Eighty Years Ago This Week

  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...

  British and Canadian forces under General Montgomery landed in Calabria on the toe of Italy  just across the Straits of Messina from Sicily, the first allied forces to arrive on mainland Europe. It was a sad specimen of confused allied planning. Montgomery had objected to the plan as it would leave his forces with a long drive to the true battlefield in the north. The aim of the operation was to tie down German forces to smooth the planned major landing further north at Salerno.   The Germans did not oblige and Montgomery faced minimal opposition. Australian and US forces landed at Lae on north-east New Guinea, opening the reconquest of the island from the Japanese. The allies were beginning a major drive against the Japanese in the region after the long attritional battles on Guadalcanal and to ward off Japanese attacks against the south of the island. The attack featured a regiment of US paratroop, who seized an airfield inland from Lae in the first major drop in the ...

    One of the decisions taken at the Quebec summit meeting was announced: the appointment of the 45 year old Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as supreme commander for the newly created Allied South East Asian Command (SEAC). American acquiesence was inevitable. The US had few assets in the region, in practice India and Burma. His deputy was the American General 'Vinegar Joe' Stillwell but Stillwell's principal task was liaising with Chinese ruler Chiang-Kai-Shek and never behaved as Mountbatten's subordinate anyway. The official SEAC flag displayed only a Union Jack. SEAC was quite distinct from the Pacific theatre which was essentially a US show, albeit a battleground between the US Navy and General Douglas MaCarthur, who pursued entirely separate strategies. Mountbatten's was very much Churchill's personal appointment. He had never commanded anything larger than a destroyer in battle, but he had lived up to Churchill's expectations as head of Combined ...