Phil, Brian, George

Just rereading this post.
If Italy “soft under belly” why did it take so long to take?
Normandy landing June 1944 covered about 600 miles to Stuttgart, Germany by Apr 45; about 10 months. Italian Salerno landing 9 Sep 1943. Cover about 500 miles to Venice by Apr 45; about 20 mos. Front width in France only very marginally wider about 350 mi France vs 320 mi Italy. Of course terrain in Italy much better for defense. WSC appears to have been fixed on med as area of major British/empire interest/objective; France not so much? WSC again opposed the So. France landing in Aug 44 arguing strongly with FDR for landing in Balkans area. If not ready for cross channel attack Sep 43 why not southern France? (maybe topic covered before?) ( note not a WW2 specialist)

Thanks, Mike_C
mikecmaps

George,
“If the "D-day Dodgers" were keeping many German divisions busy while D-day was being planned and executed, the Germans were also keeping the allied forces busy.”

Yes, that’s my question seems like Italy was more distraction to allies. Example, why fight all the way up the boot. More of distraction to Germans if stop/slow part way up, maybe rome, & simply maintain line holding max Germans with min Allies, didn’t need to fight whole way to do that??

More of distraction to Germans if stop/slow part way up, maybe rome, & simply maintain line holding max Germans with min Allies, didn’t need to fight whole way to do that??

The war in North Africa culminated in a very significant Axis defeat. There’s some doubt about the claim that a quarter of a million German and Italian troops were captured in Tunis, but I think it’s true that the best part of one hundred thousand Germans went “ into the bag” there, which rivalled Stalingrad in terms of captives. Wasn’t it incumbent on the Allied High Command to turn such a triumph to account ? To have failed to exploit it by not going into Italy would have been tantamount to wasting it.

I agree with George about the prospects of a cross channel invasion in 1943. Remember that Dieppe was all too recent and sanguinary a warning of what might happen.

… I do think we have to ask where all those German divisions, many of them excellent ones, would have been deployed had they not been sent to Italy. Could those divisions have made a difference at Normandy or against the Soviets?

As well, it was important to knock one axis member, Italy, out of the war. That was accomplished.

How secure would the Mediterranean have been if the Italians and the Germans had been able to operate freely out of Sicily and Italy? Winning the Battle of the Mediterranean was important as it kept the British supply lines open through the Suez Canal. If Germany and Italy had control of the Med., I wonder what would have happened in Burma and India.

This highly successful campaign (Operation Compass) was terminated before completion, thanks largely to WSCs' decisions concerning Greece. The BEF stripped from NA and sent to Greece allowed the Axis – largely German troops of the “Afrika Korps” – to offer sufficient reinforcements to prolong the war for an additional couple of years. And I have not yet found one positive thing gained by the British switch from North Africa to Greece. In this case, make sure you have won before pulling troops out, and make sure you’ll be using the pulled troops to advantage. I would argue that the transfer of troops to Greece was a political decision argued to be a military requirement.
Brian G

Even the US waffled somewhat on Operation Anvil (later Dragoon). There were only so many troop transports available and it would have been impossible to run Dragoon at the same time as Operation Overlord, I think.

I also think that there were political considerations that Churchill appreciated as a European that may have been less relevant to the Americans. WSC was worried about the balance of power in Europe and certainly about future access to the far flung outposts of the Empire. Now we know that the US had little concern for the maintenance of the British Empire and so less reason to support actions in the middle east or the Balkans.

I think this [the movement of troops from NA to Greece, my insert] is a key point. The North African campaign should have been wrapped up long before the Germans even considered sending an Afrika Korps. To divert resources to Greece was folly - I think you're correct, Brian, in that the only consideration for this intervention was political; the British wanted to materially show their support for the enemies of Nazi Germany. I can't imagine many senior British officers were advocating sending some of their best veteran units to Greece when the Italians were still in the field of battle (albeit rolling back).

Phil, thank you for that reference. I have seen Wilmot’s book on a number of occasions, but have never read it. From what you say, I’ve had a completely distorted view of the book. For some reason, I had it in mind that it was a “toadying” tribute to US forces, so have passed it by for years. Must have been suggested as good reading by a teacher I disliked!

Off to my local used bookshop tomorrow to hunt down a copy. That means one pint fewer tomorrow afternoon. God, the sacrifices we make to the gods of history!

Cheers. And stay safe.
Brian G

It has been literally half a century since I read Chester Wilmot's book, but I believe it must be severely dated at this point. If I remember correctly he was a correspondent for both the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC. Also, he was attached to the 21st Army Group headquarters and was close to Montgomery. Should be a good read as long as one understands its limitations.

Gary

I don’t think I’ll get sucked in by Chester Wilmot. From what you all suggest, I think I might enjoy his perspective.

To resume.....Hitler was determined to rescue Mussolini . Not just in the early part of the war, but even towards its close. Think of that daring German commando raid that got Il Duce out of prison. Why would Hitler insist on doing that when his world was collapsing East and West ? When Hitler killed himself on April 30 1945, it was shorty after he had seen photographs of Mussolini’s corpse strung up from a lamppost in Milan. This is a tentative argument, but I really do feel that Hitler had a lot of ideological and emotional capital invested here, and that this attribute was a weakness to be exploited. I’ll repeat my allusion to the withdrawal of German forces from the Kursk battles when the Allies struck out in Operation Husky.

Something to think about....what do you reckon ?

Ci Vediamo ! Regards, Phil

There is one aspect of his perspective that I take profound exception to : on the second page of his book, in the preface, he writes :

It was the refusal of the British to admit defeat and the frustration of the German invasion plan in 1940 that drove Hitler into attacking Russia.

That, to my mind, is an incredible distortion. My interpretation is that Hitler sought the destruction of the Bolshevik state to the East as a principal objective, and that, against this, the British were a nuisance which had to be supressed. Wilmot implies things were the other way round. Rather an act of Anglo centric aggrandisement !

In truth, I think you’re being a bit dismissive of the British in your counter-assessment.

The German model for military offense relied on the ground use of the Luftwaffe.

and had the allies been able to hold back the German blitzkrieg in 1940 they may well have found success into 1941 and beyond as the British war industry truly got going.

Hitler greatly admired Mussolini. The 1923 Münich Putsch was inspired by the Mussolini 1922 Blackshirt March on Rome. It was only as Hitler was in Landsberg Prison, although imprisoned would not really be the right word, that Hitler decided that a Putsch would not work and that power could only be reached through the ballot box.

Do you think that, if the German attack in the West had been contained, the Anglo French armies would have been condemned to a repeat performance of the nightmare of the earlier war ?

In the Second World War, the British army suffered only one fifth the number of deaths it had suffered in 1914-18. I often wonder how many British lives were saved by that catastrophic defeat and expulsion from the continent in 1940.

OTOH, how many jewish lives might have been saved if the Allies had held firm in the West, and Barbarossa been suspended ?

My hunch is that the German officer class would have removed Hitler and the Nazis from power if it looked like a rerun of 1914-18 was on the cards. The allies had deeper pockets, a stronger naval force and the overt support of the President of the United States. Germany in 1940 was set up for the quick win and Hitler did not yet have the undying support of much of the military, which came after the miracle win over France, Britain and the Low Countries in 1940.