All language subtitles for The World at War - S01E13 - Tough Old Gut Italy (November 1942 - June 1944).eng

NARRATOR: Winston Churchill
once told Stalin:

"The Mediterranean is the soft
underbelly of the crocodile."

Churchill and the British
Chiefs of Staff were sure

that attacking German-occupied
Europe through Italy

would help shorten the war.

The Americans were not convinced,

preferring to focus on the decisive
blow across the English Channel.

Only reluctantly did they agree to join
their British allies on the road to Rome.

November, 1942.

11 months after Pearl Harbor,

the American army prepared for its
first encounter with the Wehrmacht.

Operation Torch - codename
for the Anglo-American landings

in the French North African colonies
of Morocco and Algeria.

They met little or no resistance
from the forces of Vichy France.

The French command soon broke
with the government of Pétain

and their troops
became part of the Allied army.

An American general, Dwight D Eisenhower,

was supreme commander.

The American planners
were never keen on the operation,

but President Roosevelt was determined

to get his ground forces
into action against Hitler in 1942.

Attacking the Germans in Tunisia

was the next best thing to
a second front in Europe.

At Casablanca,
within two months of the landings,

an impressive array of British
and American top brass assembled.

The Russians were not present,

but everybody there knew
they had to do something

to take the pressure off the Red Army.

Churchill and Roosevelt had now to
decide where they went from here.

At the beginning of 1943,

the British and Americans
were firmly established in North Africa.

Hitler reinforced Rommel's forces
in Tunisia,

but with the British Eighth Army
closing from the east,

it could only be a matter of time

before the entire African coastline
was in Allied hands.

What then?

We have to face the fact that there was
a big difference between the two sides

about what the future strategy
of the war would be.

The British, the British Chiefs
of Staff, Churchill,

were all in favour
of the future of the campaign

being carried out through Italy

and hitting at the underside
of the underbelly of the Germans,

moving up and eventually joining up
with the Russians.

The Americans held
exactly the opposite view.

They felt the only way
that you could defeat Germany

was to take the shortest way into the
center of Germany, across the Channel,

and advance into the areas
of the Ruhr and Saar,

great industrial areas,

and then destroy the German forces
by that means.

NARRATOR: The British,
led by Sir Alan Brooke,

Chief of the imperial General Staff,

came to Casablanca determined
to have their way. They got it.

The Americans, under Marshall,
were persuaded that the next objective

would be the invasion of Sicily,

leading, it was hoped,
to the surrender of Italy.

Thus the main second front
was postponed for another year.

At the time, however, the big news
from the Casablanca conference

was an unexpected pronouncement
by the American president.

MAN: Mr Roosevelt began by saying
that when he was a young man

the great reputation in the American
military was General Grant,

who had once sent an order

saying that he would accept no terms
but unconditional surrender,

and that these in fact were the terms
that the Allies or the United Nations

wanted to present to their enemies.

He then went on
as though he did not understand

how important a statement he had made.

Mr Churchill looked
considerably surprised at this.

And I think that Mr Churchill felt that

it was not the best way to present
the Allied position to the enemy.

However, as he said then and later,
he was Mr Roosevelt's ardent lieutenant

and he would go along with it.

NARRATOR: After the talking, Roosevelt
appeared in his other capacity -

commander in chief
of the American armed forces.

If this fresh confident-looking American
army crossed the Atlantic

expecting to carry all before it,

it was very soon cruelly disillusioned.

In a sudden onslaught
through the Kassarine Pass in Tunisia,

Rommel inflicted on the American army
one of its worst defeats of the entire war.

The Afrikakorps was far too
well-equipped and experienced

for the lightly armored
and underpowered American tanks.

The morale of these raw young
Americans was badly shaken.

Many were taken prisoner.

MIDDLETON: It brought the troops
face to face

with the fact that this
was going to be a long war

and a tough one
and that the Germans were very good.

Armies never learn from other armies,
they have to learn by themselves,

and a lot of the tactics
that we used disastrously at Kassarine

were those that the British army
had used equally disastrously

two years before in the western desert,
then discarded.

I think it helped our army,
and it also made them realise,

because the British came down
from the north and did help,

this was going to be a cooperative
effort, that we couldn't win it alone.

Also, it got the average GI
accustomed to the fact

that there would be one battle
after another.

NARRATOR: But Rommel lacked
the strength to exploit his victory.

The Allies, under Alexander, regrouped
and within ten days retook the path.

The Germans in Tunisia
were now hemmed in.

The Allied sea and air blockade
of the coastline

made large-scale evacuation impossible.

In the south, a forward patrol
of the Eighth Army

linked up with the American Second Corps.

The trap closed.

Two Allied forces, once separated
by 2,000 miles of mountain and desert,

joined hands for the final onslaught
on the German position in Africa.

The Allied armies, vastly superior
in numbers, drove the enemy,

now without Rommel who
had been invalided home, back

through the mountains
of Tunisia towards the sea.

The Allied air forces
had undisputed control.

In seven days it was all over.

Finally, the Afrikakorps saw no point
in fighting to the last man.

They surrendered in droves.

The unfortunate General von Arnim,
who succeeded Rommel,

also surrendered with all his staff.

Nearly a quarter of a million men
were taken prisoner -

a victory to rank alongside Stalingrad.

This was a major boost for the British
and their Mediterranean strategy.

Sicily, as agreed at Casablanca,
was the next item on the agenda.

Only two months
after the German collapse in Tunisia,

the British and Americans began
landing troops on Sicilian beaches.

The British were led by Montgomery,
the Americans by General Patton -

the first time these
egocentric personalities

had been involved in the same campaign.

It was the British Eighth Army which
met the fiercest German resistance.

On their left, Patton's Americans
swept across Sicily in style.

They found useful allies in the Mafia

and family connections
among the civilian population.

MAN: I think the situation
was relieved somewhat

by the fact that there
was hardly a family in Sicily

that didn't have relatives
in the United States.

NARRATOR: The Sicilian landing,
bringing the war on to their own soil,

convinced most Italians
that theirs was a lost cause.

Giving themselves up,
if possible by the regiment,

became the first objective
of Italy's armed forces.

Allied bombing raids on Rome provided
another argument for getting out of the war.

Benito Mussolini, il Duce for 20 years,

was outvoted in his own
Fascist Grand Council.

On July 25th, he was toppled from power.

King Victor Emmanuel approved
the elderly Marshal Badoglio

as head of the government.

Badoglio declared publicly
that the war would go on,

but immediately began secret negotiations

with the Allies for surrender.

By now Sicily, after only a few weeks,
was almost all in Allied hands.

This time there was to be no great haul
of German prisoners.

German evacuation across the narrow
Straits of Messina was highly successful.

Most of the Wehrmacht's personnel
got away to the mainland.

Even the last guard dog.

General Patton beat Montgomery
into Messina.

The Allies had landed in Sicily
not knowing where they would go next.

At the prospect of an
early Italian collapse,

the British were all for
attacking the mainland.

The Americans agreed
to a limited campaign, but

insisted that Overlord,
the invasion of Normandy,

must take priority for resources.

A secret envoy, General Castellano,
was sent by Badoglio

to find out on what terms
Italy could join the Allies.

But the Allies simply wanted
Italian surrender

and refused to tell Castellano
of their invasion plans -

partly because they didn't want
the Italians to know

how limited their forces were.

STRONG: All we could say
to General Castellano was this:

"Well, we will tell you
two or three hours before it happens,

so that you can give any assistance
you can

to the British...
to the Allied operations.

Eventually, on the 3rd September,
these terms were signed.

NARRATOR: On that day,
the Allies invaded.

Montgomery went across the Straits
of Messina to attack the toe of Italy,

but found no resistance.

The Germans had moved north

to counter the threat of an
Allied landing further up the coast.

The Italians had wanted a landing
to safeguard Rome from German attack,

but this was impossible.

The furthest point north which the Americans
and British felt it prudent to land

was nowhere near Rome, but at Salerno,

as far as the Allied air cover
operating from Sicily could stretch.

The operation had been mounted
at great speed

to take advantage
of the confusion in Italy.

The forces of the command
of American general Mark Clark

were barely adequate
for the job they had to do.

On the way, the troops heard a broadcast

-by General Eisenhower.
-EISENHOWER: The Italian government

has surrendered its armed forces
unconditionally.

As Allied commander in chief,
I have granted a military armistice.

The armistice was signed
by my representatives

and the representative
of Marshal Badoglio.

And it becomes effective this instant.

[CHEERING]

NARRATOR: The surrender of his allies
did not take Hitler by surprise.

He'd already moved reinforcements
into northern Italy.

Here the Italians were quickly disarmed

under a plan ironically codenamed
Operation Axis.

At this point, Hitler had not decided
just where he would hold the line.

The Germans entered Rome to find it
a capital without a government.

Badoglio and his ministers had avoided
the risk of being shot for treachery

by leaping into their cars
and driving away.

South of Rome, Clark's invasion force
was nearing the beaches.

MAN: Salerno, if you go in on a boat,

you look at the mountains that hem you in
there and the passes through which you go.

The enemy would be
looking down your throat.

NARRATOR: The Germans
were ready and waiting.

After 48 hours, the Germans
launched a furious counterattack.

The situation in the beachhead
became so precarious,

Clark ordered plans
for possible re-embarkation.

But with massive support
from air and sea,

the Salerno invaders
just managed to hold on.

After a week of savage fighting,
the Germans withdrew.

STRONG: It required the intervention
of all the air forces

to save us at Salerno.

Of all General Eisenhower's battles,

that is the one where I think
we were nearest to a tactical defeat.

I've never had any doubts in my mind

that it was a completely successful
operation.

We were ordered to go in there,

we were ordered to seize a bridgehead.
We did it.

We were ordered to capture the port of
Naples - we did that within three weeks.

NARRATOR: So far, so good.

At least a large part of southern Italy
was in Allied hands.

[CHEERING]

Naples was desperately short of food.

There were bread riots.

Water was scarce.

There was a typhus epidemic.

The advance continued, but just ahead
lay the line of real German resistance.

The Allied commanders had hoped
Hitler would withdraw further north.

Instead, greatly encouraged
by his near-victory at Salerno,

he had decided to fight here,
in the mountains south of Rome.

Like a bad lira,
Mussolini turned up again.

He was hoisted from his hiding place
by a German rescue party

and taken to Hitler.

The Führer was aghast at his appearance,

but thought he might still come in useful

to encourage the Fascists
in German-occupied Italy.

The German forces in Italy
were led by Kesselring,

one of the war's ablest
defensive commanders.

Kesselring had a lot going for him.

The rocky spine which runs
almost the whole length of Italy

meant the Allies had to advance along
the coastal plains on either side.

The only way to outflank the Germans
was by amphibious landings.

But by now the necessary landing craft
were earmarked for Normandy.

As they went north
to their prepared defensive positions,

Kesselring's men destroyed
the only lines of communication.

In the towns, the Germans
left booby traps. This was Naples.

They were well-trained troops. They were
tenacious troops, they were well led.

And one point I like to make is
they were homogenous -

they were all of one nationality.

They were all equipped with the same
weapons and ammunition.

They ate the same food. They believed
pretty much in the same god.

I had 16 different nationalities with me,

some of whom couldn't eat this
and couldn't eat that,

and some that didn't want to fight on
Fridays or some other day of the week,

and the British,
with their infantry weapons

and your artillery
completely different from ours.

You couldn't move them with ease from one
front to the other like the Germans could.

NARRATOR: Winter. The Allied ground commander
General Alexander and his colleagues

were faced with the unpleasant realities
of their Mediterranean strategy.

The Eighth Army, accustomed to swift
advances across the desert,

could only manage a few 100 yards a day.

Across the mountains,
Clark's Fifth Army was also mud-bound.

MAN: They issued us galoshes
after the rains had stopped.

If anybody was in the galoshes business,

he could have found millions
along the roadside,

because you couldn't walk with them.

It was impossible to go through that mud.

NARRATOR: This was not the sunny Italy
of the travel posters.

MAN: The only way an infantryman
was coming out of those mountains

was to be carried out.

That's why it was actually desirable
to get wounded.

NARRATOR: Dreadful weather, difficult
terrain, determined German resistance.

To the men in the mud, this combination
did not match up to Churchill's vision.

CLARK: I can see him now at his map
and his persuasive way with his pointer,

pointing out the "soft belly"
of the Mediterranean.

After we got in there, I often thought
of what a tough old gut it was,

instead of the soft belly
he had led us to believe.

NARRATOR: Before the end of 1943,

the Allies were hammering
at Kesselring's Winter Line.

Alexander had 11 divisions, Kesselring
nine, with eight more in reserve.

Every small mountain village
had to be fought for.

In December, the American 36th Division
tried to take San Pietro.

MAN: It was one of the things
that most of our fighting was in Italy.

You got into a position, you dug in,
and you just stayed.

I mean, we'd shoot at them
and they'd shoot at us.

And it was only when they were ready
to leave that we moved forward.

NARRATOR: After ten days,
the Americans took San Pietro -

at heavy cost.

In any unit, you would have
a Graves Registration Unit,

and their job was to go round
picking up bodies.

And what they would do,
if someone had been hastily buried,

they would disinter him,
or if he was just lying there,

they'd pick him up and slide them
into the mattress covers,

pile them up into the trucks

and take them off
to a temporary cemetery somewhere.

I suppose some people got buried
as many as four or five times that way,

which is kind of unfortunate, really.

I always thought people
should be left where they were.

NARRATOR: The Italian people
had once been told by Mussolini:

"War puts the stamp of nobility on those
who have the courage to meet it."

At Tehran in November 1943,

Roosevelt and Stalin overruled Churchill

and at last fixed a definite date
for the landing in France:

May 1944.

Italy was to become a sideshow.

But after Tehran, Churchill refused
to accept the deadlock in Italy.

He got on to Roosevelt
and persuaded him to lend landing craft

for a new amphibious landing.

The plan was in two stages.

First, Mark Clark's Fifth Army
would attack the Germans at Cassino,

draw their forces southward,
drain their reserves.

Then the amphibious troops would strike
behind their lines at Anzio,

just 22 miles south of Rome.

At Cassino, the Germans
held the high ground.

They could see everything
that moved in the valley below.

The Fifth Army attacked on January 20th.

Its troops had not been reinforced.
They were cold, wet, exhausted.

The attack failed disastrously.

But the second stage of the plan
went ahead two days later -

the assault on Anzio.

Having gone into Salerno
with not enough troops -

no commander ever has
what he thinks he ought to have -

I was determined that if I was to be
the commander going into Anzio,

or be the overall commander, that we
should not go in on a shoestring.

I went in with one and two-thirds
division, which was totally inadequate.

But that's the way
the ball bounces in war.

You do what you're told to do,

or they'll get somebody else
that will do it.

NARRATOR: The Germans
expected the landing,

but had no idea where it would come.

They did not have enough troops
to cover all possible beaches.

The Anzio force was completely unopposed.

MAN: Nothing. An odd bang
in the distance, but nothing.

And when dawn broke,
we'd got complete surprise.

And a few minutes later, along the road,
there came a marvelous drunken car,

swaying back and forth,

full of happy Germans who'd had a night
out in Rome and were staggering back,

and couldn't believe they were captured.

They said, "Kameraden"
and they kept on embracing me.

Finally they put them in the clink too.

And that was the landing -
complete surprise.

NARRATOR: The Anzio beachhead
was consolidated in an eerie calm.

After Salerno, it seemed incredible that
there was no instant German riposte.

Perhaps now was the time
for a lightning dash,

in the style of General Patton,
for the gates of Rome.

But the American commander at Anzio
was no Patton.

General Lucas was a cautious man

who believed the beachhead
must be secured before striking inland.

Alexander did not overrule him.

London Churchill
complained bitterly , "I thought

we'd flung a wildcat
into the Alban Hills,

but instead we got a whale
floundering on the beach."

There were only two battalions

and some very old-fashioned
coast batteries

at the coast for defending.

If the Americans

had realised the situation,

they could stay on the evening
of the landing day in Rome.

General Lucas could, but he would have
soon been met by an overwhelming force

which would have defeated him,
no question about it.

So we had to dig in on the biggest
perimeter we could possibly digest,

and wait for the onslaught which came.

NARRATOR: Caught off-balance,
as he often was by Alexander,

Kesselring recovered fast.

Spurred on by Hitler's demands

for the immediate liquidation
of the "Anzio abscess",

he threw all he had
into the counterattack.

If Anzio were eliminated,

perhaps the Allies would think again
about crossing the English Channel.

Allied advance units which
had spread out from the beaches

were overwhelmed
by the weight of the German attack.

VAUGHAN-THOMAS: There was one unit
that simply packed in -

folded their coats
and handed themselves over.

They couldn't take it any more.

They were young and hadn't
seen this sort of thing before.

And I don't blame them one little scrap.

NARRATOR: Two American Ranger
battalions were captured

and humiliatingly paraded
through the streets of Rome.

The beachhead could only
be relieved from the south

by breaking through
the German defensive line

which ran through
the monastery of Monte Cassino.

Perched high above the valley,

an observation post here could see
everything that moved for miles around.

The Allies believed, wrongly,
that the monastery had been fortified.

MAN: It was the general view

and the general belief of the troops
involved on that front

that the monastery at Cassino

was being used for military purposes
by the Germans.

That being the case,

and it also being part
of my military philosophy,

and a great many other people's,

that you must not put troops into battle

without giving them all possible
physical and material support you can

to give them the best chance
of getting a success.

On February 15th, 1944,

over 200 Allied bombers
pounded the monastery into rubble.

The air and ground attacks
were badly coordinated,

giving the Germans time to swarm into
the rubble - ideal cover for defense.

The Gustav Line was held.

At Anzio, Kesselring
flung ten German divisions

against the Allies' four and a half.

Hitler hoped Anzio would be a
turning point in Germany's fortunes.

He promised the unit that broke through

the honor of escorting Allied prisoners
through the streets of Berlin.

Massed waves of German infantry
were flung in.

VAUGHAN-THOMAS: They came over a
moon landscape, pitted, wrecked tanks,

abandoned Jeeps along the road,

and I still to this day
don't understand the German tactics.

There was a moment you could see them
leaving their lines

like the old films of the Somme battle,

and falling down as our machine guns
took them.

NARRATOR: The German offensive
lasted four days.

In the end, the Allied superiority
in heavy guns tipped the balance.

It was finally beaten back.

The Germans had pulled back,

but the Allies still lacked
the strength to break out.

It was stalemate.

VAUGHAN-THOMAS:
We then had to form trenches,

and Anzio then became an old-fashioned
World War I trench system.

And they were bombed
and they were mortared

and then they had to do trench patrols

and occasionally, keen generals used
to send up people to try and find out

who was opposite us and do a trench raid.

It was right out of Journey's End.

NARRATOR: The two front lines
were only yards apart.

A couple of fellows were cleaning this
machine gun, got it all to pieces and...

An Irish fellow named Tommy McGough
was there and he looked up and said:

"Bloody Jesus Christ!"

He rushed for this gun,
trying to put the barrel back on,

he put it on upside down and all sorts.

Of course, I just looked and I said,
"Quite all right, Tommy."

I could see this fellow was... I go down
to the wire. He speaks good English.

He says, "Where's Fred?"
I said, "He's gone."

I said, "It's quite all right,
what have you got?"

Danish pork and fresh lemons.

Of course,
I gave him a tin of bully beef.

We got talking to him about
the position and the war and all that.

-He come from a place near Emden?
-MAN: Emden, yes.

And at the time,
this city had a 1,000-bomber raid.

I said, "Oh, you've had the bugger then?"

"You've had it."

"No, no," he said, "I come from
a little village near Emden. Me OK."

He showed me his photos of his wife. She
was a bus conductor in Emden and that.

And I said, "Why don't you pack in?
You've had it now."

He said, "No, Germany will not be beat."

"We shall go right down like that,
till we get near to the bottom,

and then we shall join forces with
Britain and America and fight Russia."

After that he just went.
I never seen him any more.

He must've got relieved the next night.

At meal time, the cooks would shout,
"Grub up."

You'd go with your mess tins
down for your grub.

Before you could get down
to the cookhouse,

Anzio Annie would send one over,
a big one,

one of these clouds raised, you know,

and you automatically, as soon
as that burst, you'd drop to the floor.

You were always used to it.

You walked crouched.

They called it, when you were walking
about, you'd got "the Anzio crouch".

And as you lay there,

you used to tune in - on the radios
that you shouldn't have had -

and... to the voice of Sally.

Sally lived in Rome
and she was a great...

Well, she sounded
the most wonderful, sexy female ever.

And she gave messages to the troops.

DEEP: "Hello, hello..."

Women always think that the lower
they speak, the more sexy they sound.

And she had the lowest register
of any woman.

She said, "Hello, this is Sally.
Why don't you come over and see me?"

"Private Fox - you remember him last
night? He stepped on a shoe mine."

"Nasty things, shoe mines."

"You could hear Private Fox yelling
for most of the night."

"Don't be like Private Fox,
come over to see Sally."

There would be a smart crack overhead,

and down would flutter
propaganda pamphlets,

saying, "The Yanks
are lease-lending your women."

"They're having a lovely time
in jolly old England."

A picture of a naked woman
embracing an American,

or an American tactfully knotting
his tie while she did up her panties.

NARRATOR: At Cassino,
the Allies maintained the pressure,

their aim to tie up as many
German troops there as possible.

A third attempt to take
the rui nedmonastery

opened with a massive bombing attack
on Cassino town.

500 planes went in under the sporting
codeword "Bradman Batting Tomorrow".

Among the places knocked for six was the
headquarters of the British Eighth Army.

Once again, there was poor coordination
between air and ground forces.

After the bombing,
the Germans came out of the ground

and were in position again before the
New Zealanders launched their attack.

The German defenders
were elite paratroops.

The battle raged from house to house,
room to room, cellar to cellar.

The New Zealanders lost 4,000 men.

The Germans still held out.

Three assaults on Monte Cassino,
three bloody failures.

The allied commanders finally
realised tht to take the mountain

must crush the defense
by weight of numbers.

They massively reinforced the Fifth Army.

They used, too,
an elaborate deception plan

to make the Germans think

they were preparing another
amphibious landing north of Rome.

The Germans weakened their
mountain defenses to prepare for it.

In May, the Allies at last outnumbered
the Germans at Cassino by three to one.

After an artillery barrage
by 2,000 guns, the monastery fell.

Polish troops
were the first to reach the ruins,

where they raised their national flag.

The eyes of the captured Germans
told the story of their ordeal.

The Germans were now in headlong retreat.

Kesselring declared Rome an open city

and attempted to regroup
north of the capital.

On the 25th of May, the Cassino front
linked up with the Anzio beachhead.

Alexander's plan was for Clark
to cut off the Germans' retreat.

Instead, Clark threw everything
into a drive for Rome.

He was determined to get there
before anyone else, and he did.

On the evening of June 4, 1944,

the first Allied troops entered the city.

Those Romans who had backed
the wrong side now paid the price.

Clark's Roman triumph was short-lived.

Kesselring would succeed in regrouping.

Another Italian winter lay ahead.

And in less than 48 hours

the world's attention
would turn to another theater of war -

the beaches of Normandy.