fought to a finish,’ wrote Churchill, ‘and having for its object the destruction and ruin of the armed force of the enemy south of Rome.’14
Ever since the agreement to invade southern Italy the previous summer, Churchill had been looking forward to the day the Allies captured Rome. ‘He who holds Rome,’ he had told President Roosevelt and Marshal Stalin the previous November, ‘holds the title deeds of Italy.’ This was perhaps overstating the case, but there was no doubting the enormous psychological fillip that the capture of Rome – which would be the first European capital to be taken – would provide.
Yet despite the considerable commitment of the Allies – and Britain in particular – to the Italian campaign, their presence there had never been part of any long-agreed master plan. Rather, it had been purely opportunistic, a decision born of a series of unfolding events, each one bringing Italy closer and closer to the typhoon of steel that would rip through it.
The seeds of this momentous decision date back to a meeting between a US general and the Russian Foreign Minister in Washington DC in late May 1942. Normally wary of promising too much, the US Chief of Staff General George Marshall, America’s most senior military figure, nonetheless assured Vyacheslav Molotov that the United States would start a second front before the end of the year. Three days later, speaking to Molotov on 1 June, President Roosevelt reiterated his determination to help the Soviets by engaging German troops on land some time during 1942.
What Roosevelt and Marshall had in mind was an Allied invasion of Continental Europe. America’s commitment to a ‘Europe-first’ rather than a ‘Pacific-first’ policy had been agreed with Britain more than six months before, in December 1941, at the hastily arranged Washington Conference following the US’s entry into the war. The Americans agreed that Nazi Germany, rather than Japan, posed the greatest immediate threat, especially since the Soviet Union appeared to be a hair’s breadth away from defeat. Such a collapse would have been catastrophic for the Western Allies, with the weight of the Nazi war machine turned against them. Furthermore, Germany would then have had access to all the oil and minerals it needed; indeed, it was for these essential raw materials, above all, that Hitler had ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union. Britain and the United States, not the USSR, were regarded as the most dangerous enemy by the Führer.
There was thus considerable urgency to help the Soviet Union as soon as possible. Broadly, they agreed on a policy of ‘closing and tightening the ring around Germany’,15 which was to be achieved in a number of ways: by supporting the Russians materially; by beginning a campaign of aerial bombardment against Germany; by building up strength in the Middle East and wearing down Germany’s war effort; and then striking hard with a punch that would see a combined Allied force make an invasion of Continental Europe, preferably in 1942, but otherwise certainly in 1943.
Yet despite this agreement, Britain and America approached the task of winning the war from completely different strategic viewpoints. Britain’s tactic was to gather the necessary forces and wait for events to dictate where the decisive engagement would take place. The Americans, on the other hand, began with deciding where they should attack and then, working backwards, preparing the forces required for success. The British viewed the American approach as naïve, born of their lack of experience in war and international affairs. Conversely, the Americans thought the British lacked decisiveness and the willingness to make the necessary sacrifices to see the job done.
To begin with, however, these differences in approach were smoothed over. Britain was happy to agree in principle to America’s avowed intention to invade northern France, while it soon became apparent that America was physically unable to stick to its desired timetable. Despite its rapidly expanding manufacturing capabilities and massive mobilisation, n 1942 the United States was still some way behind the times and its armed forces were just a fraction of the size they would balloon to by the war’s end. In September 1939, for example, America’s standing army comprised just 210,000 men – only the nineteenth largest in the world. By the time of Pearl Harbor, this figure had only slightly more than doubled. From there on, the figure would rise exponentially, but there could be no seaborne invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe just yet and most certainly not of France. Nor could Britain be relied on to mount such an operation. With their forces already overstretched in the Far East, in North Africa and the Middle East, the Allies accepted that the proposed invasion would have to take place in 1943 instead – although, as General Alan Brooke, the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, pointed out during a visit to Washington in June 1942, it was important that no alternative, lesser operation should be undertaken in 1942 that might affect the chances of a successful large-scale assault into Europe the following year.
However, Roosevelt was determined to see his promise to Molotov fulfilled. ‘It must be constantly reiterated,’ he told his Chiefs of Staff on 6 May 1942, ‘that Russian armies are killing more Germans and destroying more Axis material than all the twenty-five nations put together… the necessities of the case called for action in 1942 – not 1943.’16 Moreover, he was all too aware that the American people, having been led into war, would not tolerate a long period of apparent inaction.
It was following the talks with Molotov that Churchill suggested the Allies invade northwest Africa as a means of Roosevelt keeping his word. There were, he argued, all sorts of good reasons for making such a move: the British Eighth Army was already fighting in Egypt and Libya – and in strength – and securing Vichy-French-held Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia would be a less demanding task than an assault anywhere on the Continent. Furthermore, securing the Mediterranean would ease British shipping for future operations in Europe, would enable Allied bombers to attack Germany and Italy from the south, would hasten Italy’s exit from the war, and tie up Germany’s forces – all of which would help Russia.
General Brooke and the British Chiefs of Staff, despite their concerns, soon fell in line with their prime minister. But both the American Chiefs of Staff, and General Eisenhower and his planning team in Britain – Mark Clark included – were deeply sceptical, believing an invasion of north-west Africa would be a major deviation from their main goal – and one that could, if undertaken, see hopes for an assault on France dashed even in 1943. Roosevelt, however, saw some merit in the plan, and having accepted there was no other viable place they could successfully bring about a second front, supported Churchill’s proposals. The misgivings amongst his military commanders may have continued, but Roosevelt had made up his mind and his word was final. The invasion of north-west Africa was on.
This, then, was how the Mediterranean strategy was born. In a remarkably short time, Eisenhower, together with General Clark as his chief planner, diverted their attention to an invasion of north-west Africa instead of France. In November 1942, as the Eighth Army was soundly beating Rommel’s German-Italian army at El Alamein, a joint British and American invasion force landed in Morocco and Algeria. The landings were an astonishing achievement and produced a rapid and overwhelming victory. Admittedly, the opposition had hardly been very stiff, but conception to execution had taken a little over three months. It showed what could be achieved, logistically at any rate.
It certainly got Churchill’s mind whirring. Suddenly he began to see a wealth of opportunities emerging in the Mediterranean. With the whole of North Africa secure, he realised that Britain and America would be ‘in a position to attack the underbelly of the Axis at whatever may be the softest point, i.e. Sicily, southern Italy or perhaps Sardinia; or again, if circumstances warrant, or, as they may do, compel, the French Riviera or perhaps even, with Turkish aid, the Balkans’.17
This memo to his War Cabinet in October 1942 showed that Churchill was beginning to think in terms of a double second front – one that could be opened alongside the cross-Channel invasion. Churchill has often been accused of putting his designs for the Mediterranean
