Small Town America in World War II: War Stories from Wrightsville, Pennsylvania

PART II: THE NORTH AFRICAN AND ITALIAN THEATERS

PART II THE NORTH AFRICAN AND ITALIAN THEATERS THE NORTH AFRICAN AND ITALIAN THEATERS The invasion of North Africa beginning in November 1942 was primarily a British plan. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his military advisors feared that Germany and Japan would gain control of India, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Suez Canal. On the other hand, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his generals wanted to stage a crosschannel attack into northern France as soon as possible. They argued that the quickest way to defeat Germany was to drive across France and conquer the industrial heartland of the enemy. Such an undertaking was out of the question, asserted the British, because of the limited forces then available for such a complicated, ambitious operation. For two years, the British had been fighting a seesaw war against a combined Italo-German army in Egypt and Libya. Since they had done most of the fighting and had contributed the most manpower up to that time, the British strategy prevailed. Roosevelt finally gave in because he wanted to get American forces into action against Germany somewhere by 1942 because such a move would enable him to resist pressure to concentrate 112 SMALL TOWN AMERICA IN WORLD WAR II on the war against Japan and still permit him to maintain a Europe-first policy. Operation Torch was launched 8 November 1942, with the landing of 90,000 Allied troops, 65,000 of them Americans, on the shores of Algeria and French Morocco. According to the Anglo-American plan, the British would launch an offensive aimed at pushing the Axis forces out of Libya, while the Americans in the west would invade the Vichy French colonies of Morocco and Algeria. Then the two Allied armies, converging from the west and east, would catch the enemy in a vise and annihilate them. Instead of a quick victory, however, the Allies were bogged down in a campaign of attrition that went on through the winter of 1942 and into 1943. Finally, Allied air and sea attacks cut Axis supply lines to Tunisia, while steady ground attacks began to take their toll. On 10 May 1943, 275,000 Italian and German soldiers surrendered, securing North Africa for the Allies. Buoyed by success in North Africa, Churchill next insisted that the Western Allies follow up their victory by invading Sicily and then Italy. Referring to Italy as the “soft underbelly of the crocodile,” he convinced Roosevelt to go along with this campaign against what was perceived to be the weakest of the Axis nations. By knocking Italy out of the war, Churchill believed, the Allies could attack Germany through the proverbial back door. Italy did surrender, but this was not the “soft underbelly” that Churchill had promoted. The Germans had anticipated this strategy, so they simply took over Italy as another occupied country. For Allied soldiers, the German occupation now meant they were fighting a large, strong, well-led enemy army instead of disinterested, war-weary Italian soldiers. During the next two years, the Allies slowly slogged their way up the Italian boot against fierce resistance, often in terrible weather and mountainous terrain, with the Germans defending the high ground while gradually retreating north. The Italian Campaign turned out to be a dead end, with the establishment of air bases to attack Germany being the only positive outcome of this struggle. The commitment of THE NORTH AFRICAN AND ITALIAN THEATERS 113 troops to a theater on the periphery of Nazi-occupied Europe delayed the timetable for the Normandy invasion while at the same time engaging only a limited number of German forces. By having to postpone the cross-channel attack, the Western Allies lost an opportunity to exert greater influence in western and northern Europe. Even if the Germans had been pushed out of Italy, the greatest natural barrier in Europe, the Alps, lay between the Anglo-American armies and the Reich.1 114 SMALL TOWN AMERICA IN WORLD WAR II Notes 1. For the most recent books on both the North African and Italian campaigns, see Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2002) and The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2007). These are part of a projected three-volume series entitled The Liberation Trilogy [3.135.198.49] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 04...