Twists and turns of the Italian campaign

When Rome fell to the Allies on 5 June 1944 General Harold Alexander, commander of the 15th Army, calculated that he would need just 12 weeks to reach the river Po and liberate Italy from the Germans. It took him nearly a year. Christian Jennings’s new book chronicles the months of heavy fighting, the advances and retreats and the enormous losses on both sides as the Allied forces stalled, and the enemy attacked.

It was never going to be easy. Once the Italians signed the armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943, turning their backs on their former Axis partners, the Germans moved quickly to occupy the whole of Italy. While the British and the Americans were arguing over their policy towards the defeated Italians, Hitler dispatched nine divisions down through the Brenner Pass. Rome collapsed and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, in charge of the German Army Command South, put in place the first of a series of defensive lines to stop the Allies from breaking through into central Europe.