The Allied landings in Europe and the defeat of the Axis powers
- Also called:
- Second World War
- Date:
- September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945
- Participants:
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- India
- Italy
- Japan
- Soviet Union
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Major Events:
- Battle of France
- Holocaust
- North Africa campaigns
- Pacific War
- Eastern Front
News •
Developments from autumn 1943 to summer 1944
Sicily and the fall of Mussolini, July–August 1943
Hitler’s greatest strategic disadvantage in opposing the Allies’ imminent reentry into Europe lay in the immense stretch of Germany’s conquests, from the west coast of France to the east coast of Greece. It was difficult for him to gauge where the Allies would strike next. The Allies’ greatest strategic advantage lay in the wide choice of alternative objectives and in the powers of distraction they enjoyed through their superior sea power. Hitler, while always having to guard against a cross-Channel invasion from England’s shores, had cause to fear that the Anglo-American armies in North Africa might land anywhere on his southern front between Spain and Greece.
Having failed to save its forces in Tunisia, the Axis had only 10 Italian divisions of various sorts and two German panzer units stationed on the island of Sicily at midsummer 1943. The Allies, meanwhile, were preparing to throw some 478,000 men into the island—150,000 of them in the first three days of the invasion. Under the supreme command of Alexander, Montgomery’s British 8th Army and Patton’s U.S. 7th Army were to be landed on two stretches of beach 40 miles long, 20 miles distant from one another, the British in the southeast of the island, the Americans in the south. The Allies’ air superiority in the Mediterranean theatre was so great by this time—more than 4,000 aircraft against some 1,500 German and Italian ones—that the Axis bombers had been withdrawn from Sicily in June to bases in north-central Italy.
On July 10 Allied seaborne troops landed on Sicily. The coastal defenses, manned largely by Sicilians unwilling to turn their homeland into a battlefield for the Germans’ sake, collapsed rapidly enough. The British forces had cleared the whole southeastern part of the island in the first three days of the invasion. The Allies’ drive toward Messina then took the form of a circuitous movement by the British around Mount Etna in combination with an eastward drive by the Americans, who took Palermo, on the western half of the northern coast, on July 22. Meanwhile, the German armoured strength in Sicily had been reinforced.
After the successive disasters sustained by the Axis in Africa, many of the Italian leaders were desperately anxious to make peace with the Allies. The invasion of Sicily, representing an immediate threat to the Italian mainland, prompted them to action. On the night of July 24–25, 1943, when Mussolini revealed to the Fascist Grand Council that the Germans were thinking of evacuating the southern half of Italy, the majority of the council voted for a resolution against him, and he resigned his powers. On July 25 the king, Victor Emmanuel III, ordered the arrest of Mussolini and entrusted Marshal Pietro Badoglio with the formation of a new government. The new government entered into secret negotiations with the Allies, despite the presence of sizable German forces in Italy.
A few days after the fall of Mussolini, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the German commander in chief in Italy, decided that the Axis troops in Sicily must be evacuated; the local Italian commander thought so too. While rearguard actions held up the Allies at Adrano (on the western face of Mount Etna) and at Randazzo (to the north), 40,000 Germans and 60,000 Italian troops were safely withdrawn across the Strait of Messina to the mainland, mostly in the week ending on August 16, 1943—the day before the Allies’ entry into Messina.
The Allies sustained about 22,800 casualties in their conquest of Sicily. The Axis powers suffered about 165,000 casualties, of whom 30,000 were Germans.
The Quadrant Conference (Quebec I)
The success of the Sicilian operation and the fall of Mussolini converted the American military and political leadership into supporters of a campaign in Italy. Furthermore, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, who after Casablanca had been designated chief of staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC), produced a detailed and realistic plan for the long-envisaged invasion of France from Great Britain, thus enabling the U.S. strategists to calculate more precisely how much of the Allies’ resources were needed for that purpose and how much could be spared for operations in the Mediterranean and for the Pacific. With regard to the Pacific, plans sponsored by Admiral Nimitz for operations against the Gilbert and Marshall islands apart from the enterprise against Rabaul were approved early in August 1943.
The new turn of strategical thought necessitated a new Anglo-U.S. conference, which took place in Quebec in mid-August 1943 and was code-named “Quadrant.” After vigorous debate, the question of the timing of “Overlord” was eventually left open, but it was agreed that the strength of the assault force should exceed the original estimate by 25 percent, that the cross-Channel landing should be supported by a landing in southern France, and that a U.S. officer should be in command of “Overlord.” It was also decided that a new Southeast Asia theatre of war should be organized, under British command.
The Allies’ invasion of Italy and the Italian volte-face, 1943
From Sicily, the Allies had a wide choice of directions for their next offensive. Calabria, the “toe” of Italy, was the nearest and most obvious possible destination, and the “shin” was also vulnerable; and the “heel” was also very attractive. The two army corps of Montgomery’s 8th Army crossed the Strait of Messina and landed on the “toe” of Italy on September 3, 1943; but, though the initial resistance was practically negligible, they made only very slow progress, as the terrain, with only two good roads running up the coasts of the great Calabrian “toe” prevented the deployment of large forces. On the day of the landing, however, the Italian government at last agreed to the Allies’ secret terms for a capitulation. It was understood that Italy would be treated with leniency in direct proportion to the part that it would take, as soon as possible, in the war against Germany. The capitulation was announced on September 8.
The landing on the “shin” of Italy, at Salerno, just south of Naples, was begun on September 9, by the mixed U.S.–British 5th Army, under U.S. General Mark Clark. Transported by 700 ships, 55,000 men made the initial assault, and 115,000 more followed up. At first they were faced only by the German 16th Panzer Division; but Kesselring, though he had only eight weak divisions to defend all southern and central Italy, had had time to plan since the fall of Mussolini and had been expecting a blow at the “shin.” His counterstroke made the success of the Salerno landing precarious for six days, and it was not until October 1 that the 5th Army entered Naples.
By contrast, the much smaller landing on the “heel” of Italy, which had been made on September 2 (the day preceding the invasion of the “toe”), took the Germans by surprise. Notwithstanding the paucity of its strength in men and in equipment, the expedition captured two good ports, Taranto and Brindisi, in a very short time; but it lacked the resources to advance promptly. Nearly a fortnight passed before another small force was landed at Bari, the next considerable port north of Brindisi, to push thence unopposed into Foggia.
It was the threat to their rear from the “heel” of Italy and from Foggia that had induced the Germans to fall back from their positions defending Naples against the 5th Army. When the Italian government, in pursuance of a Badoglio–Eisenhower agreement of September 29, declared war against Germany on October 13, 1943, Kesselring was already receiving reinforcements and consolidating the German hold on central and northern Italy. The 5th Army was checked temporarily on the Volturno River, only 20 miles north of Naples, then more lastingly on the Garigliano River, while the 8th Army, having made its way from Calabria up the Adriatic coast, was likewise held on the Sangro River. Autumn and midwinter passed without the Allies’ making any notable impression on the Germans’ Gustav Line, which ran for 100 miles from the mouth of the Garigliano through Cassino and over the Apennines to the mouth of the Sangro.
The western Allies and Stalin: Cairo and Tehrān, 1943
Relations between the western Allies and the U.S.S.R. were still delicate. Besides their inability to satisfy Soviet demands for convoys of supplies and for an early invasion of France, the Americans and the British were embarrassed by the discrepancy between their political war aims and Stalin’s.
The longest-standing difference was about Poland. While Poles were still fighting on the Allies’ side and acknowledging the authority of General Władysław Sikorski’s London-based Polish government in exile, Stalin was trying to get the Allies to consent to the U.S.S.R.’s retention, after the war, of all the territory taken from Poland by virtue of the German–Soviet pacts of 1939. On January 16, 1943, the Soviet government announced that Poles from the border territories in dispute were being treated as Soviet citizens and drafted into the Red Army. On April 25, the Soviet government severed relations with the London Poles, and Moscow subsequently began to build up its own puppet government for postwar Poland.
Besides the quarrel over Poland, the western Allies and the U.S.S.R. were also at variance with regard to the postwar fate of other European states still under German domination; but the Americans and the British were really more interested in maintaining the Soviet war effort against Germany than in insisting, at the risk of offense to Stalin, on the detailed application of their own loudly but vaguely enunciated war aims.
Sextant, the conference of November 22–27, 1943, for which Churchill, Roosevelt, and Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo, was, on Roosevelt’s insistence, devoted mainly to discussing plans for a British–U.S.–Chinese operation in northern Burma. Little was produced by Sextant except the Cairo Declaration, published on December 1, a further statement of war aims. It prescribed inter alia that Japan was to surrender all Pacific islands acquired since 1914, to retrocede Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores to China, and to give up all other territory “taken by violence and greed”; and, in addition, it was stipulated that Korea was in due course to become independent.
From Cairo, Roosevelt and Churchill went to Tehrān, to meet Stalin at the Eureka conference of November 28–December 1. Stalin renewed the Soviet promise of military intervention against Japan, but he primarily wanted an assurance that “Overlord” (the invasion of France) would indeed take place in 1944. Reassured about this by Roosevelt, he declared that the Red Army would attack simultaneously on the Eastern Front. On the political plane, Stalin now demanded the Baltic coast of East Prussia for the U.S.S.R. as well as the territories annexed in 1939–40. The main communique of the conference was accompanied by a joint declaration guaranteeing the postwar restoration of Iran. Returning to Cairo, Roosevelt and Churchill spent six more days, December 2–7, in staff talks to compose their differences on strategy. They finally agreed that “Overlord” (with Eisenhower in command) should have first claim on resources.
