Canada Ping!
The U.S. was the biggest loser of World War II.
The U.S. was the biggest loser of World War II.
The invasion of Italy forced the Germans to deploy troops who were desperately needed elsewhere. Without it, the Overlord could have failed because the Germans would be able to bring more resources to bear on the invaders.
3 of the BIGGEST BOOBS of WW II:
1. “Dugout” Doug MacArthur
2. Marc Clark
3. Omar Bradley
Canada Ping!
The terrain isn't, for certain. But against Italian and Balkan military prowess, that's quite another matter. IMHO, too many worthy American lives were needless sacrificed rescuing the ungrateful French. Had we taken Churchill's advice and gone through the Balkans, much of eastern Europe might have been spared the trauma of Communism and we most certainly would have reached Berlin before the Russians.
We all keep in mind that 80% of Wehrmacht was destroyed by USSR. USSR lost about 35 million people and 14.5 million soldiers, over a million second lieutenants.
Allies committed ~18 divisions to Italy, and tied down a smaller number of less capable German division, but also managed to get Allied units and commanders significant combat experience that was later used in France and Germany.
At the time of the Italy landings, it was announced that Germany called off their offensive in kursk to counter the invasion of Italy.
I believe Napolean said - Italy is indeed like a boot. It can only be entered from the top.
Reading of America’s successes of the past depresses me since we have no ability to do this under the current circumstances.
We don’t even have a space program with the shuttle any longer. At least Obama made them do a fly over of the shuttle on the way to the mothballs so that it would look like we were doing something.
Just finished a book titled Operation Mincemeat. Basically a diversionary ploy by the British to deceive the Germans into thinking the attack on southern Europe by the Allies would be Sardinia and in the eastern Med Greece, a two pronged attack, instead of single assault on Sicily.
The Germans were duped by this ploy and didn’t concentrate their forces on Sicily which was the logical Allied attack point. Interesting story.
Patton, for all his bluster, was a serious student of ancient military history. What he saw developing was something like what happened in the second Punic War, and what Rome had done about it was to hop the periphery of the island clockwise, south to north. Once you hit Messina, Italy is a short boat-ride away. We took 100,000 Italian POWs because we had them encircled.
There were other issue surrounding that particular attack at that particular time. Stalin had been (rightfully, in my opinion) demanding a second front to relieve pressure on his own. It was well-known that a channel crossing would take assets we did not have in place and technology that didn't even exist yet. Both the Brits and the U.S. were deployed to North Africa at that point, also over ground that the Carthaginians and the Romans had fought. Sicily was an obvious stepping stone.
That was not lost on the Germans, themselves students of ancient warfare. It partially explains, I suspect, why they managed to leave the Italians holding the bag (it was their own territory, after all) and retreat slowly up the length of Italy. My late father followed them step for step the entire route, and his descriptions of the terrain match those of the article, sans a few expletives about managing mules through the Italian mountains.
What Churchill meant by "soft underbelly" was that the Germans didn't have defense in depth there to the degree to which they did on the Eastern front or that they still were developing at the Atlantic Wall. German planners felt that a slow retreat through Italy would buy them the requisite time, and for the most part they were correct; what happened, however, was a shortage of assets to develop a fourth front north of there once the third opened on June 6, 1944, in Normandy.
Sicily and the Italian campaigns had as much to do with political considerations as strategy. The Allies couldn’t leave the fighting to the Russians while waiting for the main invasion in France, and they had two armies in the Med with nobody to fight. Perhaps if they had ignored the political issues and those divisions in Italy had been at Stalingrad instead, the fight on the Eastern Front would have been more drawn out, but when you have allies, you often have to do things more for their benefit that your own.
There is another reason for the invasion of Italy.
Churchill & FDR had promised the USSR they would launch a second front in Western Europe. The Russians were facing the brunt of the Nazi forces & needed some relief. The Italian invasion fulfilled that promise as the invasion of France (Overlord) was not yet ready.
Germany was forced to defend Italy with troops & equipment badly needed in the fight with the Russians & needed in France to prepare for the Allied invasion. In effect, the Italian defense was a THIRD front for Germany.
The Lorenz Cipher and how Bletchley Park broke it
documentary on it.
Hindsight is always 20-20.