an attack on the Germans in France as soon as possible. The British were more circumspect. Having been in the war longer that their new allies, the British felt that it would be foolish to risk everything in one reckless operation. Many of the British commanders had experienced the carnage of the the First World War and were afraid of throwing men against enemy lines in a frontal assault – inevitable when making an amphibious assault against a fortified coastline. As First Lord of the Admiralty in the First World War Churchill himself had been responsible for the disastrous amphibious assault at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles where 250,000 men, largely Australians and New Zealanders, were lost before the 83,000 survivors could be evacuated. Britain’s worst fears were realised when 5,000 Canadians, 1,000 British and 50 US Rangers staged a disastrous raid on the Channel port of Dieppe in August 1942 – 2,600 men were lost. The American Army was still untested, so President Roosevelt was persuaded to join the war in North Africa.

When this was brought to a successful conclusion, Churchill proposed an attack on the ‘soft underbelly of Europe’. On 10 July 1943 an Anglo-American force landed on Sicily. Italian resistance collapsed and on 25 July Mussolini fell from power and was arrested. The German forces, under Field Marshal Kesselring, were then evacuated from Sicily and prepared to defend the Italian mainland.

On 2 September, a small Allied force landed on the ‘heel’ of Italy and quickly captured the ports of Taranto and Brindisi. On 3 September Montgomery’s Eighth Army crossed the Strait of Messina and landed on the ‘toe’ of Italy, meeting little resistance. That day, the new Italian government agreed to change sides and its capitulation was announced on 8 September. The following day, the combined US–British Fifth Army under General Mark Clark landed at Salerno on the ‘shin’. This was where Kesselring had expected the attack to come. The situation was precarious for six days, but the Fifth Army eventually broke out, taking Naples on 1 October.

On 13 October 1943, Italy declared war on Germany. This was not unexpected and Kesselring had already consolidated his hold on central and northern Italy. And he held the Allies at the Gustav Line, a defensive line that ran right across the narrow peninsula of Italy some sixty miles south of Rome. To get round this, the Allies landed 50,000 men north of the Gustav Line at Anzio. At first they met with little resistance, but instead of driving directly on Rome, the landing force stopped to consolidate the beachhead. Kesselring quickly counter-attacked, nearly pushing the Allies back into the sea.

The main Allied force was held up by the German defenders at Monte Cassino, a mountain-top monastery pivotal in the Gustav Line.

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