The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [218]
With Rome the next major objective – more for political and morale than for military reasons, since it was designated a demilitarized open city by both sides – the Allies had to fight their way northwards, taking booby-trapped and sharply contested towns and villages, crossing rivers whose bridges had been destroyed and driving down roads expertly laid with Tellermines, mushroom-shaped circular metal boxes a foot in diameter which packed a 12-pound charge of TNT. The terrible weather in the autumn of 1943, combined with the topographical opportunities for defence provided by the 840-mile-long, 80-mile-wide Apennine mountain range with its 4,000-foot peaks, meant that Vietinghoff had myriad opportunities for tenacious rearguard actions, with the effect of Allied air superiority often negated. Churchill had injudiciously likened Europe to a crocodile, with the Mediterranean as its ‘soft underbelly’. As Mark Clark told the TV programme The World at War, ‘I often thought what a tough old gut it was instead of the soft belly that he had led us to believe.’18 Montgomery agreed. ‘I don’t think we can get any spectacular results,’ he reported to Brooke, ‘so long as it goes on raining; the whole country becomes a sea of mud and nothing on wheels can move off the roads.’19 The rain, sleet and frequent blizzards during the winter of 1943/4 led to pneumonia, dysentery, respiratory diseases, fevers, jaundice and the debilitating fungal infection called trench foot, which arises from wet socks that are not removed for days on end. As well as Fifth Army’s 40,000 battle casualties by the end of 1943, there were 50,000 non-combat casualties and perhaps as many as 20,000 deserters.20
The first meeting of what became known as the Big Three – Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill – took place at the Teheran Conference (codenamed Eureka) from 28 November to 1 December 1943. Roosevelt was under the mistaken but surprisingly widespread impression that personal intercourse could mollify Stalin, and he deliberately set out to try to charm the Russian dictator, if necessary by making Churchill the butt of his teasing. For his part Stalin insisted on the invalid Roosevelt flying halfway around the world to meet in the Iranian capital, and placing him in the Russian Legation as his guest, thus separating him from Churchill. On Stalin’s insistence, Chiang Kai-shek was also excluded from the conference altogether, so as not to ruffle the sensibilities of the Japanese, with whom the USSR had a non-aggression pact. In the first session of the Teheran Conference, however, Stalin announced his willingness to declare war against Japan after Germany had surrendered, which was greeted with undisguised pleasure by the Western Allies.
Less happy was the reception given to Churchill’s strategy of using Italy as a springboard from which to attack the Germans in south-eastern France and Austria and Hungary via Yugoslavia. Not wishing to see a powerful Allied force in his south-eastern European backyard, Stalin opposed the scheme, and was supported by Roosevelt, so it fell through, much to Churchill’s chagrin. Although Stalin would have preferred to see an earlier date for the cross-Channel invasion, he accepted that it would take place on 1 May 1944. (It later had to be put back five weeks for lack of landing craft after fighting in Italy went on for longer than planned.)
Other discussions on the eastern border of Poland, which was to be compensated with German territory for the loss of land to the USSR to its east, ran directly contrary to the promise made in the Atlantic Charter for ‘no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned’, but at least Stalin agreed to the outlines of a United Nations Organization with vetoes for Britain, Russia, the United States and China. There was also agreement on Yugoslavia, where Marshal Tito’s Communist partisans would be given support rather than the pro-monarchist Chetniks, because it was clear from Ultra decrypts that the Chetniks were in league