Eighty Years Ago This Week

    The British black propaganda radio station Soldatensender Calais (Calais soldiers' station) made its first transmission. It was part of the Political Warfare Executive and used the high power Aspidistra transmitter to send a clear signal, primarily to occupying troops in France but it was also popular in Germany. It was run by the gifted propagandist Sefton Delmer and presented itself as an official German station, even broadcasting speeches by Hitler. Amongst its attractive programming of light music and sports news, it slipped in defeatist messages. Most famously it claimed that units in France which showed up well in drill and presentation were more likely to be sent to the Russian front so as to encourage sloppiness.  The RAF launched a heavy raid on the city of Kassel; now that most large cities had been attacked Bomber Command was turning its attention to smaller ones. 1,800 tons of bombs were dropped including a high proportion of incendiaries which ignited th...

  The British government announced that Italy's declaration of war would not alter the status of the Italian prisoners of war it held. It was a purely utilitarian decision. Marshal Badoglio's government was of marginal importance only so there was little reason to give it the kudos of obtaining the return of PoWs, which would have consumed overtaxed shipping resources anyway. Most important, of the 80,000 Italian PoWs in Britain, 35,000 were already providing desperately needed labour in agriculture. More would join them. Italy's co-belligerence with the allies meant that the already minimal need to guard them or wear distinctive red patches on their clothing vanished. Many would settle in Britain and never go back to Italy. The US 8th Air Force capped its losses of "black week" with "black Thursday", its second raid on Schweinfurt, Germany's ball-bearings capital. Its first strike in August had suffered 20% casualties but had reduced o...

  The Eighth Army launched Operation Devon, a largely extemporized amphibious landing by commando and SAS units to capture Termoli at the northern end of the Puglia plain. At that point it seemed possible that the momentum of the allied advance would take them to Rome with little effort. They achieved initial surprise but had few or no heavy weapons so when the Germans 16th Panzer Division put in a counter-attack they found they had a hard fight on their hands. Termoli was at the eastern end of a series of defensive lines that General Kesselring had marked out to hold the allied advance. One small SAS unit had been tasked with gathering escaped British PoWs and its commander Roy Farran later candidly admitted that he considered defending against the counter-attack was "somebody else's affair" but when he was called to order his unit fought intensely. Eventually the garrison was relieved by regular infantry and tanks advancing over land, but the Battle of Termoli provided...

      The US-British landing force at Salerno broke out of its beachhead and moved north to take Naples.   Given Italy's change in status this could be classed as a liberation. A few days before the allies arrived the population had risen in revolt. The Germans took revenge by burning the contents of the university library of Naples, one of Europe's oldest. 50,000 books including many irreplaceable manuscripts were destroyed including papers of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, who was revered as a great figure in German history. This act of vandalism was doubly perverse in view of Goering's - lunatic - order to the garrison evacuating Sicily a few weeks before to remove Federick's sarcophagus from Palermo cathedral. The island of Kos which had been occupied by the British  in one of Churchill's more foolish gambits after Italy surrendered was retaken by the Germans.  Churchill had seen this as part of an assault on the 'soft under-belly ...

  Having reached the heel of Italy the 8th Army made rapid progess up the long coastal plain of northern Apulia. The Germans made barely any attempt to hold them on this very poorly defensible terrain. The British reached Foggia near the east coast almost opposite where the Salerno landing force was trying to break out of its bridgehead on the west coast. It gave a dangerously optimistic sense of how rapidly an army could advance northwards through Italy. Foggia's large airfield would provide a base from which allied bombers  could attack targets in the south of the Reich and the Balkans with far more reliable weather than the 8th Air Force had to contend with over its bases in England. On the instructions of Hitler Mussolini proclaimed the Italian Social Republic in Venice as a rival to the established Italian government under Marshal Badoglio which had deposed Mussolini and surrendered to the Allies. It was never to be much more than a German puppet state. It was better kno...

  Wehrmacht forces on the Greek island of Cephalonia began the massacre of Italian troops of the Acqui division. The Italians had briefly fought the Germans after taking a vote on what to do following their country's surrender. About 5,000 Italians would be killed out of hand. Similar slaughters took place elsewhere notably Kos and Corfu. Under the command of General Giraud about 2,000 French troops were landed on Corsica from French warships. In part this was motivated by fears that the local maquis might be exterminated after attacking German occupation forces.  In the event Hitler had decided to abandon both Corsica and Sardinia so the operation proceeded with only moderate casualties. Some of the Italian occupation forces fought against the Germans. This was the first allied landing on French soil and Corsica was the first French departement to be liberated. The operation was the last hurrah of Giraud's faltering campaign to lead the Free French. British mini-submarines (...

    The Allies staged the major landing aimed at capturing Naples in the first stage of conquering Italy. In operation Avalanche one US and one British corps landed at Salerno south of the city under the command of US general Mark Clark. This was the first time British forces were commanded by a US officer in a major operation. Clark was a favourite of General Eisenhower but he had only been a staff officer; this was his first battle command. The Germans were well prepared and staged two full scale counter attacks on the bridgehead which came close to pushing the Allies back into the sea. Faulty planning by Clark has been blamed. The British corps commander Richard McCreery did much to save the situation although 300 British replacement troops mutinied and refused to go to their new units because promises to return them to their original units were broken. Fire support from almost unopposed allied naval units provided critical assistance. The remaining Bitish forces under Mont...