The Rest Is History - 399. The Savage Storm: World War II and The Battle for Italy

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

The Battle for Italy in 1943 proved to be one of the bloodiest and most brutal episodes of the Second World War. Following hot on the heels of their recent victory in Sicily, the Allies crossed the Straits of Messina and entered Italy in September, to fight their way up the Italian peninsula, what Churchill termed “the soft underbelly of Europe”. Intended to draw Axis troops away from the Eastern Front, and with Churchill’s enthusiastic backing, the campaign was expected to be an easy one, with Allied troops in Rome by Christmas. But this wasn't to be the case. What unfolded was an attritional meat-grinder, in which every mile the Allies covered was a hard-fought struggle against fierce German resistance.   Join Tom, Dominic and renowned historian of war James Holland to discuss this dark and dramatic campaign, fought amidst the precarious ruins of a vanished Roman empire, as they describe in unflinching detail its horrors, hardships, and tragedies. Buy your copy of James' new book here: https://coles-books.co.uk/the-savage-storm-by-james-holland-hardback 📱Protect your tech valuables with our exclusive 20% off discount at http://uk.mous.co/RestHistory 🎒 Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. The Italian people have already suffered terribly. Their manhood has been cast away in Africa and Russia. Their soldiers have been deserted in the field. We have seen that ourselves. Their wealth has been squandered. Their empire has been lost, irretrievably lost.

Now their own beautiful homeland must become a battlefield for German rearguards. Even more suffering lies ahead. They are to be pillaged and terrorized in Hitler's fury and revenge. Nevertheless, as the armies of the British Empire and the United States march forward in Italy, as we shall march, the Italian people will be rescued from their state of servitude and degradation, and will be enabled in due course to regain their rightful place among the free democracies of the modern world. So that was an archive recording of Winston Churchill. Oh, that's who it was.

It was one of the very first recordings ever made of Parliament, Tom. So Parliament had just come back after the summer recess. That was the 21st of September, 1943. And Churchill was reporting to the House of Commons on the 21st of September, 1943. And Churchill was reporting to the House of Commons on the state of the war in Italy, where the Allies had just made this extraordinary decision to land in Italy and to fight their way up, Tom, through what some people say Churchill called the soft underbelly of the Axis. Whether he did actually say that, I imagine we will discover today. I imagine we we will and it was 80 years ago this year was it not yeah it was not today as

you said when we originally recorded this segment no and we've recorded that because i goofed and thank you for drawing attention to it for everyone to sneer and laugh at me i'm kind that way kind to the listeners i think that it's just like to like to share and we're not perfect. So the soft underbelly, of course, it proves not to be a soft underbelly, does it? Because, well, actually, let me read a passage from a recently published book by an absolutely top historian of the Second World War that's just come out and is available in all good bookshops ready for Christmas. And this top historian writes, the invasion of Italy conceived in August in the heat and sun of aranean summer and based on dubious intelligence that hitler planned to swiftly retreat north of rome had been launched on the understanding that its objectives would be

quickly achieved that the capital would be in allied hands in a trice and that it would be a limited operation but dominic it proves to be none of those things, does it? Because it's an absolutely brutal slog. There's not enough troops, not enough kit. It's all being husbanded for D-Day. And the result really is quite a forgotten campaign. A forgotten quagmire, Tom. Well, I would say a forgotten savage storm, Dominic, which is the title of the book that I was mentioning, The Savage Storm, The Battle for Italy, 1943, by the top historian of the Second World War, who is my brother, James, James Holland, who is also, of course, presenter on the top Second World War podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk. And he's joining us all the way from Cornwall. Hello, bro.

What's up, bro? Thanks for the intro. Great impersonation of Churchill, I thought there. Thank you. Very fine. You can come on again. It's a shame bro? Thanks for the intro. Great impersonation of Churchill, I thought there. Thank you. Very fine. You can come on again. It's a shame you never had to say Nazi. Yeah. I always feel that should be included in any wartime impersonation. That's the giveaway, isn't it?

That he always says Nazi rather than Nazi. Nazi. Yeah. But can I just refocus on the savage storm? Because also, bro, you say about this kind of menacing, the buildup to the Allied invasion, the typhoon of steel was, the Typhoon of Steel was approaching. Typhoon of Steel? We love a gathering storm. That follows the storm clouds of war, right? The Typhoon of Steel? It absolutely does. But, Brett, did I give a correct analysis of

kind of the overview of this campaign, that it's meant to be easy, but actually it turns out to be a meat grinder? Yes. So the problem with it is they decide to go into Sicily at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. And then they have a big update conference called the Trident Conference, which is in May 1943 in Washington. And this is a point where they settle, right, we're absolutely going to make the priority operation overlord, which is going to be the cross-channel invasion,

which at that point is settled for the 1st of May 1944, but obviously, as we know, ends up being the 6th of June 1944. And the Americans also insist that they're going to accelerate operations in the Pacific against Japan, which is not really what British had imagined playing second fiddle was going to be when they first discussed this on America's entry into the war back in December 1941. But future operations in the Mediterranean, well, they were just going to see what happened, see what happened in Sicily, see whether Sicily did prompt the Italians to get out of the war, see what the situation was and all the rest of it. But Overlord was going to be the absolute priority. And the British agreed to this. They said, okay, fine. Overlord is a priority. And really, the Italian campaign is conducted with the sort of tyranny of overlords sort of overseeing

everything that they do. And the truth is, despite the kind of incredible rate of shipbuilding, particularly assault craft building, which goes on in the United States and indeed in the UK as well, they simply don't have enough to do all the things they need to do. Because let's not forget, they're also supplying Chiang's nationalists in China at this time. They're also supplying the USSR with vast amounts of supplies as well. Then you've got the Pacific. Then you've got Southeast Asia. Then you've got planning for Overlord, which, you know, by any reckoning is going to be a massive undertaking because it's against the most heavily defended part of the European coastline. So Italy sort of falls in the middle of that. But at the same time, after Sicily, you've got these vast Allied forces in the Mediterranean.

And it seems crazy not to do anything on land in Europe between then and the 1st of May 1944, when Overlord is originally scheduled. Because the United States has been in the war since the end of 1941. Am I right in saying they've basically cleared the Axis out of North Africa by this point? Yes, they have, absolutely, on the 13th of May 1943. And it's a huge, huge victory. To be perfectly honest, both the British and the Americans have worked out how to beat the Germans by this point, which is by roughly the strategy of steel, not flesh. You use your global reach, huge amounts of mechanisation, firepower, airpower, a sort of brotherhood of air, land, and sea to do the hard yards so that your foot sloggers, the poor bloody infantry, don't have to do so much work. That's the basic idea behind it. And it really works.

But you're saying that the Allies had too many troops in the Mediterranean to do nothing and very many good strategic reasons to invade Italy, but they didn't have enough to win these prizes easily or even with anything like a guarantee of success. However, they do have a prime minister who has a track record in backing lunatic amphibious schemes. So Churchill famously was the guy who backed the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War that went absolutely disastrously tits up. But here he is again, and he's the great enthusiast for this, isn't he?

And not only invading, but also kind of launching an attack halfway up Italy. Why should we crawl up the leg like a harvest bug from the ankle upwards? Let us rather strike at the knee. Yes. And that's all very pithy and all very well and everything. And he's got very good reasons for saying that actually, because if you look at the toe of Italy, just across from the Straits of Messina, which are so close when you're in Northeast Sicily, that you can almost touch them. I mean, this is the kind of the Straits of Scylla and Charybdis of Homeric Faneborough, of course, but it's incredibly mountainous. And where it's mountainous, obviously, that makes it very difficult for you to pass.

And one of the kind of byproducts of this highly mechanized, highly industrialized type of war that the Allies are kind of protracting is that it comes with lots of vehicles. And the Italian road network is kind of used for Strada Bianca, that kind of dirt roads,, is that it comes with lots of vehicles. And the Italian road network is kind of used for strata bianca, that kind of dirt roads, which are great if you're a kind of horse and cart or the occasional Fiat Topolino, but not so great if you're the 3,000 vehicles of a single infantry division, for example. And divisions are the unit by which we judge the scale of armies in the Second World War. And if you imagine that a division is around 15,000 men, give or take, that's the kind of scale you're talking about. So each 15,000 men strong infantry division would

have 3,000 vehicles. And you can see how you very quickly can get bogged down in this mountainous terrain, particularly with German engineers blowing up every bridge and mountain pass and culvert along the way. So we've looked at the Allies. They have all this vast preponderance of kit, basically. But could we look at the state of play with the Axis powers? So the Germans and the Italians are allies. They both have fascist leaders, except that in the summer of 1943, Mussolini gets toppled, doesn't he? 25th of July, yeah.

So what's happened to him? He's been taken prisoner, right? He's been held in secret. Yes, and he's actually formally deposed by the king on the 26th of July. And it's easy to forget that all through the fascist era, Italy remains a monarchy. And there's King Vittorio Emanuele III, who's a sort of diminutive and rather feckless character, but nonetheless does get rid of Mussolini. And Marshal Pietro Badoglio takes over. He's a rather sort of sad looking fellow and a rather sort of sad character full stop, to be perfectly honest.oglio takes over. He's a rather sad-looking fellow and a rather sad character

if I'll stop, to be perfectly honest. And he takes over as Prime Minister. But if you think Pétain was bad, then Badoglio is even worse. He's just utterly hopeless. And it's absolutely clear that the writing is on the wall, and the Germans know this. And this is one of the big calculations for going into Italy, of course, is that it's not just a question of getting to Rome,

which is what really attracts Churchill to the whole undertaking. The main reason why the Americans buy into it is twofold. Firstly, because it might draw troops away from the Western Front for Operation Overlord. Again, Overlord is a priority, and away from the Eastern Front at the same time. Because Italian troops occupy not just Italy, but also the Balkans and Greece and the Aegean, the Dodecanese, the whole shebang, to a tune of about 32 divisions, which is a huge number of men, which the Germans will have to either abandon or replace it. And they're not going to abandon it because Hitler's extremely paranoid about his southern flank, but also because their only source of real oil that they have at all is in Ploesti and Romania, which is in that realm of the Aegean and the Balkans and all the rest of it. So there's no way they're going to do that. That is part of the Americans and indeed the British calculation for going into Italy. And it is this preoccupation with taking over the Italian armed forces, which dominates German strategy from the moment that Mussolini is overthrown. So outwardly, they're sort of paying lip service to their Italian ally,

but secretly they're plotting to kind of swoop in and take over absolutely everything the moment that the Italians surrender, which they're pretty certain they're going to do. And indeed they are. And meanwhile, there are all kinds of shenanigans going on involving Italian diplomats flying off to Spain and going in disguise and trying to negotiate with British diplomats and so on. But they kind of arrive at a resolution that the Italians will essentially surrender unconditionally. Is that right? Yes. And that is signed at 4.30pm on the 3rd of September, 1943. But what the Allies don't do

is they tell them that there will be a main invasion somewhere up the leg of Italy, but they don't tell the Italians when that's going to happen or where that's going to happen because the shortage of shipping. And the problem is, is unless you've got a port to go into, you need assault shipping because it's got to go straight onto beaches. So because of the shortness of shipping, they're going to do it in two hits. So they're going to do a very modest eight-farmy crossing with just two divisions, so 30,000 men going across the Straits of Messina into the tow to kind of sort of distract the Germans and the Italians and all the rest. Which they do on the 3rd of September, the same day as the armistice is announced.

Very same day. So early that morning that the surrender has been signed, they have gone in. And that's one of the reasons why the Italians sign it, because clearly the allies are serious, because they've already crossed the Strait of Messina. But on that same day, they promise that there's going to be a subsequent bigger invasion somewhere else. And the Italians get it into their head that it's going to be in the middle of September, and it's going to be somewhere around Rome. But anyone who knows anything about modern warfare would know that you can't do an amphibious invasion without air cover and that Rome is just simply too far from allied bases in Sicily and Malta and so on. So that's a ludicrous

presumption and there is no reason at all why the allies would land in the middle of September. So this is just a kind of false assumption by the Italians, but plays havoc with what happens subsequently. So you're a military historian, you're not a historian of Italy, but... A historian of war, Dominic. A historian of war, not a military historian. What's the difference? A massive difference, because military is just about brigades and divisions and stuff, whereas a war historian is about everything, economic, political, social, the whole shebang.

Tom, did you know this? Yeah, I did. Of course I did. I don't believe you. 500 episodes, you've never mentioned it. A military historian is retired Colonel Smithers. He's written a book about the 3rd Brigade in Dunkirk in 1940 or something. So James, what do people in Italy think of all this?

So ordinary Italians, they were in the war. They were on the side of the Axis. They're all going, oh, let's build a new empire. It's all gone horribly wrong in North Africa. Suddenly, armistice. Messolini has been out of action for months. An armistice plus the Allies are now landing. What does Roberto Donadoni, I mean, obviously he played for Italy in 1990,

so I don't know why he's alive in 1943. But had he been? He's in the time travel machine. Yeah, exactly. What does the Roberto Donadoni of 1943 think of this? Well, most Italians are absolutely ecstatic about it and think that this means the war is over. Of course, the Italian leadership don't realise

that they're between a rock and a hard place because, you know, get it wrong with the Germans, they're all going to be rounded up and executed. But on the other hand, they want the Allies to come to their rescue and it's a very difficult line to juggle. But, bro, just to intrude, because I love this detail so much, the Germans have flooded Italy, haven't they, with German troops, and they call this Operation Alaric, after the Gothic leader who sacks Rome. Yep. I love that.

They do. And then there's a different one. It's Constantine for Greece and the Balkans, but then beginning of September, Hitler changes his name to just Operation Axis, which is wonderfully ironic as well. But yes, most Italians are absolutely delighted about it. And even once the Allies do land and get a foothold in Italy and start sort of destroying vast numbers of villages and towns, they're still sort of cheering them as they're coming into the towns. I mean, the bottom line is, is they're absolutely impoverished and they're just absolutely had it up to here with the war. They're just not interested anymore. But James, are these not the same people who two years earlier would have been cheering the news of Italian advances and Italian victories? Absolutely.

I mean, have they just turned their coats? Yep, they turned very quickly. And I mean, without wanting to sort of be sweeping in my judgment of Italians, I do remember talking to some Sicilians and, you know, them saying that when the Americans arrived in Gela in southern Sicily, they were very suspicious and thought, you know, Mussolini's going to triumph. And then literally a day later, they were going around sort of handing out chocolate and cigarettes. And they thought, oh, Americans are absolutely brilliant. Mussolini's rubbish. And just turned just like that on a sixpence. And a friend of mine who was with me at the time, who actually lived in Sicily, said, that's just so Italian.

They'll sort of back the winner. And they felt by 1943, second half of 1943, that the winners were the Allies, not the Germans. And frankly, they were right. And so they just completely had it with the war. They'd had it with fascism. They'd had it with everything. The whole point about fascism was it was supposed to make them feel better and good about themselves and richer and more prosperous. And so when that doesn't happen, understandably, they turned. I mean, it's a bit like kind of everyone's all for Boris when he wins the election, but how quickly it crumbled when they realised how feckless and hopeless he was.

Right. So, I mean, not comparing the Italian leadership in the Second World War to Boris. Well, there's a certain similarity between him and Mussolini, I'd say. Yeah, why don't we? The mistake that you've made is you think we're the rest is politics. They love that kind of chat on the rest is politics. We enjoy it within reason. So the Italian leadership are basically very unimpressive.

Oh my God, are they ever. I mean, the Allies want to get rid of the king. They don't trust Badoglio and they've surrendered unconditionally. And the whole thing is essentially a shambles. And the Italians think that the Allies are not going to evade until September. September the 12th, I think, are the earliest. Yeah. Right.

In the event, the main invasion happened six days after the Allies have crossed the Straits of Messina in the south. Yeah. And it is south of Salerno. Yes. Which again is south of Naples. So it's kind of pretty much in the middle. And this is called Operation Avalanche. It's launched on the 9th of September.

You describe it as being an almighty and totally out of character gamble. So in what way is it a gamble? In what way is it out of character? Again, they just don't have enough shipping. So I know Dominic loves statistics and loves me mentioning trucks and things. He does. I like facts. I do like facts. They're very grindy in that way. Okay. Well, let me give you some facts. So for Operation Husky, which is Invasion of Sicily, they have 1,743 landing craft and sail craft. And these are ones that can just go straight onto a beach. So you don't need a port. You can just go straight in, down comes a ramp, off they go. For Operation Baytown, which is the crossing of the Straits of Messina, they have 268. For Avalanche, they have 359. So 359 for an operation where they are against

19 German divisions in Italy at that point, compared to the two that were opposing them in Sicily. And what that means is the lack of landing craft. It's not just a question of getting them there at H hour on D-Day, the kind of first moment of the evasion. These landing craft are in action the whole time, just shuttling forth troops and ammunition and supplies and all the rest of it. They're absolutely vital to the whole thing.

So where are the troops coming from, from Sicily? Yes, they're mainly coming from Sicily and from Algeria. And they're coming in troop ships and then the infantry go in their landing craft. But there's also the little Higgins boats and the LCAs and all the rest of it. What is an LCA? It's a landing craft assault. They can take sort of 36 men, but then you have these large ones, which are landing ships, which are much bigger. Okay. And they can do this because they have air power? They can do this because you have air power. And they could just about get air power north of Naples, but your Spitfires or whatever wouldn't be able to linger long enough over the beaches to be properly effective. And so because of the shortage of landing craft, they're having to up

the game with naval warships and naval gunpower, but also with aircraft. But even that is just not enough. So what that means is the Allies are only aircraft. But even that is just not enough. So what that means is the Allies are only able to land on D-Day three divisions. So what's that, you know, 45,000 men, plus two groups of special forces, the commandos and the US Army ragers up in the north and the sort of Amalfi Coast to go and secure some passes. But that is really, really undercooked, again, compared to Husky. Now, obviously, Sicily is larger, but it is amazing how small the initial landing is when one considers the challenge, the height that they are up the leg of Italy, and how many German troops there are on Italy at that time.

Now, there's only actually one German division directly facing them where they're landing. But it's only a matter of time before those other divisions start to sort of coalesce around Salerno. That's the issue. And so the fighting is very hard. And at one point, it looks as though the Allies are going to be basically flung back into the sea. And the commanders are talking about the possibility of retreat. But they fight on in the face of large German numbers. And they have a secret weapon, don't they? The Fritz X. So what is the Fritz X? So the Fritz X is the first ever kind of radio controlled guided missile. It's a very sort of sophisticated and clever piece of kit. The guy who's guiding it is on a Dornier, which is a sort

of twin engine bomber. So it's a bit like a drone, is it? It's a bit like a drone, yeah. Effectively, it is an unmanned aerial vehicle, I would say. And he has to have visual contact on it the whole time. So he's on the Dornier. You release it from the sort of mothership and off it goes. And he can control it as long as he can see it. And it's obviously packed with explosives and it's specifically designed to get through sort of battleships and cruisers. So it's very effective. Okay. But in the end, allied air and naval power proves overwhelming. Yes. And the brilliance of the infantry on the ground. And the beach is secured. Yep. Yep. Salerno is secured.

Right. So from my point of view, the most interesting thing about all this is that it is taking place around the three most significant surviving Doric temples from the golden age of Greece. So I found loads about the book, which is wonderfully, horribly written. Endless, grueling details. Horribly written. I can't believe you just said that. The sense of horror that it conveys. I didn't take it that way, Dominic, don't worry. The deeper sense of horror it gave me was the endless description of how close all these classical ruins come to being left even more ruined so you have an american corporal who records in his diary came about one mile inland he then adds moved again to some ancient ruins and these are the three great what the heck were they greek temples the doric temple

at paestum and basically they set up camp in the middle of ancient paestum don't they they do they kind of use the walls as a defense so that that's very, very chilling. And meanwhile, while this is going on, the Germans are seizing control in Rome and driving panzers down. And you describe how they're kind of aiming their guns at the Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum. And the whole thing is, I think if you have any familiarity with ancient or medieval history, The fact that all these battles are taking place in all these kinds of contexts. And it's obviously of appeal to the commanders themselves, isn't it? So we talked about how the Germans have Operation Alaric. And you've talked later about how General Allenbrook is flying over Southern Italy en route to a meeting with

Montgomery. And he orders his plane to make a gentle loop around the battleground of Cannae, which was the great victory won by Hannibal against the Roman Republic. So there's a lot going on there. There are lots of echoes and shades. Well, I have to admit, when I was out there kind of sort of walking the ground and looking at the distance between the landing beaches and where they were and thinking about the Americans setting up their base camp within the old city walls of Paistop,

I was thinking of Ibro and thinking how upset you'd be about the whole thing. And ditto when Carlo Caponi was dodging the tank shells in Rome and going towards the Forum and all the rest of it. I mean, it's just amazing, isn't it? It shows just what a sort of incredible history Italy has and that all these places end up repeatedly being caught up in successive wars and so much destruction. Well, thankfully, the Arch of Constantine survives. The Germans secure Rome

and basically take it over. And the temples in Paestum survive as well. Don't get any damage at all, remarkably. That's extraordinary. No, huge relief all round. I think we should take a break at this point. And when we come back, let's look at what the long-term effects over the rest of 1943 are of the Allies securing this bridgehead. We'll see you in a few minutes. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. In no other theatre was more demanded of Allied frontline troops. They were not being supplied with the normal levels of materiel or replacements. The conditions were appalling. The mud, the rain, the freezing temperatures, disease.

The inability to deploy armour, mechanisation and air power. In the valley floor, the mud was knee-deep. Even in the jungle or on Pacific atolls, the men could at least dig in. In the mountains, the soil was thin or non-existent, making mortars and shells even more lethal and shelter harder to come by. So that is from The Savage Storm by top presenter of We Have Ways of Making You Talk and historian of the Second World War. Not a military historian, but a historian of war. And the way you read that, Dominic, it makes it sound not horrible at all. Right. Oh, that's nice. That's good to hear.

Not horribly written. I thought it sounded pretty bad. Well, horribly written was your brother's verdict in the first half. So viewers can make up their own minds about that. I was thinking, gosh, that's actually quite nicely written, that bit. It conveys the horror, doesn't it? That's the beauty of a really good reading. A lot of that is in the narrator's voice, I think you'll find.

Absolutely. I question the break. Right. Listen, let's talk about what is going on particularly in naples yes that great city so naples is kind of the epicenter of the action yeah the germans have been in naples but they've now decided they're going to have to pull out is that right yes phil marshall kessering who is the commander of german forces the southern half of italy and subsequently becomes the commander of all german troops in italy when he realizes that they're're not going to win at Salerno, he calls a general retreat back to the river Volterno, which is about 25 miles north of Naples. So when they're retreating, they don't just scurry back there overnight. It's a kind of delaying action, kind of fighting retreat, etc. But Naples falls

into that. And don't they also, they have a thing where they have allied prisoners of war and they kind of lead them in a Roman-style triumph through the streets of Naples. Yes. Well, that's before Naples has fought to try and sort of keep the Neapolitans in check. They're terribly worried about having a revolt in Naples because obviously, you know, the last thing they want to do is have to be dealing with that as well as the enemies. I should just say very quickly though, before we get to Naples, I mean, Kesselring has really, really copped things up in a massive way because his plan is once he's wrapped up Rome, which he does on the 10th of September, so the day after Avalanche is launched, he then sends all his available divisions, which are eight in total,

down towards Salerno. And the idea is to put everything he possibly can, throw all his eggs in one basket, chuck the Allies out into the sea, then turn to eight farming in the toe of Italy, tidy it all up and all the rest of it. And then the whole of southern Italy will be back in German's hands and the Allies won't be able to secure a toehold at all. That's the plan. But by chucking all his eggs in one basket and then failing, he's left himself fatally weak in the southern part of Italy, particularly the southeast of Italy.

And three big ports, Taranto, Bari and Brindisi, the British are able to just walk into because they don't need assault craft for those because they're open ports. And so they can just sell their ships straight in and put on the quayside. And he hasn't got enough troops left in Southeast Italy to maintain that. And so what that means is that actually one of the main reasons for the Allies going into Italy in the first place, which was, again, all part of Operation Overlord, but is securing the airfield complex around Foggia, which is around two-fifths of the way up on the Adriatic side in one of the very rare flat bits of Italy. That falls on the 27th of September, so five days before Naples does,

and is an absolute shoo-in. I mean, it's basically given up without a fight and is one of the most important bits of real estate in the whole southern half of Italy. So at that point, there's absolutely no point at all in even defending south of Rome because, okay, you lose Rome, but it's frankly neither here nor there at that point. It is a huge own goal. But unfortunately, his inverted commas determined defence at Salerno has brought Hitler's attention, which is why he ends up being ultimate supremo in Italy. But with Hitler's attention comes the Hitlerian spotlight, and that then absolutely restricts your room for manoeuvre, which is why he is then consigned to fight as far south as Rome

as he possibly can. But that's just to sort of give you that whole perspective and why actually three out of the four reasons for the Allies going in, i.e. getting Italy out of the war, tick, drawing in German troops, massive tick, getting the Foggia airfield complex, huge tick. That's all happened in very, very quick order. The only thing that eludes them is the capital, which of course is the thing that Churchill's obsessed about. But because they've got Foggia, and because it's so important to them, and this tightening the air power noose around Nazi Germany is so vital, you've got to protect it. You don't want to have that. Put all the effort

into getting bomb groups and all the rest of it and fuel dumps and blah, blah, blah over to Foggia and then lose it again. So you need a cushion. So that's why the Allies are then compelled to absolutely stay on the job and push north of Rome. And at the same time, the Germans, because Hitler's spotlight is now on them, are now also compelled to fight south of Rome. So this is why it becomes this huge almighty clash. Isn't it also that they're very anxious about the idea of a replica of the Western Front in the First World War, that they don't want a stationary war? Yeah, absolutely. But sorry, that was a slight divert. Just to go back to Naples. So Naples is the third biggest city. It's a population around 900,000 people. It's the most densely

populated city as well in Italy. It has also been bombed over 180 times by the Allies since the start of the war and 175 times since the start of 1943. And it's much damage done to its archaeological treasures. Much, much damage. And what about Pompeii? Yeah, Pompeii is also damaged, I'm sorry to say. But it is looked after, curated by a very efficient fascist archaeologist and curator who does a brilliant job in safeguarding it as much as he possibly can. You'll be pleased to know.

Well, thank goodness for that. So the conditions in the city are absolutely appalling. Absolutely appalling. Near famine, effectively. Completely. So it's partly because of the Allied bombing, but it's also partly because of the scorched earth policy that the Germans have. This is for two reasons. Mainly, it is to try and slow up the Allies. So if the Allies have got to look after a humanitarian crisis, then that's going to slow up their advance and make life difficult for them. So that's the main reason for doing it. Second reason is spitefulness because they got stabbed in the back, etc. So what they do is they have an exclusion zone of 300 metres from the waterfront all around the port facilities and destroy everything they possibly can. All the water systems, the water network is destroyed, the electricity network is destroyed. They damage as many water of water wells and all the rest of it as they possibly can. And the whole place is just

an absolute mashup. And there is a humanitarian crisis in Naples. It's absolutely horrific. And so what does this mean for the Neapolitans? How do they cope? Well, it means starvation. Also, the other problem is that the Allies, as they move up northwards, they create what's called Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories, AMGOT. And of course, the conditions for this are sort of dreamt up by desk wallers in Allied Forces headquarters in Algiers, by people who don't really know Italy and don't really understand it. There's a bit of spitefulness going on there as well. The exchange rate is set too high. There's chronic inflation. There's lots of black marketeering going on it is absolutely wretched for people but also james

surely the allies think i mean the italians a they've been fighting us and killing our boys until very very recently but b they joined the war like kind of hyenas at the feast when they thought hitler was going to win now they're feeling sorry for themselves but they brought this on themselves are not a lot of allies thinking that well there is a bit of that going on but what you tend to find with a lot of the allies is they have this sort of preconceived view of italy certainly which goes very much along those lines and then they get to italy and befriend some italians and you know they see this sort of lovely warm open population and sort of you know the classic italian character and all the rest of it

and are quickly seduced i mean a lot of people who know anything about italy in the second world war would have heard of norman lewis's great diary that he kept called naples 44 and it's a brilliantly vivid account of someone who absolutely has his humanity very much intact and is just sort of destroyed by what he sees and the kind of awful tragedy he witnesses. I mean, you know, it's been amazing seeing all the footage of Gaza and the poor old Gazans and, you know, how much are they responsible for Hamas and how much are they just innocent people wanting to get on with their lives? You know, these are the sort of questions that one asks oneself.

And, you know, when you're looking at Naples and Italy, it's not just Naples. I mean, you know, around the battlefield of Salerno, Salerno is pretty bashed about, but Eberle, Atavilla, Battapaglia, these towns are all absolutely just wiped from the face of the earth. And plenty more will be before the war finally finishes in Italy. The levels and scales of destruction are absolutely appalling. And I think one of the things one has to understand is in such a mountainous country, most of the population, and Italy has a population of around 40 million, so it's one of the more populated countries in Europe. Most of them, of course, are on exactly the same arteries. Most of the habitation cities are on the same arteries that the Allies are trying to advance up and the Germans are trying to retreat down. And this is the difference with North Africa,

where the Allies had developed this very mechanised, kit-heavy approach to war that basically involved blowing things up, right? And there, there aren't major centres of mechanized, kit-heavy approach to war that basically involved kind of blowing things up, right? And there, there aren't major centers of habitation, but now they're doing it in very, very inhabited reaches of the road and so on. And so they are kind of destroying people's homes in the name of giving them liberty. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And how much bad do you have to do to achieve good? I mean, the moral conundrum of the Great Crusade, in inverted commas, is, yeah, I think I just find it so endlessly fascinating. It's so interesting. It's impossible to kind of read diaries of Italians and letters of Italians and not feel deeply for their plight and for the awful dilemmas in which they find themselves. So you quote a New Zealander who is watching a tank destroy a house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Italian family are watching it.

And obviously they're distraught because everything they own has gone. And this New Zealander reflects on the challenge of fighting fascists who are embedded among civilians. And he says, you are in the way or out of the way, a yard or an inch can spell the difference between life and death, destruction or deliverance. embedded among civilians. And he says, you are in the way or out of the way, a yard or an inch can

spell the difference between life and death, destruction or deliverance. And that, of course, this year, of all years, I mean, it has a kind of resonance, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, it's just incredible. And I was lucky enough to read a lot of diaries from Benedictine monks through to civilians in Eberle, through to civilians in Naples, to Waltona on the Adriatic coast and all over. What one has to also remember about Italy is that it's basically completely Catholic, but they have more regional patois in Italy than any other country in Europe. That tells you about the isolated nation of it. When one's thinking about the puffed out chests and cockerel feathers in helmets and black shirts of fascism in the Mussolini era, don't be confused with thinking

that's Italy all over. This is Turin and Milan and Florence and Rome or whatever. But large parts of Italy are incredibly parochial and out of the way. And you're dealing with villages and towns, which, I mean, they're sort of peasant farmers that have been farming the same way for centuries. You know, the rhythms of life and the annual agricultural farming year have kind of remained untouched in centuries. You know, these are completely out of touch places and they're not particularly fascist. You know, it's why all these towns are on top of hills. They're very sort of isolated. And suddenly you've got this incredibly modern, highly mechanized war just sort of descending on them, like this sort of huge storm of destruction,

which is why I call it the savage storm. Savage storm, yeah. Well, exactly that. But it really, really was. And whether it's Batapelia or Altavelia or Naples, or whether it's the tiny little mountain village of San Pietro in Fine, a little bit further north, these lives are just completely and utterly destroyed. And it's really clear. I mean, when one drives around Italy now, you can always tell the town where the wars pass through, because they're absolutely gapping. I mean, they're full of horrid 1960s buildings. You can always tell, and it's just a scale of destruction, particularly on this path along the Adriatic and this path going up from sort of Salerno to Naples,

following the old Roman Via Casalina, you know, Highway 6 as it was, which goes from Naples to Rome. All along that road, it's just a litany of destruction. I mean, you and I, Brad, were talking about Capua on the weekend. You know, the road just passes straight through Cap straight through Capua, Caserta and so on. This place is absolutely hammered. It's so depressing. Let's talk a tiny bit about the Germans, James. Yes. So you were saying that Kesselring, his newfound prominence means he's now got Hitler's eye on him and it makes it more difficult for him to maneuver. What do he and the other German high command, what do they think they're going to get out of this campaign? So, for example, they don't give up Rome.

People thought they might withdraw north of Rome. You might have made an argument for them withdrawing right up to the north of Italy, withdrawing to the foothills of the Alps or something. Yeah, very good argument, I'd say. Why don't they do that? Do they think that they can basically tie down the Allies and bleed them dry as they move up the peninsula? No, it all goes back to that early stage. It's the early plan when Salerno happens, Operation Avalanche happens, that Castlering is planning to kick them back into sea,

then clear out the zone. He thinks he can hold the whole of Italy. Well, if you can hold the whole of Italy, then there is a reason for fighting south of Rome. If you can't hold the whole of Italy, then there is no reason for fighting south of Rome. If you can't hold the whole of Italy, then there is no reason for fighting south of Rome at all, because you've lost Foggia, which is so important. That is the crucial bit. That's where the Allies' strategic airpower can come in and make a firm base. You've lost all those ports, Brindisi, Bari, Taranto, Naples, Salerno itself. You've lost all those ports. There's no point. What you really want is to be shortening your lines of supply. The the Pisa Rimini line, which is where Hitler is originally going to retreat to, should the Allies invade, that's his original plan earlier in the year, should it happen. And it is certainly the one

that Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, who is in charge of German forces in the north of Italy when the Allies invade at the start of September, that is his recommendation, having been on the receiving end of the Allies. But Kesselring is a sort of relentless optimist. I mean, he's not sort of half full. He's brimming over all the time. And actually, that's not a particularly good asset to have if you're a kind of a senior high commander. You want to have a sort of healthy dose of realism. And when his big plan fails at Salerno, the whole strategy for reclaiming the whole of Italy falls down like skittles. And then he gets stuck because he's got the Hitlerians in the spotlight. There is no sense,

no strategic sense whatsoever for fighting south of Rome once you've lost Foggia. And the German commanders are absolutely loggerheads. Most of them absolutely loathe Kesselring because he's a Luftwaffe field marshal, not a ground commander. And he's taken on this role as an army group commander and has all the kind of prestige that that allows, but without the kind of training and knowledge to be able to pull it off. He's got, broadly speaking in history, he's seen as a reasonably good German and has got a reasonably good press, but I think he was absolutely crap. Okay. Punchy take there. So this is terrible for everybody. Everybody.

It's terrible for the Germans. Awful for the Germans. Who end up having to use heated child's urine as antiseptic, which I think is always a sign that the war isn't going well if you're in that state of play. No. It's terrible for the Italians who are caught in the middle of these two meat grinders going at each other. Yes. You have an awful description of two women who are machine gunned while going to fetch water from a stream that runs at the bottom of the village. Rosa Fuoco. Nobody can go and get the water and so the whole village kind of dies of thirst.

This is San Pietro, yeah. I mean, that's kind of awful. And it's awful for the allies who are having to slog at the passage that Dominic read at the head of this second half. And again, you've written so much about the Second World War, and yet you seem kind of overwhelmed by the horror of this second half. And again, you've written so much about the Second World War, and yet you seem kind of overwhelmed by the horror of the fighting here. So you write about the conditions. I continue to be in awe of how the Allies kept going. Why should a Texan boy be fighting up a mountain in a desolate corner of Italy, or a New Zealander be wading across the icy Sangro? It is astonishing that they did so. Yeah, I think the scale of destruction and the scale of the violence was shocking. And I think largely because when one thinks of the Italian

campaign, most people think of sort of Anzio and Cassino, and I suppose ultimately the fall of Rome, and then don't give it much further thought. So there's not much after Cassino, and there's not much before Cassino either. And I would say these very crucial months and the back end of 1943, where Allied strategy is sort of taking a little bit of a hiccup because of the kind of huge global weight that they put upon their shoulders, and for the preparation for Overlord and all the rest of it, means that Italy falls short. There's very good reasons for going in still. There's very good reasons for staying there, but they're not able to do it at kind normal levels of support, material support and shipping support, crucially, that they would normally expect.

And I'll give you an example of this. Once they do get into Normandy, Allied infantry battalions, which is your sort of basic unit of 845 men or something, you wouldn't expect them to fight in the front line for more than four to six days max. But in Italy, they're fighting for kind of two weeks solidly. The physical and mental strain of that is just enormous, particularly when you've got sort of endless rain and all the privations you get of kind of operating in extreme mud in the valley floors and in extremely bare and naked positions on the top of mountains. So I was shocked. But I think the other main reason is that for the first time, I've really focused all my personal accounts on contemporary sources, diaries, letters, and so on, rather than

post-war oral testimonies, which actually I'm sort of now questioning a little bit because what does someone remember 60 years after the day? I mean, they can remember sort of key things, but you can't remember that specific detail of what you were feeling on that particular day. Whereas a diary and a letter tells you what was going on on that particular moment. And I suppose the vividness of those recollections really brings into sharp focus the scales of destruction and violence in a way that I probably underestimated before. Well, since you're talking about the challenge of writing history and about the recollections that people have, we've actually got a question from one of our listeners, from Theo Young-Smith. And he says, could you please ask James Holland to talk about the role of women in the Italian campaign? So what do you have to say about that, James?

Well, does he mean in uniform or does he mean civilians? Because obviously there were a lot of Italian women caught up in this. A huge number of young men were away in prison of war camps by this stage in Canada and Britain and the United States and elsewhere. A lot of women were having to fend for themselves. And it's estimated by the US Fifth Army General Medical Officer that 50%, at least 50% of all available women, his words, had some kind of form of sexually transmitted disease by the spring of 1944. Oh my word. And that's because of prostitution? Yes, because that's the only way they can survive. It's by prostituting themselves to allied troops in return for cans of fruit and syrup and all the rest of it. I mean,

it's just absolutely horrendous. But in terms of military personnel, yes, there were a huge number of nurses. They were incredibly courageous. And actually, a lot of these field hospitals, they weren't absolutely in the direct front line, but they were very much in the firing line. And there were lots of them. So we're now in December and 80 years ago, the Allies had not broken through to Rome. They had not got there. It wasn't going to be over by Christmas. They are, as you said, very anxious of a potential Western front situation. And so essentially they are increasingly relying on their superior firepower to try and blast their way through. And you mentioned the most significant architectural victim of this approach,

which is fought in 1944, so the next year, and that is the Abbey of Monte Cassino, founded by Saint Benedict and rebuilt over many centuries, one of the holiest places in Italian Catholicism. And I mean, just to end this episode with the drumbeat to that catastrophe, which is starting to be sounded in the dying days of 1943. So 17th of October, the treasures of the abbey start to be removed by the Germans. Many of their commanders are Catholic, so they're not just doing it in a cynical spirit. They are genuinely worried about what is coming. The German high command then proclaim a neutral zone around the abbey, which is what, kind of 300 meters all around? Yes, and is completely disabused.

And then on Christmas day, you were talking about the value of reading diaries, that you have a diary of a monk in Monte Cassino. Yes, Don Musebio. And he confides to his diary, his confidence that the protection zone will be respected. And of course, it won't be. Oh, it's so awful. It's so awful. That reading this book, it ends, you know, as the year turns from 43 to 44. And you have a sense the worst is yet to come.

I know. All these horrors you've described. And yet, Monte Cassino hasn't even been fired at yet. No, I know. It is amazing. And Dom Eusebio, who's the diary you're talking about, the Benedictine monk, it's so moving because what you realise is that this tiny little community in the monastery, they're so ill-equipped to deal with the catastrophe which is befalling them. The father abbot, he just doesn't know what to do. They are incredibly learned, incredibly ascetic, incredibly religious,

obviously, but they're just not equipped to deal with a war passing through them. They just don't know what to do. They don't know what to do for the best. And the father abbot is repeatedly in tears trying to make the right decision. Do we hand over the treasures to the Germans? Will they flog it, take it back to Germany? Will it be safe? What do we do? How do we secure a 300-metre zone? And it's just desperate. And Domus Sebbia, who is only, I think, 32 at the time, he's writing this diary, is a very perceptive diary keeper. And I will just give you one spoiler alert for what follows, is that he suddenly gets a bad cold in January, and it then gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse. And then on the 13th of February, he dies. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

And his body is still in the crypt when two days later, the monastery is destroyed. It's just, it's so profoundly moving. I can't tell you. It really is. And that's the other advantage, I think, in a sort of cynical kind of writery way of using diaries is that obviously if you're relying on oral testimony, self-evidently they've survived. Whereas with diaries, you don't know whether the diary keeper is going to make it through.

The jeopardy is that much greater yeah well bro on that cheery note yes thank you so much oh well thank you for having me on happy christmas everyone and what could be more festive than the savage storm the battle for italy 1943 by james holland who is also of course presenter of the brilliant second world war podcast we have Have Ways of Making You Talk. And on that bombshell, literally, James, thank you so much. Tom, was that a tour de force? Does that count as a tour de force by your definition? I would say it was an explosive tour de force.

Savage storm. Wonderful. All right. Thank you very much, James. Savage storm, everybody. And of course, We Have Ways of Making You Talk is our sister podcast. In fact, it's our progenitor, really, isn really isn't it tom because it was the first goal hanger podcast it is yes yes yes i remember saying to tony you know what you should talk to my bro

oh my word there you go with those words a terrible monster was born a typhoon of steel one might say well it's a great honour to be on. Thank you very much for having me on. Absolute pleasure. All right. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye, everyone. Cheerio.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.