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Gothic Line

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370th Infantry Regiment walking toward the mountains at north of Prato - april 1945

The Gothic Line, also known as Linea Gotica, formed Field Marshal Albert Kesselring's last line of defence along the summits of the Apennines during the fighting retreat of Nazi Germany's forces from Italy in the final stages of World War II. The Gothic Line developed as a result of one of the Allies' missteps in the Anzio breakout.

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 Churchill's strategic goals for the long, costly campaign against the Axis "soft underbelly". This would have required U.S. 5th Army General Mark Clark to commit most of his Anzio forces to the drive east from Cisterna, and to execute the envelopment evisioned in the original planning for the Anzio landing (i.e., flank the German 10th Army, and sever its northbound line of retreat from Cassino). Instead, fearing that the British Eighth Army might beat him to Rome, Clark diverted a large part of his Anzio force in that direction in an attempt to ensure that he and the 5th Army would have the honor of liberating the Eternal City.

As a result, most of Kesselring's forces slipped the noose and fell back north of the Arno River, where they built a 16 km-deep belt of fortifications extending from south of La Spezia (on the west coast) to the Foglia Valley, through the natural defensive wall of the Apennines mountains, 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. This last redoubt proved the Germans' determination to continue fighting.

One of the Allied breakthroughs occurred at Mount Fogarito, where the U.S. 5th Army had positioned 3 infantry divisions, (at that time, the equivalent of 12 regiments) to hammer the Germans entrenched on the mountain. The mountain guarded the Po Valley and access to Austria. As of April 1945, the Americans had been unable to breach the line for six months. The Germans had dug in quite well and resisted all attempts at frontal assault, at which time the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was sent to attempt a breach. Commanders of the all-nisei force claimed they could do it in 24 hours; striking from the rear. Soldiers of the 442nd scaled up the rear of the mountain, a near-vertical 4,000 foot precipice deemed inaccessible. However, the plan worked. After 8 hours of climbing (men who fell during the climb did not utter sounds that would give away the unit), the unit assaulted German positions. The U.S. Army reported the 442nd broke the Gothic Line in 34 minutes. [1]

Hitler had concerns about the state of preparation of the Gothic Line: He feared the Allies would use amphibious landings to out-flank its defenses. So, 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 wouldn't be able to use the more pretentious name to magnify their victory claims. In response to this order, Kesselring renamed it the "Green Line".

The Battle of Gemmano

The Battle of Gemmano (August-September 1944), nicknamed by some historians as the "Cassino of the Adriatic", took place along the Gothic line; a second major battle occurred between August 25, 1944-September 30 at Rimini.

The Battle for Rimini

In August 1944, Allied forces primarily consisting of Canadian I Corps and the British 8th Army Group moved to the Adriatic in preparation for an assault on the Gothic Line from those positions. The attack commenced on the night of August 25-26 when these forces along with elements of the free Polish Army, over the course of four days, pushed the Germans back to their main defensive positions. Subsequently, and contrary to traditional practice, the Canadians pressed the attack and to the surprise of both their allies and the enemy, accomplished a feat previously believed impossible when they succeeded in breaching the Gothic Line after only two more days. Unfortunately, although the Germans had been unbalanced by this manoeuver they were able to recover more quickly than the unprepared British reserves and the opportunity to exploit this breakthrough was lost. As a result, despite the spectacular gains achieved in only six days, it took three additional weeks of intensely bitter fighting before the German army could be pushed out of the mountains and the town of Rimini liberated around September 21st. [2]

Bibliography

  • Gerhard Muhm : La Tattica tedesca nella Campagna d'Italia, in Linea Gotica avanposto dei Balcani, (Hrsg.) Amedeo Montemaggi - Edizioni Civitas, Roma 1993
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