Allied Invasion of Italy | Battle of Salerno | World War 2 Documentary

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This film – originally titled as ‘Battle of Salerno’ – is a short documentary produced by the U.S. Army about the Allied invasion of Italy during World War 2. It pictures Operation Avalanche, the main invasion at Salerno by the American Fifth Army under Lieutenant General Mark Clark on 9 September, 1943. The scenes of the documentary were filmed under fire by combat photographers. It was an episode of ’The Big Picture’ TV series and published in 1958.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / CONTEXT

In the final push to defeat the Axis powers of Italy and Germany during World War 2, the United States and Great Britain, the leading Allied powers, planned to invade Italy. The Italian Campaign, from July 10, 1943, to May 2, 1945, was a series of Allied beach landings and land battles from Sicily and southern Italy up the Italian mainland toward Germany. The campaign seared into history the names of such places as Anzio, Salerno and Monte Cassino, as Allied armies severed the German-Italian Axis in fierce fighting and threatened the southern flank of Germany. The Allied advance through Italy produced some of the most bitter, costly fighting of the war, much of it in treacherous mountain terrain.

The Allied plan:
In Casablanca, Morocco, in January 1943, Allied leaders decided to use their massive military resources in the Mediterranean to launch an invasion of Italy, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the “soft underbelly of Europe”. The objectives were to remove Italy from the war, secure the Mediterranean Sea and force Germany to divert some divisions from the Russian front and other German divisions from northern France, where the Allies were planning their cross-Channel landing at Normandy, France.

Italy surrenders, Germany fights on:
On July 10, 1943, Operation Husky, the code name for the invasion of Sicily, began with airborne and amphibious landings on the island’s southern shores. Jarred by the Allied invasion, the Italian fascist regime fell rapidly into disrepute, as the Allies had hoped. On July 24, 1943, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini was deposed and arrested. A new provisional government was set up under Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who had opposed Italy’s alliance with Nazi Germany and who immediately began secret discussions with the Allies about an armistice.

On August 17, 1943, Allied forces marched on the major port city of Messina (Sicily), expecting to fight one final battle; instead, they discovered some 100,000 German and Italian troops had managed to escape to the Italian mainland. The battle for Sicily was complete, but German losses had not been severe, and the Allies’ failure to capture the fleeing Axis armies undermined their victory.

Meanwhile, the German command deployed 16 new divisions on the Italian mainland. German leader Adolf Hitler did not want to let the Allies establish air bases in Italy that could threaten Germany’s southern cities as well as its primary oil supplies in Romania. He instructed his army group commander in southern Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, to make the Allies pay dearly for every inch of their advance.

Battle of Salerno (Operation Avalanche):
On 9 September 1943, the U.S. 5th Army under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark landed along the Salerno coastline while British Commando units and their American counterparts, the U.S. Rangers, landed on the peninsula itself. Salerno had been chosen as the first site for invasion of the peninsula because it was the northern-most point to which the Allies could fly planes from its bases in Sicily. Rockets launched from landing craft provided cover, and the beach landings went relatively smoothly. It wasn’t until two days later that the Germans, with some Italian troops coerced into service, mounted a heavy counterattack on the beachhead. But Clark called in the 82nd Airborne for support, and by the 15th, Salerno was in Allied hands. Meanwhile, the British 1st Airborne Division, having successfully landed at Taranto, captured the airfield at Foggia.

With the Salerno beachhead secure, the Fifth Army began its attack northwest towards Naples on 19 September.

Clark was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest U.S. award for valor in combat.
Allied Invasion of Italy | Battle of Salerno | World War 2 Documentary

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NOTE: THE VIDEO DOCUMENTS HISTORICAL EVENTS. SINCE IT WAS PRODUCED DECADES AGO, IT HAS HISTORICAL VALUES AND CAN BE CONSIDERED AS A VALUABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. THE VIDEO HAS BEEN UPLOADED WITH EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. ITS TOPIC IS REPRESENTED WITHIN HISTORICAL CONTEXT. THE VIDEO DOES NOT CONTAIN SENSITIVE SCENES AT ALL!

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