With the Balkans largely cleared of organised Italian resistance by the end of July and the SS Panzer Corps having arrived and been reinforced with new heavy tanks the German offensive against the Eastern Alpine Wall was ready to begin.
On the 3rd of August heavy Luftwaffe attacks began to batter Italian forces preparing defences along the Adige and Piave rivers which lay behind the defensive wall. At the same time small German forces along the Austrian border launched feint attacks against the Brenner and Tarviso passes, preceding the actual assault on the Italian fortifications by the 1st Gebirgsjager Mountain division.
Facing the German mountain troops were elements of the Italian border guard, the Sforzesca and Torino infantry divisions, some ten thousand troops recently repatriated from the Balkans with little more than their rifles and the Julia Alpini division. This was one of the Alpini divisions which had been destroyed on the Eastern Front and was in the midst of being reconstituted. Barely a thousand men of the original division had survived the long retreat from the Caucuses and most were still recovering from various ailments they had incurred on the way home.
The veterans nonetheless had gained many advantages; experience of fighting in the worst conditions with minimal supplies alongside a bitter hatred of Fascism and their erstwhile German allies which had put them through such experiences in the first place. These were assets they had passed on to the greener Alpini units who had arrived to supplement the rebuilding of the division and helped form a physical barrier in between the Alps.
The concrete bunkers of the Eastern Alpine Wall were most numerous among the natural gaps and designed in such a way they could support each other making it difficult for them to be outflanked and bypassing them in any great numbers impossible. The Gebirgsjäger were forced into a bloody, protracted advance which often devolved into hand to hand fighting. By the end of the first day the tanks of the SS Panzer corps were still roaring impatiently awaiting the green light to drive through the mountains.
Nonetheless the situation facing the remaining Alpini was desperate. Now cut-off from supply their positions were running low on ammunition and water. By the afternoon of the 4th of August most remaining fortifications had been neutralised and the Alpine Wall was breached. From Berlin Goebbels’ propaganda machine announced to the world how German soldiers had matched Hannibal’s triumph of crossing the Alps and German newsreels would soon show a seemingly endless column of tanks streaming into Italy. The footage of Alpini holdouts charging tanks with grenades and throwing themselves underneath was edited out.
In Rome the newly recognised Italian regime attempted to keep their citizens calm. Caviglia admitted the Alps had been breached but reassured the Italian people that the Austro-Germans had come this way in the First World War only to meet a bad end. Ambrosio attempted to maintain a cool head despite the head of the Italian Eighth Army, General Italo Gariboldi, practically begging him to move the mechanised corps around Rome north to plug the breach in the line.
Gariboldi was also a Stalingrad veteran and warned Ambrosio that unless the German breakthrough was immediately suppressed the Po Valley would be lost. Ambrosio refused stating fuel was scarce and they were the only force left to react to German threats against the south until the Allies had properly established themselves. In conjuring up the memories of 1918 Caviglia had neglected to inform the Italian their defence was now being left to a force who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the First World War.
By contrast the SS Panzer Corps made great use of their motorisation and close air support to exploit the breakthrough which had been denied to them in Russia the previous month. Dogged but largely static pockets of Italian resistance were bypassed or hammered from the air. By the evening of the 4th they had reached the Piave river where the Central Powers had been halted in1918. Orders for the bridges across the river to be blown following the German breakthrough were largely carried out successfully however German sappers had established pontoon bridges by the following morning.
The Regia Aeronautica flew several sorties in an attempt to destroy these bridges; however their remaining machines were outnumbered and outclassed by the Luftwaffe. Comando Supremo turned to the Anglo-American air forces for help only to receive an apologetic reply. Airfields in southern Italy were still in the process of being established to accommodate American and British aircraft with priority being given to strategic bombers whose targeting was too inexact to be of much use.
Comando Supremo could only inform forces in Northern Italy that vague Allied help was coming soon and to delay and frustrate the German advance for as long as possible behind the Adige and Po rivers. However with the Germans across the Piave, with no reinforcements coming from the south and the Luftwaffe dominant in the skies, a feeling of abandonment began to set in.
The German betrayal and their initial attempts to conquer Italy had evoked a great deal of patriotic fervour which had temporarily overcome the low morale the Italian Army had suffered through 1943 now morale started to crumble once more. Panic came naturally with the sense of abandonment which in turn led to a feeling that now it was every man for himself.
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