Why the invasion of Italy almost failed
In July of 1943, the Allies had a problem. More than two weeks into the battle for Sicily, the Allied leaders had failed to decide what would happen next. They were locked in a fierce debate. The Americans wanted to take the most direct route into the Third Reich via France. While the British wanted more time to build their forces.
But on the 25th of July 1943, everything changed. The Fascist Grand Council deposed the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini and his successor began secret peace negotiations with the Allies. Now, the Allies planned to take advantage of the coup and knock Italy out of the war with an invasion of the Italian mainland.
The invasion was supposed to be a simple one. But the reality was very different. In this second episode of our Italian Campaign series, sponsored by Company of Heroes 3, we'll examine the Allied invasion of Italy and how perilously close it came to catastrophe.
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Whoever would call Italian or Balkan shores 'a soft underbelly' certainly has not looked at the physical map of Europe
Brits...
I think they were comparing it to the strongly built up presence of the Nazis in France, the lowlands, and the eastern front.
Churchill as always like Galli
to answer the publisher the answer is "terrain" if you think strategically there might have been an idea that germany was buzy elsewhere ..... and that had now lost north afrika for sure and they knew germany was pressed elsewhere. So might have been an idea germany had little to spare. But germany decided that they wanted to fight and diverted forces and coupled with nice terrain for defense it worked. Allied never took entire italy because other political things happened in italy. And allied was satisfied with the result seeing no need letting more of their soldiers die.
What did you expect from someone who called Ottoman empire « the sick man of europe » then proceed to make a disastrous campaign in Gallipoli
The terrain in Italy is ideal for defense. I doubt any experienced officers truly expected it to be easy
One said he spent two years fighting his way up Churchill's soft underbelly and never slept in a bed unless it was a hospital bed in all that time.
@@freebeerfordworkers the only "soft underbelly" was churchill drunkard's one
Which is why Churchill thought it was a winner.
Exactly, anyone who lives in Italy like I do, knows how harsh and difficult the topography is....Churchill or Chooch-hill as I like to call him probably said this after some bad whiskey.
Notably, Churchill's only military experience was six months in a very quiet sector of the front during WW1 where he was sent essentially as punishment for his role in Gallipoli. When you listen to his rhetoric, you realise he would have been an ideal soldier to fight Napoleon. And even then, he would probably have led the British cavalry in one of their suicidal charges.
My great grandfather fought in italy. Was a part of two platoons that got completely decimated. He nearly lost his foot from freezing in a foxhole in muddy water. Went weeks without dry socks. We still two of his uniforms. One with 2 bullet holes. He spent a lot of time there on the back of one of those spotlight trucks
My uncle was in the British Army in Italy. His enduring memory was mud, mud and more mud.
Three reasons: 1. Churchill underestimated the Italians and forgot about the Germans. 2. Italy’s rugged terrain and narrow frontlines made movement slow and attacks both predictable and more easily defended. 3. Defence-in-depth running up the entire length of Donna Italia’s boot meant each attritional breakthrough had to be repeated again and again and again.
Arguably, they didn’t underestimate the Italians when you consider that there was a revolution and anti-fascist uprising in the country that no one had predicted. If the Italians were underestimated, it was not the ability of the fascist army that was underestimated so much as the willingness of the masses to oppose the fascists. But they certainly overestimated how fast the invasion would progress and what it could achieve. Actually it achieved a lot but that didn’t necessitate a rapid advance and this should have been taken into account.
Wasn't the first time this guy screwed up an invasion. If he had had to land there himself, it would certainly not have happened or it would have been much better prepared and equipped. It was clear that the Germans could build up a good defense there. The geography there is ideal for defense and a nightmare for any attacker.
and steadily fighting more and more uphill each confrontration. Remember a remark from some doc, madness invading Italy from the south. Its geography heavily favors the defenders
4. Kesselring make sure it wasn't a Kessel Run.
@@raylast3873British did underestimate the Italians, they thought they were crap, useless and cowards, this myth and Urban Legends Is still porteayed today, too bad the guys at El Alamein Remember the Italians a bit differently
Churchill completely ignored the physical geography of Italy which was ideal for defensive battle. He probaly only studied a political map instead of a physical geography one.
He does that a lot, like Gallopoli for instance.
you think he was that stupid? Where is your proof. You think Churchill was commanding the the Allied forces in Italy.
The more I learn about Churchill, the more I think he was an idiot whose only talent was giving speeches.
@painipedia9354 Churchill was dumb basically made the UK an American vassal so he wasn't that bad afterall.
Churchill's conduct in the war in general was actually pretty idiotic.
"The soft underbelly". Yeah, right. By the time Berlin fell, a good chunk of Italy was still under Axis control. Italy is basically a set of valleys between mountains.
Italy surrendered in 1943 after the invasion and Mussolini was deposed. Also the Nazis surrendered in Northern Italy only 2 days after Berlin fell and before they surrendered in Northern Europe. Therefore, the Italian campaign was very successful by any measure.
no, it wasn't.
@@Canadian_Skeptical Check for yourself. Google is there for you.
Italy wasn’t the priority.
@@ennieminee4470 It was for Britain, but unfortunately not for the newly arrived, inexperienced USA. However, if Churchill had had his way the war would have been over earlier and the Soviets would not have occupied so many countries.
Mark Clark had an opportunity to cut off the German army in Italy at Valmontone and Artena, instead he ran off to Rome for news headlines, allowing over 100,000 German soldiers to slip away. Surprised that Eisenhower didn't sack Clark over his insubordination.
Only to be overshadowed by D-Day the next day.
@@markt5619 Yeah didn't look so glamorous once D-day went ahead 😂
Clark was a jackass.
@@thegobbledygooker731 One of the worst generals of WW2.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- it's ironic and tragic. Sometimes I stop to think how many people could still been alive if the generals were just competents, without the competition to see who is the best or who will claim all the glory
"Italy is like a boot; it should be entered from the top"- Napoleon
Yess if you are Annibal
@@matteo4096 💀
@@laff__8821 in the last months of the ww2 the French tried to invade us from the North but never succed. The alps are too arsh for everyone, even us when we tried to invade France in 1940 we failed
@@matteo4096 i know
Where did you take that quote from
Churchills mistake was the same as his other great error Gallipoli , not understanding the terrain.
Underestimating the italians
exactamente
@@alessandromazzini7026 The Italian were a non-factor within two weeks of the Salerno landings. He underestimated the geography (a topographical map would have fixed that), and the Germans.
Churchill pushed for the Italian Campaign. He thought it was the soft underbelly, but he was wrong.
Still the correct option at the time.
the only "soft underbelly" was churchill drunkard's one
@@CB-fz3li It wasn't though. He was just seeking validation after bungling the Gallipoli campaign after insisting the Ottoman Empire was the weak link of the Central Powers in WW1. He believed the same thing about Italy in WW2 and ignored reality in favour of the idea that if you believed hard in enough in victory; it would occur. After the Italian surrender and German occupation of the country, it was plainly obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that fighting up southern and central Italy's hills and the Apennines would drastically favour the defenders. After the initial landing in Italy caused the surrender and brought hundreds of thousands of German troops there, the logical thing was clearly to trap them in the peninsula by landing in Northern Italy. Not only would that have seized the industrial north of Italy, depriving Germany of vital industrial assets, it would have simultaneously threatened Austria and southern France. If these landings were made after the Normandy Landings, taking the place of Operation Dragoon in southern France, it would have caused chaos as the Germans tried to manage the retreat from western France and southern Italy and prevent over half a million German troops being cut off in two separate countries. This would have been concurrent with Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front where the Soviets were annihilating Army Group Centre. Instead Churchill committed the Allies to a brutal war of attrition up the spine of Italy with Allied forces invading Germany before the forces in Italy had reached the north, after fighting bitterly through line after prepared line of defences across the peninsula. Italian factories were able to provide for the Germans right until the end.
@@DomWeasel So you don't argue that it was incorrect to go into Italy, in the first place.
@@CB-fz3li I think Churchill's reasoning was complete bollocks but the invasion of Sicily and securing of Taranto was strategically valid; it allowed the Allies to lock off the eastern and western Mediterranean from each other and bottleneck the Adriatic while providing airbases to attack the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. It also required the Germans to occupy the peninsula; drawing hundreds of thousands of troops away from the Eastern Front. But trying to head north of Naples was mere vanity and always doomed to be nothing more than a bloody, costly campaign ultimately achieving nothing that the original invasion hadn't already succeeded in doing.
My grandfather landed at Salerno and fought through Italy ending the war I Austria. Salerno stayed with him all his life.
did he meet any Yugoslav partisans in Austria?
Strange, since the war ended with many parts of Northern Italy still under German occupation.
Many thanks to your grandfather. If it were not for heroes like him, we wouldn’t enjoy the freedoms we have today.
@@gs7828 no, not really.
German vehicles running out of fuel was commonplace in this war! The historian Anand Toprani argues that Germany effectively lost the war in July of 1940, because they had occupied more territory than had, or could possibly hope to get, enough fuel to defend.
They needed said territory to feed their population after completely ruining their agriculture with the usual brain-dead socialist reforms.
Arguably by holding France they'd been given a temporary advantage, as France was the most motorised country in Europe with the most vehicles and best infrastructure. But the moment the Germans started operating in harsher climes they doomed whatever mechanisation efforts they'd made
Anand is incorrect. In my book I explain how WW2 was lost before the start of WW1.
@@jimmylight4866 title?
@@greg_mca that & they captured a lot of oil stocks in France, which allowed them to fuel their planes in the Battle of Britain; but finite oil *stocks* are no substitute for an ongoing *supply* of oil
the only Italian officer to successfully repel the germans was General Bellomo defending the port of Bari in south Italy, after the war Bellomo was the only italian officer sentenced to death for war crimes. his crime? shooting 2 british officers (that were trying to escape (while people like Badoglio or Graziani, who used gas in Ethiopia were fully pardoned). many says that behind his death there was the british MI6 and the King of Italy since the process has nomerous irregularities.
Prime material
A traitors death, lol.
6:06 Poor guy just tripped and ate it at the worst possible time
Was looking for a comment like this
I love how he almost looks at the camera like ''oh, THIS you got on camera!?!?!?'' XD
Churchill always had the most outrageous landing ideas bro. First in Greece, now in Italy.
What about Gallipoli haha
@@kasadam85 when I said greece, what i meant was gallipoli haha. I was dumb bro, it should've been turkey.
most overrated politic in history
seriously? The americans could not care less about allies aslong as it gets them in the news headlines.@@MirkoNavarra
The maps here are really clear and easy to follow. Good work.
It seems landing in Italy and fighting taught a lot of the allied forces valuable insight learning from their mistakes made the invasion of France a lot less bloody than it might have otherwise been.
Nothing that they would not have amply learned during the Dieppe raid.
and what was the alternative?
@@logon235 BS. How long did the Dieppe raid last? You think that's the same thing as the invasion of Normandy. ha
@@logon235 that doesn't make sense. Dieppe was a beach raid - not comparable to these penetrating offensive operations and their in depth defenses.
@@Canadian_Skeptical nobody said it was a bad idea...
My Dad was at Salerno. Also at Anzio. He was captured there after his entire company was slaughtered. I hope you guys will be doing a video about Anzio.
Anzio, as one german propagandist called it, was the largest prisoner of war camp in Europe, and the Allies built and reinforced it willingly
Was your dad a Facist?
Gaining the southern Italian airfields transformed the air war in the Balkans, threatened German oil in Ploesti, and made support of partisans in Yugoslavia much easier. That alone made invasion worthwhile.
knocked Italy out of the war impacted the German morale Relieved some pressure from Soviet Union Tied strong German forces Showed aggression, thus reassuring the Soviets that both are in this war together, and preventing any thoughts of separate piece negotiations Sounds good to me
it also brought an end to Hitler's Alpine Fortress (Alpenfestung), since Austria was no longer out of bomber range. All bombings in Austria took place from Bari and other Southern Italian airfields. Transfering rocket production from Peenemünde into the Alps turned out to be futile, but consumed a lot of German resources.
@@ekesandras1481 The Germans were busy little bees, building things all over the place. The Germans dissipated their resources, and bit off more than they could chew. You would think they had learnt their lesson in WW1!
The Soviet victory Kursk did all of that and more, it meant the Balkans would fall from German hands and furthermore you are ignoring that Greece was an easier target than Italy and more proximal to the Balkan states.
If you guys seem warlords churchill vs stalin part 3 you will know why this campaign mattered
Excellent video; I wish the History Channel still made content like this!
"Who wants to hear about history when we can just gibber incoherently about UFOs and made-up conspiracy theories all day?" --History Channel executives, apparently
@@dudermcdudeface3674 And Pawn Shops!
THEIR MESSIAH OBAMA WANTS TO ERASE ENGLISH HISTORY...U.S./UK
And Ice Trucks or people being "Alone"? Or maybe how to make a hand forges knife from an old railroad track
Excellent job on the maps with the units this time
So what were they expecting once they reached the alps? How was there a soft route from southern Italy to Germany if the alps are in the way? What am I missing here
Brilliant programme - great narration. Clear and concise
The reason it wasn't the soft underbelly Chruchill had promised was because it wasn't the Italians they were fighting.
fascist units didn't surrender, and if the whole of the italian army had been fighting it would not have been much different
The reasons because the allied succeeded are two: italians did not fight as they would have if Mussolini stayed in power AND the americans provided the needed firepower. England without USA is Dunkirk, the Repulse, the Prince of Wales. Disrespecting italians is a lack of respect for the 15.000 british lives lost in el Alamein, where a batallion of italian paratroopers and some few WW1 small tanks of the division Ariete stalled several armored british divisions for 3 days, being outnumbered 6 to 1 or more. As a result for losing the war, Italy lost its colonial empire. As a result for being allied with the winner, the UK lost their empire as well. Congratulations. During the italian campaign, 5 allied troopers died for any 3 of the axis. American logistics won the campaign, not better soldiers.
@@ilmaio The disrespect to the British is just unfathomable. Without England, the Americans would not have had a forward base to attack North West France, bomb Germany or supply their own forces during the war. England had been fighting for years and was a professional and successful army as seen at El Alamein and during Operation Compass. The reason Italy was not a swift campaign was the overall horrible terrain the Allies were fighting in as the Italian peninsula gave the Germans a huge advantage in defense and the weather which prevented British and American breakthroughs. The Americans in Italy actually prolonged the campaign as stupidity from American general Lucas at Anzio prevented a breakthrough and Clark going for Rome after the Breakthrough allowed German unites to escape. The British were very successful in the war and provided experience for the untrained US army during the war. American firepower was not the only factor here. It was the overall good tactics and soldiering of the British and American armies.
@@joaquineduardocarvajal4105 You leave out the parts where the British had to learn to be a professional army. They had years of head start and the beginning was not so pretty as you make it seem.
Brits and especially Montgomery got lucky. It's easy to win when you have almost unlimited resources at your disposal.
Churchill? Underestimate an enemy? Never! Not like he planned Gallipo- Ohnowait.
First time viewer. Joni is amazing and your appreciation of her genius is infectious. I’m subbed!
Sometimes a soft underbelly is covered in hard scales.
I see the value in the invasion of Sicily and the opportunistic invasion of the Italian mainland at the time of the Italian armistice, but beyond a certain point it became a repetition of the Gallipoli campaign: an advance across an arid and mountainous battlefield, dominated by a tenacious enemy.
and been planned by two military masterminds (:-)
Great Video, thank you, Thump Up. What went wrong they plan with the Italians and it was every time hard to fight the germans - ist was hard to push them back.
Thanks Winston. Thanks again.
3 years ago no one would believe we'd have such high quality videos
Muy buen documental. Excelentes los gráficos y mapas
Excellent video.
Afterwards, a German General said: "If you are going to invade Italy, start at the top."
That was General Fridolin von Senger und Eterlin against millitary historian Michael Howard
Great, he read Napoleon. Shouldn’t you do the opposite of what they expect?
1. Topography favors the defenders 2. mismanagement of resources by the Allies in trying to prepare for D-Day while still grinding it out in Italy. 3. Failure to learn from mistakes in Sicily and Salerno leading to the near disaster of Anzio 4. The failures of leadership and generalship from Alexander and Clark 5. the one I don't understand of why not use Sardinia and Corsica as alternate means to attack both Italy and southern france to lure more Germans away from Normandy/southern Italy. But of course this last one could just be logistics wouldn't allow it.
What a coincidence! I just started the boardgame Salerno '43 from GMT games this week! Good video! 👍
That's a great game. Just had a close defeat as the Germans. Very tricky for both sides, and definitely a game that makes you understand just how much Montgomery's incompetence made that battle so hard for the Allies.
Happy to see my friend Sean.
Minor quibble which others may have pointed out: an anachronistic map of Italy has been used in the video. It has the borders from the postwar peace treaty that stripped them of Istria etc.
You are a very good KZheadr.
Mark Clark and Bernard Montgomery were a deadly combination for Allied Troops.
And with those noses they could blind anyone. LOL
Allies didnt liberate Naples, the Neapolitans started a riot and managed the Germans to retreat from the city, i know that because i am Neapolitan and the old people here always tell us stories and its sad that that man said the Allies liberated Naples because he doesn't name all the hundreds of civilians who died in the defense of his own city.
It should not be overlooked that a key aspect of Churchill's Italian/Balkan strategy wasn't just to get into Germany faster (he thought anyway) but also to cut the Red Army off from Europe---Shake hands with the Russian Bear as far east as possible, he said. Italy and into Austria offered best chance of that. Meet the Red Army at the gates of Vienna not the Elbe.
The Iron Curtain would be very different.
@@AYVYN I agree. It is interesting to play out Churchill's strategy. The Soviets might have been kept out of Germany completely and the wall could have been in Vienna, the Vienna Wall!!
The decision to invade Sicily was the problem itself. The Allies should have attacked the mainland of Italy directly. Now the Germans had months to prepare themselves of the coming next step. This is also what the German commanders said after the war. They would have been in a much worse situation.
To quote the late, great Spike Milligan's war memoirs on his experiences in the Italian campaign, "soft underbelly, my arse!"
I feel like the Italian campaign is often discarded as a failure, but it is an increbily important component of the war. It took Italy out of the war as a direct Axis ally, requiring many more German soldiers to attend the front than Germany would have liked, as well as a morale hit due to losing an ally. Further to this it coincided with the USSR's first successful summer offensives which would take place in 1943. It was a good way of ensuring that the Germans were on several fronts at all times - losing Africa was a blow, but could have allowed for re-diversion of resources. Opening up Italy so soon meant that this was not the case.
It only took some of the Italian forces out of the war. The die-hard Fascismo in the army and navy would fight on with the germans against the allies and Italian Communist partisans. The naval ships that weren't destroyed or managed to escape were absorbed into the Kriegsmarine for combat duty.
@@tankgirl2074 I understand this, but this does not detract from the fact that it was not only a blow to axis morale, a morale victory for the allies, and still required extra troops to be diverted to the front (even more so than would have been required if Italy’s armies had remained in tact. Several hundred thousand German soldiers required to hold a new front, all while the Soviets were making gains finally in the east. It arguably couldn’t have come at a worse time for the axis.
@@tankgirl2074 Hitler Lost 80 divisions in a night, that alone was worth. Only a small ammount of the italian army fought for Hitler After the 8th September 1943, most of the army went Pow or Just went home.
Italians suck at war
@@matteoorlandi856 You know what Napoleon said: I would rather fight allies than fight with allies!! Hitler no doubt would have agreed when it came to Italy,
Easy answer: Churchill was military incompetent as much as Mussolini. Only difference between the two was that Churchill relied on competent generals meanwhile Mussolini preferred people loyal to him.
As I understood it, 'Smiling Albert' expected a landing 'somewhere south of Naples because that was the range limit of Allied fighter cover. I think Kesslering ever 'pegged' Salerno as THE most likely site for a landing. (BUT I might well be wrong).
USA army got to land in the south thanks to mafia aid. This video didn't mentioned it at all..
You would have thought Churchill learned something from Gallipoli in WWI, but instead 10s of thousands of Americans died, as the Australians did before them. Churchill having the Americans land at Anzio was pure stupidity. The Americans could have avoided all this if Ike had been able to convince Churchill that the invasion of France was more important. The war in Europe could have ended much earlier if the Allies had a diversion in Greece then landed full force in Normandy instead of splitting their offensive between Italy and France. If they landed in Greece they could have rolled up the Baltics joint forces with the Russians in Eastern Europe once they had beaten Rommel in North Africa.
I read that when ordered to withdraw from Salerno by Clark one American divisional commander signaled back, leave the ammunition and water on the beach the XYZ Division is staying. That's as memorable a signal as any in the war and I wonder who the man was but I doubt he got promoted.
It seems not many people know about the Italian partizans divisions who fought a guerilla war against the fascists and the Nazis long before the Allies landed.The critical role the Mafia played in supplying the needed intelligence and support for landing in the South. On top of that over 1 million soldiers were left to die between Russia and Africa alone leaving only the most loyal fascist divisions to fight along with the Germans. The Germans had a rule that for every one of them that was killed by the resistance they would kill 10 civilians in retaliation, not That hard to imagine most of the Italians surrendering and welcoming the Allies.
Why it became a bloodbath? What did you expect? A holiday? The Italian royal army first, the social republic army then, did enormous efforts to defend their homeland against the aggressors. We tend to elogy the Wehrmacht's soldiers and their officials, without taking in consideration the Italian forces, even though their low capacity productivity, due to the criminal bombings. Officially the Italian campaign 1943-45 it costed to the Allied over 250.000 men, but probably this number is understated.
All you have to do is look at a topographical map of Italy to see why it is a defenders dream.
All thought IWM speaks from the British point of view.. Documents have show , on both sides, the USA wanted to by-pass Italy but at the behest of Churchill , SHAEF granted the British one last offensive to "save face" after the disaster in El Alaime and at DIEAPPE.
No explanation of why and how the Germans had been allowed to evacuate Sicily. With the Italian Navy silent, why were the Straits of Messina left safe for Kesselring's crossing?
This is part 2, watch part 1 for that.
kzhead.info/sun/g8OPkrV_gZttgKs/bejne.html there you go!
It's simple really, Germans had put the largest concentration of anti-air guns at the straits close proximity in world history. Navy itself already couldn't attack there because of the shore batteries. Allied air units tried to attack the strait multiple times and failed at all of them.
You all know why a politician says the things they said right? They’ll say anything to get their way.
The answer is simple: the fact that Italy was the weakest part of the enemy front, doesn't mean it was not defended by some troops. By consequence, when it was invaded, the defending troops (both German and Italian) reacted the way they were accustomed - with the fiercest reaction. Never thought about this possibility?
Many people don't realise that motivation is a key element in war. The same way Italian soldiers were not that motivated to fight in Greece or Africa,they were much more motivated to fight for their home
We’ll just look at a topographic map of Italy. It’s a defenders’ dream. I also believe the number of landing beaches are very limited and obvious. I don’t know much about this theater if the war but it would be interesting to know if resources would’ve been better off being devoted to NW Europe than the Italian camp gain after Sicily. I would think the Nazis would’ve sent the freed up resources East and wouldn’t have impacted the Western Allies much at all…
if you don't know much about this theatre why are you commenting?
My dad was on the PT201 in Anzio Bay with General Clark when it was shelled with friendly fire. Several sailors died. My dad and the general survived.
Wehrmacht mobility was less of an advantage in the Italian terrain than it was in France, so the Southern front still made strategic sense. It tied down a lot of German divisions in less-than-ideal geography for them and made Normandy much more likely to succeed than if we'd gone straight to it.
I dunno
@@Americanpatriot-zo2tk Think of it like this: The whole organizing principle of the German war machine was rapid offense (i.e., blitzkrieg). If they couldn't do that because of terrain, and had to fight purely defensively, they had no advantages. A waiting game was a losing game for them. That's why they opted for blitzkrieg in the first place. Same situation as Japan, though less clear-cut. Churchill's "soft underbelly" remark was arrogant, but the Italian campaign surely did weaken German capability elsewhere in the West.
@@dudermcdudeface3674 your post is 100% spot on!
@@dudermcdudeface3674 Blitzkrieg - or better, Bewegungskrieg, movement war - was certainly one of the reasons of many German operational successes at the start of the war, but by 1943 the german approach was on the defensive and its tactics and doctrines adapted; namely towards a deep defence and trading ground for time. Which they applied both in Russia and, on a smaller scale, in Italy throughout the end of '44 and maybe even into '45. This was certainly due to the changing strategic considerations (the Wehrmacht did not have the material upper hand anymore and was globally on the defensive), but particularly to the lack of fuel and resources which brought the famed logistical efficiency to an agonizing halt. And remember that the german army was one of the least motorised among the combatants. Though to be honest, I think that due to the relative easiness of supply - as opposed to the Eastern front - the proportion of German mechanised forces in Italy was quite high. Your remarks seem a bit engrained in the traditional narrative of the "German war machine" - I'm gonna guess you hail from the other side of the Atlantic from where these events actually happened - but don't take that as an offence, it's just that it's easy to get caught in the simplicity of clichés, especially in complex historical matters.
@@dudermcdudeface3674 That's true. The reason the Western Allies invaded Sicily and Italy is because the size and shape of the land was small enough that the small Allied armies could operate without exposing an open flank. France was much larger. There would have been an exposed flank for the Germans to circle around and exploit.
Singapore was a fort he said... Itally was a soft underbelly he proclaimed...
Oh yes that is where the Australians deserted by the hundreds running away casting away their arms.
From the stories I heard from veterans, Mark Clark was the big problem. Also, Kesselring was really good.
Churchill "In General Clark the United States Army has found a fighting leader of the highest order and the qualities of all Allied troops have shone in noble and unjealous rivalry." above 1209 Hansard LIBERATION OF ROME: LANDINGS IN FRANCE HC Deb 06 June 1944 vol 400 cc1207-11
@@nickdanger3802 I've meet veterans that served under Clark. When he arrived in Korea, Morale went to zero. Nobody wanted him around.
Old songs sung by soldiers stuck in Italy after 1944 laments how all their good commanders left and that “AAI is left with General fucking Clark” (the lyrics word for word). That alone should be a good indicator of how despised Mark Clark is by his men, when your troops sing a song about how much they dislike the fact that they are stuck with you… Also, the song is “Onwards 15 Army Group” sung to the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers”.
Churchill seemingly had an obsession with conducting complex military operations in the Mediterranean. The Gallipoli campaign, the invasion of Sicily & the Italian campaign.
What went wrong is easy. Dithering by the commanding general kept the troops on the beaches allowing the Germans to bring up reinforcements whereas advancing straight away would have outnumbered the defenders.
@Fidd88 ah yes, beg pardon 😊
watching this after playing company of heroes 3 relatable...
What went wrong? Mark Clark.
I haven’t heard anything positive about Mark Clark in these videos.
Churchill "In General Clark the United States Army has found a fighting leader of the highest order and the qualities of all Allied troops have shone in noble and unjealous rivalry." above 1209 Hansard LIBERATION OF ROME: LANDINGS IN FRANCE HC Deb 06 June 1944 vol 400 cc1207-11
Classic example of underestimating your opponent.
A Generalfieldmarshal by the name of Albert Kesselring. Convicted of war crimes for sure. But that doesn't take away his brilliance of defense which made our guys suffer so much.
Like General Alexander later said abaut the terrible battle for Monte Cassino did take so long and cause so many casualties was " we were fighting the best soldiers in the world" The Fallschirmjager.
I´ve always wondered why amphibious pincer movements from the sea weren´t used to outflank the successive German defensive lines and of course the rivers. The amphibious part of the Anzio landings were successful - it was the appalling generalship once the Allies were ashore that was disastrous. The long narrow shape of Italy would seem to lend itself to such operations despite the central Apennines.
Defense in depth with retreat is acceptable in Italy but not in other fronts.😮
Here in Brazil we always remember the Italian front, because of our own soldiers. The Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB in Portuguese) had 25.000 men, and they saw a h*ll of a fight. We also sent 400 pilots.
My city, Siena, was liberated by Brazilian forces (as well as French and American)
I made a comment years ago about Montgomery being overated in a group and got reviled for it. I suspect it was a mainly UK group but it was unbelievable the amount of hate that ensued. I still stand by my original position, and now include Churchill as well. He was a great wartime politician but no military leader. This is why I laughed when MSM compared Zelensky to Churchill.
I think the key handicap in the Italian campaign had LESS to do with unfavorable geography for the Allies or bad weather etc than this: The Americans never believed in it or liked it. The USA was never going to devote the kinds of resources necessary for a decisive win in Italy since that would have diminished what was available for Overlord. The kind of resources necessary for a win in Italy would have handicapped Overlord and the USA was not about to let that happen so the Italian campaign suffered. Given a choice between Italy and France, there was just no question that USA favored France and after Casablanca Con would not allow any further delays past 1944 which a full committment to Italy would have done.
I wouldn't call it a disaster. A disaster would have been if the landing force was wiped out.
The problem in the Italian campaign began with Montgomery having the slows in Sicily. Capturing Messina on schedule was supposed to cutoff German retreat to the boot. Salerno was poorly planned by Clark. Relief took forever to arrive, once again with Montgomery exhibiting the slows. Terrain was a brutal impediment, but so was myopic arrogance. Salvation came in the forms of naval barrage and the 82nd Airbourne
In short, amphibious ops are hard and experience matters. But alt history guys are sure Germany would have got it perfect the first time if they tried Seelowe even with the RN facepalm.
In contrast, Patton performed so well that he was ‘relieved of his command’ and kept out of the way until after DDay. He had been particularly adept at courageously murdering prisoners of war and bravely slapping his own men about. Once given another command, Patton gallantly allowed the Germans to escape the Falaise Pocket and advanced gaily, on Metz where he heroically allowed his chaps to sit outside the fortifications, doing 11/10ths of b*gger all.. He then again sportingly allowed the Germans to escape the Ardennes Pocket by choosing to advance on completely the wrong place. Then he was killed in a road accident. Then Hollywood made a film about him. Then he became a hero. Montgomery, on the other hand, confined himself to fortuitously planning Operation Overlord with two other incompetent Brits, Tedder and Ramsay), luckily defeating the German counterattack at Caen, advancing through Northern France, liberating Belgium and Holland, crossing the Rhine (Operation Varsity; largest airborne op. of the war) and receiving the German surrender on Luneberg Heath. He wasn’t ‘Murcan though so none of this counts. Hollywood did not make a film about him he couldn’t have been any good, anyway. Pip pip.
My daddy was a paratrooper with the 504th 82nd airborne at this time. Our own Navy shot the plane down he was in. Only 3 men got out of that C-47.
Much love for Winnie but he was better at politics than military strategy. His military incompetence, previously costly at Gallipoli, squandered tends of thousands of casualties in Italy. The idea Germany could somehow be effectively attacked from the south was not sane.
Churchill was a master of disaster. He planned the Gallipoli disaster in WW1, then he planned the Norway disaster in 1940 and then he planned the Italian disaster in 43. He almost got away planning disasters in North Africa in 42. Churchill entire political career was based on a single speech.
Next time we should have an insight into how the Allies bombed and utterly Monte Cassino, a centuries-old monastery because they thought the Germans had observers there. Despite the Germans stating that this was not the case as it was a cultural object and how said Germans afterward did occupy the ruins as a defensive position, repelling several Allied assaults.
If i was allied commander in that war I wouldn't believe a word the germans say. They really didn't have a reputation as a country that keeps its word.
I'm sorry, the same Germans who burned an old university out of spite? They should be believed when they say they were respecting a cultural object?
And? It’s not like the Germans didn’t often have observers in churches so that seems reasonablish. And I never have understood this worshipping the German army for its defence thing. Like yeah, in a defensive position you can repel assaults, they did a pretty decent job of defence, however overall consistently lost land regardless.
I’m not trusting the local enemy combatants about the deployment of their forces.
The person in charge was Major General Freyberg. Being a New Zealander, he wasn't going to listen to any German BS and ordered the bombing of the monastery. But, being a General he also didn't understand that he had just created a snipers paradise. Well, not until the NZ troops got their asses kicked off the mountain by the German paratroopers. The Polish Division did the job in the end. They had enough hate built up for it and weren't going to be told no. Kiwi soldiers still don't want to talk about Freyberg.
Ahaha.....Someone should have remembered Winston that just before WWII the soft underbelly of Europe defeated without any external help two powerful empires (Ottoman and Austro Hungarian) in less than 7 years (1911 and 1918)
Where is Anzio beachhead invasion in all of this? Thank you
Using Taranto and south italy as an harbour to land troops in Yugoslavia would have been a better choice in my opinion. The situation in the balkans was already unstable for the germans, and it became even worse since the italians stopped policing the area.
A far too distant route to invade Germany. Logistics in WWII did not include teleportation. Instability doesn't negate geography. Picture the logistics involved in sending freighters through the contested, shallow Med...
Basically just a few german soldiers held off the allies alone. Imagine if italy and its army was also fighting.
1/3 of the axis' forces was made of Italians...
Don't talk rubbish
Mountainous terrain is easier to defend.
"tough old gut" is a quotation from the bbc series "world at war"
Is there a third video?
Churchill was the worst strategist of all WWII leaders. In 1941 he sent British divisions into the Balkans saying there would be a grand alliance between the Greeks and other states, arrogantly ignoring the fact that most Balkan nations hated each other. The WWI Gallipoli fiasco was his idea.
This is why Rommel is overrated. The Kesselring strategy, which was meant to be employed in North Africa, proved very effective. You could argue that it was the terrain, but Kesselring had more success in Italy than Rommel in Normandy
Incompetent glory hound general ( Clark ) and his yes men
I think after taking Rome or after the Italians surrendered the Allies should have shifted focus to a more defensive posture and focused on tying down as many divisions as possible. Because I don't quite understand the need to continue pushing North apart from political reasons mainly being to limit the spread of Soviet influence. Even if they had pushed the Germans far North you'd only end up in more mountains where Austria and Slovenia are now. Just look at WW1 to see how awful the fighting in that area was. They'd either have to slog through the Alps and Austria or go all the way around to Zagreb and then up to Vienna that way and probably end up linking with the Soviets.
It didn't go wrong. If the Germans had the troops available, in France, that were tied up defending Italy, the invasion of Normandy would have been a disaster for the allies. D-Day required both the deception operation that tied up German forces at Calais and the fighting that tied up German forces in Italy in order to succeed. If the Germans had the forces to properly defend Normandy, the invasion would have been suicide. The allies could spare the forces fighting in Italy. The Germans could not. Even if the allies underestimated the speed at which the Germans would react to the Italian surrender. Invading Italy was still the right strategic decision. We are still dealing with the echos of the American underestimation of how hard an amphibious operation against the French coast would be. To win in Normandy, the Germans just needed enough troops to defeat the force that we could land with artificial harbors. We had to reduce the forces they had to defend France and invading Italy was necessary to do that. Fighting the Germans was going to be a bloodbath because they had a good army. Fighting them was a bloodbath in Normandy and Russia was also a bloodbath. There was no magic way t avoid that. Normandy could easily have been a bloodbath that we lost.
Well all those mountains might have something to do with it.
Static attrition warfare was what you got with Montgomery. Sadly, Patton had been forced into an extended 'vacation'.
A misunderstanding, I think. Churchill pitted the Italians against Hitler and demonstrated to the Italian diaspora that Hitler was not their friend. This was more important than actually occupying land.
No video necessary - mountains, artillery and defensive positions based upon the two. Done
To be fair it makes sense for the British because they needed to maintain access of the Suez Canal. That’s the lifeline for Britain to sustain their presence in the war. A large number of their troops and supplies would have been lost in India, Burma, and Australia. If Canada was the only dominion they had access to, they may not have the punch the US would have desired for a western front war. Throughout the whole time, the British had to conserve their manpower as well, which is reasonable since they have a smaller population than the US
What? Any beach landing operation is always expected, by all military planners, to be difficult.
The reason is Churchill. Like the reason for Gallipoli is Churchill.
the only "soft underbelly" was churchill drunkard's one
“Posh Baldrick” is a good name I have heard for him. I have a cunning plan indeed!
Churchill had no say in the fighting on the ground at Gallipoli he devised the naval plan.
@@anthonyeaton5153 the Dardanelles campaign was Churchill's brainchild.
Just calling Italy of WWII with a propagandistic citation of Churchill "Europe soft underbelly" is already a sign of how little serious and historically little accurate is this video. A true historical documentary will never judge a side or another, talking in a stereotipized way like that. Italy was not soft at all during WWII and actually Churchill was fearing them.