The World at War Episode 13 - Tough Old Gut - Italy (November 1942 - June 1944)
Transcript
00:00Winston Churchill once told Staline, the Mediterranean is the soft underbelly of the crocodile.
00:23Churchill and the British chiefs of staff were sure that attacking German-occupied Europe
00:27through Italy would help shorten the war. The Americans were not convinced,
00:33preferring to concentrate on the decisive blow across the English Channel.
00:38Only reluctantly did they agree to join their British allies on the road to Rome.
01:27November 1942. Eleven months after Pearl Harbour,
01:46the American army prepared for its first encounter with the Wehrmacht.
01:49Operation Torch, codename for the Anglo-American landings in the French
02:00North African colonies of Morocco and Algeria.
02:06They met little or no resistance from the forces of Vichy France.
02:10The French command soon broke with the government of Pétain
02:13and their troops became part of the Allied armies.
02:19An American general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was supreme commander.
02:25The American planners were never keen on the operation, but President Roosevelt
02:29was determined to get his ground forces into action against Hitler in 1942.
02:33Attacking the Germans in Tunisia was the next best thing to a second front in Europe.
02:50At Casablanca, within two months of the landings,
02:53an impressive array of British and American top brass assembled.
03:04The Russians were not present, but everybody there knew that they had to do something to
03:11take the pressure off the Red Army. Churchill and Roosevelt had now to
03:15decide where they went from here. At the beginning of 1943, the British
03:23and Americans were firmly established in North Africa.
03:26Hitler had reinforced Rommel's forces in Tunisia, but with the British Eighth Army
03:31closing from the east, it could only be a matter of time before the entire African
03:35coastline was in Allied hands. What then?
03:39We got to face the fact that there was a big difference between the two sides
03:44about what the future strategy of the war would be.
03:49The British, the British chiefs of staff, Churchill, were all in favour of the future
03:58of the campaign being carried out through Italy and hitting at the underside of the underbelly
04:06of the Germans, moving up and eventually joining up with the Russians.
04:12The Americans held exactly the opposite view. They felt that the only way that you could defeat
04:19Germany was to take the shortest way into the centre of Germany across the Channel
04:25and advance into the areas of the Ruhr and Saar, the great industrial areas,
04:33and then destroy the German forces by that means.
04:38The British, led by Sir Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff,
04:42came to Casablanca determined to have their way. They got it.
04:46The Americans, under General Marshall, were persuaded that the next objective
04:50would be the invasion of Sicily, leading, it was hoped, to the surrender of Italy.
04:54Thus, the main second front was postponed for another year. At the time, however, the big news
05:01from the Casablanca conference was an unexpected pronouncement by the American president.
05:06Mr Roosevelt began by saying that when he was a young man, great reputation in the American
05:14military was General Grant, who had once sent an order saying that he would accept no terms
05:21but unconditional surrender, and that these, in fact, were the terms that the Allies or the
05:27United Nations wanted to present to their enemies. He then went on as though he did not understand
05:36how important a statement he had made. Mr Churchill looked considerably surprised at this,
05:44and I think that Mr Churchill felt that it was not the best way to present the Allied position
05:50to the enemy. However, as he said then and later, he was Mr Roosevelt's ardent lieutenant,
05:55and he would go along with it.
06:07After the talking, Roosevelt appeared in his other capacity,
06:10commander-in-chief of the American armed forces.
06:21If this fresh, confident-looking American army had crossed the Atlantic,
06:24expecting to carry all before it, it was very soon cruelly disillusioned.
06:30In a sudden onslaught through the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia,
06:33Rommel inflicted on the American army one of its worst defeats of the entire war.
06:59The Afrika Korps was far too well-equipped and experienced for the lightly armoured
07:09and underpowered American tanks. The morale of these raw young Americans was badly shaken.
07:20Many were taken prisoner.
07:38It brought the troops face-to-face with the fact that this was going to be a long war and a tough
07:45one, and the Germans were very good. Armies never learn from other armies. They have to learn by
07:50themselves, and a lot of the tactics that we used disastrously at Kasserine were those that the
07:56British army had used equally disastrously two years before in the Western Desert and then
08:00discarded. I think it helped our army. It also made them realize, because the British came down
08:06from the north and did help, that this was going to be a cooperative effort, that we couldn't win
08:11it alone, and also it got the average GI accustomed to the fact that there was going to be one battle
08:17after another. But Rommel lacked the strength to exploit his victory. The Allies under Alexander
08:24regrouped and within 10 days retook the path. The Germans in Tunisia were now hemmed in.
08:30The Allied sea and air blockade of the coastline made large-scale evacuation impossible.
08:36In the south, a forward patrol of the Eighth Army linked up with the American Second Corps.
08:42The trap closed.
08:46Two Allied forces, once separated by 2,000 miles of mountain and desert,
08:51joined hands for the final onslaught on the German position in Africa.
09:06The Allied armies, vastly superior in numbers, drove the enemy, now without Rommel,
09:10who had been invalided home, back through the mountains of Tunisia towards the sea.
09:23The Allied air forces had undisputed control.
09:31In seven days, it was all over.
10:05Finally, the Afrika Korps saw no point in fighting to the last man. They surrendered in droves.
10:17The unfortunate General von Arnim, who succeeded Rommel, also surrendered with all his staff.
10:24Nearly a quarter of a million men were taken prisoner, a victory to rank alongside Stalingrad.
10:31This was a major boost for the British and their Mediterranean strategy.
10:35Sicily, as agreed to Casablanca, was the next item on the agenda.
10:46Only two months after the German collapse in Tunisia,
10:49the British and Americans began landing troops on Sicilian beaches.
10:52The British were led by Montgomery, the Americans by General Patton.
10:57The first time these two egocentric personalities have been involved in the same campaign.
11:22It was the British Eighth Army which met the fiercest German resistance.
11:33On their left, Patton's Americans swept across Sicily in style.
11:43They found useful allies in the mafia and family connections among the civilian population.
11:50I think the situation was relieved somewhat by the fact that there was
11:53hardly a family in Sicily that didn't have relatives in the United States.
11:58The Sicilian landing, bringing the war onto their own soil,
12:02convinced most Italians that theirs was a lost cause. Giving themselves up,
12:06if possible, by the regiment became the first objective of Italy's armed forces.
12:10Allied bombing raids on Rome provided another argument for getting out of the war.
12:27Benito Mussolini, il duce for 20 years, was outvoted in his own fascist grand council.
12:37On July 25th, he was toppled from power.
12:41King Victor Emmanuel approved the elderly Marshal Badoglio as head of the government.
12:49Badoglio declared publicly that the war would go on,
12:53but immediately began secret negotiations with the Allies for surrender.
13:03By now, Sicily, after only a few weeks, was almost all in Allied hands.
13:11At this time, there was to be no great haul of German prisoners.
13:19German evacuation across the narrow straits of Messina was highly successful.
13:33Most of the Wehrmacht's personnel got away to the mainland, even the last guard dog.
13:41General Patton beat Montgomery into Messina.
13:53The Allies had landed in Sicily, not knowing where they would go next.
13:56With the prospect of an early Italian collapse, the British were all for attacking the mainland.
14:00The Americans agreed to a limited campaign, but insisted that Overlord,
14:04the invasion of Normandy, must take priority for resources.
14:08A secret envoy, General Castellano, was sent by Badoglio to find out on what terms Italy could
14:14join the Allies. But the Allies simply wanted Italian surrender and refused to tell Castellano
14:19of their invasion plans, partly because they didn't want the Italians to know how limited
14:23their forces were. All we could say to General Castellano was this,
14:29well, we will tell you two or three hours before it happens so that you can give any assistance you
14:38can to the Allied operations. Eventually, on the 3rd of September, these terms were signed.
14:52On that day, the Allies invaded.
14:55Montgomery went across the Straits of Messina to attack the Toa of Italy, but found no resistance.
14:59The Germans had moved north to counter the threat of an Allied landing further up the coast.
15:09The Italians had wanted a landing to safeguard Rome from German attack, but this was impossible.
15:16The furthest point north at which the Americans and British felt it prudent to land was nowhere
15:20near Rome but at Salerno, as far as the Allied air cover operating from Sicily could stretch.
15:30The operation had been mounted at great speed to take advantage of the confusion in Italy.
15:35The forces at the command of the American General Mark Clark were
15:38barely adequate for the job they had to do.
15:41On the way, the troops heard a broadcast by General Eisenhower.
15:45The Italian government has surrendered its armed forces unconditionally.
15:50As Allied Commander-in-Chief, I have granted a military armistice.
15:55The armistice was signed by my representatives
15:57and the representative of Marshal Badoglio, and it becomes effective this instant.
16:03The surrender of his allies did not take Hitler by surprise.
16:07He had already moved reinforcements into northern Italy.
16:10Here, the Italians were quickly disarmed under a plan ironically codenamed Operation Axis.
16:17At this point, Hitler had not yet been able to take Rome,
16:20but he had already been able to take Italy by surprise.
16:22He had already moved reinforcements into northern Italy.
16:25He had already moved reinforcements into northern Italy.
16:28Operation Axis.
16:30At this point, Hitler had not decided just where he would hold the line.
16:37The Germans entered Rome to find it a capital without a government.
16:41Badoglio and his ministers had avoided the risk of being shot for treachery
16:44by leaping into their cars and driving away.
16:52South of Rome, Clark's invasion force was nearing the beaches.
16:57Salerno, if you go in on a boat, you'll look at the mountains that hem you in there
17:02and the passes through which you go.
17:04The enemy would be looking down your throat.
17:08Germans were ready and waiting.
17:56So
18:09so
18:25After 48 hours, the Germans launched a furious counterattack.
18:39The
18:45situation in the beachhead became so precarious,
18:47Clark ordered plans for possible re-embarkation.
18:53But with massive support from air and sea, the Salerno invaders just managed to hold on.
19:09So
19:18after a week of savage fighting, the Germans withdrew.
19:31It required the intervention of all the air forces to save us at Salerno.
19:37Of all General Eisenhower's battles, that is the one where I think we kept near,
19:44we were nearest to a tactical defeat.
19:47I've never had any doubts in my mind that it was a completely successful operation.
19:53We were ordered to go in there. We were ordered to seize a bridgehead.
19:58We did it. We were ordered to capture the port of Naples. We did that within three weeks.
20:04So far, so good. At least a large part of southern Italy was in Allied hands.
20:24Naples was desperately short of food. There were bread riots.
20:33Water was scarce.
20:50There was the typhus epidemic.
20:52The
21:02advance continued, but just ahead laid the line of real German resistance.
21:08The Allied commanders had hoped Hitler would withdraw further north.
21:12Instead, greatly encouraged by his near victory at Salerno,
21:16he had decided to fight here, in the mountains south of Rome.
21:22Like a bad lira, Mussolini turned up again.
21:34He was hoisted out of his hiding place by a German rescue party and taken to Hitler.
21:42The Führer was aghast at his appearance,
21:45but thought he might still come in useful to encourage the fascists in German-occupied Italy.
21:51The German forces in Italy were led by Kesselring,
22:08one of the war's ablest defensive commanders. Kesselring had a lot going for him.
22:14The rocky spine, which runs almost the whole length of Italy, meant the Allies had to advance
22:19along the coastal plains on either side. The only way to outflank the Germans was by amphibious
22:26landings, but by now the necessary landing craft were earmarked for Normandy.
22:50As they went north to their prepared defensive positions,
22:55Kesselring's men destroyed the only lines of communication.
23:11In the towns, the Germans left booby-trapped. This was Naples.
23:20Well, they were well-trained troops. They were tenacious troops. They were well-led.
23:37And one point I like to make is they're homogenous. They were all of one nationality. They were all
23:46equipped with the same weapons and ammunition. They ate the same food. They believed pretty
23:51much in the same God. And I had 16 different nationalities with me, some of whom couldn't
23:59eat this and couldn't eat that, and some that didn't want to fight on Fridays or some other
24:04day of the week. And the British with their infantry weapons and their artillery, completely
24:11different from ours, you couldn't move them with ease from one front to the other like the Germans
24:16could. Winter. The Allied ground commander, General Alexander, and his colleagues were
24:25now confronted with the unpleasant realities of their Mediterranean strategy. The Eighth Army,
24:31accustomed to swift advances across the desert, could only manage a few hundred yards a day.
24:42Across the mountains, Clark's Fifth Army was also mud-bound.
24:52They issued us galoshes after the rains had stopped. If anybody was in the galoshes business,
24:59he could have found them by the millions along the roadside because you couldn't walk with them.
25:05I mean, it was impossible to go through that mud.
25:10This was not the sunny Italy of the travel posters.
25:18And the only way an infantryman was going to come out of those mountains was to be carried out,
25:22you know, and that's why it was actually desirable to get wounded.
25:27Dreadful weather, difficult terrain, determined German resistance. To the men in the mud,
25:38this combination did not match up to Churchill's vision. I can see him now at his map in his
25:44persuasive way with his pointer, pointing out the soft belly of the Mediterranean. And after we got
25:51in there, I often thought of what a tough old gut it was instead of the soft belly that he had led
25:56us to believe.
26:13Before the end of 1943, the Allies were hammering at Kesselring's winter line.
26:18Alexander had eleven divisions, Kesselring nine, with eight more in reserve.
26:27Every small mountain village had to be fought for.
26:48In December, the American 36th Division tried to take San Pietro.
26:56So
27:05so
27:25it was one of the things that most of our fighting wasn't Italy. You got into a position,
27:31you dug in, and you just stayed. I mean, we'd shoot at them and they'd shoot at us.
27:39And it was only when they were ready to leave that we moved forward.
27:42After 10 days, the Americans took San Pietro at heavy cost.
28:13In any unit, you would have a graves registration unit, and their job was to go around picking up
28:18body. And what they would do is either if someone had been hastily buried, they would disinter him,
28:25or if he was just lying there, they'd pick him up and they would slide them into the mattress
28:31covers and pile them up into the trucks and take them off to a temporary cemetery somewhere.
28:36I suppose some people probably got buried as many as four or five times that way, which is kind of
28:43unfortunate, really. I always thought people should be left where they were.
29:06So
29:25the Italian people had once been told by Mussolini,
29:29war puts the stamp of nobility on those who have the courage to meet it.
29:47At Tehran in November 1943, Roosevelt and Stalin overruled Churchill and at last fixed a definite
30:03date for the landing in France, May 1944. Italy was to become a sideshow. But after Tehran,
30:11Churchill refused to accept the deadlock in Italy. He got onto Roosevelt and persuaded him
30:16to lend landing craft for a new amphibious landing. The plan was in two stages. First,
30:24Mark Clark's Fifth Army would attack the Germans at Cassino, draw their forces southward, drain
30:29their reserves. Then the amphibious troops would strike behind their lines at Anzio,
30:34just 22 miles south of Rome. At Cassino, the Germans held the high ground. They could see
30:41everything that moved in the valley below. The Fifth Army attacked on January the 20th.
30:47Its troops had not been reinforced. They were cold, wet, exhausted. The attack failed disastrously.
30:55But the second stage of the plan went ahead two days later, the assault on Anzio.
31:01Having gone into Salerno with not enough troops, no commander ever has what he thinks he ought to
31:08have. And I was determined that if I was to be the commander going into Anzio, or be the overall
31:14commander, that we should not go in on a shoestring. I went in with one and two-thirds division,
31:21which was totally inadequate. But that's the way the ball bounces in war. You do what you're told
31:29to do, or they'll get somebody else that will do it. The Germans expected the landing, but had no
31:40idea where it would come. They did not have enough troops to cover all the possible features.
31:46The Anzio force was completely unopposed. Nothing, an odd bang in the distance, but nothing.
31:54And when dawn broke, we'd got complete surprise.
32:00And a few minutes later, along the road, there came a marvellous drunken car, swaying back and
32:05forth. It was full of the most happy Germans who'd had a night out in Rome, and they were staggering
32:10back. And they couldn't believe they were captured. They said, it's our kind of camaraderie, and they
32:14kept on embracing me. So finally they put them in the cling too. And that was the landing. Complete
32:20surprise. The Anzio beachhead was consolidated in an eerie calm.
32:44After Salerno, it seemed incredible that there was no instant German riposte.
32:49Perhaps now was the time for a lightning dash in the style of General Patton for the gates of Rome.
32:54But the American commander at Anzio was no Patton. General Lucas was a cautious man who
33:00believed the beachhead must be secured before striking inland. Alexander did not overrule him.
33:19London Churchill complained bitterly, I thought we'd flung a wildcat into the
33:23Auburn hills, but instead we got a whale floundering on the beach.
33:30There were only two battalions and some very old-fashioned coast batteries
33:40at the coast for defending. If the Americans had
33:50realized the situation, they could stay on the evening of the landing day in Rome.
33:58General Lucas could, but he would have soon been met by an overwhelming force which would defeat
34:03it. He'd have been defeated, no question about it. So we had to dig in on the biggest perimeter
34:08we could possibly digest and wait for the onslaught which came.
34:17Caught off balance as he often was by Alexander, Kesselring recovered fast.
34:24Spurred on by Hitler's demands for the immediate liquidation of the Anzio abscess,
34:28he threw all he had into the counterattack.
34:33If Anzio were eliminated, then perhaps the Allies would think again about crossing the
34:37English Channel.
35:07Allied advance units which had spread out from the beaches were overwhelmed by the weight of
35:17the German attack. There was one unit I know that simply packed in, folded their greatcoats and
35:26handed themselves over. They couldn't take it anymore and they were young, they hadn't seen
35:29this sort of thing before, and I don't blame them one little scrap.
35:43Two American ranger battalions were captured and humiliatingly paraded through the streets of Rome.
36:00So
36:20the beachhead could only be relieved from the south by breaking through the German defensive
36:24line which ran through the monastery of Monte Cassino. Perched high above the valley,
36:28an observation post here could see everything that moved for miles around.
36:35The Allies believed, wrongly, that the monastery had been fortified.
36:41It was the general view and the general belief of the troops who were involved on that front
36:48that Cassino, the monastery at Cassino, was being used for military purposes by the Germans.
36:54And that being the case, and it also being a part of my military philosophy and the great
37:01many other people's too, that you must not put troops into battle without giving them all possible
37:07physical and material support that you can to give them the best chance of getting a success.
37:18On February the 15th, 1944, over 200 Allied bombers pounded the monastery into rubble.
37:48The air and ground attacks were badly coordinated, giving the Germans time to swarm into the rubble,
38:06ideal cover for defence. The Gustav Line was held.
38:18At Anzio, Kesselring flung ten German divisions against the Allies four and a half.
38:28Hitler hoped Anzio would be a turning point in Germany's fortune. The unit that broke
38:34through, he promised, would have the honour of escorting Allied prisoners through the streets
38:38of Berlin.
38:56Massed waves of German infantry were flung in.
39:00They came over a moon landscape pitted, wrecked tanks, abandoned jeeps along the road,
39:06and I still to this day don't understand the German tactics. There was a moment when you
39:10actually could see them leaving their lines like those old films of the Somme battle,
39:15and falling down as our machine guns took them.
39:26German offensive lasted four days. In the end,
39:30it was the Allied superiority and heavy guns that tipped the balance.
39:36It was finally beaten back.
40:06The Germans had pulled back, but the Allies still lacked the strength to break out. It was stalemate.
40:18We then had to form trenches, and Anzio then became an old-fashioned World War I trench system.
40:26And they were bombed, and they were mortared, and then they had to do trench patrols, and
40:30occasionally keen generals used to send up people to try and find out who was opposite us
40:36and do a trench raid. It was right out of Journey's End.
40:43The two front lines were only yards apart.
40:47A couple of fellas were cleaning this machine gun, got it all to pieces, and
40:54Irish fellas named Tommy McGough was there, and he just looked up and he said,
40:58bloody Jesus Christ, and he tried, rushed for this gun, trying to put the barrel back on it,
41:03putting it on upside down and all sorts. You know, of course, I just looked, I said,
41:07quite all right, Tommy. I could see this fellow was,
41:11I went down to the wire, and he was speaking very good English. He says,
41:15where's the friend? I said, he's gone. Oh, I said, it's quite all right. What have you got?
41:20Danish pork and fresh lemons, of course, we gave him a tin of bully beef, and
41:24we got talking to him about the position and the war and all that, you know, and he
41:29come from a place near Emden, was it? Emden, yeah. Emden, and at the time, this
41:36city had a thousand bomber raid, you know, and I said, oh, you've had the bugger then.
41:40You've had it. No, no, he said, I come from a little village near Emden. He said, me, okay,
41:45and he showed me his photos of his wife. She was a bus conductor in Emden and that,
41:51and I says, why don't you pack in? I said, you've had it now, hasn't you, Tommy? He said, no, he
41:58says, Germany will not be beat. He said, we should go right down, right down, like that, he says,
42:04till we get near to the bottom, he said, and then we shall join forces with Britain and America,
42:09he said, and fight Russia, and after that, he just went. Well, I never seen him in the
42:14moor, like he must have got relieved the next night.
42:31And at mealtime, the cooks would shout, grub up, you go with your mess tins down,
42:37for your grub. Before you could get down to the cookhouse,
42:41Hansy O'Hanlon, he'd send one over, a big one, one of his slide race, you know, and he'd,
42:47automatically, as soon as that burst, you'd drop to the floor. You were always used to it.
42:54You walk crouched, they called it, if any, when you were walking about, you got the Hansy O'Crouch.
43:07And as you lay there, you used to tune in on the radios that you shouldn't have had,
43:17and to the voice of Sally. Sally lived in Rome, and she was a great, well, she sounded the most
43:25wonderful, sexy female ever, and she kept on giving messages to the troops, she said, hello,
43:31hello, one of the, women always think that the lower they speak, the more sexy they sound,
43:36and she had the lowest register of any woman. She said, hello, this is Sally, why don't you come
43:43over and see me? Private Fox, you remember him last night? He stepped on a shoe mine,
43:50nasty thing, shoe mine. You could hear Private Fox yelling for most of the night,
43:55don't be like Private Fox, come over to see Sally.
43:59There would be a smart crack overhead, and down would flutter propaganda pamphlets saying,
44:07the Yanks are least lending your women, they're having a lovely time in jolly old England.
44:13There was a picture of a naked woman being embraced by an American, or an American
44:17tactfully knotting his tie while she did up her panties.
44:20At Cassino, the Allies maintained the pressure. Their aim, to tie up as many German troops there
44:25as possible. A third attempt to take the ruined monastery opened with a massive bombing attack
44:30on Cassino Tower. 500 planes went in under the sporting code word, Bradman Batting Tomorrow.
44:37Among the places knocked for six was the headquarters of the British Eighth Army.
44:50So
45:12once again, there was poor coordination between air and ground forces.
45:20After the bombing, the Germans came out of the ground and were in position again before
45:32the New Zealanders launched their attack. The German defenders were elite paratroopers.
45:50So
46:03the battle raged from house to house, room to room, cellar to cellar.
46:20The New Zealanders lost 4,000 men.
46:34The Germans still held out.
46:39Three assaults on Monte Cassino, three bloody failures. The Allied commanders finally realised
46:45that to take the mountain, they must crush the defenders by weight of numbers.
46:48They massively reinforced the Fifth Army.
46:54They used, too, an elaborate deception plan to make the Germans think they were preparing another
46:59amphibious landing north of Rome. The Germans weakened their mountain defences to prepare for
47:05it. In May, the Allies at last outnumbered the Germans at Cassino by three to one.
47:13After an artillery barrage by 2,000 guns, the monastery fell.
47:18Polish troops were the first to reach the ruins where they raised their national flag.
47:31The eyes of the captured Germans told the story of their ordeal.
47:38The Germans were now in headlong retreat. Kesselring declared Rome an open city and
47:52attempted to regroup north of the capital. On the 25th of May, the Cassino front linked up
47:58with the Anzio beachhead. Alexander's plan was for Clark to cut off the Germans' retreat.
48:04Instead, Clark threw everything into a drive for Rome.
48:11He was determined to get there before anyone else, and he did.
48:15On the evening of June the 4th, 1944, the first Allied troops entered the city.
48:20Those Romans who had backed the wrong side now paid the price.
48:50Clark's Roman triumph was short-lived. Kesselring would succeed in regrouping.
49:06Another Italian winter lay ahead, and in less than 48 hours,
49:10the world's attention would turn to another theatre of war, the beaches of Normandy.
50:20you