WAllies skip Italy

[Booster Gold]

The other day I wandered across something or other about how difficult the Italian campaign was in WW2 and it got me thinking:

As Italy was a sideshow as far as belligerents go, and Churchill really had to press for a campaign, and the Soviets were screaming for a proper second front, and for numerous other reasons, what happens if Churchill loses the argument? What if the Allies see Italy as it was, a lot of pain for very little gain, and decide to skip it. Is that feasible? Can the Wallies invade France in 1943 or anywhere else? If Europe is still off limits based on their timetable, what do the Wallies do?

 

[torten]

The other day I wandered across something or other about how difficult the Italian campaign was in WW2 and it got me thinking:

As Italy was a sideshow as far as belligerents go, and Churchill really had to press for a campaign, and the Soviets were screaming for a proper second front, and for numerous other reasons, what happens if Churchill loses the argument? What if the Allies see Italy as it was, a lot of pain for very little gain, and decide to skip it. Is that feasible? Can the Wallies invade France in 1943 or anywhere else? If Europe is still off limits based on their timetable, what do the Wallies do?

Scilly is going to happen as it gets rid of Mussolini and secures the med, and taking Sardinia and Corsica provides you with Airbases, as well as shutting up Charles de Gaulle for two minutes as Corsica is part of France proper. The only thing is, ITTL Corsica and Sardinia were taken rather easily. This leaves a awful lot of soldiers with nothing to do. Churchill will almost certainly lobby for a invasion of Crete and if that works, the Germans could worn down by island hopping in Greece, Landing craft permitting. By the middle of 1944, people will be lobbying for something in Italy to stop it from getting totally overrun by communists (Italian Communist party was very strong ITTL.)

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Their shipping situation is worse because they need to keep routing their convoys around Africa, rather than moving through the Mediterranean. Its a stupid move not to in 1943, especially because its a difficult theater for the Germans to supply and very easy for the Allies, so they can crush the Germans under weight of material very easily, rather than say going against France or Norway in 1943. Plus it opens up Romania to bombing and OSS/SOE ops in the Balkans. Not to mention the bombing options against what was then too far away in Austria a major source of German oil and new factories with high capacity that were supposed to come online in 1943 but were instead bombed from Allied bases in occupied Italy.

 

[Gannt the chartist]

A 1943 invasion of France is not going to happen, essentially its a proposal by the US army for the British to invade continental Europe fight for a year or so without support and that's not going to fly at all.

As it is Italy is in casualty terms a net gain for Allies, sucks 8 Panzer or Panzer Grenadier divisions into Italy, and makes best use of Allied troops.

Worth Remembering that the NZ/Indian/Polish/Jewish/Brazilian/South African and Italian troops whatever their qualities are not useable in a main theatre, the replacement rates are too high and their national reserve levels too low or too far away.

 

[ivanotter]

Brooke wanted it as a strategic trap. Loads of German troops in Italy meant far fewer in France when the invasion would be launched.

North-South transport is not great from Italy.

There is also the little added benefit: Britain had the upper-hand in the Med.

By just threatening an invasion somewhere, Kesselring would be kept in the dark and would have to deploy forces all over.

The minute a landing is taking place, the surprise is over and it is possible to either allocate more or use the German forces somewhere else - France.

Unfortunately, US (Marshal and King) insisted in the withdrawal of landing ships; hence it did not work 100% after all.

Going for France in 1943 would just mean disaster.

Ivan

 

[Simon]

What if the Allies see Italy as it was, a lot of pain for very little gain...

Was it? Whilst it was a hard fight aside from the enemy troops it tied down in Italy itself before the Italians switched sides they had a large number of divisions garrisoning the Balkans and Greece, afterwards the Germans had to replace them stretching their resources even further. As Gannt the Chartist says if they don't invade Italy then they have a large number of troops with nothing to do since the British won't agree to an invasion of North-West Europe in 1943, and if Stalin was moaning about the invasion of Italy being small beer he's going to be even more contemptuous of small-scale operations around Crete, Rhodes and the Dodecanese.

Scilly is going to happen as it gets rid of Mussolini and secures the Mediterranean...

Will it? IIRC he wasn't overthrown until the Allies invaded the Italian mainland. Sicily might have brought events to the brink but without the invasion to tip things over the edge I'm not so sure that Italy would seek a separate peace.

 

[spkaca]

The short answer - not the whole answer, but sufficient - is: air superiority. Permit me to rhapsodise the North American P-51D Mustang. A mass-produced, high-performance, long-range fighter that became available late 1943/ early 1944, at which point Luftwaffe losses became unsustainable. In 1943, the Allies could have had air superiority over the invasion area. That might have been enough. In 1944, they had it over the whole of Western Europe. The effects of this I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Long ago I read a book by John Grigg called '1943, the victory that never was'. It argued that the Allies should have mounted an invasion of NW Europe in 1943, and spent entire chapters discussing the political/ diplomatic machinations concerning the French - as though de Gaulle was the main problem facing the Allies, rather than the Wehrmacht. Discussion of the air problem was confined IIRC to a single sentence. I thought at the time, and still do, that this was a weird sense of priorities. The point is, any discussion of amphibious (indeed any military) operations post-1939 must start by talking about air power - not the whole story, but it shapes the battlefield, and the entire war.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

The short answer - not the whole answer, but sufficient - is: air superiority. Permit me to rhapsodise the North American P-51D Mustang. A mass-produced, high-performance, long-range fighter that became available late 1943/ early 1944, at which point Luftwaffe losses became unsustainable. In 1943, the Allies could have had air superiority over the invasion area. That might have been enough. In 1944, they had it over the whole of Western Europe. The effects of this I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Long ago I read a book by John Grigg called '1943, the victory that never was'. It argued that the Allies should have mounted an invasion of NW Europe in 1943, and spent entire chapters discussing the political/ diplomatic machinations concerning the French - as though de Gaulle was the main problem facing the Allies, rather than the Wehrmacht. Discussion of the air problem was confined IIRC to a single sentence. I thought at the time, and still do, that this was a weird sense of priorities. The point is, any discussion of amphibious (indeed any military) operations post-1939 must start by talking about air power - not the whole story, but it shapes the battlefield, and the entire war.

Williamsom Murray in his book Strategy for Defeat about the decline of the Luftwaffe makes a very convincing case that the Luftwaffe was killed on the periphery, especially in the Mediterranean in 1943; by 1944 when the P-51D showed up the Luftwaffe was effectively a shell and by coincidence and due to its range as an SE fighter was present when the Luftwaffe imploded. It helped, but the Luftwaffe would have died anyway nearly about the same time just due to the existing attrition rates the P-47 and -38 were inflicting. The P-51D was certainly good, but all it really did was slightly hasten the inevitable collapse of the LW fighter arm. The conditions for a successful Normandy were set in the Mediterranean in 1943, as it really ground down the LW at the end of its supply lines and had all sorts of other positive effects on the war effort that going for Normandy in 1943 would have been the worse choice.

 

[alexcoppo]

I have always thought that the smart strategy for the allies would have been to occupy Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Crete. After this, mount continuous raids upon the interminable french/italian/yugoslav/greek coastline forcing the germans and italians to either let the allies wreck havoc anywhere or man the coasts, sucking literally millions of soldiers into static defences.

 

[Athelstane]

Long ago I read a book by John Grigg called '1943, the victory that never was'. It argued that the Allies should have mounted an invasion of NW Europe in 1943, and spent entire chapters discussing the political/ diplomatic machinations concerning the French - as though de Gaulle was the main problem facing the Allies, rather than the Wehrmacht. Discussion of the air problem was confined IIRC to a single sentence. I thought at the time, and still do, that this was a weird sense of priorities. The point is, any discussion of amphibious (indeed any military) operations post-1939 must start by talking about air power - not the whole story, but it shapes the battlefield, and the entire war.

I had a copy of that book once, some years ago - disappeared in a move, and I have not been able to find it available for purchase since...

His most valid points were that the Atlantic Wall was mostly unbuilt in the spring of 1943, and that the Germans would have had longer interior lines to contend with, given that they controlled more territory in 1943 than 1944. But my recollection is that he made little effort to come to grips with the issues of manpower, airpower, and amphibious assault vehicles.

It's just not in the cards to invade France in 1943. That being the case, the Allies have to do *something* in the European Theater in 1943 once Tunis is taken. My main beef with Italy was not whether it was wrong to invade, but to spend so much blood and treasure trying to drive the Germans back, rather than simply dig in once the main German line was reached. That still forces Hitler to commit major forces to Italy, you've still knocked Mussolini from power, and you still have southern Italy from which to run bombers.

 

[Zheng He]

Williamsom Murray in his book Strategy for Defeat about the decline of the Luftwaffe makes a very convincing case that the Luftwaffe was killed on the periphery, especially in the Mediterranean in 1943; by 1944 when the P-51D showed up the Luftwaffe was effectively a shell and by coincidence and due to its range as an SE fighter was present when the Luftwaffe imploded. It helped, but the Luftwaffe would have died anyway nearly about the same time just due to the existing attrition rates the P-47 and -38 were inflicting. The P-51D was certainly good, but all it really did was slightly hasten the inevitable collapse of the LW fighter arm. The conditions for a successful Normandy were set in the Mediterranean in 1943, as it really ground down the LW at the end of its supply lines and had all sorts of other positive effects on the war effort that going for Normandy in 1943 would have been the worse choice.

Took two classes from him when I was an undergraduate back in the day. Great professor...

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Took two classes from him when I was an undergraduate back in the day. Great professor...

Cool, what classes were they?

 

[Zheng He]

Cool, what classes were they?

History of World War I and History of World War II.

 

[cra0422]

Unfortunately, the Western Allies would need to deal with Italy. The Americans invaded North Africa because it was the only place they could fight the Germans and have a chance at winning in 1942, as well as "free up the Med for shipping" as we've already discussed. By 1943, they didn't have the equipment or the troops (both in training and numbers) to launch an invasion that wouldn't be annihilated on the beaches.

I will argue that the strategy in the Mediterranean could have gone better.

• Option A) skip Sicily to invade Sardinia & Corsica which would have bypassed the defensive positions at Cassino and spread the Axis forces along hundreds of miles of coastline in northern and central Italy, inevitably trapping all German forces south of the invasion site. BTW, this would allow for an invasion of Anzio in the summer of 1943 rathernthan in January of 1944.
• Option B) invade Sicily but instead of invading at Salerno invade at Civitaveccia, which again bypasses the defensive positions at Cassino and puts Rome within easy striking range.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Scilly is going to happen as it gets rid of Mussolini...

Will it? IIRC he wasn't overthrown until the Allies invaded the Italian mainland. Sicily might have brought events to the brink but without the invasion to tip things over the edge I'm not so sure that Italy would seek a separate peace.

Mussolini was deposed on 24 July 1943, nearly a month before the Allies took Messina on 17 August.

The Italians opened negotiations for surrender in mid August, and the armistice agreement was signed on 3 September. That same day, British 8th Army crossed from Messina to Calabria. But the armistice was not announced until 8 September, when the main invasion at Salerno went in.

 

[MattII]

Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica could be done, and might in fact be useful, it would after all give experience that could be later used in the pacific, plus it's easy to spoof the Axis, as Italy is a much more obvious choice after Sicily than Sardinia. Sardinia and Corsica also force the Germans to spread their forces thin, as the allies can legitimately threaten a landing anywhere from Marseilles to Rome

 

[Gannt the chartist]

But the Italian Surrender means Sardinia and Corsica with their large Italian Garrisons fall to the Allies anyway.

 

[usertron2020]

Scilly is going to happen as it gets rid of Mussolini and secures the med, and taking Sardinia and Corsica provides you with Airbases, as well as shutting up Charles de Gaulle for two minutes as Corsica is part of France proper. The only thing is, ITTL Corsica and Sardinia were taken rather easily. This leaves a awful lot of soldiers with nothing to do. Churchill will almost certainly lobby for a invasion of Crete and if that works, the Germans could worn down by island hopping in Greece, Landing craft permitting. By the middle of 1944, people will be lobbying for something in Italy to stop it from getting totally overrun by communists (Italian Communist party was very strong ITTL.)

Worries about The Commies aren't going to be a problem for FDR. He wasn't Harry S. Truman. He thought it more important that the Communists were the absolute backbone of resistance movements in most lands.

Crete?

"God forbid that I should try to dictate, but not one American soldier is going to die on that beach!" George Marshall

Even Churchill backed off in the face of that statement.

Their shipping situation is worse because they need to keep routing their convoys around Africa, rather than moving through the Mediterranean. Its a stupid move not to in 1943, especially because its a difficult theater for the Germans to supply and very easy for the Allies, so they can crush the Germans under weight of material very easily, rather than say going against France or Norway in 1943. Plus it opens up Romania to bombing and OSS/SOE ops in the Balkans. Not to mention the bombing options against what was then too far away in Austria a major source of German oil and new factories with high capacity that were supposed to come online in 1943 but were instead bombed from Allied bases in occupied Italy.

Agreed. Landing in the Balkans would have been doing just what Hitler wanted: No easy terrain for the attacker to fight in clean to Northern Yugoslavia and Hungary, whereupon you run into the Alps and Slovakia.

Williamsom Murray in his book Strategy for Defeat about the decline of the Luftwaffe makes a very convincing case that the Luftwaffe was killed on the periphery, especially in the Mediterranean in 1943; by 1944 when the P-51D showed up the Luftwaffe was effectively a shell and by coincidence and due to its range as an SE fighter was present when the Luftwaffe imploded. It helped, but the Luftwaffe would have died anyway nearly about the same time just due to the existing attrition rates the P-47 and -38 were inflicting. The P-51D was certainly good, but all it really did was slightly hasten the inevitable collapse of the LW fighter arm. The conditions for a successful Normandy were set in the Mediterranean in 1943, as it really ground down the LW at the end of its supply lines and had all sorts of other positive effects on the war effort that going for Normandy in 1943 would have been the worse choice.

Um, no. The P-38, P-47, and the RAF inventory lacked the ability to range over the whole of Germany, making it possible for the Luftwaffe to disengage from the Western Allies in the air in order to replenish their ranks, resources, and aircraft. The P-51D represented not only a plane that could prevent that, but defeat the best the Germans had to boot at the same time.

One could argue the Luftwaffe was never the same again time after time in WWII. Going from the Med in 1943 back to Barbarossa all the way to the Battle of Britain.

It was the P-51D that helped make the difference between air superiority-enemy performing air missions at tremendous cost, like the Anglo-French in 1940-and air supremacy, where the enemy can't even take off from their own airfields without risking being shot up on the ground, local AA defenses notwithstanding. And if they do, trying to engage the enemy over enemy air space is all but suicide. In circumstances of air supremacy, like in 1944-45 Western and Southern Europe, the Luftwaffe became only a rumor.

Unfortunately, the Western Allies would need to deal with Italy. The Americans invaded North Africa because it was the only place they could fight the Germans and have a chance at winning in 1942, as well as "free up the Med for shipping" as we've already discussed. By 1943, they didn't have the equipment or the troops (both in training and numbers) to launch an invasion that wouldn't be annihilated on the beaches.

I will argue that the strategy in the Mediterranean could have gone better.

• Option A) skip Sicily to invade Sardinia & Corsica which would have bypassed the defensive positions at Cassino and spread the Axis forces along hundreds of miles of coastline in northern and central Italy, inevitably trapping all German forces south of the invasion site. BTW, this would allow for an invasion of Anzio in the summer of 1943 rathernthan in January of 1944.
• Option B) invade Sicily but instead of invading at Salerno invade at Civitaveccia, which again bypasses the defensive positions at Cassino and puts Rome within easy striking range.

Salerno-Sardinia-Corsica-Genoa-Southern France would be better. Genoa outflanks the whole of the Italian Boot, IF it can be done operationally.

 

[bsmart]

No one seems to have mentioned the main reason that Italy HAD to be invaded.

The Allies needed to free up passage thru the Med to deliver supplies to the CBI theater and to the USSr via Iran. This meant that at least southern Italy had to be neutralized so it could not be used to attack shipping thru the central Med.

Once the Allies cleared Italy past Naples they could have stopped, dug in and stopped. The only reason to push past the Cassino line was politics about capturing Rome.

 

[torten]

No one seems to have mentioned the main reason that Italy HAD to be invaded.

The Allies needed to free up passage thru the Med to deliver supplies to the CBI theater and to the USSr via Iran. This meant that at least southern Italy had to be neutralized so it could not be used to attack shipping thru the central Med.

Once the Allies cleared Italy past Naples they could have stopped, dug in and stopped. The only reason to push past the Cassino line was politics about capturing Rome.

Capturing Scilly would achieved almost total domination of the med. Anyway, most of the Italian fleet sailed to malta in September 1943. Also further to the earlier topic, Roosevelt might not have been worried about commies, but Churchill was and a invasion at the top of the boot would cut off a awful lot of Germans from going to france.