Angus Konstam - Salerno 1943: The Allies invade southern Italy

Series editor Marcus Cowper

In September 1943 the Allies invaded Italy, an operation which marked the start of the Western Allied assault on Hitlers Festung Europa (Fortress Europe). It was an operation that nearly didnt succeed. In what became known as Operation Avalanche, an Anglo-American invasion force of more than 80,000 men was landed on the beaches of the Gulf of Salerno, to the south of Naples. The plan was to establish a bridgehead and then to drive north to capture Naples, whose port could then be used to support the Allied drive up the Italian Peninsula. The Italian army had just surrendered, and many in the invasion ships thought that resistance would be relatively light. They were proved wrong. The invasion was bitterly contested, and what followed was one of the hardest-fought campaigns of the war.

For obvious reasons no photographs were taken of the first waves of American troops who landed at Salerno. They landed before dawn and were under fire. This shot was taken of GIs of a supporting wave, wading ashore from an LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel).

This attitude that the invasion was little more than a clearing operation permeated Hitlers headquarters as well as those of the Allies. He considered Italy to be indefensible, and his advisors recommended that he withdraw his German troops to the Po Valley, to avoid them becoming trapped in the Italian Peninsula. It was Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring who persuaded him that Italy could be held, and that the fighting there would tie up Allied formations which might otherwise be deployed in the impending invasion of north-west Europe. Therefore, as one side looked optimistically to a potentially easy victory, their opponents took over abandoned Italian defences and grimly prepared for the fight of their lives.

An amphibious invasion is one of the most difficult military operations to carry out. Regardless of how much planning and logistical preparation is made, there are so many intangible factors that organizers are often unable to predict the outcome. If the invasion force manages to establish a viable bridgehead, then the operation often becomes a race to bring in reinforcements. If the defenders can be reinforced faster than the invaders, then they might well be able to launch a counter-attack designed to drive the enemy back to their ships. This is exactly the situation that developed at Salerno, and when it came the German counter-attack very nearly succeeded. For ten days the fate of the Allied invasion of Italy even the fate of Italy herself hung in the balance, as both sides vied for control of the narrow, beleaguered beachhead. The Salerno campaign was a critical moment in the struggle against Nazi Germany.

The landing of an Allied army on the Italian mainland almost never happened. In January 1943, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met in Casablanca to determine the strategy of the next phase of the war. At that moment Allied forces were poised to overrun the last Axis foothold in Tunisia, and the big question was what to do next. First, they clarified their war aims to force an unconditional surrender on Germany. Then they talked about strategy. Roosevelt and his senior commanders favoured the harbouring of resources for an Allied invasion of north-west Europe.

The British were less keen, feeling the time wasnt right. Churchill preferred delaying a cross-Channel invasion for a year or more, and instead to devote resources to the Mediterranean. Having fought them since June 1940, Britain preferred to knock Italy out of the war first, and thereby safeguard her sea communications with India and the Middle East. In the end, Churchill got his way, with several provisos, in return for a promise of greater British involvement in the war in the Pacific.

A Sherman tank of the US 2nd Armored Division entering Palermo on 22 July 1943. The capture of Sicily paved the way for the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland, despite the reluctance of Eisenhower and other American planners to venture onto the Italian mainland.

The decision was made that after forcing the surrender of the Germans in Tunisia, the Allies would invade Sicily. This would bring immediate strategic benefits, such as placing the Italian mainland in range of Allied bombers, and it would safeguard the transit of Allied convoys through the Western Mediterranean. However, General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean Theatre, had reservations about what he saw as a potentially open-ended commitment to a war in Italy. He demanded and received assurances that any offensive in the Mediterranean would be conducted in a limited way, and would not prevent the transfer of troops and supplies from what he saw as the more important operation the assault on north-west Europe.

In the end Operation Husky was a success. On 10 July 1943 the Allies established beachheads on the southern and south-eastern coasts of the island, and then drove north and west, pushing the Germans and their unenthusiastic Italian allies before them. Italian units surrendered en masse, and, although German resistance hardened around the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna, by 17 August the Allies had captured the port of Messina in the north-east corner of Sicily and the island lay entirely in their hands. The only negative aspect was the fact that over 60,000 German troops had managed to escape from the island as they and their equipment were ferried to safety across the Straits of Messina under cover of darkness. Still, as well as securing the Allied lines of communication, the capture of Sicily had also exerted considerable moral and physical pressure on the Italian state. Mussolinis Fascist regime had collapsed, and there were clear signs that the interim Italian government had no stomach for continued war.

More than anything else it was this political situation that turned Eisenhowers fears of an open-ended commitment into a reality. Even before