The Allies before the Gothic Line

In mid-August 1944 the Allied armies in Italy came to a halt before the last great belt of German fortifications in the Apennines – the Gothic Line. General Mark Clark’s US Fifth Army stood on the lower Arno, from near Pisa to the western outskirts of Florence; the British XIII Corps was fighting in Florence and in the hills to the east of it; on the Adriatic, General Władysław Anders’s Polish II Corps had reached the river Cesano and was approaching the Metauro. Beyond these rivers, from a dozen to several dozen kilometres further on, began the main German defensive position shielding the Po Valley.

Popular chronologies of the war record that on 15 August the Allies “reached the Gothic Line, the last strategic German position in northern Italy”. Both parts of this statement need qualifying. 15 August was not a day of any particular breakthrough: at that time the Allies stood on the Arno and on the Adriatic, in front of the Gothic Line’s forward positions, and the attack on the line itself – Operation Olive – began only on 25 August on the Adriatic, when the Polish II Corps, the Canadians and the British crossed the Metauro. Nor was the Gothic Line the last German position in Italy: within its depth lay a second belt of fortifications, and behind it the Germans built more – in 1945 they were still defending, among other places, the Genghis Khan Line on the river Idice in front of Bologna, while further north positions were being prepared on the Adige and at the foot of the Alps.

Fortifications in the Apennines

The Germans began building fortifications across the Italian peninsula in the autumn of 1943, after Italy’s exit from the war. The work was carried out by the Organisation Todt, which employed – largely by compulsion – more than 15,000 Italian labourers. The position, named the Goten-Stellung, ran from the Ligurian coast between La Spezia and Massa across the ridges of the Northern Apennines (PL) to the Adriatic near Pesaro, along the valley of the river Foglia. It was some 320 kilometres long; its depth is given in various studies as anything from a dozen or so to about 30 kilometres.

In June 1944 Hitler ordered the name to be changed. He feared that if the Allies broke through a line named after the Goths, enemy propaganda would turn it into a symbolic victory. Kesselring therefore renamed the fortifications the Green Line (Grüne Linie), but the old name survived in the historiography, especially Italian and Allied. According to English-language studies, by the end of August 2,375 machine-gun posts, 479 positions for anti-tank guns, mortars and assault guns, and more than 3,600 shelters and dugouts had been built in the German Tenth Army’s sector, and more than 72,000 anti-tank and 23,000 anti-personnel mines had been laid. Not everything was finished, however: of the planned tank turrets set in concrete, only four were ready. The work was hampered by partisans and – according to the same studies – also by Italian cement suppliers and labourers who deliberately worked slowly or badly.

A pursuit that did not destroy Kesselring

After the breaking of the Gustav Line and the capture of Monte Cassino in May 1944 and the Allied entry into Rome on 4 June, General Harold Alexander’s armies advanced northwards for two months. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, however, did not allow himself to be encircled. His Tenth Army under General Heinrich von Vietinghoff and Fourteenth Army under General Joachim Lemelsen fell back in good order, making successive stands on the Trasimene Line at the end of June and the Arno Line in July. Every week of this delaying defence gave the Organisation Todt time to extend the fortifications in the Apennines.

On the western flank the Americans took Livorno on 19 July and approached Pisa; in the centre British, New Zealand and South African troops entered southern Florence on 4 August, while fighting for the northern part of the city, with the involvement of Italian partisans, was still going on. On the Adriatic the Polish II Corps, which had taken the port of Ancona on 18 July, pressed on north along coastal Highway 16. The 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division seized a small bridgehead over the river Misa, and from 9 August the 5th Kresowa Infantry Division went back into action, supported by the tanks of the British 7th Hussars; in a night attack it took Monterado and reached the river Cesano. By mid-August Polish units were approaching the Metauro, beyond which, on the river Foglia, the fortifications of the Gothic Line began.

The lost divisions

Alexander’s plans were thwarted by a decision taken far from Italy. At the beginning of July the Americans, against the wishes of Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff, pushed through a landing in the south of France – Operation Anvil, renamed Dragoon. For its sake the US VI Corps and the French Expeditionary Corps were withdrawn from the Italian front – seven experienced divisions in all, including the French mountain troops, the best prepared for fighting in the Apennines – together with a large part of the air forces. According to American figures, the strength of the Fifth Army fell by 5 August from 249,000 to 153,000 men. The Allies had about 18 divisions in Italy against 14 divisions of the German Tenth and Fourteenth Armies, behind which stood between four and seven divisions in reserve.

The landing went ahead on 15 August: that day the Allies landed on the coast of Provence between Toulon and Cannes, opening Operation Dragoon. From then on, in Washington’s eyes, the Italian front was a secondary theatre whose task was above all to tie down as many German divisions as possible. Churchill and the British, on the other hand, hoped that a rapid breakthrough of the Gothic Line would open the way across the Po Valley towards the Ljubljana Gap near Ljubljana, and on into Austria and Hungary – partly to forestall the Red Army in Central Europe.

Alexander’s plan: from the centre to Olive

The original plan for the attack on the Gothic Line was drawn up by Alexander’s chief of staff, General John Harding. It envisaged a thrust in the centre, from the Florence area through the Apennine passes to Bologna – the shortest route to the Po Valley, where most of the Allied forces were in any case concentrated. A deception operation was to convince the Germans that the main blow would fall on the Adriatic.

On 4 August Alexander met the commander of the British Eighth Army, General Oliver Leese, who did not support the plan. He argued that after the departure of the French mountain troops there was no one to fight in high mountains, and that the Eighth Army’s strength lay in the cooperation of infantry, armour and artillery, which could not be exploited in the Apennines. He proposed a surprise attack along the Adriatic coast, where the mountains run down towards the sea and end in a narrow plain. Some historians also see in this Leese’s reluctance to work alongside Clark after their quarrels over the capture of Rome. Alexander did not want to impose a plan on his subordinate against his convictions, and accepted the proposal.

So Operation Olive was born. The Eighth Army was to strike along the Adriatic towards Pesaro and Rimini and draw the German reserves there; once Kesselring had weakened his centre, Clark’s Fifth Army, reinforced by the British XIII Corps, was to attack through the Apennines north of Florence towards Bologna. The two thrusts were to close like pincers in the Po Valley. The precondition was the transfer of most of the Eighth Army from central Italy to the Adriatic coast, across the mountains and along damaged roads. In mid-August this regrouping was in full swing: by night, in strict secrecy and with the appearance maintained that the divisions were still in their old positions, the Canadian I Corps and the British V Corps moved east. It took about two weeks. Another deception operation, Ulster, was this time meant to convince the Germans that the main blow would come in the centre.

On the other side

Kesselring was pleased with the progress of the work on the Gothic Line, especially in the Adriatic sector, where – as he wrote – he awaited an attack “with a certain confidence”. Facing the Eighth Army was the Tenth Army’s LXXVI Panzer Corps, which initially had only three divisions; opposite the Poles by the sea stood the 1st Parachute Division, the same one that had defended Monte Cassino in May. The German command failed to detect the Eighth Army’s regrouping. When the attack began on 25 August, both Vietinghoff and the commander of the 1st Parachute Division, General Richard Heidrich, were on leave, and as late as 27 August Kesselring considered the attack a diversion. Only on 28 August, when Leese’s order of the day fell into his hands, did he realise that this was the main offensive, and he brought in three divisions from the Bologna sector.

Place in the war

On the night of 25–26 August 1944 the Eighth Army crossed the Metauro and launched Operation Olive. The Polish II Corps attacked along the coast itself; on 28 August its units reached the river Foglia, and at the turn of August and September the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division took Pesaro, breaking through the first belt of the Gothic Line in its sector. Exhausted by the fighting, the corps, which according to Polish figures had lost more than 1,350 killed, wounded and missing on the Adriatic, went into reserve at the beginning of September. The Canadians and the British continued the attack; after heavy battles for the Coriano and Gemmano ridges, Rimini fell only on 21 September. On 10 September the Fifth Army’s attack in the centre also began, and in October it stalled a dozen or so kilometres from Bologna.

The Gothic Line was thus broken, but the breakthrough did not bring a decision. The autumn rains turned the plain of the Romagna, cut by dozens of rivers, into a quagmire, and the German divisions once again withdrew in good order. The campaign in Italy dragged on through the whole winter of 1944–1945. Only the spring offensive of April 1945 – in which units of the Polish II Corps were the first to enter Bologna – shattered the German forces in the Po Valley, and on 2 May 1945 the surrender of the German Army Group C, signed at Caserta, came into effect.

For the Western Allies, the summer of 1944 settled that Italy would remain a secondary front. British hopes of a march through Ljubljana to Vienna faded by the autumn, and further forces were transferred from Italy to France and Greece. The Italian front nevertheless fulfilled the task the Americans had assigned to it: until the end of the war it tied down more than twenty German divisions in the Apennines and on the Po, which could not reinforce the defence of the Reich in either the West or the East.