Dan Snow's History Hit - WWII: The Allied Invasion of Italy

Episode Date: February 4, 2024

By the summer of 1943, there were Allied boots on Axis soil. Sicily had been taken, and fascism's grip on Italy was beginning to loosen. But Allied command was faced with a tough decision - what to do next?Dan is joined by historian, author and broadcaster, James Holland, to explain why they decided to invade Italy proper and tell us how the invasion played out.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up now for your 14-day free trial.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. It's the summer of 1943.

The Allies have landed in Sicily. They're Allied boots on Axis soil for the first significant time during the Second World War. The invasion of Sicily, although hard fought, is successful, aided by Operation Mincemeat, the deception plan which you will have heard about on this very podcast. On the 25th of July, as that campaign is rumbling on, the Italian government fell. Mussolini was summoned by the king to the royal palace and dismissed and immediately taken into captivity. The succeeding Italian government assured the Germans that they were true to the Axis cause whilst secretly making overtures of peace to the Allies. As the Allies completed their occupation of Sicily, they faced a decision.

What to do next? Should they hop across those narrow straits and invade Italy proper? Or should they leave it in a kind of ambiguous limbo so they concentrate on more important theatres? In the end, life came at everyone pretty fast. As you will now hear on this podcast, the very brilliant James Holland, today's guest, historian, author, podcaster, legend, the Allies decided that they would invade Italy to establish airfields from which bombers could then strike Germany all over the Third Reich. In the space of a very, very busy week in September 1943, the Allies landed in Italy proper, the Italian government surrendered, and the Germans effectively invaded and occupied Italy. They already had lots of troops there fighting alongside the Italians. They simply seized control from the Italian

government. And that meant that what followed was a savage, grinding war right up the Italian peninsula against the Wehrmacht, against Hitler's army, in a campaign that would last, really, the best part of two years. For the first instalment of that campaign, take us through the fighting that was going on 80 years ago now. Here is James Holland. He's just written Savage Storm about the Italian campaign. He has also made a wonderful history hit documentary, film documentary, filmed on location in Italy. They had a lot of fun. I was rather jealous not to be there on that one.

Also called Savage Storm. Please go and subscribe to History Hit, where you can watch the Netflix history, History Hit TV, and you can see James Holland's Savage Storm there. In the meantime, though, enjoy this pod. T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff.

And the shuttle has cleared the tower. James Holland. Good to have you back on the podcast, buddy. Oh, Dan, always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. You've been very busy. You've been crewing around. Been busy, been busy, but not as busy as you, though, dude,

with all your books flying out off the pen. Last time I talked to you on the pod, I think, we did the battle for Sicily. Yes. You took the Allies ashore. You mocked up the German defences in Sicily, the Axis defence in Sicily. Yes. You took the Allies ashore. You mocked up the German defences in Sicily, the Axis defence in Sicily. What was Churchill and Roosevelt and others hoping might happen?

Were they hoping the invasion of Sicily would be enough to get Italy to sort of swap sides, to knock Italy out of the war? Yeah, well, in January 1943, so they had the Casablanca Conference, and that's when they decided to go into Sicily, even though at that point they haven't actually won in North Africa. That doesn't happen until the 13th of May 1943. Now, they haven't got any further plans whatsoever for going into the Mediterranean. And it's the next big conference is the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. And this

is where they're going to go. The Americans go, you know what, we want to accelerate things in the war against Japan. So Pacific's going to be quite a big focus for us and China and what have you. But we also want to nail down the cross-channel invasion. You know, we've been talking about doing it in 1942. We've been talking about doing it in 1943. It's got to be 1944. You know, let's put a stop to the rot. Let's just make sure it absolutely happens.

This has to be the priority. And the Brits go, yeah, absolutely fine. But what about future operations in the Mediterranean? And they say, well, let's just get Sicily out of the way and then let's see how it all pans out. But already before that, Churchill is going, come on, we've got to go into Italy, we've got to go into Italy. You know, why crawl up the, let's get Rome.

Rome is the capital. He who has Rome has the kind of title deeds to Italy and all this kind of stuff. The Americans are thinking, well, that's great. But what about Overlord? What about Japan? What about China? What about supplies to the Soviet Union?

What about everything else? You know, there's a huge pull on Allied resources, not least particularly American resources. But there is a big thing, and this is very much linked to Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion, which is the Allies know that for an absolute prerequisite for Operation Overlord is having a control of the airspace over a vast wave of Northwest Europe. And to do that, they have to really, really seriously dent the Luftwaffe, push them back. But also how you push them back is by destroying them in the air, but also by destroying them on the ground and destroying factories and all the rest of it. The problem is while the rural industrial heartland of Nazi

Germany is on the West very conveniently for those bombers operating out of East Anglia and England and all the rest of it. Its aircraft factories are deep in the Reich, and they're beyond the range of fighter escort cover. So the airmen in the Mediterranean go, look, you know, it'd be quite good to get into Italy because then we could get Foggia and all around Foggia, which is about two thirds of the way up on the Asiatic side. There's a flat bit in Italy, and you can chuck in loads of strategic air force bases. And what I mean by that is four engine heavy bombers, you know, B-17s, B-24s, that kind of stuff. And we can further tighten the ring and we can get to Wiener Neustadt and we can get to Regensburg and Schreinfeld and the airfields, you know, the oilfields at Plestie in

Romania. Wouldn't that be a cool idea? And George Marshall, who's the chief of staff of the American Air Forces, goes, actually, yeah, maybe it would. And he goes over and he looks around and he talks to Eisenhower and Eisenhower says, well, you know, it would be quite good. So the seed has already been sown by the time Mussolini has kicked into touch on the 25th of July, 1943, halfway through the Sicilian campaign. And they're already starting to think about it. But at this point, they're kind of, you know, they're still kind of, it's up for grabs. They haven't quite decided what they're going to do and all the rest of it. But then what happens just at the point where they're already starting to think about it. But at this point, they're kind of, you know, they're still kind of it's up for grabs. They haven't quite decided what they're going to do and all the rest of it. But then what happens just at the point where they're deciding that maybe they should go into mainland Italy on the very same day that Sicily is won, 17th of August, on the very

same day that face-to-face negotiations start with the Italians for an armistice, on the very same day that the chiefs of staff go, yeah, you know what? Actually, maybe we should go into Italy after all. On that very same day is the Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid in which 60 aircraft out of 315 are shot down and destroyed. And this is an attack on aircraft factories deep in the Reich. And those were aircraft based in the UK. Exactly.

So it focuses people's minds and they just think, we can't just keep going in and hitting Regensburg or Schweinfurt or Wiener Neustadt deep in the southern right from England, because if we do that, we're going to destroy ourselves before we've even started. So the attraction of having the Fodgier Airfields is this complex, this flat area, and it is absolutely flat as a board there, just this one brief little bit of Italy on the Adriatic coast. Suddenly it seems very attractive.

And that's the kind of rubber stamp on the whole thing, really. So it is actually, ironically, it's the Americans who are driving it as much as the British. James, this is an unpopular thing to say, but was the Americans' initial uncertainty about the Italy operation and Churchill's sort of gung-ho fascination with it, do you think the Americans were right? Would it have been easier to just leave Italy then? into Italy, first of all, is to absolutely kind of put the nail in the coffin of making sure that Italy gets out of the war. Once Italy is out of the war, you've got a whole swathe of land in southern Mediterranean, which is occupied by Italian troops. It's not just Italy, it's also the Balkans, it's also most of the Greece and the Aegean. So the Germans are either going to have to give that up, or they're going to have to occupy it themselves. And that's a hell of a lot of manpower. It's like 50 divisions worth. For 50 divisions worth, I mean, Britain only produces 49 infantry divisions in the entire war.

So 50 divisions there is quite a lot. You know, it's a big chunk, even for the Germans. And those are going to have to come from the Eastern Front, and they're going to have to come from the Western Front. So there's very good reasons for going in. And also, after Sicily, they've got these vast armies in the Mediterranean. You know, air forces, naval forces, and armies, US 7th Army, British 8 and armies, US 7th Army,

British 8th Army, US 5th Army, they're all there. So it's sort of a case of, at this point in 1943, D-Day is going to be, you know, the cross-channel invasion is going to be the 1st of May 1944, not the 6th of June. But it's still quite a long way away. And wouldn't it be a good idea to do something on the ground? And while we've got it? The problem is the Allies at this point, by the time they're getting to the beginning of September 1943, don't have enough assault shipping to do what they want to do. They've got the forces, they just don't have the assault shipping. And so that means that the invasions that they do launch

are massively, massively scaled back. Whereas what you really want to do is you want to go in absolutely hard, just make an absolute slam dunk. They've certainly got the forces to deliver that they just don't as i say have the assault shipping and it's fascinating because we just think that these vast numbers of landing craft and higgins boats and landing ships where the big kind of sort of 120 meter long things they're the absolute kind of doyen of assault craft you kind of think we've got zillions of those and it is true that in america alone between apr 1942 and May 1943, they built over

8,000 of them. But it's still not enough when you've got the Pacific War going full tilt, and you've got kind of other demands on your time. You've got to prepare for overlord, and you've got damage from Sicily, and they will have to be repaired and all the rest of it. And so what that means is, when they do their main assault, they do a little tiddly assault across the Straits of Messina on the 3rd of September with eight army, but it's not eight army, it's just two divisions worth, so it's like 30,000 men. When they do the main evasion on the 9th of September, which is Operation Avalanche, which is just south of Salerno, just a little bit further south from Naples, they just don't have enough troops to be able to absolutely make sure

that it's a complete success. And the commander is General Mark Clark, who's an American commander, the commander of the Fifth Army, which has actually got a whole British Corps in it. So two divisions, the 46th and the 57th. These guys are landing, but Clark has been given a hell of a poison chalice. I mean, that's a really, really dud hand to be given. And actually, as it turns out, he pulls it off, but it's a pretty high riskrisk venture. So it's high-risk because after Mussolini goes, let's break it down for everyone, after Mussolini goes, the Italian replacement government are saying we'll still remain in the war as allies with Hitler whilst desperately trying to secretly make a peace deal with the Allies.

Yes. So the Allies then invade. Unlike, was it Napoleon who said you should always enter Italy like a boot from the top? They do the opposite, right? So they come in because they are in Sicily. So they come in from the bottom. You mentioned Salerno, that's sort of halfway up the coast of Rome,

almost bare Naples, Mount Vesuvius, people know about it. But they also go in via the heel of the boot, do they? Yes, they do. Because this is the kind of dud bit that the Germans do. The Germans are planning to retreat to the Pisa Rimini line should the Allies invade. That is the original plan. And that is Hitler's agreed plan in conjunction with Rommel, who's been brought in to be commander of all German forces in Italy, in the north of Italy. And Rommel is very much in favour of retreating to the Pisa Rimini line,

which is about 200 miles north of Rome. So it's actually north of Rome. But this is the one bit on the country where the mountains cross both sides sides because the Apennines actually just slant slightly kind of to the northwestwards. And so you've got mountains coast to coast, which makes it a very, very strong defensible position. And Rawls says to Hitler, look, I fought against the Allies. I fought against the British. I can tell you they've got amazing air power. You really don't want to have long lines of communication.

This is a really, really bad idea. Let's just go to the Peace Army and have a really, really, really tough defensive position. We can hold them there indefinitely. There's no way they're going to get through. This is like a brick wall. And Hitler goes, yeah, OK, I kind of get the point of that. What then happens is you've still got troops, though, in the south coming back from Sicily. And, you know, this is Army Group C.

And this is commanded by Kesselring, who has been the senior German commander in the Mediterranean for a number of years, since December 1941. You know, he's incredible optimistic. He always looks on the bright side. He thinks, no, I think we can hold the whole of Italy, and wouldn't that be even better? And so when the landing happens at Salerno, he chucks everything he possibly can at Salerno. And he's got eight divisions he can call upon. And as you well know, Dan, you know, divisions are the scale by which we judge, you know, the sizes of armies in the Second World War. And if you think about 15,000 men per division, you're not kind of far wrong. So he thinks, well, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to chuck everything at it, knock them back into the sea. Then I'll turn into the boot and the little toe

and the little kind of foray by a couple of divisions of the British into the toe, kick them out, and I'll control the whole thing. But by doing that, he leaves the southeast of Italy, the heel of Italy, incredibly vulnerable. And there's only one division there and it's not even full strength at all. And this is the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division, the 1st Paratroop Division. And what that means is the Allies realised what's happened. And so on the same day as Operation Avalanche, the landings at Salerno, they also land the British 1st Airborne Division at Taranto. And the great thing about that is, from the British point of view, or the Allied point of view,

is you don't need assault craft for that, because Taranto is untouched. So they can just sail in and part by the quayside, you know, moor up, and off they go straight onto the quayside. The problem is, for the Allies, is nearly all the landings they do are amphibious and have to be onto beaches, because they don't have captured captured ports and ports they would like to capture are kind of wrecked by the Germans or whatever. So that's why you need these assault craft. But at Taranto, you don't. And so it's an absolute gimme. It's a complete own goal. The plan would have worked brilliantly for the Germans if they'd knocked the Allies back at Salerno, but they don't. And so having chucked all his eggs in one basket, Kesselring is then left with the kind of massive problem

because on the 27th of September, literally just two weeks after the landings at Taranto, Foggia is in Allied hands. And that is the most important bit of real estate in the whole of Southern Italy. And so the German forces risk getting bottled up now between the hammer and the anvil. Yeah, a little bit.

Well, what happens is because Kesselring's troops make a reasonable showing at Salerno, even though they don't kick the Allies back into the sea, Hitler goes, actually, do you know what? I've changed my mind. I don't want to go to the Pisa Rimini line after all. I want to fight for every yard south of Rome. And so Kesselring has been hoisted by his own petard. And the problem is, is that the Hitlerian spotlight was very much on Rommel

and his plans for the Pisa Rimini line. and Kesselring was a kind of afterthought. Now, the Hitlerian focus is entirely on Kesselring. And so, when that happens, your room for manoeuvre as a commander is severely curtailed. And if Hitler says you've got to fight for every yard, that's what you've got to do. Even though, strategically, there's no point in fighting south of Rome, really, apart from the kind of psychological value of having Rome. It's completely pointless, because all that is turning into is a sort of massive meat grinder, where German troops are getting pulverised just as much as Allied troops, and no one's going anywhere in these kind of fights in the mountains south of Rome. You listen to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about the battle for Italy 80 years ago.

More coming up. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Tell me about that fighting, because it's a theatre of the war that perhaps many people won't be familiar with. How bad was it? I mean, it was awful, but I mean, what were the experiences of the men who fought there? Yeah, well, it was really, really bad. And of course, you know, one of the assumptions that the Allies made was that, you know, they

had picked up a snippet that Hitler was going to retreat to the Pisa Rimini line. So they thought they were going to be in Rome in a matter of weeks. And it just didn't turn out that way. And the problem is, is when they were planning the Italian campaign, you know, it was sunny and the kind of Mediterranean was looking wine dark and twinkly and all the rest of it. And it all looked, you know, you're thinking sort of olive groves and citrus plants and so on.

The sun is shining. But from the beginning of October, it just rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained, and it rained 50% of the entire time between then and the end of the year. Listen, you've been to Italy, you know what those little back roads are like. They're kind of pretty basic, even to this day. Back in the kind of 1940s, these were what we've known as Strada Bianca, a kind of white road. And they're designed for, you know, a peasant, Italian peasant with his horse and mule, or a kind of, I don't know, a little kind of sort of Fiat Topolino or something. But they're not designed for 3,000 vehicles per division, which is what the Allies were bringing

to bear. And also, you know, all these little mountain passes and culverts and bridges and all the rest of it, they're really, really easy to blow up. And you don't need a lot of troops to do them. And you don't need a lot of ordnance to do them. And the Germans, as they retreated, blew them all up. So the advance is really slow. And of course, where you've got mountains, you've got rivers, inevitably. And the river's always trying to get to the sea. And the Allies are trying to get to get north and the mountains are running kind of north-south. So you've got rivers galore running 90 degrees to the axis of the advance you're trying to go up. And everywhere you're going, every bridge is blown up and seeded with mines and IEDs and, you know, horrible booby traps and all the rest of it. And on the low ground, it's just a quagmire of mud.

And on the high ground is mountain where the soil is incredibly thin. And of course, you know, if a shell lands on the beach of Dunkirk, the beach does quite a lot of the work for you and absorbs it. But on the top of a mountain, a 3000 foot mountain where there's not much soil, that shell just goes absolutely everywhere. And its destructive capability is exaggerated by the amount of stone, which has also been kind of shredded everywhere. So it just turns into a complete horror story. And also, it presumably then develops its own momentum. The Allies can't just stop and then switch back to thinking about Western Europe, right? They're now committed. Completely, because the problem is they've now got Foggia. But as General Alexander says at the beginning of October, when he does his kind of new assessment,

he's the overall Allied Army group commander, most senior Army man in Italy. He says, look, it's great that we've got Foggia, and it's great that we're investing so much in it, and the American engineers are investing a huge amount in Foggia. The problem is that you can't risk then losing it again. So he says that realistically, we need a cushion of at least 50 miles north of Rome to make sure that this investment in Foggia is going to be worth it. And everyone goes, you know, you're probably right about that. And to put this in some perspective, by November the 25th, the American engineers have built an oil pipeline, or a fuel pipeline, from the coast to the Fodgier itself, capable of taking 160,000 gallons of high-octane fuel every single day. I

mean, that is amazing, but it also shows the level of investment in those airfields and the importance of those airfields. So you're absolutely damn right. You know, you just can't lose them. Alexander was absolutely on the money. But what that's doing is that's consigning the Allies to a grinding battle. And the problem is, is that what the Germans have discovered is that there is this sort of double lock kind of door system blocking the route to Rome, which is in the kind of sort of casino to Mignano area which is between 65 and 80 miles south of Rome. Basically, there's four main roads, all roads lead to Rome, right? But there's basically the Adriatic coast, but then you've got to get across. Then there's the Tyrrhenian coast, but it's very close to the sea

and mountains overhang it and all the rest of it. There's no room for manoeuvre. Then there's one in the middle that goes through the mountains of sort of Malaysia and all the rest of it. And that's no good because it's too mountainous. The main road north, the best road north is the Via Casalina, the ancient Roman road that leads Naples to Rome, Highway 6. And this goes through this gap in the mountains between Monte Camino and Monte Samucro, known as the Mignano Gap, and then goes a little bit further north, hugs this mountain massive at the

foot of which is a little tiny town called Casino, and then turns the corner and goes into the Leary Valley. And then kind of once you're in the Leary Valley, it's kind of plain sailing all the way to Rome. And what the Germans realised is that you've got this double lock system around the Mignano Gap and then around Casino Town. And if you can block the Allies there and make the most of this incredibly strong natural defensive position, you can hold them up for, you know, who knows, months, a year, whatever. And that's basically what happens. Just quickly, before we leave those airfields, did they serve the purpose that it was hoped they might? Well, they did, but not really in 1943 or even into the beginning of 1944. And there was

also a kind of massive mission creep because the original plan was to put in six bomb groups, which is kind of three squadrons each of bombers. So 18 squadrons of heavy bombers. But then they changed their mind and they go, actually, you know what? It's so good around here. Let's have some more bombers and let's have 21 bomb groups and let's build up to 21 bomb groups by March 1944.

Well, that requires a hell of a lot more infrastructure. You know, they need tents and camps and supply dumps and ammunition and ground crews and camps and supply dumps and ammunition and ground crews and mechanics and spare parts and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, keeping those beasts in the air, it's a big old thing. It's not something to be taken lightly. And obviously, that resource space and that shipping space, more to the point, is competing with the ground forces

who are slogging their way through the mountains and the mud and the rain and the misery of the Apennines in winter. So, yes, they do kick off, but there is definitely a case for saying, tell you what, let's just really focus on getting to Rome first. We'll hold open those Foggia airfields. Let's not kind of worry about them too much in the winter, but let's get onto them once the weather improves in the early part of 1944, in the spring, have it all ready for then, and then let's absolutely go for it then. But the clock is ticking because they need to have this control of the airspace by spring over Northwest Europe for Overlord by, I don't know, middle of April 1944. So it's all cutting it a bit fine. And so that's why they go for it. But it's no question that the number one priority

for the Allies, for Italy, is securing those airfields, and they do do that. It just means it's very tough if you're an infantryman in Italy. That's a horror story. This reminds me slightly of the British Empire accidentally conquering a huge chunk of Africa in order to secure the Suez Canal in the 19th century. James, let's get into operational and tactical stuff. We're not going to get quite as deep as you do on your excellent podcast. We have ways of making you talk, because we have a general audience, not hardened World War II veterans. We need to talk about the Germans holding people up. How do you do that? You dig in deep, you make sure you've got heavy guns with pre-sighted artillery. What's going on? What's it look like day to day?

Okay, so let's just take the Mignano Gap, for example. So you've got this little valley floor, which is, I guess, about a mile wide, wide something like that maybe two miles wide something like that is a long low saddle which is known as monte lungo originally then either side of that you've got these two huge centrals about 3 000 feet high so what's that you know kilometer high monte camino on the left as you're looking north on the western side monte samucro on the right and then you've got mountains all the way down to the coast on the terranian coast and all the way across Italy. So what the Germans do as part of their defences is down in the valley floor, lots of mines, lots of wire, lots of little sort of infillading fire.

And what we mean by that is positions where you can sort of create an arc so that as someone advancing through that, they're just hit by a wall of fire coming at them from either side. So that's what sort of infillading fire is. So what you then have is you then have German observers on this high ground with their amazing Zeiss icon binoculars and all the rest of it and sighting instruments. And you've got your artillery further back. And the guys on the top of the mountains, the observers with their amazing Zeiss icons, also have a radio and they're talking back to the artillery and they're going, right, see that road there? Okay, you need to zero this

and you need to make sure that you know what that coordinate is. So they fire, they do ranging shots and all the rest of it and they go sort of up a bit, left a bit, right a bit. Yep, that's your spot. Because the bottom line is, is the Allies can't get forward without the arteries of these roads, the railway network and the road network. Because, you know, ultimately they're mechanized

and tanks and trucks and all the rest of it. You know, you can't take them up a mountain. They've got to go through the roads. So as long as you've got artillery zeroing, i.e. honed in on those points, on those roads going through the valley floor, no Allied forces are going to be able to get through. So what the Allies have got to do is get up onto the high ground and kick off those observers with their Zeiss Icon optics. But of course, the observers with the Zeiss Icon optics are also protected by other German troops up there with machine guns and mortars and all the rest of it. And up on that very thin soil up on the top of the mountains, where mortars, which are kind of short range little missiles, which kind of get popped up into the air and drop straight down again, they're kind of like mini shells, I suppose. You've got those and you've got artillery shells and you've got people with machine guns that can fire machine guns at a rate of kind of get popped up into the air and drop straight down again. They're kind of like mini shells, I suppose. You've got those, and you've got artillery shells,

and you've got people with machine guns that can fire machine guns at a rate of kind of 1,200, 1,400 bullets a minute. That's like 23 a second. All that makes it a very, very hazardous place to be if you're an attacking force. And that's why it's very hard to get up, because what happens is you attack up with infantry, you come into this area, suddenly there's a mass of mortars

and artillery and machine guns and rifles and all the rest of it, you'll get cut down, and you just can't make any progress. And the progress you do make is kind of little toe holes. And then you kind of build up rocks and you carry behind it and hope for the best. And it just becomes attritional. And it's just who can sort of sling the most artillery shells and kill the most people quickest. And the Allies will always win that battle because they've got more. But it's a really, really slow process. It's not something you just sort of click your fingers and just sort of, okay, take them out of. And that's why it comes into such a slogging match. And that's why high ground is so important. And you get these German defensive lines that go

up the spine of Italy. Is that because, unlike the First World War, that the Allies aren't being totally rebuffed each time? But is it just because there's very small bite and hold and then move forward each time the Germans are able to form new defensive lines? Or are they actually pushing the Allies back and stopping them advancing full stop for weeks at a time? What they do is the Germans have these kind of defensive positions. They're usually behind rivers or using mountain lines. So the first big position is, once they surrender Salerno, is the River Volturno, which is a river that kind of runs halfway across the leg.

That's pretty heavily defended. And there's other rivers on the eastern side. And the combination of the kind of bad weather and not being able to approach successfully the river and all the rest of it and the German defences, that holds up the Allies for a bit. Then they eventually get across the river. In the case of getting over the Volturno,

this is US Fifth Army with British troops attached. They get across the Volturno and the Germans do a sort of fighting retreat. So they move back to a town or a little bit of high ground or another river or whatever, and they hold it for a little bit. Then, you know, the Allies have to stop, get out all their guns, redeploy. It all takes time, a bit of a process. Then they go to the next one, then the next one. And all the time they're building their main line of defence, which is the Bernhard line, or the Winter line, as it's known by the Allies, which is the first of this double lock system I was telling you about

that runs through the Mignano Gap all the way across Italy. And then the second one is the Gustav line. That's the one that's on Cassino and the monastery of Monte Cassino and all the rest of the really kind of famous one, I suppose, or infamous one, depending which way you're looking at it. And what's happening is the Allies are attacking, in each case, the Bernhard line and then the Gustav line. They're not like a Great Wall of China or something or Hadrian's Wall. They're a series of interconnected positions, observers and the rest of it. But these mountains are quite big. So you've got scope to

fall back a little bit from a German point of view, you know, a few hundred yards or half a mile here, half a mile there, give a little bit of ground whilst you're still holding the general line position. And it just takes till the end of December for the Allies to break through the Bernhard line, the winter line. And they do that by the end of December, but they're still 70 miles from Rome. and then they're faced with the Gustav line, which is the next part of this kind of double lock, and it's just been an absolute slaughter. It's been a slaughter for both sides. I mean, when Allied troops are in Normandy, you know, your average battalion, which is sort of 850 men, something like that, it's your basic kind of unit, they're rarely in action for more than kind of four to six days

max. I mean, that is the absolute longest they're in. Because after that point, they're losing casualties and, you know, not all dead, but wounded and captured and all the rest of it. And their ability to fight as a coherent unit just gets degraded. Well, in Italy, infantry battalions are fighting for kind of 10 days, two weeks before they're relieved. Now, why is that? Because it's just not enough. They're just not getting the resupply priority that they're getting in Normandy, for example, or in Norfolk, Europe.

There just isn't the shipping to support it. And the shipping there is, is also having to support the buildup of the air forces at Foggia. So supply lines are constantly having to compete with one another. Air forces against ground forces all the time. So it just turns it into a horror show. I mean, it's absolutely grim. And of course, you know, there's lots and lots of civilians caught up in this because Italy is a population of 40 million in 1939, and not much less in 1943, 44. And Italy is a very mountainous place. So most of the habitation is in the valleys where it's easier

to build and easier to access and all the rest of it, which is, of course, precisely the places where the Allies want to get through. So anyone in the middle of this and in the way of it, it's easier to build and easier to access and all the rest of it, which is, of course, precisely the places where the Allies want to get through. So anyone in the middle of this and in the way of it, it's a sort of typhoon of steel, like a twister. It's sort of going up the leg of Italy, just causing kind of mayhem. I mean, and it is incredible because, you know, all the time I was writing this, you know, the war was going on in Ukraine and Latvia has been going on in Gaza. And, you know, you're just seeing the same footage, the same scenes. It's just horrendous. I guess you say horrendous, it's for everybody,

including the civilians, but for the Germans, because you do lots of great archival research there, you're suffering astonishing casualties, but also just the inevitability. Did any German soldier think, oh, we might counterattack and drive these people back into the sea? Or is it just like, no, our job is to retreat as slowly as possible and to take as big a toll on this ultimately victorious force as we can? I mean, that's surely a particular kind of mental torture as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really, really interesting. So with the generals, there's also fighting chat about counterattacks and all the rest of it. The sort of grassroots, it wouldn't be surprising to know that there's very little of that. I mean, one of the diaries I follow is this guy called Jörg Zellner,

who's a battalion commander in the 44th Hocken-Deutschmeister Division, which is an infantry division. And his diaries are just incredible because they're full of pain and misery, but dark humour, of despair, of little glimmers of hope. But then he's tortured by kind of, what are they doing there? What's the point? And then he sees a ruined Italian village.

And he says, this is why we have to do this. Because if we don't fight down here, that's what's going to happen to Germany. That's what's going to happen to my family. And that's why they're doing it. But then next minute, he's cursing it. You know, I remember following another diary of another German faustian, a paratrooper.

And he's sort of saying, what the hell are we doing? Where is everyone? You know, we can't hold all of this in a poolia. This is absolutely crazy. You know, the generals have gone mad. So there's real kind of despair. You know, I mean, these guys are, by 1943, there's a lot of people there who kind of can see the writing is on the wall, who don't want to be there, curse the war, absolutely fed up with the whole thing, morale pretty bad, but what do you do? I mean, because obviously if you don't do what you're told, you'll get shot and that'll be that. This is one of the awful things about Italy.

The whole thing is just so completely pointless. I mean, it's sort of achieving so little. That's the problem. And tell us what the new smash hit book is called. It's called The Savage Storm, and there is also the second part of The Savage Storm. It's going to be out on History Hit. Oh, yes, of course.

More importantly than the book. Thank you, James. Yeah, the book's out, everyone. Go and buy the book, folks. But there is a documentary on History Hit TV. Which I have to say was literally the most fun I've ever had making a TV documentary, ever, which I felt a bit guilty about,

considering the subject matter. But obviously, Italy, a lovely place to visit today. Well, you all had fun. I heard the stories from behind the camera and I know it was good fun. James Holland, you're such a good friend, man. Thank you for doing this. And everyone, go and get James' book

and listen to his podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk, and go to his summer festival as well, the We Have Ways Festival. What are the dates? The 19th to the 21st of July next year. Go and see it, everybody. It is something to behold.

Thanks for coming on the podcast, buddy. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.

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