Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

by Greg Annussek

  The target of the raid was Kesselring’s GHQ, where 150 German soldiers had been killed.4 Kesselring himself was uninjured.5 “The first bombs fell close to my glass veranda just as I was leaving my office,” he remembered. “The enemy attack caused less damage to the military staffs than to the town and its inhabitants.”6 Though the headquarters complex suffered only minor damage, Skorzeny’s quarters at Frascati had been gutted.7

  But as Skorzeny soon discovered, the air raid was merely the prelude to more important events. In the early evening he was driving through Rome on the way to meet Radl. “My car moved forward slowly,” he recalled, “for there was an unwonted bustle in all the streets. People thronged around loud speakers and, as I drove into the Via Veneto, I had to move at a snail’s pace. Noisy acclamations hailed a piece of news bellowed by the loud speakers . . . women embraced one another, groups of people engaged in passionate debate. More and more puzzled, I finally stopped to question a passer-by who informed me of a fresh catastrophe: Italy had laid down her arms.”8 When Skorzeny had taken to the air that morning, the Italians had been allies. They were his enemies, it seemed, by the time the sun had set.

  Or were they? That was the question that had plagued Hitler’s anxious lieutenants for several hours on September 8. Though Allied radio started broadcasting the news of Italy’s surrender in the late afternoon, the Italians continued to deny the existence of the armistice to the Germans, many of whom learned of it only through foreign radio reports. Rudolf Rahn, who was acting as Hitler’s diplomatic envoy to Rome during this time, was particularly perturbed. He first heard about the Italian surrender at 5:45 P.M. on the American radio.9 The U.S. media, as it turned out, had broken the story prior to Eisenhower’s official announcement, which aired a short time later at around 6:30 P.M.10

  “This is General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces,” Ike’s voice crackled over the radio. “The Italian Government has surrendered its armed forces unconditionally. As Allied Commander-in-Chief, I have granted a military armistice. . . . All Italians who now act to help eject the German aggressor from Italian soil will have the assistance and support of the United Nations.”11

  It seemed incomprehensible. That very day at noon, Rahn had spoken to King Victor Emmanuel, who assured him that Italy would never surrender!12 “At the end of the conversation,” Rahn recalled, “the King stressed the decision to continue the struggle, to the end, at the side of Germany, with whom Italy is bound in life and death.”13 After hearing the first radio broadcast, Rahn had hurriedly put in a call to General Roatta, the chief of the Italian army.14 He dismissed the radio reports as nothing more than British propaganda.15 But later that evening, Guariglia, Badoglio’s foreign minister, finally came clean. “I have to tell you,” Guariglia told Rahn in person a little after 7:00 P.M., “that Marshal Badoglio, in view of the desperate military situation, has been forced to ask for an armistice.”16 Rahn replied angrily, “This is treachery to a given word.”17

  But the Nazis were not the only ones surprised by the Allied radio reports. Incredibly, in a bizarre twist worthy of fiction, Eisenhower’s decision to broadcast the news of the Italian armistice had also caught Badoglio off guard.

  As was seen earlier, General Castellano, Badoglio’s proxy, had signed the Short Terms in Sicily on September 3 amidst great secrecy. It was understood that the public announcement of the armistice would roughly coincide with start of Operation Avalanche, the Allied invasion of the mainland. But because of security concerns— the Allies still did not have complete faith in their would-be ally— Eisenhower declined to inform Rome about the date or location of the landings lest these details find their way into German hands. The Italians soon came to believe, mistakenly, that D-day was set for September 12, or possibly later—or so they claimed.18

  This misunderstanding led to a major confrontation between the Allies and the Italians in the hours leading up to Avalanche. Having learned the true date of D-day on the evening of September 7–8, the Italians immediately got cold feet, protesting that they had not yet taken all the military measures needed to fight the Germans. 19 But Eisenhower was unimpressed by these arguments and refused to alter his timetable.

  In the early evening of September 8, Victor Emmanuel hastily convened a special council to discuss his options.20 During this meeting, the king’s men, who included Badoglio and a score of other leading Italians, seriously considered denying the existence of the armistice, at least as a temporary measure, and so avoid the wrath of the Nazis.21 But after much debate, they agreed to keep their commitments to the Allies: Badoglio made a radio address later that evening at 7:45 P.M. announcing Italy’s capitulation.22

  “The Italian Government,” he said, “recognizing the impossibility of continuing the unequal struggle against the overwhelming power of the enemy . . . has requested an armistice from General Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of the Anglo-American Allied Force. This request has been granted. The Italian forces will, therefore, cease all acts of hostility against the Anglo-American forces wherever they may be met. They will, however, oppose attacks from any other quarter.”23 The last sentence was a veiled reference to the Nazis, though Badoglio avoided mentioning them by name; it was as if he thought this strange omission would somehow soften the blow in Hitler’s mind.

  Amazingly, for much of the day on September 8, Eisenhower was left guessing as to what the Italians would do.24 He did not know whether they planned to welcome his forces as liberators or to take up arms against them. The latter scenario, he maintained, could have been disastrous for the Allies in light of the modest forces he had at his disposal for invading the Italian coast.*25 Indeed, there was so much confusion on September 8 that several Italian aircraft actually attacked the Allied invasion force at sea.26 The Italian navy also made a bid to stop the Allies, and this potential catastrophe was only prevented at the last minute—literally.27

  Much like the coup of July 25, the Italian surrender announcement had caught the Nazis by surprise, at least in its timing.28 But it did not take long for them to lash out at their new enemy, promising to square accounts with Badoglio and other Italians who dared to oppose them.

  “With this,” German radio announced at 11:00 P.M. on September 8, “the veil has been torn from a treacherous intrigue which for weeks had been enacted by an Italian clique, serfs to Jews and alien to their own people. . . . Led by the Reich, Europe is determined and strong enough to get equal with this treason. An exemplary punishment will be visited on the traitors: a punishment which they deserve for the betrayal of the Italian people. These traitors will not reap any profit from their crime; the German army will see to it.”29

  The Nazis also flashed the code word “Axis” to their commanders throughout Italy and beyond, including the Balkans and the West. This was the signal for German forces to begin neutralizing their former allies by disarming them and taking them prisoner by any means necessary. Operation Axis incorporated some of the measures that Hitler had proposed in the immediate aftermath of the Italian coup.

  The military situation in Italy had changed radically during the previous six weeks. On July 25, the day that Mussolini was arrested, only three German divisions operated on the Italian mainland, and a few more were fighting in Sicily. By September 8, that number had ballooned to sixteen divisions, eight under Rommel in the north and another eight under Kesselring in the south, two of the latter’s divisions being positioned near Rome. Nine of these sixteen had entered Italy in the weeks following the coup. Another four divisions had managed to escape from Sicily in mid-August along with their equipment, and these forces—battered and depleted from their recent battles against the Allies—were placed under Kesselring’s command.

  The sudden announcement of Italy’s volte-face created a volatile and unpredictable situation throughout the Italian peninsula, where all hell began to break loose in the face of Avalanche. During the early hours of September 9, thousands of American and British forces (General Mark
Clark’s Fifth Army) began landing on the beaches of Salerno, located on the southwestern coast of Italy below Naples, where they struggled to establish a beachhead under enemy fire. A small Allied force on the southern tip of Italy (General Sir Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army), which had crossed over from Sicily to Calabria back on September 3, was already moving northward, albeit rather slowly, to link up with the main invasion force at Salerno. Skirmishes between German and Italian units began to break out near Rome and in other parts of the country.*

  No one, perhaps, was more shocked by the Italian surrender than Kesselring, who had retained an almost unquestioning faith in his Axis ally until the bitter end. But as the commander of German forces in southern Italy, “Smiling Albert” quickly accepted the reality of the situation by hurling the German Tenth Army into action against the Allies at Salerno. (Montgomery’s Eighth Army was so far south at the time that it did not pose an immediate threat.) Fortunately for the Nazis, Kesselring had anticipated a landing in the Salerno area—it was a predictable choice—and had made his preparations.30

  For the next several days, the fighting at Salerno was intense. But though Rommel had eight divisions in the north, Kesselring received no aid whatsoever from the former’s Army Group B. “This Italian duumvirate of myself and Rommel,” Kesselring complained, “with Hitler’s almost obsequious submissiveness to Rommel, was responsible for the rejection of my priority calls for reinforcements.”31 Rommel did not believe it was worth fighting for southern Italy, and he had no intention of sacrificing his own units for the sake of what he viewed as a lost cause.

  Yet even without reinforcements, Kesselring soon found himself on the verge of a stunning victory. At one pivotal moment on September 13, the Nazis came within a hair’s breadth of driving to the sea through an open gap in the Allied forces and threatening their flanks, a potential knockout blow that may very well have led to disaster and even defeat for General Clark’s invasion force.

  “The situation deteriorated to such an extent,” remembered Kenneth Strong, Eisenhower’s intelligence chief, “that at one point plans for the evacuation [by sea] of at least part of the beachhead were being actively canvassed.”32 Evacuation. The very idea was unthinkable. But after making a supreme effort, the Allies finally managed to save the day thanks largely to naval gunfire, air power, and desperate and heroic fighting on the part of the troops;33 indeed, the situation became so desperate at one point that the Americans threw cooks and typists into the fray.34

  “After the war Eisenhower said he thought of all his battles, Salerno was the one where the Allies came nearest to a tactical defeat,” wrote Strong.35 Mark Clark also admitted that Salerno was almost a disaster.36

  After the climactic battle on September 13, the situation began to stabilize as reinforcements arrived to buttress Clark’s position and Kesselring realized that he could not push the Allies into the sea. Somewhat after the fact, Monty’s Eighth Army arrived on the scene to take part in what everyone hoped would be a speedy drive to the Eternal City.

  For Badoglio and other Italians in high places, that is precisely where the real crisis was taking place. In the aftermath of the surrender, the five Italian divisions guarding Rome were facing the chilling prospect of going one-on-one with the Nazis without help from the Allies. “All Italians who now act to help eject the German aggressor from Italian soil,” Eisenhower promised, “will have the assistance and support of the United Nations.”37 But because the Allies had chosen to land at Salerno, about 140 miles south of Rome, his statement did not have much practical effect.38

  This unfortunate state of affairs had come about in part through the failure of the Italians to coordinate their military plans with the Allies, who had grudgingly agreed to make a risky airborne insertion into Rome on September 8.

  The American troops were needed, the Italians said, to assist their local forces in defending Rome against German attacks. More important, it was also hoped that a landing near the capital would spook the Nazis and force them to clear out of southern Italy altogether in an effort to avoid being cut off and trapped.39 Because Rome was a major road and rail center, whoever controlled the capital could sever the Nazi supply routes to southern Italy, where Kesselring’s divisions were engaging the Allies.

  But although the Italians had pleaded for the help of General Matthew Ridgway’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division, they made no real effort to give Ridgway the military support he required to carry out his planned series of airdrops and landings.40 On the Italian side, this involved seizing control of the antiaircraft guns protecting Rome, securing airfields, and providing trucks and fuel for Ridgway’s men.

  The Allies were so worried about whether the Italians could give meaningful support to the American paratroopers that they took the unusual step of sending General Maxwell Taylor, disguised as a downed Allied airman, on a clandestine mission to Rome on September 7 to assess the viability of the plan.41 “He and his companion, Colonel Gardner, were picked up by an Italian frigate and smuggled into Rome in a Red Cross ambulance at great personal risk,” recalled Strong.42

  After some delays, General Giacomo Carboni, the commander of the Italian forces guarding Rome, eventually made an appearance and informed Taylor that the airborne operation could not be carried out as planned. By way of explanation, Carboni made some dubious assertions involving a lack of fuel and ammunition and German troop positions.43 When Taylor eventually caught up with Badoglio, in the early hours of September 8, the marshal backed up Carboni.

  This last-minute backpedaling erased all doubt from Taylor’s mind: The airborne operation would have to be cancelled. As a result, the Romans would have to face the Nazis on their own, and they had no one to blame but their own leaders. “The air landing would, like all such operations, have been risky,” reflected Strong, “but I believe it might have been carried out with relatively small losses if Badoglio had possessed more courage. The . . . Italian divisions, though admittedly immobile, together with our airborne units, could conceivably have been adequate to hold Rome and perhaps to prevent the Germans from sending reinforcements to Salerno.”44

  But even this lost opportunity did not, in itself, doom the Eternal City. After all, the Italians had five divisions in the Rome area with which to repel the Nazis.45 Kesselring, who had his hands full at Salerno, could afford to detail only two of his eight divisions to seize Rome: the Third Panzergrenadier Division and General Student’s Second Parachute Division, the same paratroopers who had been rushed to Rome in the wake of the July 25 coup.46 But it soon became evident that the local effort to protect Rome was botched from the beginning. It was the hasty flight of the decisionmakers that truly sealed the city’s fate.

  In the wee hours of September 9, Badoglio got wind of German attacks on the outskirts of the city. Fearing that the Nazis might capture them, he and the king, along with a motley assortment of other high-ranking Italians, fled Rome in a long convoy of vehicles and headed eastward toward the opposite coast. They eventually arrived in Pescara on the Adriatic, boarded a nearby corvette, and sailed to Brindisi, on the heel of Italy, arriving on September 10.

  “If the Government remained in Rome,” Badoglio later wrote in his defense, “its capture would be inevitable and the Germans would rapidly substitute a Fascist Government who would repudiate the armistice. This disaster must be avoided at all costs, for it would mean the complete ruin of Italy.”47

  Perhaps. But in his speedy flight from the capital, Badoglio did not give the Italian army specific orders regarding the German threat.48 Without clear direction from the top, the Italian forces in and around Rome, and throughout the country, began to fall apart. Although isolated units did fight bravely and soldiers and Roman citizens alike participated in individual acts of gut-wrenching heroism, most of the resistance ceased on September 10. On that day, Kesselring, who had threatened to raze the capital with the Luftwaffe, accepted the surrender of the Eternal City.

  The precipitous flight of Badoglio and the
king exposed the bankruptcy of their post-Mussolini strategy, which was based on avoiding risk and allowing the West to do all the fighting against the Germans. By dragging out the peace process for weeks and refusing to lend military support to the Allied invasion, the new Italian government had made it much easier for the Nazis to gain the upper hand in the aftermath of the surrender.*

  On September 11, the day after Badoglio and company found safe harbor in Brindisi, the Italian people received a call to arms.49 It came not from the king or his Capo del Governo, but from Italy’s newfound friends, the Allies. In a joint statement, Churchill and Roosevelt exhorted the Italians to rise up against the hated Nazis:

  “Now is the time for every Italian to strike his blow,” the message urged. “The liberating armies of the Western World are coming to your rescue. We have very strong forces and are entering at many points. The German terror in Italy will not last long. They will be extirpated from your land and you, by helping in this great surge of liberation, will place yourselves once more among the true and long-proved friends of your country from whom you have been so wrongfully estranged. Take every chance you can. Strike hard and strike home.”50

  Under the circumstances, the message fell flat. The Badoglio regime had already fled Rome, the Italian army was left without specific orders or firm leadership, and Allied soldiers were fighting for their very lives at that moment on the beaches of Salerno. The Nazis, on the other hand, were cementing their control over most of Italy at this time and securing the all-important communications networks, such as roads and railways, leading to the south.51