How Hitler Could Have Won World War II (26 page)

The resulting collision developed into the greatest tank battle in history. SS Panzer Corps had about 400 tanks, the Russians twice as many. The surviving Tiger and Panther tanks with their 88-millimeter cannons and thick armor could engage the Russian tanks beyond the range of the T-34s.

To close the distance to a point that the T-34s could be effective, the Russians launched an almost suicidal charge across the open, rolling plain. In the terrible dust-shrouded melee that followed, the Germans lost their long-range advantage, and Russian and German armored vehicles fought it out in almost point-blank gun battles. Rotmistrov lost more than 400 of his tanks, but the Germans lost 320.

At the end of July 12 Prokhorovka was a graveyard of burned-out tanks, but the Russians had stopped the German offensive. Tank losses had been staggering. Not only had Porsche's Tigers failed, but the Panthers were breaking down because of their drive problems and were easily set ablaze because the oil and gasoline feeding systems were inadequately shielded. Of eighty Panthers at the start, only a few remained.

Hitler summoned Manstein and Kluge to his headquarters in East Prussia on July 13 and informed them that the attack must be called off at once. The Allies had landed on Sicily, and troops had to be transferred to the Mediterranean.

The Russian high command had done a superb job, yielding ground, taking the strength out of the German attack with minefields and antitank defenses. Though Russian tank losses were much greater than German, the Russians still had a great superiority in armor, and pushed 4th Panzer Army back to its start line by July 23.

The strategic initiative now passed to the Russians. They did not relinquish it for the remainder of the war.

On July 12, Markian M. Popov's Briansk Front launched an offensive against the Orel salient to the north of Kursk, and by August 5 he had pushed the Germans entirely out of the salient.

On August 4, Nikolai F. Vatutin's Voronezh Front in the southern end of the Kursk salient attacked 4th Panzer Army's weakened line, and captured Belgorod the next day. Exploiting the German exhaustion, Vatutin drove eighty miles in the next week, pushing toward the rear of Kharkov and its communications with Kiev.

In the second half of August eighteen Soviet armies pressed westward on a front of 270 miles. The main thrust was against Army Group South, which faced forces three times the size of its own.

Against Army Group Center, Popov advanced from Orel on Bryansk, ousting the Germans in mid-September, while other Russian columns squeezed them out of Smolensk on September 25. German forces slowly fell back to a chain of bastion towns along the upper Dnieper—Zhlobin, Rogachev, Mogilev, and Orsha—and Vitebsk on the Dvina.

Farther south unrelenting Russian attacks forced the German armies to abandon Kharkov and withdraw to a new line from Zaporozhye to the Black Sea.

In late September, Russians seized Zaporozhye, and imperiled 1st Panzer Army holding the Dnieper bend, 6th Army holding the region between the Dnieper and the Sea of Azov, and 17th Army, which Hitler had finally ordered out of the Kuban peninsula, but had sent into the Crimea.

Late in October Russians attacked 6th Army, which withdrew to the lower Dnieper between Nikopol and Berislav, thus cutting off 17th Army in the Crimea, and threatening 1st Panzer Army.

Early in November, Russian forces along the Dnieper swung west of Kiev, and took the city from the rear. They were now more than 300 miles west of Kursk.

The Germans were unable to contain these advances, but Hitler rejected a plan that might have stymied the Russians. Immediately after Citadel, Rommel devised a method that would have worked: building a heavily mined defensive line perhaps six miles deep protected by every antitank gun the Germans could find. Russian tanks would bog down before such a line, and from then on would have to gnaw their way forward. Meanwhile the Germans could build more minefields and antitank screens behind.

But Hitler would not listen. When Guderian proposed such a line, Hitler asserted that his generals would think of nothing save withdrawal if he permitted defensive positions in their rear. “He had made up his mind on this point,” Guderian wrote, “and nothing could bring him to change it.”

As the year 1943 ended on the eastern front, the German army had been pushed well west of most points it had reached at the end of 1941 but was holding this line precariously. Everyone from field marshal to private knew the Russian juggernaut was poised to drive the Germans out of the Soviet Union and beyond in 1944.

20 THE ASSAULT ON ITALY

IF THE ALLIES HAD LANDED AIRBORNE TROOPS AT ROME AND MADE A SEA LANDING nearby, Kesselring would have been forced to evacuate all of the southern half of Italy.

Indeed, many of the Germans in the six divisions of H.-G. Vietinghoff's 10th Army in southern Italy might have had to surrender. Siegfried Westphal, Kesselring's chief of staff, said the two German divisions around Rome were too weak to eliminate the Italian divisions there and defend against an Allied attack as well. “One could hardly bank on saving the 10th Army from being cut off,” he said. The Allies should have landed not at Salerno but at Civitavecchia, thirty miles north of Rome. “A combined sea and air landing would have taken the Italian capital inside seventy-two hours.” That would have brought all Italy south of Rome into Allied hands.

Despite Allied command of the sea, Eisenhower dared nothing so bold as a strike at Rome, because it was beyond the reach of fighter aircraft. He also ignored recommendations that the Allies land on the heel of Italy, around Taranto and Brindisi, also beyond fighter cover, but where the Germans had no troops.

Instead, Eisenhower and Alexander ordered the main thrust by General Mark Clark's 5th Army around Salerno (Operation Avalanche) on September 9, 1943—55,000 troops in the initial landing, 115,000 more to follow.

Belatedly realizing that no Germans were anywhere close to Taranto, the Allies pulled the British 1st Airborne Division out of rest camps in Tunisia, piled the men onto warships (the only vessels now available), and hurried them to the port—with only six jeeps and no tanks, artillery, or heavy weapons. The “paras” met no resistance, but were unable to exploit their success.

Kesselring, confident the Allies would do nothing daring, concentrated his slender forces around Salerno. Vietinghoff sent just two infantry battalions to slow Montgomery's entire 8th Army in its step-by-step march up the toe of Italy from the Strait of Messina. Only two roads ran up the toe, one on either side of the mountainous backbone of the peninsula, and they were easily blocked.

Of 10th Army's six divisions, four had escaped from Sicily and were badly depleted in men and equipment. Vietinghoff sent the 15th Panzergrenadier and Hermann Göring Divisions to Naples to refit, the 1st Parachute Division to the east coast to defend Foggia, and the 29th Panzergrenadier Division around the toe of Italy to face Montgomery. His other two divisions were the 16th and 26th Panzer. But the 26th had no tanks and Vietinghoff sent it temporarily to block 8th Army. This left the 16th Panzer, his best force, but with only half the strength of an Allied armored division, possessing eighty Mark IV tanks and forty self-propelled assault guns. He placed it to cover the Gulf of Salerno.

The landing was made by the U.S. 6th Corps under Ernest J. (Mike) Dawley on the right, and the British 10th Corps under Sir Richard L. McCreery on the left.

McCreery's corps landed on a seven-mile stretch of beaches just south of Salerno near the main road (Route 18) to Naples. This road crossed the low Cava Gap. Capture of that gap was important to open a way to Naples and to block German reinforcements coming from the north.

In 10th Corps were the British 46th and 56th Infantry Divisions, two British Commando outfits, and three battalions of American Rangers. The Commandos and Rangers were to seize Cava Gap and Chiunzi pass on a neighboring route.

Dawley's corps struck the beaches twenty to twenty-five miles south of Salerno around the Sele River and Paestum. The untried U.S. 36th Infantry Division was to land, with the U.S. 45th Infantry Division in reserve.

The Allies knew the Germans were expecting the invasion at Salerno because a German radio commentator forecast it two weeks before it took place. Even so, General Clark counted on catching the Germans unawares and forbade any preliminary naval bombardment, though the naval commander, American Vice Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, said, “It was fantastic to assume we could obtain tactical surprise.”

The landing craft reached the British beach with little loss because McCreery, despite Clark's order, authorized a short but intense bombardment of beach defenses by naval guns and rockets (modeled on the German
Nebelwerfer
). On the American beaches, however, the divisional commander stuck to Clark's no-fire order. In the last stage of the approach, the landing craft came under a hail of fire, and many men were killed or wounded.

In the 10th Corps sector, American Rangers secured the Chiunzi pass within three hours, but German defenders stopped Commandos trying to grab the Cava Gap.

The main British landings south of Salerno met heavy resistance from the beginning and failed to secure the first-day objectives: Salerno harbor, Montecorvino airfield ten miles east of Salerno, and the road junctions at Battipaglia and Eboli, thirteen and sixteen miles east of the town.

When 36th Division troops hit their beaches, they encountered even heavier curtains of fire, plus numerous German air attacks that struck the men as they were on shore and coming on shore. The Americans got good gunfire support from destroyers that moved in close, and it checked thrusts by German tanks. By nightfall the American left wing had pushed about five miles inland to Capaccio, but the right wing was still pinned down near the beaches.

September 10 was quiet for the Americans, for 16th Panzer Division moved to confront 10th Corps, a greater strategic menace. The Americans expanded their bridgehead and landed most of 45th Division.

Meanwhile the British 56th Division captured Montecorvino airfield and Battipaglia, but was driven back by a counterattack of two German battalions and some tanks. That night the division mounted a three-brigade attack to capture the heights of Mount Eboli, but got nowhere. The 46th Division occupied Salerno, but did not press northward.

In the American sector, 45th Division advanced ten miles inland up the east bank of the Sele River, but a counterattack by a single German battalion and eight tanks threw it back.

By the end of the third day the Allies, now with the equivalent of four divisions on the ground, still held only two shallow bridgeheads, while the Germans possessed the heights and the approach roads.

By now 29th Panzergrenadier Division had arrived, plus a battle group of two battalions and twenty tanks from the Hermann Göring Division. On September 12, 29th Panzergrenadier with part of 16th Panzer thrust between the British and Americans and drove the British out of Battipaglia. The next day, the Germans evicted the Americans from Persano, forcing a general withdrawal. In some places German armored vehicles reached within half a mile of the beach. On the same day the Hermann Göring
Kampfgruppe
sealed off Cava Gap, broke through the British line above La Molina, and got almost to Vietri before Commandos stopped it.

By the evening of September 13 the situation was so grim that Clark stopped unloading supply ships, and prepared to reembark 5th Army headquarters, while asking that all available craft be made ready to evacuate 6th Corps. The order produced consternation at Allied headquarters and brought immediate help. Matthew Ridgway, commander of 82nd Airborne Division, dropped paratroops on the American sector that evening. On September 14, Eisenhower sent all available aircraft to attack German positions and their communications, a total of 1,900 sorties in one day. At the same time, warships commenced a powerful bombardment, hitting every target they could locate. The British 7th Armored Division started landing on the British bridgehead on September 15.

There was a lull on September 15 as the Germans reorganized their bombed and shelled units, and brought up some reinforcements, including the still-tankless 26th Panzer Division, and parts of the 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions. Total German strength was only four divisions and a hundred tanks, however, while Clark had on shore on September 16 seven larger divisions and 200 tanks.

The same day the British battleships
Warspite
and
Valiant
arrived with a destroyer flotilla, and began bombarding targets a dozen miles inland with their heavy 15-inch guns.

September 16 was eventful in another way: Montgomery's 8th Army made contact in a fashion with Clark's 5th Army. A group of war correspondents got so exasperated with Montgomery's snail-like pace up the peninsula that they struck out on their own on minor roads and reached 5th Army across the fifty-mile stretch without meeting any Germans.

On the same day the Germans launched a renewed effort to drive the Allied bridgeheads into the sea. Combined artillery and naval gunfire, plus tanks, stopped the assaults, and Kesselring, seeing how close Montgomery was to 5th Army, authorized disengagement on the coastal front and gradual retreat northward.

First stage was withdrawal to the Volturno River, twenty miles north of Naples. As the Germans pulled away, a bomber disabled the
Warspite
with another of the new radio-guided gliding bombs.

Kesselring withdrew because 8th Army could move east of Salerno, and easily outflank the German positions, since Vietinghoff had only a small fraction of the combined forces of 5th and 8th Armies. Indeed, the Allies could have completely dislodged the German position in southern Italy by a swift strike up the east coast beyond Foggia to Pescara, where the main trans-peninsula road led to Rome.

But this was the sector of Bernard Montgomery, and it took him until September 20 merely to send a Canadian spearhead to Potenza, fifty miles inland from Salerno, a crossroads that opened the way through the mountains to the east coast. A hundred German paratroops blocked Potenza, causing Montgomery to mount a full brigade attack—that is, thirty times the strength of the German detachment—plus a huge air attack that killed 2,000 inhabitants of the town.

There were still virtually no German troops on the east coast, but the British 1st Airborne Division, which had landed at Taranto on September 9, had been able to take little advantage because it lacked arms and transportation. Using the half-dozen jeeps that had come on the warships, plus confiscated Italian vehicles, the paratroops occupied Brindisi and Bari, but that was all.

Even when transport and arms arrived beginning September 14, Montgomery's methodical, painstaking preparations still held the paras in check. The commander in the east, C. W. Allfrey, now reinforced with two more divisions, took until September 27 to send a small mobile force to occupy Foggia and the airfields there. Montgomery stopped any farther advance, though the only enemy element in front of Allfrey was the 1st Parachute Division with just 1,300 men at Termoli on the Biferno River, thirty miles northwest.

Early on October 3, a British Special Services brigade landed from the sea beyond Termoli, causing the German paratroops to withdraw. But Vietinghoff had already sent the 16th Panzer Division to the east coast, and early on October 5 it drove the British back to the edge of Termoli, then had to withdraw itself when attacked by the British 78th Division, also brought up to Termoli by sea.

The Germans disengaged and withdrew a dozen miles north to the next river line, the Trigno. But their counterattack had so shaken Montgomery that he paused for two weeks to shift his 5th Corps to the coast, moving 13th Corps into the mountainous interior. The 5th Corps did not break the Trigno position until November 3, when the Germans withdrew seventeen miles northward to the Sangro River.