Was the Gothic Line offensive the first
battle of the imminent "Cold War" ?
In that fatal Summer truth will out.
Unbelievably by the military point of view the Americans break off the
pursuit of the Germans defeated in the battle for Rome and send the bulk
of their forces away from Italy into Southern France against Churchill's
will. The British Premier, who believes that "it is in Italy where the
future of the Balkans and Europe will be decided" and who had been
informed that in Yugoslavia the situation was still uncertain between the
friendly Serb Mihajlovic and the communist Croat Tito, now thinks that
only Alexander can solve the situation leaping from Italy into the Balkans
and decides to launch a decisive strategic stroke with what is entirely
British and under British command.I hope to turn and break the Gothic
Line, break into the Po valley and ultimately advance to Trieste and the
Ljubljana gap to Vienna".
Churchill
political aim merges with the ideological aim of the Church, to defend
Christianity from the Soviet communism, atheist and materialistic. The
Premier meets the Pope Pius XII on Aug. 23, agrees with him about the
danger of Communism, decides to launch a Christian offensive with the Pope
viaticum.
He
will not be an imperialist who fights for U.K., but a Crusader, who fights
in defence of Christendom. His battle will have the epoch-making mark of
the battles of Poitier (732), Beograd (1456), Wien (1683), Beograd again
(1716) which saved Christendom from the Islam deadly menace of Arabs and
Turks.
Which were in 1944 the Grand Strategies of the Three Bigs after Teheran? Roosevelt. According to British historian
Arnold Toynbee the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was more friend of Stalin than of Churchill.
At Teheran he had shared Europe with Stalin and didn’t have any interest to change their plans.
Actually the President dreamed of a Brave New World to realize with Stalin. (on April 12, 1945 his
death will persuade Stalin, shocked, not to launch the “proletary revolutions” already scheduled
in Germany, France and Italy) In his book “As He saw it” Elliott Roosevelt, son of the President,
reports the Grand Strategies of his father and of Churchill with the words of his father. “Whenever
the P.M. argued for our invasion through the Balkans, it was quite obvious to everybody what he really
meant…That he was, above all, anxious to knife up in central Europe in order to keep the Red Army out of
Austria, and Romania, even Hungary if possible. Stalin knew it, I knew it, everybody knew it…“The one
thing I’m sure of is this: if the way to save American lives, the way to win as short a war as possible,
is from the West and the West alone, without wasting landing craft and men and materiel in the Balkan mountains,
and our chiefs are convinced of it, then that’s ! I see no reason for putting the lives of American soldiers
in jeopardy in order to protect real or fancied British interest in the European continent.”
Stalin. Kruscev marks in his “The Glasnost Tapes” the Grand Strategy of Stalin. “We had our hopes.
Just as Russia came out of World War I, made the revolution and established Soviet power, so after
the catastrophe of World War II Europe might become Soviet.”
Churchill. Churchill’s Grand Strategy is reported by LIFE International presenting Churchill’s “History of W.W.II”
-“ The biggest difference of opinion on military strategy between Britain and the U.S. came over the proposal
to land a force in the South of France to join the forces in Normandy into Germany ( Landing Anvil-Dragoon to
take away U-S. troops from the Gothic Line offensive) . Churchill argued against it, maintaining that it
would divert from Italy troops which could otherwise push north and east into the Balkans. Roosevelt
insisted on the original plan and the landings were made .The weakened forces in Italy were stalled and
Russian armies sweep into eastern Europe.”
Pius XII. Christendom Grand Strategy was proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in his Sept.1st, 1944 radio-speech as soon
as the Gothic Line was breached by Canadians. “This is the gravest hour for Mankind…From It depends
the destiny of Christendom in Europe and in the World"
This
is the genesis of the Gothic Line offensive, a great pincer manoeuvre
called Alexander's "Summer Offensive", which in its first
decisive phase from 25 Aug. to 30 Sept. 1944 is known as the "Battle of
Rimini". The "important divergence" between Churchill and Roosevelt, the
reluctant will of the Americans to trespass the Gothic Line, together with
the bravery of the German soldiers and tactics, make a failure of the
offensive. "The weakened forces in Italy were stalled and the Russian
armies swept into Eastern Europe". (Churchill)
But Churchill doesn't give up his British plans of a balance of power in
Europe. France and Italy were too weak to forestall the Soviet Armies.
Only Germany could do it. In the 2nd conference of Quebec he is obliged by
Roosevelt to sign the Morgenthau Plan, outlined by the soviet agent Harry
Dexter White, that anticipates the destruction of Germany to a pastoral state which could feed only 30 millions of Germans out of
80 damning 50 millions to death for starvation, and in
October he goes to Moscow in the vain attempt to get from Stalin a Balkan
compromise. But the soviet dictator, too elated in his presumptuousness of
a total, final victory over his naïve Allies, who in Yugoslavia betray
their friend Mihajlovic to help Tito and in China betray their friend
Chiang Kai Shek to help Mao-tze-tung, makes a pawn of the British
Aristocrat, pretending to give credit to his farcical Balkan agreement.
Then against the Americans' will Churchill decides to attain his Balkan
aims by his most temerarious plan enlarging the Gothic offensive into
Greece that was almost completely in the hands of the red partisans. Later
he wrote: "Alexander's offensive failed. Italy was not to be wholly free
for another eight months, the right-handed drive to Vienna was denied to
us and, except in Greece, our military power to influence the liberation of South-Eastern
Europe was gone." Actually Alexander's offensive was not really a failure.
The Gothic Line offensive although attained limited aims in Italy, with its corollary in Greece allowed the Western World to keep the control of
the Mediterranean in the "Cold War" of the war aftermath.
Comment. The necessity to review history
Militarily this phase of the offensive reveals the disconcerting line of the Americans who, twice,
at the end of September renounced to close the Alexander pincer manoeuvre around the best German
troops in Italy, giving the victory as a gift to their enemy, fieldmarshal Albert Kesselring (who
thought the victory a miracle, not knowing the important divergence between Churchill and Roosevelt).
This situation reveals grave responsibilities who explain the media silence of the Americans who
didn’t return to the defeated Germany the German war documents sequestered, keeping to themselves the
right to manipulate and also obliterate the Gothic Line fights. To meet this veto the Author,
starting from “The Gothic Line” of the late friend Douglas Orgill, carried out researches and
studies in military archives, asking veterans of all ranks and nations, particularly Germans, among
them Brün Meyer of the Bundes Military Archiv and Col. Gerhard Muhm, the best expert of
Auftragstaktik, the German tactics.
Against the factious party stories it’s born in 3 volumes the only true history of the Gothic Line
Offensive in its aspects, military, political and ideological: “Linea Gotica 1944” (2002)
military and political, “Linea Gotica 1944. Scontro di civiltà (Clash of civilizations) (2006),
ideological, political, “Clausewitz sulla Linea Gotica” (Clausewitz on the Gothic Line) 2008, military. |