Allied strategy to the fall of Italy

In the wake of Operation “Torch,” Roosevelt and Churchill met at Casablanca (January 1943) to determine strategy for the coming year. Once again Roosevelt conciliated Churchill, agreeing to put off opening a second front in France in favour of more modest operations against Sicily, Italy, and the “soft underbelly” of Europe after the liberation of North Africa. General George Marshall and Admiral Ernest King succeeded in winning approval for offensives in Burma and the southwest Pacific. The French rivals, de Gaulle and Giraud, were persuaded at least to feign unity and later to create a French Committee of National Liberation under their joint chairmanship (May 1943). But the main event was Roosevelt’s parting announcement that “peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese military power…(which) means unconditional surrender.” This surprise declaration was not spontaneous, as Roosevelt claimed; it was a considered signal to Stalin of Allied resolve, especially necessary after General Eisenhower’s ignominious “Darlan deal.” But it also rashly committed the United States to a power vacuum, rather than a balance of power, in postwar Europe, and may have discouraged Germans from attempting to oust Hitler in hopes of escaping utter defeat.

Stalin’s reaction to Casablanca was predictably sour. In March he expressed great anxiety about repeated postponement of the second front in France. On the other hand, the Battle of Stalingrad had more or less assured eventual Soviet victory. Would it not have served Soviet interests more to delay the Allied presence in Europe as long as possible? It is likely that Stalin’s continued pressure for a second front was a function of his perennial fears for internal Soviet security. Stalin may have wanted to recapture his lost ground, especially Ukraine, as quickly as possible lest anti-Soviet movements take hold there or in neighbouring countries. At this time Stalin also began to denounce the London Poles as reactionaries and sponsored a new Union of Polish Patriots in Moscow as a rival government-in-exile. The final breach between the London Poles and Stalin followed in April 1943, when the Germans uncovered a mass grave in the Katyn forest containing the corpses of over 4,000 Polish officers captured by the Russians in 1939. (Another 10,000 Polish officers were killed in Soviet secret police concentration camps.) Churchill advised Władysław Sikorski, prime minister in the London government-in-exile, not to pursue the issue out of deference to Stalin, who blamed the massacre on the Germans. But the Poles invited an International Red Cross investigation that strongly suggested the Soviets had committed the crime in the spring of 1940, presumably to exterminate Poland’s non-Communist leadership class. Stalin’s seemingly benign dissolution of the Comintern in May 1943 was likewise inspired by postwar planning. The party purges and the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico (August 1940) placed foreign Communists so securely under Moscow’s thumb that the formal apparatus of control was no longer needed, while the appearance of independence on the part of Communist parties would ease their participation in coalition governments after the war.

At the Trident Conference in Washington (May 1943) Churchill and Roosevelt finally projected a 29-division invasion of France for May 1944. The long delay was the consequence of the need to build up troop strength, landing craft, and supplies, and to ensure complete command of air and sea. But Stalin again castigated Allied bad faith and initiated a series of vitriolic communications with Churchill.

The final defeat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps opened the way for the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. The Allies’ rapid success there gradually undermined Mussolini’s eroding Fascist regime. Badoglio, Ciano, and Grandi had all denounced Mussolini’s leadership and had been sacked by February 1943. Other Fascist leaders insisted on convening the Grand Council in July and after violent debate voted 19 to 8 in favour of restoring “the prerogatives of the King and parliament.” Mussolini resigned the next day, and Badoglio took power in the face of a complex dilemma. Italy wanted peace, but to break the alliance with Hitler might provoke a German attack and condemn Italy to prolonged fighting. Thus, while feigning continued loyalty to Germany, Badoglio made secret contact with Eisenhower in the hope of synchronizing an armistice and an Allied occupation. But the Americans insisted on August 11 that Italy give an unconditional surrender and would not promise to land as far north as Rome. With tension and German suspicions mounting—and two British corps crossing the Straits of Messina—Badoglio agreed secretly to invite Allied occupation on September 3. The armistice was announced on the 8th, and Allied landings followed that night in the Bay of Salerno south of Naples. Four days later Hitler sent a crack team of commandos under Otto Skorzeny to rescue Mussolini and set him up as a puppet dictator in the north of Italy.

The new Italian government, far from exiting the war, was obliged to do a volte-face and declare war on Germany on October 13. The Allies did not take Naples until October 1 and made no dent in the Germans’ reinforced Gustav Line until 1944.