All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [373]
The worst victims of the Ardennes offensive were the German people. Most now cherished ambitions only to see the Western Allies, rather than the Russians, occupy their cities and villages. After the shocks of December 1944, however, strategic prudence became the theme of Eisenhower’s operations. His armies’ subsequent advance into Germany was sluggish, influenced by a morbid anxiety to avoid exposing flanks to counter-attack. The Russians in the east, meanwhile, became important beneficiaries of Hitler’s losses: when they launched their own great offensive on 12 January 1945, many of the German tanks which might have checked their advance lay wrecked on the Western Front. The Ardennes battle, by dissipating Hitler’s armoured reserves, hastened Germany’s end, and not in a fashion to its people’s advantage. It ensured that the Red Army, rather than the Americans and British, led the way to Hitler’s capital. Only on 28 January did Eisenhower’s forces reoccupy the line they had held before Hitler launched Autumn Mist.
While the struggle in the Ardennes dominated headlines across much of the world, in Italy the Anglo-Americans continued their thankless, yard-by-yard struggle up the peninsula. Many Allied soldiers became increasingly embittered by the belief that they were suffering shocking privations for scant purpose or recognition. In some units, discipline became precarious. A platoon in Lt. Alex Bowlby’s infantry battalion formed up to deliver a collective protest when they heard that a despised officer had been recommended for a Military Cross. The recommendation was cancelled, but Bowlby sensed that his men were not far from mutiny, reluctant to participate in patrols or attacks. It has been remarked that Bowlby’s unit was untypically weak, that some regiments sustained higher morale and greater determination, which is undoubtedly true. But it was sometimes hard to persuade soldiers to risk and indeed sacrifice their lives when they knew that the outcome of the war was being determined elsewhere.
The last phase of the Italian campaign, in the spring of 1945, was by far its best-conducted, because the Allies belatedly appointed good generals. Lucian Truscott succeeded Clark at US Fifth Army in December 1944, and Richard McCreery took over the British Eighth Army from Oliver Leese. Both men displayed an imagination their predecessors conspicuously lacked, especially in avoiding frontal attacks. The push across the Po valley, admittedly against much-depleted German forces, was a fine military achievement, albeit too late to have much influence on the war’s endgame.
But there were some men fighting in Italy who had special reasons for questioning the campaign’s value. The Yalta conference in early February made it plain that, following victory, a communist government would rule Poland, and that the east of the country would become Russian soil. On 13 February the Polish corps commander in Italy, Gen. Władysław Anders, sent a letter to his British commander-in-chief, reflecting on the sacrifices that his men had made since 1942: ‘We left along our path, which we regarded as our battle route to Poland, thousands of graves of our comrades in arms. The soldiers of II Polish Corps, therefore, feel this latest decision of the Three-Power Conference to be the gravest injustice … This soldier now asks me what is the object of his struggle? Today I am unable to answer this question.’ Anders seriously considered withdrawing his corps from the Allied line, until