Invasion U.S.A. Movie Download Italian
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In October, the Badoglio government declared war on Germany, but the Allied advance up through Italy proved to be a slow and costly affair. Rome fell in June 1944, at which point a stalemate ensued as British and American forces threw most of their resources into the Normandy invasion. In April 1945, a new major offensive began, and on April 28 Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and summarily executed. German forces in Italy surrendered on May 1, and six days later all of Germany surrendered.
November 6 Hitler orders Rommel to leave Italy and go to France to prepare defenses there against an expected Allied invasion. Two weeks later Kesselring becomes supreme commander of German forces in Italy.
December 2-7 At the Cairo Conference US President Franklin D. Roosevelt informs British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that he has chosen General Dwight D. Eisenhower to lead the Allied invasion of France, planned for the coming year. Italy increasingly becomes a secondary theater of Allied operations.
The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group (comprising General Mark W. Clark's American Fifth Army and General Bernard Montgomery's British Eighth Army) and followed the successful Allied invasion of Sicily. The main invasion force landed on the west coast of Italy at Salerno on September 9 as part of Operation Avalanche, while two supporting operations took place in Calabria (Operation Baytown) and Taranto (Operation Slapstick).
Following the defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa in May 1943, there was disagreement between the Allies about the next step. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted to invade Italy, which in November 1942 he had called "the soft underbelly of the axis" (American General Mark W. Clark would later call it "one tough gut").[2] Churchill noted that Italian popular support for the war was declining and an invasion would remove Italy from the Axis, thus weakening Axis influence in the Mediterranean Sea and opening it to Allied traffic. This would allow the reduction of shipping capacity needed to supply Allied forces in the Middle East and Far East theaters[3] at a time when the disposal of Allied shipping capacity was in crisis[4] and permit an increase of British and American supplies to the Soviet Union. In addition, it would tie down German forces in Italy. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, had been strongly pressuring Churchill and Roosevelt to open a "second front" in Europe, which would lessen the German Army's focus on the Eastern Front, where the bulk of its forces were fighting in the largest armed conflict in history against the Soviet Red Army.
However, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and much of the American staff wanted to avoid operations that might delay the main invasion of Europe, which had been planned as early as 1942, and which finally materialized as Operation Overlord in 1944. When it became clear that no cross-channel invasion of occupied France could be undertaken in 1943, both parties agreed to an invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, with no commitment made to follow-up operations. After the highly successful outcome of the Sicilian campaign had become clear, both Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. President, accepted the necessity of continuing to engage the Axis before the start of the campaign in northwest Europe.[5] Discussions had been ongoing since the Trident Conference held in Washington, D.C. in May, but it was not until late July, with the fall of Italian Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, that the Joint Chiefs of Staff[6] instructed General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean theater, to go ahead.[7]
Despite the overwhelming success of the Sicilian campaign, a significant number of Axis forces managed to avoid capture and escape to the mainland. Contemporary Axis propaganda portrayed this as a success. In late July, the fascist government fell and Mussolini was removed as head of the Italian government, envoys of which soon began approaching the Allies to make peace. It was believed a quick invasion of Italy might hasten Italian surrender and produce quick military victories over the German troops trapped fighting in a hostile country. However, Italian (and more so German) resistance proved relatively strong, and fighting in Italy continued even after the fall of Berlin in April 1945. In addition, the invasion left the Allies in a position of supplying food and supplies to conquered territory, a burden that would otherwise have fallen on Germany. As well, Italy occupied by a hostile German army would have created additional problems for the German commander-in-chief (C-in-C), Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring.[8]
The Allies had originally planned to cross from the island of Sicily into the "arch" area (Taranto) of the Italian mainland, envisioning a limited invasion of the Italian "boot",[9] whence they would advance up the western coast, anticipating a strong defense by both German and Italian forces. The overthrow of Mussolini made a more ambitious plan feasible, and the Allies decided to make their invasion two-pronged by combining the crossing of the British Eighth Army under General Sir Bernard Montgomery into the mainland with the simultaneous seizure of the port of Naples further north. Although the Americans were mindful of Napoleon's maxim that Italy, like a boot, should be entered from the top, the range limits of Allied fighter aircraft based in Sicily reduced their choices to two landing areas: one at the Volturno River basin to the north of Naples and the other south of Naples at Salerno (though separated from Naples by the mountainous Sorrento peninsula).[10] They chose Salerno because it was closer to their air bases. In addition, Salerno had better surf conditions for landing; its harbor allowed transport ships to anchor close to the beaches, which were narrower for the rapid construction of exit roads; and there was also an excellent[citation needed] pre-existing road network behind them.Operation Baytown was the preliminary step in the plan in which the British Eighth Army would depart from the port of Messina, Sicily, across the narrow Straits and land near the tip of Calabria (the "toe" of Italy), on 3 September 1943. The short distance meant landing craft could launch from there directly, rather than be carried by ship. The British 5th Infantry Division (Major-general Gerard Bucknall) of XIII Corps, under Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey, would land on the north side of the "toe" while its 1st Canadian Infantry Division (Major-General Guy Simonds) would land at Cape Spartivento on the south side. Montgomery was strongly opposed to Operation Baytown. He predicted it would be a waste of effort since it assumed the Germans would give battle in Calabria; if they failed to do so, the diversion would not work, and the only effect of the operation would be to place the Eighth Army 480 km (300 mi) south of the main landing at Salerno. He was proved correct; after Operation Baytown, the British Eighth Army moved 480 km north to the Salerno area against no opposition other than engineering obstacles.
On 8 September (before the main invasion), the surrender of Italy to the Allies was announced, first by General Eisenhower, then in the Badoglio Proclamation by the Italian government. Italian units ceased combat and the Navy sailed to Allied ports to surrender. The German forces in Italy were prepared for this and implemented Operation Achse to disarm Italian units and occupy important defensive positions.
Luftwaffe planes began strafing and bombing the invasion beaches shortly after 04:00 on the morning of September 9th[35] before X Corps seized the Montecorvino airfield 5 km (3 mi) inland later that day, destroying three dozen German planes. However, failure to capture the high ground inland left the airfield within easy range of German artillery and therefore unusable by Allied aircraft.[40] On September 10th, German bombers began targeting Admiral Hewitt's flagship USS Ancon while the ship was serving as General Clark's headquarters. The flagship called thirty "red alerts" over a period of 36 hours in response to 450 Luftwaffe flying sorties. Admiral Hewitt reported: "Air situation here critical."[41] The Allied aircraft carriers had intended to withdraw on September 10, but remained with the invasion so that their Supermarine Seafires could provide the air cover which invasion planners had expected to operate from Montecorvino.[42]
The decision to attack Italy was not made without debate. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) had long been clamoring for the other Allies to relieve his armies fighting Germany in the east by undertaking an Allied invasion from the west, and American commanders were reluctant to divert any resources away from Normandy. But Italy lay just across the Mediterranean from the North African theater where plentiful Allied forces could be redeployed. Churchill argued that as long as the Allies maintained the initiative, these troops could battle their way up the Italian peninsula relatively quickly and benefit the Normandy operation in the process. His view prevailed.
After victories in North Africa in May 1943, the Allied high command looked to open a second front against the Axis on the European continent. Normandy was the first choice, but British insistence that a cross-channel attack would not be successful until 1944 left the Western Allied leadership looking for alternatives. At the May 1943 Trident Conference in Washington, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided that an invasion of Sicily would be conducted to take pressure off the Eastern Front. Following the success of that attack in July 1943, known as Operation Husky, and the sudden deposition of Mussolini that same month, a separate peace with Italy became possible. Allied military planners decided to invade Italy at Salerno (Operation Avalanche) in addition to two supporting operations at Calabria (Operation Baytown) and Taranto (Operation Slapstick). Invading the Italian mainland would maintain a second front against the Axis and continue to degrade the German military machine ahead of the Normandy attack.1
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