Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, sign up at restishistorypod. Com. That's restishistorypod. Com. The Italian people have already suffered terribly. Their manhood has been cast away in Africa and Russia. Their soldiers have been deserted in the field. We have seen that ourselves. Their wealth has been squandered. Their empire has been lost, irretrievably lost. Now their own beautiful homeland must become a battlefield for German rear guards. Even more suffering lies ahead. They are to be pillaged and terrorized in Hitler's fury and revenge. Nevertheless, as the armies of the British Empire and the United States march forward in Italy as we shall march, the Italian people will be rescued from their state of servitude and degradation and will be enabled in due course to regain their rightful place among the free democracies of the modern world. That was an archive recording of Winston Churchill.

That's who it was.

It was one of the very first recordings ever made of Parliament, Tom. Parliament had just come back after the summer recess. That was the 21st of September 1943, and Churchill was reporting to the House of Commons on the state of the war in Italy, where the Allies had just made this extraordinary decision to land in Italy and to fight their way up, Tom, through what some people say Churchill called the soft underbelly of the axis. Whether he did actually say that, I imagine we would discover today.

I imagine we will. It was 80 years ago this year, was it not?

Yeah, it was not today, as you said, when we originally recorded this segment.

No, and we've recorded that because I goofed and thank you for drawing attention to it, for everyone to sneer.

And.

Laugh at me. I'm kind that way. Kind to the listeners. I think the listeners like to share and we're not perfect.

The Soft Underbelly, of course, it proves not to be a soft underbelly, does it? Actually, let me read a passage from a recently published book by an absolutely top historian of the Second World War that's just come out and is available in all good bookshops, ready for Christmas. This top historian writes, The invasion of Italy conceived in August in the heat and sun of a Mediterranean summer, and based on dubious intelligence that Hitler planned to swiftly retreat north of Rome had been launched on the understanding that its objectives would be quickly achieved, that the capital would be an Allied hands in a trice and that it would be a limited operation. But, Dominic, it proves to be none of those things, does it? No. Because it's an absolutely brutal slog. There's not enough troops, not enough kit. It's all being husbanded for D-Day. The result really is quite a forgotten campaign.

A forgotten Kwagmyer, Tom.

Well, I would say a forgotten, the Savid Storm, Dominic, which is the title of the book that I was mentioning, The Savid Storm: The Battle for Italy, 1943 by the top historian of the Second World War, who is my brother, James, James Holland, who is also, of course, presenter on the top Second World War podcast. We have ways of making you talk. He's joining us all the way from Cornwall. Hello, bro.

What's you, bro? Thanks for the intro. Great impersonation of Churchill, I thought there. Thank you. Very fine. You can come on again. It's a shame you never had to say Nazi. I always feel that should be included in any war-time impersonation.

That's the giveaway, isn't it? That he always says Nazi rather than Nazi.

But.

Can I just refocus on the Savage storm? Because also, bro, you say about this menacing, the build-up to the Allied invasion, the typhoon of steel was approaching.

Typhoon of steel.

We love a.

Gathering storm. That follows the storm, clouds of war, right? The typhoon of steel.

It absolutely does. But, bro, did I give a correct analysis of the overview of this campaign that it's meant to be easy, but actually it turns out to be a meat grinder?

Yes. The problem with it is they decide to go into Cicily, the Casabranca Conference in January 1943, and then they have a big update conference called the Trident Conference, which is in May 1943 in Washington. This is a point where they said, Right, we're absolutely going to make the priority operation Overload, which is going to be the cross-channel invasion, which at that point is settled for the first of May 1944. But obviously, as we know, ends up being the sixth of June 1944. The Americans also insist that they're going to accelerate operations in the Pacific against Japan, which is not really what British had imagined playing second fiddle was going to be when they first discussed this on America's entry into the war back in December 1941. But future operations in the Mediterranean, well, they were going to see what happened, see what happened in Cicily, see whether Cicily did prompt the Italians to get out of the war, see what the situation was and all the rest of it. But OverLord was going to be the absolute priority. The British agreed to this. They said, Okay, fine. But OverLord is a priority. Really, the Italian campaign is conducted with the tyranny of overlords, overseeing everything that they do.

The truth is, despite the incredible rate of shipbuilding, particularly assault, craft, building, which goes on in the United States and indeed in the UK as well, they simply don't have enough to do all the things they need to do because let's not forget, they're also supplying Chang's nationalists in China at this time. They're also supplying the USSR with vast amounts of supplies as well. Then you've got the Pacific, then you've got Southeast Asia, then you've got planning for Overland, which by any reckon is going to be a massive undertaking because it's against the most heavily defended part of the European coastline. Italy falls in the middle of that. But at the same time, after Cicily, you've got these vast allied forces in the Mediterranean, and it seems crazy not to do anything on land in Europe between then and the first of May 1944, when Overland is originally scheduled.

Because the United States has been in the war since the end of 1941, am I right in saying they've basically cleared the axis out of North Africa.

By this point? Yes, they have. Absolutely, on the 13th of May 1943. It's a huge, huge victory. To be perfectly honest, both the British and the Americans have worked out how to beat the Germans by this point, which is by roughly the strategy of steel, not flesh, where you use your global reach, huge amounts of mechanization, firepower, air power, a brotherhood of air, land, and sea to do the hard yards so that your foot-sluggers, the poor bloody infantry, don't have to do so much work. That's the basic idea behind it, and it really works.

But you're saying that the Allies had too many troops in the Mediterranean to do nothing and very many good strategic reasons to invade Italy, but they didn't have enough to win these prizes easily or even with anything like a guarantee of success. However, they do have a Prime Minister who has a track record in backing lunatic- Mad schemes. -ambibious schemes. So Churchill famously was the guy who backed the Glypoli campaign in the First World War that went absolutely disastrous tits up. But here he is again, and he's the great enthusiast for this, isn't he? And not only invading, but also launching an attack halfway up Italy. Why should we crawl up the leg like a harvest bug from the ankle upwards? Let us rather strike at the knee.

Yes, and that's all very pithy and all very well and everything. He's got very good reasons for saying that, actually, because if you look at the toe of Italy, just across from the straits of Messina, which are so close when you're in northeast Cicily that you can almost touch them. I mean, this is the straits of Sila and Corribitas of Humeric Fainbro, of course, but it's incredibly mountainous. And where it's mountainous, obviously, that makes it very difficult for you to pass. And one of the byproducts of this highly mechanized, highly industrialized type of war that the Allies are protracting is that it comes with lots of vehicles. And the Italian Road Network is used for the Strada Bianca, that dirt roads, which are great if you're a horse and cart or the occasional Fiat topolino, but not so great if you're the 3,000 vehicles of a single infantry division, for example. And divisions are the unit by which we judge the scale of armies in the Second World War. And if you imagine that a division is around 15,000 men, give or take, that's the scale you're talking about. Each 15,000 men strong inventory division would have 3,000 vehicles.

And you can see how you very quickly can get bogged down in this mountainous terrain, particularly with German engineers of blowing up every bridge and mountain pass and culvert.

Along the way. So we've looked at the Allies. They have all this fast ponderance of kit, basically. But could we look at the state of play with the Axis powers? So the Germans and the Italians are allies. They both have fascist leaders, except that in the summer of 1943, Mussolini gets toppled, doesn't he?

25th of July. Yeah. So what's happened to him? He's been taken prisoner, right? He's been held in secret.

Yes. And he's actually formally deposed by the King on the 26th of July. And it's easy to forget that all through the fascist era, Italy remains a monarchy. And as King Vitorio, Emmanuel III, who's a diminutive and rather feckless character, but nonetheless does get rid of Mussolini. And Marshall, Petro Badolio takes over, who's a rather sad-looking fellow and a rather sad character, if we'll stop to be able to be honest. And he takes over as Prime Minister. But if you think Petam was bad, then Badolio is even worse. He's just utterly hopeless. It's absolutely clear that the writing is on the wall and the Germans know this. This is one of the big calculations for going into Italy, of course, is that it's not just a question of getting to Rome, which is what really attracts Churchill to the whole undertaking. The main reason why the Americans buy into it is twofold, firstly, because it might draw troops away from the Western front for Operation Overlor. Again, Overlor is a priority, and away from the Eastern front at the same time because Italian troops are occupying not just Italy, but also the and the Agya and the Dodekhanees, the whole shebang, to about 32 divisions, which is a huge number of men, which the Germans will have to either abandon or replace it.

They're not going to abandon it because Hill is extremely paranoid about his southern flank, but also because their only source of real oil that they have at all is in Pluesty in Romania, which is in that realm of the Agyan and the Balkans and all the rest of it. There's no way they're going to do that. That is part of the Americans and indeed the British calculation for going into Italy. It is this preoccupation with taking over the Italian armed forces, which dominates German strategy from the moment that Mussolini is overthrown. So outwardly, they're paying lip service to their Italian ally, but secretly they're plotting to swoop in and take over absolutely everything the moment that the Italian surrender, which they're pretty certain they're going to do.

And indeed they are. Meanwhile, there are all kinds of shenanragons going on involving Italian diplomats flying off to Spain and going in disguise and trying to negotiate with British diplomats and so on. Yeah. But they arrive at a resolution that the Italians will essentially surrender unconditionally. Is that right?

Yes. That is signed at 4:30 PM on third of September 1943. But what the Allies don't do is they tell them that there will be a main invasion somewhere up the leg of Italy, but they don't tell the Italians when that's going to happen or where that's going to happen because the shortage of shipping. The problem is, unless you've got a port to go into, you need assault shipping because it's got to go straight onto beaches. So because of the shortness of shipping, they're going to do it in two hits. They're going to do a very modest eight-army crossing with just two divisions and 30,000 men, going across the straights and massiner into the tow to distract the Germans and the Italians and all the rest.

Which they do on the third of September, the same day as the armistice is announced.

It's the very same day. So early that morning that the surrender has been signed, they've gone in. And that's one of the reasons why the Italians sign it because clearly the Allies are serious because they've already crossed the trace, Masina. But on that same day, they promised that there's going to be a subsequent bigger invasion somewhere else. And the Italians get it into their head that it's going to be in the middle of September and it's going to be somewhere around Rome. I mean, anyone who knows anything about modern warfare would know that you can't do an amphibious invasion without air cover, and that Rome is just simply too far from Allied bases in Cicily and Malta and so on. So that's a ludicrous presumption, and there is no reason at all why the Allies would land in the middle of September. So this is just a false assumption by the Italians, but plays havoc with what happened subsequently.

So you're a military historian, not a historian of.

Italy, but a historian of war, Dominic, historian of not a military historian.

What's the difference?

A massive difference because military is just about Brigades and divisions and stuff, whereas a war historian is about everything: economic, political, social, the whole spank.

Tom, did you know this?

Yeah, I did. Of course I did.

I don't believe you. Five hundred episodes, you've never.

Mentioned it. A military historian is retired Colonel Smiths who's written a book about the Third Brigade in Dunkirk in 1940 or something.

James, what do people in Italy think of all this? Ordinary Italians, they were in the war, they were on the side of the axis. They're all gung ho, let's build a new empire. It's all gone horribly wrong in North Africa. Suddenly, Armistice, Mezzanini has been out of action for months, and Armistice plus the Allies are now landing. What does Roberto Donadoni? I mean, obviously he played for Italy in 1990, so I don't know why he's alive in 1943.

But had he been? He's in the time travel machine.

Yeah, exactly. What does the Roberto Donadoni of 1943 think of this?

Well, most Italians are absolutely ecstatic about it and think that this means the war is over. Of course, the Italian leadership don't realize that they're between a rock and a hard place because get it wrong with the Germans, they're all going to be rounded up and executed. But on the other hand, they want the Allies to come to their rescue, and it's a very difficult line to juggle.

But, bro, just to intrude? Yeah. Because I love this detail so much. The Germans have flooded Italy, haven't they? With German troops. They call this Operation Alarik, after the Gothic leader who sacks Rome. Yep.

I love that. They do. Then there's a different one. It's Constantine for Greece and the Balkans. But then beginning of September, they had the is his name to just Operation Axis, which is wonderfully ironic as well. But yes, most Italians are absolutely delighted about it. And even once the Allies do land and get a foothold in Italy and start destroying vast numbers of villages and towns, they're still cheering them as they're coming into the towns. I mean, the bottom line is they're absolutely impoverished and they're just absolutely had it up to here with the war. They're just not interested anymore.

But James, are these not the same people who two years earlier would have been cheering the news of Italian advances and Italian victories?

Absolutely. I mean, have they just turned their coats.

Yep, they turned very quickly. I mean, without wanting to be sweeping in my judgment of Italians, I do remember talking to some Cicillians and them saying that when the Americans arrived in Gella, in Southern Cicily, they were very suspicious and thought, Moussaid and he's going to triumph. Then literally a day later, they were going around handing out chocolate and cigarettes and they thought, Americans are absolutely brilliant. Muslims are rubbish, and just turned just like that on a sixpence. A friend of mine who was with me at the time who actually lived in Cicily said, That's just so Italian. They'll back the winner. They felt by 1943, second half of 1943, that the winners were the Allies, not the Germans, and frankly, they were right. They just completely had it with the war. They'd had it with fascism. They'd had it with everything. The whole point about fascism was it was supposed to make them feel better and good about themselves and richer and more prosperous. So when that doesn't happen, understandably, they turned. I mean, it's a bit like everyone's all for Boris when he wins the election, but how quickly it crumbled when they realized how hopeless and hopeless he was.

Right. I mean, not comparing the Italian leadership in the Second World War to Boris.

Well, it was a bit of a similarity between him and Mussolini, I'd say.

Yeah, why don't we?

The mistake that you've made is you think we're the rest of politics. They love that chat on the rest.

Of politics.

We enjoy it within reason. So the Italian leadership are basically very unimpressive.

Oh, my God, are.

They ever? The Allies want to get rid of the king. They don't trust Badolio and they've surrendered unconditionally and the whole thing is essentially a shambles. The Italians think that the Allies are not going to evade until September.

September the 12th, I think, at the earliest.

Right. In the event, the main invasion happened six days after the Allies have crossed the straits of Messina in the south. And it is south of Salerno, which again, is south of Naples. So it's pretty much in the middle. And this is called Operation Avalanche. It's launched on the ninth of September. You describe it as being an Almighty and totally out-of-character gamble. So in what way is it a gamble and in what way is it out-of-character?

Again, they just don't have enough shipping. I know Dominic loves statistics and loves me mentioning trucks.

And things. He does.

I like facts. I do like facts. They're very grad-grinding.

In a way. Okay, well, let me give you some facts. So for Operation Husky, which is the invasion of Cicily, they have 1,743, Landingcraft and Solcraft. These are ones that can just go straight onto a beach. So you don't need a port. You can just go straight in, down comes a ramp, off they go. For Operation Baytown, which is the crossing of the Strait of Messina, they have 268. For Avalanche, they have 359. So 359 for an operation where they are against 19 German divisions in Italy at that point, compared to the two that were opposing them in Cicily. And what that means is the lack of landing craft, it's not just a question of getting them there at H-hour on D-Day, the first moment of the evasion. These landing crafts are in action the whole time, just shuttling forth troops and ammunition and supplies and all the rest of it. They're absolutely vital to.

The whole vein. So where are the troops coming from?

From Cicily? Yes, there are many coming from Cicily and from Algeria. They're coming in troop ships and then the infantry go in their landing craft. But there's also the little Higginsboats and the LCA and all.

The rest of it. What is an LCA?

It's a landing craft assault. They can take 36 men, but then you have these large ones which are landing ships which are much bigger.

Okay.

They can do this because they have air power?

They can do this because you have air power and they could just about get air power north of Naples, but your Spirit Force or whatever wouldn't be able to linger long enough over the beaches to be properly effective. And so because of the shortage of landing craft, they're having to up the game with naval warships and naval gunpower, but also with aircraft. But even that is just not enough. So what that means is the Allies are only able to land on D-Day three divisions. So what's that? 45,000 men, plus two groups of special forces, the commandos and the US Army rages up in the north and the a mouthy Coast to go and secure some passes. But that is really undercooked. Again, compared to Husky, now obviously Cicillay is larger, but it is amazing how small the initial landing is when one considers the challenge, the height that they are up the leg of Italy and how many German troops there are on Italy at that time. Now, there's only actually one German division directly facing them where they're landing, but it's only a matter of time before those other divisions start to coalesce around Salerno.

That's the issue.

The fighting is very hard, and at one point it looks as though the Allies are going to be basically flung back into the sea and the commanders are talking about the possibility of retreat. But they fight on in the face of large German numbers and they have a secret weapon, don't they? The Fritz X. Yes. So what is the Fritz X?

So the Fritz X is the first ever radio-controlled guided missile. It's a very sophisticated and clever piece of kit. The guy who's guiding it is on a Dornier, which is a twin-engine bomber.

So it's a bit like a drone, is it?

It's a bit like a drone, yeah. Effectively, it is an unmanned aerial vehicle, I would say. And he has to have visual contact on it the whole time. So he's on the dawn here. You release it from the mothership and off it goes. And he can control it as long as he can see it. And it's actually packed with explosives and is specifically designed to get through battleships and cruisers. So it's very effective.

Okay. But in the end, Allied air and naval power proves overwhelming.

Yes, and the brilliance of the infantry on the ground.

And the beach is secured.

Yep, Cilurno is secured.

Right. So for my point of view, the most interesting thing about all this is that it is taking place around the three most significant, surviving, Doric temples from the golden age of Greece. I found I mean, I found loads about the book, which is wonderfully, horribly written, endless, grueling details.

Horribly.

Written.

I can't believe you just said that.

The sense of horror that it conveys.

I didn't take it that way, Dominic, don't worry.

The deepest sense of horror it gave me was the endless description of how close all these classical ruins come to being left even more ruined. So you have an American corporal who records in his diary, came about one mile inland. He then adds, moved again to some ancient ruins. And these are the three great- What the heck were they? -greek temples, the Doric temple at Paestum. And basically they set up camp in the middle of Paestum, don't they? They do. They use the walls as a defense. So that's very, very chilling. Meanwhile, while this is going on, the Germans are seizing control in Rome and driving Panzas down. And you describe how they're aiming their guns at the Arch of Constantine and the Coliseum. And the whole thing is, I think if you have any familiarity with ancient or medieval history, the fact that all these battles are taking place in all these contexts. And it's obviously of appeal to the commanders themselves, isn't it? So we talked about how the Germans have Operation Allarik. And you talked later about how General Allenbrook is flying over Southern Italy en route to a meeting with Montgomery, and he orders his plane to make a gentle loop around the battleground of Canny, which was the great victory won by Hannibal against the Roman Republic.

So there's a lot going on there. There are lots of echoes and shades.

Well, I have to admit, when I was out there walking the ground and looking at the distance between the landing beaches and where they were and thinking about the Americans setting up their base camp within the old city walls of Pace Tip, I was thinking of Hebro and thinking how upset you'd be about the whole thing. And dito when Carla Capone was dodging the tank shells in Rome and going towards the forum and all the rest of it. I mean, it's just amazing, isn't it? It shows just what an incredible history Italy has that all these places end up repeatedly being caught up in successive wars and so much destruction.

Well, thankfully, the Arch of Constantine survives. The Germans secure Rome and basically take it over and the temples in Paestum survive as well.

Don't get any damage at all, remarkably. It's absolutely extraordinary.

No, huge relief all round. I think we should take a break at this point. When we come back, let's look at what the long term effects over the rest of 1943 are of the Allies securing this bridgehead. We'll see you in a few minutes.

In no other theater was more demanded of Allied frontline troops. They were not being supplied with the normal levels of material or replacements. The conditions were appalling. The mud, the rain, the freezing temperatures, disease, the inability to deploy armor, mechanization, and air power. In the valley floor, the mud was knee-deep. Even in the jungle or on Pacific attles, the men could at least dig in. In the mountains. The soil was thin or non-existent, making mortars and shells even more lethal and shelter harder to come by. That is from The Savage Storm, a top presenter of We Have Ways of Making You Talk and historian of the Second World War. Not a military.

Historian, but.

A historian of war.

The way you read that, Dominic, it makes it sound not horrible at all.

Right. Oh, that's nice. That's good to hear.

Not horribly written. I thought it sounded.

Pretty bad. Well, horribly written was your brother's verdict in the first half. Viewers can make up their own minds about that.

I was thinking, Gosh, that's actually quite nicely.

Written, that bit. It conveys the horror, doesn't it?

That's the beauty of a really good reading. A lot of that is in the narrator's voice, I think you find.

Absolutely. I question the very-.

Right, listen, let's talk about what is going on particularly in Naples.

Yes, that great city.

So Naples is the epicenter of the action. The Germans have been in Naples, but they've now decided they're going to have to pull out. Is that right?

Yes. Phil-marcel Kesslering, who is the commander of German forces, the southern half of Italy, and subsequently becomes the commander of all German troops in Italy. When he realizes that they're not going to win at Salerno, he calls a general retreat back to the River Volterno, which is about 25 miles north of Naples. So when they're retreating, they don't just scurry back there overnight. It's a delaying action fighting retreat, etc. But Naples falls into that.

And don't they also have a thing where they have Allied prisons of war and they lead them in a Roman-style triumph through the streets of Naples? Yes.

Well, that's before Naples is fought to try and keep the Neapolitans in check. They're terribly worried about having a revolt in Naples because obviously the last thing they want to do is have to be dealing with that as well as the enemies. I should just say very quickly though, before we get to Naples, I mean, Kesslering has really, really caught things up in a massive way because his plan is once he's wrapped up Rome, which he does on the 10th of September, so the day after Avalanche's launch, he then sends all his available divisions, which are eight in total, down towards Silerno. The idea is to put everything he possibly can, throw all his eggs in one basket, chuck the Allies out into the sea, then turn to eight farming in the toe of Italy, tidy it all up and all the rest of it, and then the whole of southern Italy will be back in German tans and the Allies won't be able to secure a toehold at all. That's the plan. But by chucking all his eggs in one basket and then failing, he's left himself fatally weak in the southern part of Italy, particularly the south east of Italy.

Three big ports, Tarantow, Bari, and Brandise. The British are able to just walk into because they don't need a salt craft for those because they're open ports and so they can just sell their ships straight in and put on the keyside, and he hasn't got enough troops left in southeast Italy to maintain that. And so what that means is that actually one of the main reasons for the Allies going into Italy in the first place, which was again, all part of Operation OverLord, but is securing the airfield complex around which is around two-fifths of the way up on the Adriatic side in one of the very rare flat bits of Italy that falls on the 27th of September, so five days before Naples does, and is an absolute shoo in. I mean, he's basically given up without a fight and is one of the most important bits of real estate in the whole southern half of Italy. So at that point, there's absolutely no point at all in even defending south of Rome because, okay, you lose Rome, but it's frankly neither here nor there at that point. It is a huge own goal. But unfortunately, his inverted commas, determined defense at Cilurno, has brought Hitler's attention, which is why he ends up being ultimate supermo in Italy.

But with Hitler's attention comes to Hitlerian spotlight, and that then absolutely restricts your room for maneuver, which is why he is then consigned to fight as far south as Rome as he possibly can. But that's just to give you that whole perspective on why actually, three out of the four reasons for the Allies going in, i. E. Getting Italy out of the war tick, drawing in German troops, massive tick, getting the Fogger airfield complex, huge tick. That's all happened in very, very quick order. The only thing that alludes to that is the capital, which, of course, is the thing that Churchill is obsessed about. But because they've got Fogger and because it's so important to them and there's tightening the air power news around Nazi Germany is so vital, you've got to protect it. You then don't want to have that. Put all the effort into getting bomb groups and all the rest of it and fuel dumps and blah, blah, blah over to Foggya and then lose it again. So you need a cushion. That's why the Allies are then compelled to absolutely stay on the job and push north of Rome. At the same time, the Germans, because Hitler's spotlight is now on them, are now also compelled to fight south of Rome.

So this is why it becomes this huge, Almighty clash.

Isn't it also that they're very anxious about the idea of a replica of the Western Front in the First World War, that they don't want a stationary war?

Yeah, absolutely. But sorry, that was a slight diverge. Just to go back to Naples. So Naples is the third biggest city, it's a population around 900,000 people. It's the most densely populated city as well in Italy. It has also been bombed over 180 times by the Allies since the start of the war, and 175 times since the start of 1943.

And it's damage done to it. It's archeological treasures.

Much, much damage.

What about Pompe?

Yeah, Pompe is also damaged, I'm sorry to say, but is looked after, curated by a very efficient fascist, archeologist and curator who does a brilliant job in safeguarding it as much as he possibly can. You'll be pleased today.

Well, thank goodness for that.

The conditions in the city are absolutely appalling. Absolutely appalling. Near famine, effectively.

Completely. It's partly because of the Allied bombing, but it's also partly because of the scourged earth policy that the Germans have. This is for two reasons. Mainly it is to try and slow up the Allies. So if the allies have got to look after a humanitarian crisis, then that's going to slow up their advance and make life difficult for them. So that's the main reason for doing it. Second reason is spitefulness because they got stabbed in the back, etc. So what they do is they have an exclusion zone of 300 meters from the waterfront all around the pool facilities and destroy everything they possibly can. All the water systems and water network is destroyed, the electricity network is destroyed. They damage as many water wells and all the rest of it as they possibly can. The whole place is just an absolute mash-up. There is a humanitarian crisis in Naples. It's absolutely horrific.

What does this mean for the Neapolitans? How do they cope?

Well, it means starvation. Also, the other problem is that the Allies as they move up northwards, they create what's called Allied military government of occupied territories, AMGOT. And of course, the conditions for this are dreamt up by desk wallers in Allied Forces headquarters in Algeias by people who don't really know Italy and don't really understand it. There's a bit of spitefulness going on there as well. And so the exchange rate is set too high, there's chronic inflation, there's a lot of black marketing going on. It is absolutely wretched for people.

But also, James, surely the Allies think, I mean, the Italians, A, they've been fighting us and killing our boys until very, very recently, but B, they joined the war like hyenas at the feast when they thought Hitler was going to win. Now they're feeling sorry for themselves, but they brought this on themselves. Are not a lot of allies thinking that?

Well, there is a bit of that going on. But what you tend to find with a lot of the Allies is they have this preconceived view of Italy, certainly, which goes very much along those lines. Then they get to Italy and befriends some Italians and they see this lovely, warm, open population and the classic Italian character and all the rest of it and are quickly seduced. I mean, a lot of people who know anything about Italy in the Second World War would have heard of Norman Lewis's great diary that he kept called Naples 44. And it's a brilliantly vivid account of someone who absolutely has his humanity very much intact and is just destroyed by what he sees and the awful tragedy he witnesses. I mean, it's been amazing seeing all the footage of Gaza and the poor old Garzans and how much are they responsible for Hamas and how much are they just instant people wanting to get on with their lives? These are the questions that one asks oneself. When you're looking at Naples and Italy, it's not just Naples. I mean, around the battlefield of Salerno, Salerno is pretty bashed about, but Ebeley, Atta Villa, Batapalia, these towns are all absolutely just wiped from the face of the earth and plenty more will be before the war finally finishes in Italy.

The levels and scales of destruction are absolutely appalling. I think one of the things one has to understand is in such a mountainous country, most of the population, and Italy has a population around 40 million, so it's one of the more populated countries in Europe. Most of them, of course, are on exactly the same arteries. Most of the habitation and cities are on the same arteries that the Allies are trying to advance up and the Germans are trying to retreat down.

This is the difference with North Africa where the Allies had developed this very mechanized, kit-heavy approach to war that basically involved blowing things up, right? Yeah. There there aren't major centers of habitation, but now they're doing it in very, very inhabited reaches of the road and so on. They are destroying people's homes in the name of giving them liberty.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. How much bad do you have to do to achieve good? I mean, the moral conundrum of the Great crusade in inverted commas is, I think I to find it so endlessly fascinating. It's so interesting. It's impossible to read diaries of Italians and letters of Italians and not feel deeply for their plight and for the awful dilemmas in which they find themselves.

So you quote a New Zealander who is watching a tank destroy a house.

Yeah.

And the Italian family are watching it. And obviously they're distraught because everything they own has gone. And this New Zealander reflects on the challenge of fighting fascists who are embedded among civilians. And he says, You are in the way or out of the way, a yard or an inch can spell the difference between life and death, destruction or deliverance. And that, of course, this year of all years, I mean, has a resonance, doesn't it?

Yeah. I mean, it's just incredible. I was lucky enough to read a lot of diaries from Benedictine Monks through to civilians in Eberley, through to civilians in Naples to Walthona on the Adriatic Coast and all over. What one has to also remember about Italy is that it's basically completely Catholic, but they have more regional patois in Italy than any other country in Europe. That tells you about the isolated nation of it. So when one's thinkingabout the puffed out chest and cockerel, feathers and helmets and black shirts of fascism in the Mussolini era, don't be confused by thinking that's Italy all over. This is Turin and Milan and Florence and Rome or whatever. But large parts of are incredibly parochial and out of the way. You're dealing with villages and towns which, I mean, they're peasant farmers that have been farming the same way for centuries. The rhythms of life and the annual agricultural farming here have remained untouched in centuries. These are completely out-of-touch places, and they're not particularly fascist. It's why all these towns are on top of hills. They're very isolated. Suddenly you've got this incredibly modern, highly mechanized war just descending on them like this huge storm of destruction, which is why I call it the savage storm.

The savage storm, yeah.

Well, exactly that. But it really, really was. Whether it's Batapale or Orta Villa or Naples or whether it's the tiny little mountain village of San Pietro in Fine, a little bit further north, these lives are just completely and utterly destroyed. It's really clear. When one drives around Italy now, you can always tell the town where the war's passed through because they're absolutely gopping. I mean, they've got a full of horrid 1960s buildings. You can always tell it, and it's just a scale of destruction, particularly on this path along the Adriatic and this path going up from Salerno to Naples following the old Roman via Casalina, Highway Six as it was, which goes from Naples to Rome, all along that road. It's just a litany of destruction. I mean, you and I, Brad, were talking about Capio on the weekend. The road just passes straight through Capio, Cursator, and so on. This place is absolutely hammered. It's so depressing.

Let's talk a tiny bit about the Germans, James.

Yes.

So you were saying that Kesselring, his newfound prominence means he's now got Hitler's eye on him and it makes it more difficult for him to maneuver. Yeah. What do he and the other German high command, what do they think they're going to get out of this campaign? So, for example, they don't give up Rome. People have thought they might withdraw north of Rome. You might have made an argument for them withdrawing right up to the north of Italy, withdrawing to the foothills of the Alps or something.

Yeah, very good argument, I'd say.

Why don't they do that? Do they think that they can basically tie down the Allies and bleed them dry as they move up the peninsula?

No, it all goes back to that early stages, the early plan when Celano happens, Operation Avalanche happens, that Castlering is planning to kick them back into sea, then clear out their own. He thinks he can hold the whole of Italy. Well, if you can hold the whole of Italy, then there is a reason for fighting south of Rome. If you can't hold the whole of Italy, then there is no reason for fighting south of Rome at all because you've lost Foglia, which is so important. That is the crucial bit. That's where the Allied strategic air power can come in and make a firm base. You've lost all those ports, Brandezi, Bari, Taranto, Naples, Celano itself. You've lost all those ports. There's no point. And what you really want is to be short of your lines of supply. And the Pisa, Reminy line, which is where Hitler is originally going to retreat to should the Allies invade, that's his original plan earlier in the year, should it happen? And it is certainly the one that Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, who is in charge of German forces in the north of Italy when the Allies invade at the start of September, that is his recommendation, having been on the receiving end of the Allies.

But Kesslering is a relentless optimist. I mean, he's not half-full, he's brimming over all the time. Actually, that's not a particularly good asset to have if you're a senior high commander. You want to have a healthy dose of realism. And when his big plan fails at Salerno, the whole strategy for reclaiming the whole of Italy falls down like skittles. And then he gets stuck because he's got the Hitlerians, the spotlight. There is no sense, no strategic sense whatsoever for fighting south of Rome once you've lost Foggin. And the German commanders are absolutely loggerheads. Most of them absolutely loathecastle ring because he's a Lufthwa field Marshall, not a ground commander. He's taken on this role as an army group commander and has all the prestige that that allows, but without the training and knowledge to be able to pull it off. He's got, broadly speaking, in history, he's seen as a reasonably good German and has got a reasonably good press, but I think he was absolutely crap.

Okay, punchy take there. So this is terrible for everybody. Everybody. It's terrible for.

The Germans. Awful for the Germans.

Who end up having to use heated child's urine as antiseptic, which I think is always a sign that the war isn't going well if you're in that state of play. It's terrible for the Italians who are caught in the middle of these two meat grinders going at each other. You have an awful description of two women who are machine gunned while going to fetch water from a stream that runs at the bottom of the village.

Rosa Fuoco.

Nobody can go and get the water and say the whole village dies of thirst.

This is San Pietro. Yeah.

I mean, that's awful. And it's awful for the Allies who are having to slog... I mean, the passage that Dominic read at the head of this second half. Again, you've written so much about the Second World War, and yet you seem overwhelmed by the horror of the fighting here. So you write about the conditions, I continue to be in awe of how the Allies kept going. Why should a Texan boy be fighting up a mountain in the desolate corner of Italy or in New Zealand to be wading across the icy sandgrove? It is astonishing that they did so.

Yeah, I think the scale of destruction and the scale of the violence was shocking, and I think largely because when one thinks of the Italian campaign, most people think of Anzio and Casino and I suppose ultimately the fall of Rome and then don't give it much further thought. So there's not much after Casino and there's not much before Casino either. I would say these very crucial months and the back end of 1943, where Allied strategy is taking a little bit of a hiccup because of the huge global weight that they put upon their shoulders and for the preparation for Overload and all the rest of it. It means that Italy fall short. There's very good reasons for going in still. There's very good reasons for staying there, but they're not able to do it at the normal levels of support, material support, and shipping support crucially, that they would normally expect. I'll give you an example of this. Once they do get into Normandy, Allied Infantry battalions, which is your basic unit, which is 845 men or something, you wouldn't expect them to fight in the front line for more than 4-6 days max. But in Italy, they're fighting for two weeks solidly.

The physical and mental strain of that is just enormous, particularly when you've got endless rain and all the privations you get of operating in extreme mud in the valley floors and in extremely bare and naked positions on the top of mountains. So I was shocked. But I think the other main reason is that for the first time, I've really focused all my personal accounts on contemporary sources, diaries, letters, and so on, rather than post-war oral testimonies, which actually I'm now questioning a little bit because what does someone remember six years after the day? They can remember key things, but you can't remember that specific detail of what you were feeling on that particular day. Whereas a diary and a letter tells you what was going on on that particular moment. I suppose the vividness of those recollections really brings into sharp focus the scales of destruction and violence in a way that I'd probably have estimated before.

Well, since you're talking about the challenge of writing history and about the recollections that people have, we've actually got a question from one of our listeners, from Theo Youngsmith. He says, Could you please ask James Holland to talk about the role of women in the Italian campaign? What do you have to say about that, James?

Well, does he mean in uniform or does he mean civilians? Because obviously there were a lot of Italian women caught up in this. A huge number of young men were away in prison, of war camps by this stage in Canada and Britain and the United States and elsewhere. A lot of women were having to fend for themselves and is estimated by the US Fifth Army General Medical Officer that at least 50% of all available women, his words, had some form of sexually transmitted disease by the spring of 1944.

Oh, my word.

And that's because of prostitution?

Yes, because that's the only way they can survive, is by prostitating themselves to Allied troops in return for cans of fruit and syrup and all the rest of it. I mean, it's just absolutely horrendous. But in terms of military personnel, yes, but a huge number of nurses, they were incredibly courageous. Actually, a lot of these field hospitals, they weren't absolutely in the direct front line, but they were very much in the firing line, and there were lots of them.

So we're now in December, and eight years ago, the Allies had not broken through to Rome. They had not got there. It wasn't going to be over by Christmas. They are, as you said, very anxious of a potential Western Front situation. Essentially, they are increasingly relying on their superior firepower to try and blast their way through. And you mentioned the most significant architectural victim of this approach, which is fought in 1944. The next year, and that is the Abbey of Montecasino, founded by Saint Benedict and rebuilt over many centuries, one of the holiest places in Italian Catholicism. I mean, just to end this episode with the drumbeat to that catastrophe, which is starting to be sounded in the dying days of 1943. So 17th of October, the treasures of the Abbey start to be removed by the Germans. Many of their commanders are Catholic, so they're not just doing it in a cynical spirit. They are genuinely worried about what is coming. The German High Command then proclaim a neutral zone around the Abbey, which is what, 300 meters all around?

Yes, and is completely disabused.

Then on Christmas Day, you were talking about the value of reading diaries that you have a diary of a monk in Monte Casino.

Yes, Don Micebio.

He confides to his diary, his confidence that the protection zone will be respected. And of course, it won't be.

Oh, it's so awful.

It's so awful. That reading this book, it ends as the year turns from 43 to 44, and you have a sense the worst is yet to come. I know. All these horrors you've described, and yet Monte Casino hasn't even been fired out yet.

No, I know. It is amazing. Dom Usebio, who's the diary you're talking about the Benetie Monk, it's so moving because what you realize is that this tiny little community in the monastery, they're so ill-equipped to deal with the catastrophe which is befalling them. The Father Rabbit, he just doesn't know what to do. They are incredibly learned, incredibly esthetic, incredibly religious, obviously, but they're just not equipped to deal with a war passing through them. They just don't know what to do. They don't know what to do for the best. That Father Rabbit is repeatedly in tears trying to make the right decision. Do we hand over the treasures to the Germans? Will they flog it, take it back to Germany? Will it be safe? What do we do? How do we secure a 300-meter zone? And it's just desperate. And Domu Sebio, who is only, I think, 32 at the time, he's writing this diary, is a very perceptive diary keeper. And I will just give you one spoiler alert for what follows is that he suddenly gets a bad cold in January and it then gets worse and it gets worse and it gets worse.

And then on the 13th of February, he dies. It's absolutely heartbreaking. His body is still in the crypt when two days later the monastery is destroyed. It's just so profoundly moving. I can't tell you, it really is. That's the other advantage, I think, in a cynical, writery way of using diaries is that obviously if you're relying on oral testimony, self-evidently, they've survived. Whereas with diaries, you don't know whether the diary keeper is going to make it through.

The jeopardy is that much greater. Well, bro, on that cheery note, thank you so much.

Well, thank you for having me on.

Happy Christmas, everyone. And what could be more festive than The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy, 1943 by James Holland, who is also, of course, presenter of the brilliant Second World War podcast. We have ways of making you talk.

And on that bombshell, literally... James, thank you so much. Tom, was that a tour de force? Is that counter the tour de force by.

Your definition? I would say it was an explosive tour de force.

A savage storm.

Wonderful. All right. Thank you very much, James. Savage storm, everybody. And of course, we have ways of making you talk is our sister podcast. In fact, is our progenitor, really, isn't it, Tom? Because it was the first Goalhanger podcast.

It is. Yes.

Yes. Yes. I remember saying to Tony, You know what? You should talk to my pro.

Oh, my word.

There you go.

With those words, a terrible monster was born.

A typhoon of steel, one might say.

Well, it's a great honor to be on. Thank you very much for.

Having me on. Absolute pleasure. All right. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye, everyone.

Cheers.