Spring 1945 offensive in Italy

• 1. Introduction

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  Operation Grapeshot opened on the 6th of April 1945, when the 15th Allied Army Group unleashed a rolling artillery barrage against German positions along the Senio river in northern Italy. Within 26 days, every Axis soldier in Italy would lay down his arms. But the path from that first bombardment to the surrender signed at the Royal Palace of Caserta was anything but straightforward. How did the Allies finally crack defenses that had held through a brutal winter? Why did a shadow negotiation in Switzerland nearly unravel the whole thing? And what role did Italian partisans play in the final collapse? Those questions run through the story of the last campaign of the Italian theater.

• 2. A Winter Stalled

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  The Gothic Line had given the Allies fits since August 1944. Lieutenant-General Oliver Leese pushed the British Eighth Army up the Adriatic coastal plain, while Lieutenant General Mark Clark drove the U.S. Fifth Army through the central Apennines. Both forces managed to breach the Gothic Line's formidable fortifications, but neither broke into the Po Valley before winter made further advances impossible. Allied forward units spent those months in what the record calls "inhospitable conditions", waiting for spring. Meanwhile the command structure reshuffled substantially. Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson moved to Washington after Field Marshal Sir John Dill died on the 5th of November, and General Harold Alexander, freshly promoted to Field Marshal, took Wilson's place as Allied Supreme Commander Mediterranean on the 12th of December. Clark stepped into Alexander's old role commanding the renamed 15th Army Group, and Lieutenant General Lucian Truscott, who had led U.S. VI Corps from the Battle of Anzio through the capture of Rome and on into Alsace, returned to Italy to command the Fifth Army. On the German side, Albert Kesselring left Italy on the 23rd of March to become Commander-in-Chief West, handing responsibility to Heinrich von Vietinghoff.

• 3. Building the Force

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  Allied manpower in Italy had been repeatedly drained to feed other fronts. The 4th Indian Infantry Division shipped to Greece; the British 4th Infantry Division followed in November; the I Canadian Corps and the British 5th Infantry Division were ordered to the North West Europe Campaign at the end of January 1945. These transfers reduced the Eighth Army, now under Lieutenant-General Richard McCreery, to just seven divisions. Alexander managed to hold back two other British formations that were also scheduled to leave. To offset the losses, the Fifth Army had been reinforced between September and November 1944 with the 1st Brazilian Division, and in January 1945 with the specialist U.S. 10th Mountain Division. By the time the offensive launched, Allied strength stood at 17 divisions and eight independent brigades. That total included four Italian volunteer groups from the Italian Co-Belligerent Army, trained and equipped by the British, plus the Jewish Brigade, a British Army formation drawn from Jews of Mandatory Palestine led by British-Jewish officers. The 15th Army Group ration strength reached 1,334,000 men, with the Eighth Army at 632,980 effective and the Fifth Army at 266,883. Facing them as of the 9th of April were 21 much-weaker German divisions, four Italian National Republican Army divisions, roughly 349,000 German troops, and 45,000 Italians. An additional 91,000 Germans held the lines of communication, and Germans commanded about 100,000 Italian police.

• 4. Clark's Battle Plan

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  On the 18th of March, Clark set out his objectives in writing: "to destroy the maximum number of enemy forces south of the Po, force crossings of the Po and capture Verona." Phase I called for the Eighth Army to cross the Senio and Santerno rivers, then drive in two directions at once, one force heading for Budrio along Route 9, the Via Emilia, the other pushing northwest along Route 16, the Via Adriatica, toward the Argenta Gap. That gap was a narrow strip of dry terrain, only 3 miles wide, squeezed between Lake Comacchio on the right and marshland on the left. An amphibious assault across the lake and a parachute drop would press the flanks. The U.S. Fifth Army, operating under the codename Operation Craftsman, was to launch the Army Group's main effort at 24 hours' notice, starting two days after the Eighth Army. IV Corps would straighten the army front and pull German reserves westward; then II Corps would drive toward Bologna along Strada statale 65. Phase II envisioned the Fifth Army pushing north to link with the Eighth Army around Bondeno, completing a pocket that would trap German forces south of the Po. Phase III was the crossing itself and exploitation toward the plains. The Eighth Army portion, Operation Buckland, faced a particular obstacle: the Senio's raised artificial banks stood between 20 and 40 feet high and were honeycombed with tunnels and bunkers on both sides.

• 5. Across the Rivers

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  Before the main assault, diversionary attacks opened on the extreme flanks in the first week of April. Operation Roast sent the 2nd Commando Brigade and tanks to seize the seaward isthmus along Lake Comacchio and capture Port Garibaldi on the lake's north side. Concurrently, bombing raids including Operation Bowler struck Axis shipping on sea, canal, and river routes. The main build-up began on the 6th of April with heavy artillery bombardment of the Senio defenses. On the 9th of April, 825 heavy bombers dropped fragmentation bombs on the support zone behind the Senio; medium and fighter bombers followed. From 15:20 to 19:10 that afternoon, five barrages of 30 minutes each alternated with fighter-bomber strikes. The 8th Indian Infantry Division, the 2nd New Zealand Division, and the 3rd Carpathian Division attacked at dusk, supported by 28 Churchill Crocodiles and 127 Wasp flamethrower vehicles deployed along the New Zealanders' front. Two Victoria Crosses were won by soldiers of the 8th Indian Infantry Division in that fight. By dawn on the 11th of April, the Indians had reached the Santerno, 3.5 miles beyond the Senio. The New Zealanders crossed the Santerno at dawn on the 11th as well, and the Poles closed on it by the night of the same day. By the late morning of the 12th of April, the 8th Indian Infantry Division was established on the far bank, and the 78th Infantry Division passed through to assault Argenta. The 78th, however, was halted at Bastia on the Reno River on the 14th, the same night the 24th Guards Brigade gained only a foothold on the Fossa Marina in the amphibious flank attack.

• 6. The Plains Opened

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  The Fifth Army's assault began on the 14th of April after a bombardment by 2,000 heavy bombers and 2,000 guns. IV Corps struck on the left with the 1st Brazilian, 10th Mountain, and 1st Armored Divisions. That night, II Corps joined in: the 6th South African Armoured Division and the 88th Infantry Division advanced toward Bologna between Highways 64 and 65, while the 91st and 34th Infantry Divisions pushed along Highway 65. Progress was slow against German resistance, but German reserves were simply too thin to hold everywhere. The 10th Mountain Division broke out of the mountains on the 20th of April. Brigadier General Robinson Duff organized elements of the division into a mobile force that made a rapid thrust to the Po, bypassing disorganized German units, reaching the river on the 22nd of April. On the Eighth Army front, by the 19th of April the Argenta Gap had been forced, and the 6th Armoured Division drove northwest along the Reno toward Bondeno. Bologna fell on the morning of the 21st of April: the 3rd Carpathian Infantry Division of II Polish Corps and the Friuli Combat Group of the Italian Co-belligerent Army entered first, via Route 9, followed two hours later by II U.S. Corps from the south. The 6th Armoured Division linked with the 10th Mountain Division on the 24th of April at Finale, about 5 miles upstream from Bondeno along the Panaro river, closing the encirclement. On the 24th of April, Parma and Reggio Emilia were liberated by the partisans.

• 7. Partisans and the Collapse

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  On the 19th of April, the Italian National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy ordered a general insurrection. Fighting between Italian partisans and German and RSI forces erupted in Turin and Genoa, and in towns across Northern Italy. German forces prepared to abandon Milan. Turin was liberated by partisan fighters on the 25th of April after five days of fighting. Milan was liberated by partisans that same day; the 1st Armored Division entered the city on the 27th, and IV Corps commander Willis D. Crittenberger followed on the 30th. In Genoa, General Gunther Meinhold surrendered his 14,000 troops to the partisans on the 27th of April. South of Milan, at Collecchio-Fornovo, the Brazilian Division encircled the remaining German and RSI units and took 13,500 prisoners on the 28th. On the far right, V Corps entered Padua in the early hours of the 29th of April to find that partisans had already locked up a German garrison of 5,000 troops. IV Corps crossed the Po at San Benedetto on the 22nd, drove north and entered Verona on the 26th. XIII Corps crossed the Po at Ficarolo on the 22nd; V Corps crossed by the 25th and advanced toward the Venetian Line along the Adige.

• 8. Surrender at Caserta

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  Secret negotiations, codenamed Operation Crossword, had taken place in Switzerland in March between German and Western Allied representatives. They produced no agreement, but they did produce Soviet protests that the Western Allies were seeking a separate peace. On the 28th of April, Vietinghoff sent emissaries to Allied Army headquarters. The next day, on the 29th of April, they signed an instrument of surrender at the Royal Palace of Caserta. The document specified that hostilities would formally end on the 2nd of May. Confirmation from Vietinghoff was delayed: Kesselring had extended his authority as Commander of the West to include Italy and had replaced Vietinghoff with General Friedrich Schulz from Army Group G upon learning of the surrender plans. During a period of confusion, the news of Hitler's death arrived. Schulz obtained Kesselring's agreement to the surrender, and Vietinghoff was reinstated to see it through. On the 1st of May 1945, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, Chief of Staff of the National Republican Army, announced the unconditional surrender of the Italian Social Republic and ordered his forces to lay down their arms. Lieutenant General Max-Josef Pemsel, Chief of General Staff of Army Liguria, broadcast his own confirmation: "I confirm without reserve the words of my Commander, Marshal Graziani. You must obey his orders." The 2nd of May 1945 thus marked the end of all Axis resistance in Italy, the conclusion of a campaign that had run from the Allied landings in Sicily to the Lombard Plain.