Gothic Line
The Gothic Line was a German and Italian defensive line of the Italian Campaign of World War II. It formed Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's last major line of defence along the summits of the northern part of the Apennine Mountains during the fighting retreat of the Axis forces in Italy against the Allied Armies in Italy, commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander.
Adolf Hitler had concerns about the state of preparation of the Gothic Line: he feared the Allies would use amphibious landings to outflank its defences. To downgrade its importance in the eyes of both friend and foe, he ordered the name, with its historic connotations, changed, reasoning that if the Allies managed to break through they would not be able to use the more impressive name to magnify their victory claims. In response to this order, Kesselring renamed it the "Green Line" in June 1944.
Using more than 15,000 slave labourers, the Germans created more than 2,000 well-fortified machine gun nests, casemates, bunkers, observation posts and artillery fighting positions to repel any attempt to breach the Gothic Line. By the end of August, the Tenth Army's sector, spanning from just north of Vicchio to Pesaro in the east, displayed a formidable array of defenses. It included 2,375 machine-gun posts, 479 positions for antitank guns, mortars, and assault guns, and 3,604 dugouts and shelters, among them 27 caves. Additionally, there were 16,006 riflemen’s positions, featuring embrasures made from fallen trees and branches. The Germans had also laid 72,517 Teller antitank mines and 23,172 S-mines, alongside 73 miles of wire obstacles and 9,780 yards of antitank ditches. However, only four Panzerturms had been completed, with 18 more under construction and seven others planned. Out of 46 smaller tank gun turrets intended to mount 1- and 2-centimetre guns, only 18 were operational. Furthermore, while 22 steel shelters were under construction, none had reached completion.
Initially, this line was breached during Operation Olive, but Kesselring's forces were consistently able to retire in good order. This continued to be the case up to March 1945, with the Gothic Line being breached but with no decisive breakthrough; this would not take place until April 1945 during the final Allied offensive of the Italian Campaign.
Operation Olive has been described as the biggest battle of materials ever fought in Italy. Over 1,200,000 men participated in the battle. The battle took the form of a pincer manoeuvre, carried out by the British Eighth Army and the U.S. Fifth Army against the German 10th Army and German 14th Army. Rimini, a city which had been hit by previous air raids, had 1,470,000 rounds fired against it by allied land forces. According to Lieutenant-General Oliver Leese, commander of the British Eighth Army: "The battle of Rimini was one of the hardest battles of Eighth Army. The fighting was comparable to El Alamein, Mareth, and the Gustav Line."
Background
After the nearly concurrent breakthroughs at Cassino and Anzio in spring 1944, the 11 nations representing the Allies in Italy finally had a chance to trap the Germans in a pincer movement and to realize some of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's strategic goals for the long, costly campaign against the Axis "underbelly". This would have required the U.S. Fifth Army under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark to commit most of his Anzio forces to the drive east from Cisterna, and to execute the envelopment envisioned in the original planning for the Anzio landing. Instead, fearing that the British Eighth Army, under Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, might beat him to the Italian capital of Rome, Clark diverted a large part of his Anzio force in that direction in an attempt to ensure that he and the Fifth Army would have the honour of liberating the city.As a result, most of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring's forces slipped the noose and fell back north fighting delaying actions, notably in late June on the Trasimene Line and in July on the Arno Line. This gave time to consolidate the Gothic Line, a deep belt of fortifications extending from south of La Spezia to the Foglia Valley, through the natural defensive wall of the Apennines, to the Adriatic Sea between Pesaro and Ravenna, on the east coast. The emplacements included numerous concrete-reinforced gun pits and trenches and 2,376 machine-gun nests with interlocking fire, 479 anti-tank, mortar and assault gun positions, of barbed wire and many miles of anti-tank ditches. This last redoubt proved the Germans' determination to continue fighting.
Nevertheless, it was fortunate for the Allies that at this stage of the war the Italian partisan forces had become highly effective in disrupting the German preparations in the high mountains. On 2 April 1944, partisans belonging to the Eighth Garibaldi Brigade managed to occupy Sant'Agata Feltria; their ambush of a German detachment sent to round up partisans led to the Fragheto massacre on 7 April. By September 1944, German generals were no longer able to move freely in the area behind their main lines because of partisan activity. Generalleutnant Frido von Senger und Etterlin—commanding XIV Panzer Corps —later wrote that he had taken to travelling in a little Volkswagen " no general's insignia of rank—no peaked cap, no gold or red flags...". One of his colleagues who ignored this caution—Wilhelm Crisolli —was caught and killed by partisans as he returned from a conference at corps headquarters.
Construction of the defences was also hampered by the deliberately poor quality concrete provided by local Italian mills whilst captured partisans forced into the construction gangs supplemented the natural lethargy of forced labour with clever sabotage. Nevertheless, prior to the Allies' attack, Kesselring had declared himself satisfied with the work done, especially on the Adriatic side where he "...contemplated an assault on the left wing....with a certain confidence".
Allied strategy
The Italian Front was seen by the Allies to be of secondary importance to the offensives through France, and this was underlined by the withdrawal during the summer of 1944 of seven divisions from the U.S. Fifth Army to take part in the landings in southern France, Operation Dragoon. By 5 August, the strength of the Fifth Army had fallen from 249,000 to 153,000, and they had only 18 divisions to confront the combined German 10th and 14th Armies′ strength of 14 divisions plus four to seven reserve divisions.Nevertheless, Winston Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff were keen to break through the German defences to open up the route to the northeast through the "Ljubljana Gap" into Austria and Hungary. Whilst this would threaten Germany from the rear, Churchill was more concerned to forestall the Russians advancing into central Europe. The U.S. Chiefs of Staff had strongly opposed this strategy as diluting the Allied focus in France. However, following the Allied successes in France during the summer, the U.S. Chiefs relented, and there was complete agreement amongst the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the Second Quebec Conference on 12 September.
Allied plan of attack
The original plan of General Sir Harold Alexander, the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in Italy —as formulated by his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Sir John Harding—was to storm the Gothic Line in the centre, where most of his forces were already concentrated. It was the shortest route to his objective, the plains of Lombardy, and could be mounted quickly. He mounted a deception operation to convince the Germans that the main blow would come on the Adriatic front.On 4 August, Alexander met Lieutenant-General Leese, the British Eighth Army commander, to find that Leese did not favour the plan. He argued that the Allies had lost their specialist French mountain troops to Operation Dragoon and that the Eighth Army's strength lay in tactics combining infantry, armour and guns which could not be employed in the high mountains of the central Apennines.
It has also been suggested that Leese disliked working in league with Clark after the Fifth Army's controversial move on Rome at the end of May and early June and wished for the Eighth Army to win the battle on its own. He suggested a surprise attack along the Adriatic coast. Although Harding did not share Leese's view and Eighth Army planning staff had already rejected the idea of an Adriatic offensive, General Alexander was not prepared to force Leese to adopt a plan which was against his inclination and judgement and Harding was persuaded to change his mind.
Operation Olive—as the new offensive was christened—called for Leese's Eighth Army to attack up the Adriatic coast toward Pesaro and Rimini and draw in the German reserves from the centre of the country. Clark's Fifth Army would then attack in the weakened central Apennines north of Florence toward Bologna with British XIII Corps on the right wing of the attack fanning toward the coast to create a pincer with the Eighth Army advance. This meant that as a preparatory move, the bulk of the Eighth Army had to be transferred from the centre of Italy to the Adriatic coast, taking two valuable weeks, while a new intelligence deception plan was commenced to convince Kesselring that the main attack would be in the centre.
Adriatic Front (British Eighth Army)
Eighth Army dispositions for Operation Olive
On the coast, Leese had Polish II Corps with 5th Kresowa Division in the front line and the 3rd Carpathian Division in reserve. To the left of the Poles was Canadian I Corps which had the Canadian 1st Infantry Division in the front line and the Canadian 5th Armoured Division in reserve.For the opening phase the corps artillery was strengthened with the addition of the British 4th Infantry Division's artillery. West of the Canadians was British V Corps with the British 46th Infantry Division manning the right of the corps front line and 4th Indian Infantry Division its left. In reserve were the British 56th Infantry and 1st Armoured Divisions and the British 7th Armoured and 25th Tank Brigades.
Further to the rear was the British 4th Division, waiting to be called forward to join the corps. The left flank of the Eighth Army front was guarded by British X Corps employing the 10th Indian Infantry Division and two armoured car regiments, 12th and 27th Lancers. Prior to the attack the I Canadian Corps' front was covered by patrolling Polish cavalry units and V Corps by patrolling elements of the Italian Liberation Corps. In army reserve, also waiting to be called forward, was the 2nd New Zealand Division.