Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [166]
The end result was that northern Italy remained under Axis control virtually to the end of the war. The Germans by early August were in their northern defense position, the one they had originally thought to hold a year earlier, and this, the Gothic Line, proved every bit as tough as the Gustav Line had last year. Behind them there was a good deal of partisan activity in the western mountains, and there was the enfeebled Mussolini. Imprisoned in isolation by the Italian government, he was rescued in a daring coup by German airborne troops; and brought back behind German lines. Now he set up a shadow Fascist government, usually called the Salo Republic, and it managed to control a small portion of German-held territory.
Neither he nor the partisans mattered a great deal, however. The Italians as a people and as a state had long lost their gamble to keep the war from their homeland. The decision on that was up to the Germans and the Allies, and now, once again, the front had stabilized. The Germans put up a strong defense around Arezzo, and it took a full-scale Allied attack to push them out of it. By late August they were on a line that ran from Pisa to Florence along the mountain peaks to the Metaurus River. Alexander still hoped, with his reduced forces, to break clear of the mountains and into the Po Valley. There was heavy fighting all through September, and the Canadians on the east coast reached Rimini, while the Americans in the center broke through the Futa Pass and got to Firenzuola. Hitler had pulled out German divisions as soon as he knew of the Allied withdrawals, and Kesselring lacked sufficient troops to man his line as completely as the fortifications demanded. The Allies were thus actually through to the rearmost portions of the original Gothic Line when the winter rains hit them, and everything ground to a halt. Ten miles short of Bologna and the breakthrough into the Po Valley, the exhausted 5th Army gave over its drive. On its right 8th Army too sank worn out into the autumn mud. Time, circumstance, and their friends as well as their enemies had robbed them of complete victory.
24. The Normandy Invasion and the Campaign of France
ROME FELL ON JUNE 4; two days later Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, and the great invasion, so long awaited, so long deferred, was on at last. Preceded by years of planning and preparation, it was the dramatic high point of the war.
With their usual tenaciousness, the British had been working toward the return of the Continent ever since they had been chased off it. Even with German bombers in the air over London, with their last seventy tanks sent off to North Africa, they had calmly set about the business of organizing the invasion. They knew they must go back, and with the quiet determination so much a part of the national character, they never doubted that at some point they would do so.
When the Americans appeared on the scene, they were as determined as the British to invade France, but less patient. Only as the military might of Germany and the excellence of her armed forces became manifest to them did they accede to the British view, that the war was going to take longer than they initially hoped. From the east, of course, there was constant pressure from Stalin for the “Second Front”; by that he meant the invasion of France, as he refused to take British efforts in the Mediterranean too seriously. It is a tribute to Churchill’s patience, hardly his strongest quality, that he never reminded Stalin that there had been a “second front” in 1940, but that at that time Stalin was busy befriending Hitler.
The invasion had been long delayed, from 1942, a target date that never meant anything except to the most optimistic Americans, to 1943, which might conceivably have been a reasonable proposition, and finally to 1944. The postponements arose partly from the material and manpower buildup, but by the first part of 1944