Bevin Alexander - How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

September 10 was quiet for the Americans, for 16th Panzer Division moved to confront 10th Corps, a greater strategic menace. The Americans expanded their bridgehead and landed most of 45th Division.

Meanwhile the British 56th Division captured Montecorvino airfield and Battipaglia, but was driven back by a counterattack of two German battalions and some tanks. That night the division mounted a three-brigade attack to capture the heights of Mount Eboli, but got nowhere. The 46th Division occupied Salerno, but did not press northward.

In the American sector, 45th Division advanced ten miles inland up the east bank of the Sele River, but a counterattack by a single German battalion and eight tanks threw it back.

By the end of the third day the Allies, now with the equivalent of four divisions on the ground, still held only two shallow bridgeheads, while the Germans possessed the heights and the approach roads.

By now 29th Panzergrenadier Division had arrived, plus a battle group of two battalions and twenty tanks from the Hermann Göring Division. On September 12, 29th Panzergrenadier with part of 16th Panzer thrust between the British and Americans and drove the British out of Battipaglia. The next day, the Germans evicted the Americans from Persano, forcing a general withdrawal. In some places German armored vehicles reached within half a mile of the beach. On the same day the Hermann Göring Kampfgruppe sealed off Cava Gap, broke through the British line above La Molina, and got almost to Vietri before Commandos stopped it.

By the evening of September 13 the situation was so grim that Clark stopped unloading supply ships, and prepared to reembark 5th Army headquarters, while asking that all available craft be made ready to evacuate 6th Corps. The order produced consternation at Allied headquarters and brought immediate help. Matthew Ridgway, commander of 82nd Airborne Division, dropped paratroops on the American sector that evening. On September 14, Eisenhower sent all available aircraft to attack German positions and their communications, a total of 1,900 sorties in one day. At the same time, warships commenced a powerful bombardment, hitting every target they could locate. The British 7th Armored Division started landing on the British bridgehead on September 15.

There was a lull on September 15 as the Germans reorganized their bombed and shelled units, and brought up some reinforcements, including the still-tankless 26th Panzer Division, and parts of the 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions. Total German strength was only four divisions and a hundred tanks, however, while Clark had on shore on September 16 seven larger divisions and 200 tanks.

The same day the British battleships Warspite and Valiant arrived with a destroyer flotilla, and began bombarding targets a dozen miles inland with their heavy 15-inch guns.

September 16 was eventful in another way: Montgomery’s 8th Army made contact in a fashion with Clark’s 5th Army. A group of war correspondents got so exasperated with Montgomery’s snail-like pace up the peninsula that they struck out on their own on minor roads and reached 5th Army across the fifty-mile stretch without meeting any Germans.

On the same day the Germans launched a renewed effort to drive the Allied bridgeheads into the sea. Combined artillery and naval gunfire, plus tanks, stopped the assaults, and Kesselring, seeing how close Montgomery was to 5th Army, authorized disengagement on the coastal front and gradual retreat northward.

First stage was withdrawal to the Volturno River, twenty miles north of Naples. As the Germans pulled away, a bomber disabled the Warspite with another of the new radio-guided gliding bombs.

Kesselring withdrew because 8th Army could move east of Salerno, and easily outflank the German positions, since Vietinghoff had only a small fraction of the combined forces of 5th and 8th Armies. Indeed, the Allies could have completely dislodged the German position in southern Italy by a swift strike up the east coast beyond Foggia to Pescara, where the main trans-peninsula road led to Rome.

But this was the sector of Bernard Montgomery, and it took him until September 20 merely to send a Canadian spearhead to Potenza, fifty miles inland from Salerno, a crossroads that opened the way through the mountains to the east coast. A hundred German paratroops blocked Potenza, causing Montgomery to mount a full brigade attack—that is, thirty times the strength of the German detachment—plus a huge air attack that killed 2,000 inhabitants of the town.

There were still virtually no German troops on the east coast, but the British 1st Airborne Division, which had landed at Taranto on September 9, had been able to take little advantage because it lacked arms and transportation. Using the half-dozen jeeps that had come on the warships, plus confiscated Italian vehicles, the paratroops occupied Brindisi and Bari, but that was all.

Even when transport and arms arrived beginning September 14, Montgomery’s methodical, painstaking preparations still held the paras in check. The commander in the east, C. W. Allfrey, now reinforced with two more divisions, took until September 27 to send a small mobile force to occupy Foggia and the airfields there. Montgomery stopped any farther advance, though the only enemy element in front of Allfrey was the 1st Parachute Division with just 1,300 men at Termoli on the Biferno River, thirty miles northwest.

Early on October 3, a British Special Services brigade landed from the sea beyond Termoli, causing the German paratroops to withdraw. But Vietinghoff had already sent the 16th Panzer Division to the east coast, and early on October 5 it drove the British back to the edge of Termoli, then had to withdraw itself when attacked by the British 78th Division, also brought up to Termoli by sea.

The Germans disengaged and withdrew a dozen miles north to the next river line, the Trigno. But their counterattack had so shaken Montgomery that he paused for two weeks to shift his 5th Corps to the coast, moving 13th Corps into the mountainous interior. The 5th Corps did not break the Trigno position until November 3, when the Germans withdrew seventeen miles northward to the Sangro River.

Meanwhile Mark Clark’s 5th Army slowly pushed up the west coast. It took three divisions and an armored brigade of the British 10th Corps a week to force passage over the hill barrier between Salerno and Naples, though the Germans employed only four infantry battalions. The breakthrough came on September 26, when the Germans withdrew, having carried out their mission of holding the line until comrades to the south had been able to pull back.

Because of broken bridges, 10th Corps did not reach Naples, twenty miles away, until October 1. The American 6th Corps came up abreast on the north. Clark had removed Dawley as corps commander because of poor performance and had replaced him with John P. Lucas. Clark’s army sustained nearly 12,000 casualties (7,000 British, 5,000 American) reaching Naples—the penalty paid for choosing too obvious a place of landing.

Rain set in the first week of October, a month earlier than usual, and it was October 12 before the Allies attacked the Volturno River line, twenty miles northwest of Naples. They were held up by German counterstrikes long enough for Vietinghoff’s main forces to withdraw to the next line of defense, fifteen miles northward—the Winter or Gustav line—along the Garigliano and the Rapido rivers, hinging on the Cassino defile, about twenty miles north of the Gulf of Gaeta. Above the town was Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict founded his monastery in 529, the parent house of Western monasticism and a center of arts and learning during the Middle Ages.

Bad weather and German demolitions slowed 5th Army’s attack until November 5. Thereafter, German resistance was so severe that Clark was forced to pull his troops back after ten days. He was not ready to launch the next effort till the first week of December. By mid-November 5th Army had lost 12,000 Americans and 10,000 British.