How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

18 THE INVASION OF SICILY

ALLIED OPERATIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AFTER THE CAPTURE OF TUNISIA presented a case study of how Germany might have achieved a deadlock if Hitler had moved over to defensive warfare. Hitler’s senior generals had been pleading with him to follow this strategy ever since the failure to capture Moscow in December 1941.

The disaster of Stalingrad should have convinced Hitler that there was no hope for a decision in the east. At the same time, western Allied commanders were proving to be so cautious that they were offering him a chance to reverse by defense many of the strategic errors he had committed by offense.

Victory, of course, no longer was possible. But Germany might have achieved a standstill in the west if Hitler had transferred much of his army and air force to challenge landings by the western Allies. By husbanding his forces in the east, and above all by avoiding an offensive that might consume his little remaining striking power, he also might have held back the Soviet Union until everyone was weary of war.

But such a reversal would have required Hitler to see that he had made mistakes—and this Hitler could not do. On the contrary, he began in the spring of 1943 to concentrate every man, gun, and tank possible for a final confrontation with the Red Army in the Kursk salient northwest of Kharkov. This campaign, Operation Citadel, was to be a make-or-break effort to regain the initiative. In this continued quest to destroy Russia and Communism, he neglected the Mediterranean and the northern coast of France. It was his ultimate failure as a field commander.

German generals in the Mediterranean were seeing that the principal Allied commanders were hesitant, slow-moving, and insistent upon overwhelming superiority before they undertook operations. Allied obsession with security played directly into the strengths of the German army. Compared to Allied commanders, German generals were, on balance, bolder, more flexible, more inventive, more willing to take chances, and more confident of their ability to overmaster opponents.

A couple of decisions illustrate the attitude of Eisenhower, Alexander, Montgomery, and other senior commanders. First, though no one expected much opposition, they earmarked ten divisions for the invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky), more than they were later able to get on the beaches of Normandy. Second, they insisted on attacking the Italian boot at Salerno because it was within the 200-mile range of Spitfires operating from northeast Sicily. Since the Germans knew about the Allied fixation on air cover, they spotted Salerno as the target and prepared a gruesome reception there.

After Tunisia, the Americans had committed themselves only to an invasion of Sicily. In mid-May 1943 Winston Churchill made his third visit to Washington, hoping to get an agreement to assault the boot of Italy. This, he argued, would lead to a quick Italian surrender. Churchill avoided mention of his real purpose: to turn the Americans away from a cross-Channel invasion.

But General Marshall insisted that Operation Bolero, the buildup in Britain for a cross-Channel attack (Operation Roundup), take precedence over anything else. This did not rule out an invasion of Italy, but Marshall hoped to prevent any shift toward the Mediterranean.

He was partly successful. The conference, code-named Trident, established early March 1944 as the date for the invasion of France, an operation that soon received the new code name Overlord. Nothing was said about Italy.

Churchill didn’t accept the silence at Washington as final and called a meeting at Eisenhower’s headquarters in Algiers for May 29, 1943, to push for an Italian invasion, and, by inference, abandonment of Overlord. General Marshall attended, but Churchill stacked the deck with Alan Brooke, chief of the imperial staff, and all British commanders in the Mediterranean.

Eisenhower was interested in gaining the airfields around Foggia in southern Italy to attack the Ploesti oil fields and targets in southern Germany, but he was not enthusiastic about a campaign up the rugged mountainous boot of Italy, especially since rain, mud, and immobility would be coming with winter.

Churchill was cagey enough not to propose more than seizure of southern Italy, but Brooke confessed privately to Eisenhower that he wanted to avoid any wider land front than the Allies could sustain in Italy, and preferred applying Allied air and naval power to blockade Germany and destroy its industry.

Eisenhower knew Marshall would never accept abandonment of Overlord, but he found himself agreeing to seize Naples and the Foggia airfields. Churchill and Brooke were satisfied. An Allied army was unlikely to stop with Naples and Foggia. Once the camel’s nose got under the tent, the whole animal was likely to follow. Churchill might still get his Mediterranean strategy.

The key to Sicily was the narrow Strait of Messina (in Greek mythology guarded by Scylla and Charybdis), less than three miles wide, which divides the northeastern tip of the island from the toe of Italy (Calabria). Any supplies to and evacuation from Sicily had to pass this bottleneck.

Since the Allies held command of the sea, the way to assure the capitulation of the enemy on Sicily without firing a shot was to invade the toe of Italy. There were virtually no Axis troops in Calabria. Its occupation would have separated Sicily from the mainland and prevented the evacuation of troops from the island—except those few who might have been flown out.

This idea never received serious consideration. Part of the reason was the hesitation by the Americans to commit to an invasion of mainland Italy. But the principal reason was Eisenhower’s unwillingness to undertake any operation that was not conservative, sure, and direct. The American naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote: “The entire Husky plan was wrong…. We should have attacked the Messina bottleneck first.”

General Heinrich-Gottfried Vietinghoff-Scheel, who commanded the German 10th Army in Italy, wrote that the Allies could have seized the Strait of Messina “without any special difficulty.” If this had happened, Albert Kesselring, German commander in chief south, said it “would have turned the landing in Sicily into an overwhelming victory.”

Instead, Eisenhower approved a completely frontal attack. General Montgomery’s 8th Army was to land at the southeastern corner of Sicily, while George Patton’s U.S. 7th Army was to come ashore immediately to the west.

This was where the Italians and Germans expected the invasion, and where the Axis commander, Italian General Alfredo Guzzoni, had posted his 275,000 men in eight coastal divisions (static forces made up mostly of Sicilian conscripts), and four mobile Italian divisions, with two German divisions (the 15th Panzergrenadier and the Hermann Göring Panzer) divided into five mobile reserve groups.

Hitler had not sent more troops to Sicily because he suspected Mussolini might be overthrown and the Italians sue for peace. He also was not sure the Allies would land in Sicily. To him Sardinia was a more logical target. Possession of this island would provide an easy jump to Corsica just to the north, and from Corsica the Allies could strike at southern France or northern Italy. He also thought the Allies might land in Greece and push northward through the Balkans.

British intelligence officers abetted Hitler’s misconceptions. They planted papers on the body of a “British officer” washed ashore on the Spanish coast. In addition to identity papers and personal letters, the documents included a private letter written by Sir Archibald Nye, vice chief of the Imperial General Staff, to General Alexander saying the Allies intended to land in Sardinia and Greece while aiming to convince the Axis that Sicily was the target.

Nazi agents in Spain were convinced the letter was authentic. Though it didn’t sway Kesselring or the Italian chiefs, it made a strong impression on Hitler. He sent 1st Panzer Division from France to Greece, the 90th Panzergrenadier Division to Sardinia, and Kurt Student’s 11th Air Corps of two parachute divisions to the south of France to intervene when the Allies invaded Sardinia.

It took Eisenhower and his senior generals until May 13 to finish their plans. Yet, since only one of the divisions intended for Husky was being used in the last stages of the Tunisian campaign, the invasion could have followed directly on the heels of the Axis surrender. If this had happened, the attackers would have found the island virtually bereft of defenders and could have seized it almost without casualties.

Because of extreme caution, therefore, the Allied invasion of Sicily was delayed to July 10, 1943. The only surprise was that a storm unexpectedly blew up, and the members of the Italian coastal divisions, who were not much interested in fighting anyway, went to sleep thinking the Allies would wait for good weather.

Four British divisions landed on a forty-mile stretch on the southeastern corner of Sicily around Syracuse and Cape Passero, while four American divisions landed to the west on a forty-mile front across the beaches around Scoglitti, Gela, and Licata. A total of 150,000 troops came ashore on the first three days; ultimately there were 478,000: 250,000 British, 228,000 American.

The American landing was made possible by use of new LST (Landing Ships Tank) and DUKW amphibious trucks.

Italian naval response was weak. Only four ships and two LSTs were lost—to submarine attack. Meanwhile Allied aerial superiority was so great (4,000 aircraft against 1,500 German and Italian) that enemy bombers had withdrawn to central Italy.

The worst Allied losses were in airborne troops. Parts of the British 1st and the American 82nd Airborne Divisions were to land inland and seize key points. But high winds scattered the Americans over a fifty-mile radius and caused 47 of 134 British gliders to fall into the sea.

On none of the landing sites did the Italians offer any resistance. General Sir Harold Alexander, in command of land forces, wrote: “The Italian coastal divisions, whose value had never been rated very high, disintegrated almost without firing a shot, and the field divisions, when they were met, were also driven like chaff before the wind. Mass surrenders were frequent.”

From the first day of the invasion, the whole burden of the defense fell on the Germans. Only one major counterattack occurred. The Hermann Göring Division had a force of 56-ton Tiger tanks around Caltagirone, twenty miles inland from the Gela plain. On the morning of July 11, the Tigers overran outposts of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division and those of the 45th Infantry Division, reaching the sand dunes bordering the beaches. It was scary, but well-directed naval gunfire broke up the attacks.

With Italian forces surrendering to any Allied troops that appeared, the Germans withdrew to the northeast corner of Sicily to cover the routes to Messina. They formed a powerful defensive line around the Mount Etna massif with the help of two additional divisions, all under a new headquarters (14th Panzer Corps) commanded by Valentin Hube.

As Montgomery attacked northward up the east coast, Patton’s 7th Army swung around to the west and central portions of the island, captured Palermo, all with little or no opposition, and drove along the north coast toward Messina.

As Sicily was being overrun, the Italians ousted Mussolini on July 25 and turned the government over to the king, Victor Emanuel, and Marshal Pietro Badoglio. The new leaders arrested Mussolini, but to deceive their German allies attested their determination to continue the war, all the while establishing secret contacts in Lisbon with the Allies.

President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were holding their Quebec conference (code-named Quadrant, August 14–24, 1943), and they superintended the negotiations. Churchill was hoping Mussolini’s ouster would turn the Americans away from Overlord and lead to a move through northern Italy into southern France or toward Vienna. He also sought to wrest Greece and the Balkans from the Germans. He especially wanted landing craft to attack the Italian-ruled island of Rhodes in the Dodecanese Islands in the eastern Mediterranean. On this, Churchill ran up against adamant opposition from General Marshall.

“Forgive me,” Marshall told the prime minister, “but no American soldier is going to die on that goddamn beach.”

At Quadrant the western Allies agreed to opportunistic moves in the Mediterranean, but Overlord was to receive absolute priority.

Hitler recognized that the Italians were going to quit and, equally in secret, set in motion Operation Axis to take over Italy. Marshal Rommel rushed eight divisions into northern Italy—ostensibly to allow the Italian troops there to move south to confront the Allies—and secured the passes through the Alps as well as all key locations in the region. Hitler directed Hube’s troops in Sicily to delay but to evacuate as quickly as possible through Messina. He also ordered SS Captain Otto Skorzeny to spy out the place Il Duce was being held and free him.

General Hube conducted highly effective delaying actions, causing heavy Allied casualties, while, over six days and seven nights, Fregattenkapitän Gustav von Liebenstein, under the cover of German fighter aircraft and strong antiaircraft artillery, evacuated 40,000 German and 60,000 Italian soldiers. Although the Italians left nearly all their equipment, the Germans took off 10,000 vehicles, forty-seven tanks, ninety-four guns, and 17,000 tons of supplies.

On August 17, the Americans and the British arrived in a Messina empty of enemy forces.

Since only about 60,000 Germans had moved into Sicily while 13,500 wounded were evacuated by air and 5,500 were captured, relatively few Germans were killed. Total British casualties were almost 13,000, American 10,000—about 5,500 killed all told.

Marshal Badoglio was getting frightened that the Germans might seize him and the king, and demanded a major landing of Allied paratroops on Rome as a condition of Italian surrender. This was far too dangerous for Eisenhower, since Hitler had moved Kurt Student with his 2nd Parachute Division and the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division close to Rome. Student had instructions to disarm all Italian forces around the capital as soon as Badoglio announced surrender.

It is a comment on Allied and German attitudes that although Badoglio had five Italian divisions at Rome, the Allies had no confidence they could protect a landing site, while Student was sure his much smaller force could eliminate them.

Eisenhower demanded an immediate cease-fire. Badoglio gave in. On September 3, 1943, near Syracuse, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, signed the capitulation document with Giuseppe Castellano, who had conducted the Lisbon negotiations. At the same moment, Victor Emanuel and Badoglio received the German ambassador to assure him that Italy would remain true to its Axis partner. On the same day British divisions crossed the Strait of Messina and formed a bridgehead on the Italian mainland. The Allies announced the cease-fire over Radio Algiers on September 8, 1943. Shortly thereafter the main invasion of Italy (Operation Avalanche) began.

Kesselring declared all of Italy to be a war theater. Rommel disarmed Italian troops in the north. Parachutists overpowered Rome. In general the Italian soldiers either took off their uniforms and faded into the population or allowed themselves to be carted off as prisoners of war. Only in the Balkans did a very few Italian units put up some resistance, none effective. It was a pathetic end to Mussolini’s dreams of a new Roman empire. Victor Emanuel, the queen, Crown Prince Umberto, Badoglio, and other members of his government fled to Brindisi on the Adriatic coast.

Most of the Italian fleet surrendered at Malta, but a newly designed German radio-guided gliding bomb sank the Italian flagship, Roma, on the way.

Meanwhile Skorzeny had tracked down the place where Mussolini was being held—on the 2,900-meter Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi Mountains seventy miles northeast of Rome. At 2 P.M. on September 12, 1943, eight gliders landed on the grounds of the Campo Imperiale Hotel. In moments seventy parachutists and Waffen-SS commandos spread out, intimidated the Italian guards, and rescued Mussolini. Shortly afterward a light Fieseler Storch landed on the grounds, picked up Mussolini and Skorzeny, and flew them to a nearby airport, where a transport carried Il Duce to Hitler at Rastenburg in East Prussia. The entire raid took less than twenty minutes.

Mussolini, a broken man, formed a “republican-socialistic government,” with Salò on Lake Garda as his “capital.” But he was a puppet of Hitler, with no power.

Two incidents in Sicily in August cast severe doubt on the capacity of George Patton as a senior commander. Visiting an evacuation hospital August 3, Patton came upon an enlisted man who had no wounds. Patton asked him where he was hurt.

“I guess I can’t take it,” the soldier replied.

Patton burst into a rage, cursed the man, slapped his face with his gloves, and stormed from the tent. The soldier had been diagnosed with dysentery and malaria. That evening Patton issued a memo to commanders berating cowards who went into hospitals “on the pretext that they are nervously incapable of combat.”

On August 10 at another hospital Patton was walking down a line of cots with a medical officer. Coming to a man shivering in bed, Patton asked what the trouble was.

“It’s my nerves,” the soldier said, and started to cry.

“Your nerves, hell,” Patton shouted. “You are just a goddamned coward, you yellow son of a bitch. You’re a disgrace to the army, and you are going back to the front to fight, although that’s too good for you. You ought to be lined up against a wall and be shot. In fact, I ought to shoot you myself right now, goddamn you.”

Patton pulled his pistol from the holster and waved it, then struck the man across the face with the gloves he held in his other hand. He ordered the medical officer to move the man out at once. “I won’t have these other brave boys seeing such a bastard babied.” He started to leave the tent, turned, and hit the weeping soldier again.

The doctor placed himself between Patton and the patient, and Patton departed. The medical authorities sent a report to Omar Bradley, commander of 2nd Corps in Patton’s army. Bradley locked the paper in his safe and said nothing. The doctors, however, also forwarded their report to Eisenhower. He sent Patton a letter that questioned his judgment and self-discipline, ordered him to explain his actions, and told him to apologize to those who witnessed the events.

When some newspaper correspondents got wind of the incident, Eisenhower asked them to withhold publication because it would require him to fire Patton. The journalists agreed. Meanwhile Patton wrote a humble letter to Eisenhower; summoned doctors, nurses, and medical personnel of the two hospitals to Palermo and expressed his regret; and called the two soldiers into his office, apologized, and shook hands.

Eisenhower hoped the matter had ended. In November, however, Drew Pearson, an American newspaper columnist, revealed the slapping incidents on a national radio broadcast. In the public furor that followed, many citizens demanded Patton’s dismissal. The storm slowly subsided. But when Eisenhower named the army group commander to direct American ground troops going into Normandy, he selected Bradley. Patton stayed for months in Sicily without a job, but on January 22, 1944, Eisenhower ordered him to Britain to take command of the U.S. 3rd Army—and delivered him from disgrace.