Inferno - Max Hastings [335]
Operation Diadem, as the May offensive was code-named, offered the Allies their only opportunity between 1943 and 1945 to achieve the comprehensive defeat of Kesselring’s armies in Italy, by cutting off their retreat. The consequences of Gen. Mark Clark’s disdain for this objective, because of his obsession with gaining the personal glory of taking Rome, has passed into the legend of the war; his disobedience of orders emphasised his unfitness as an army commander. Alexander, a weak commander-in-chief, was not the man to control the anglophobic Clark, and himself bore significant responsibility for Allied sluggishness in exploiting Diadem. When the Italian capital fell on 4 June, Kesselring made good his withdrawal to a strong new defensive position, the Gothic Line, on a northwesterly axis anchored in the Apennines between Spezia, on the west coast, and Pesaro, on the east.
But it seems just to measure the disappointments the Allies experienced in Italy during June 1944 alongside those suffered by their armies elsewhere: the Wehrmacht displayed consistent skill and determination in escaping from encirclements on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. Again and again the Russians trapped German armies, only to see them break out. If Clark had closed the Italian roads leading north, Kesselring’s retreating forces would probably have smashed through anyway. The failure of Diadem to translate tactical into strategic success was matched a few weeks later by the escape of substantial German forces through the Falaise Gap in Normandy, and by American unwillingness to cut off von Rundstedt’s withdrawal from the Bulge in January 1945.
In Italy, the Allies had to content themselves with escaping from the miseries of the winter stalemate and advancing 250 miles. Once it became clear that decisive victory in the theatre remained unattainable, to Churchill’s fury the Americans insisted upon winding down the campaign: they withdrew six U.S. and French divisions to join the battle for France. For the last eight months of the war, in Washington’s eyes the only merit of residual Italian operations was that they engaged twenty German divisions which would otherwise have been defending the Reich against Eisenhower or Zhukov.
HITLER RECEIVED NEWS of the Italian retreat with uncharacteristic fatalism. In the late spring of 1944 he knew that within weeks his armies must face a major Russian offensive. It was vital first to repulse the Anglo-American invasion of France, which was plainly imminent. If this could be achieved, it was unlikely that the Western Allies could mount a new assault on the Channel coast before 1945; most of the German forces in the west could be shifted to the Russian front, dramatically improving the prospects of repelling Stalin’s offensive. If this was an implausible scenario, as Germany’s generals thought, it was by nurturing such hopes that Hitler rationalised his strategy. Everything hinged upon the outcome of Eisenhower’s invasion attempt.
On the Allied side, there was a matching awareness of the stakes. A comparison of paper strengths suggested that the Anglo-Americans must prevail, above all because of their overwhelming air power. But amphibious operations in the Mediterranean had done nothing to