Talking About World War II: Why did the Western Allies take such a risk at Normandy? Why did they not just push through Italy?

A German language map showing the last two years of World War II in Europe. (Credit: Wikicommons Media)

Why did the Western Allies take such a risk at Normandy? Why did they not just push through Italy?

There were several reasons involved in the choice of invading German-occupied Europe via Northern France rather than from the Balkans or the Italian peninsula, all of which were based on geography and basic principles of military strategy, tactics, and logistics.

U.S. soldiers wade toward Omaha Beach in Normandy, June 6, 1944. (Photo Credit: U.S. Coast Guard)

The first basic consideration we must address is this: What was the mission of the Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944?

This was the directive given to Gen. Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower by his superiors, the Combined Chiefs of Staff when he assumed command of the AEF in January 1944:

“You will enter the continent of Europe, and undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.”

Note that when “Ike” was named as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force (SCAEF) in November of 1943, Allied Forces were technically already on the continent of Europe fighting against German and Italian Fascist units in Italy; the Anglo-American Fifteenth Army Group, which consisted of two Allied Armies - the British Eighth Army and the U.S. Fifth Army. Commanded by British General Harold Alexander, this was a multinational force that included Brazilian, Canadian, French, Indian, New Zealand, and Polish units. The Fifteenth Army Group had been fighting in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations since the invasion of Sicily in July of 1943 and, by January of 1944, was blocked from advancing to Rome by the Germans’ fortified defensive line known as the Gothic or “Winter” Line.

Now, on a one-dimensional political map that only shows a few major rivers and large bodies of water in a “What Belongs to Who” format, it seems rather logical to assume that if you already have large Allied forces in Italy (a European country), why not simply keep reinforcing them via North Africa and the Mediterranean instead of invading Occupied France?

The Italian campaign, 1943-1945. (Map Credit: inflab at Medium.com)

Well, I normally don’t like to quote from Wikipedia when I write any answers on Quora or my blog, but I will make an exception here and refer to the article on the Italian Campaign:

On 9 September, forces of the U.S. Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, expecting little resistance, landed against heavy German resistance at Salerno in Operation Avalanche; in addition, British forces landed at Tarantoin Operation Slapstick, which was almost unopposed. There had been a hope that, with the surrender of the Italian government, the Germans would withdraw to the north, since at the time Adolf Hitler had been persuaded that Southern Italy was strategically unimportant. However, this was not to be; although, for a while, the Eighth Army was able to make relatively easy progress up the eastern coast, capturing the port of Bari and the important airfields around Foggia. Despite none of the northern reserves having been made available to the German 10th Army, it nevertheless came close to repelling the Salerno landing. The main Allied effort in the west initially centered on the port of Naples: that city was selected because it was the northmost port that could receive air cover by fighter planes flying from Sicily.

As the Allies advanced, they encountered increasingly difficult terrain: the Apennine Mountains form a spine along the Italian peninsula offset somewhat to the east. In the most mountainous areas of Abruzzo, more than half the width of the peninsula comprises crests and peaks over 3,000 feet (910 m) that are relatively easy to defend; and the spurs and re-entrants to the spine confronted the Allies with a succession of ridges and rivers across their line of advance. The rivers were subject to sudden and unexpected flooding, which had the potential to thwart the Allied commanders' plans. [36]

Even though British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill preferred focusing the main Allied effort in the Mediterranean (which he had once infamously referred to as “the soft underbelly of the Axis”), the more pragmatic American generals believed such a strategy was folly.

Not only did the Italian campaign prove to be costly for both sides, but in a strategic sense, it was an expensive exercise in the dispersion of men and military materiel in a theater which in no way posed a mortal peril for Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich.

Let me put it to you this way; in a fight, if you want to knock out your opponent and hope to have a reasonable chance of winning, you don’t attack his arms or legs. You aim for the head in hopes of delivering a knockout punch.

Germany’s capital, Berlin, was the “head” of the Third Reich. and during the planning stages of Operation Overlord, it was still on the Western Allies’ list of strategic objectives. It is, however, far to the north and east of Italy - too far and too difficult to support an Allied advance from the south.

The industrial “heart” of the Reich was located in the Saar and Ruhr regions of western Germany, closer to Great Britain and, by extension, the U.S. East Coast, which is where most of the troop transports and supply convoys to provided reinforcements and logistical support for the Allied forces sailed from.

The only way to defeat Germany before the bloody war on the Eastern Front - which was still where most of Hitler’s armies were fighting against the Soviet Union - ground down to a World War I-like stalemate was to get to the “heart” and “central nervous center” of Nazi Germany rather than nibble at the edges of Hitler’s empire.

Thus, the directive:

“You will enter the continent of Europe, and undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.”

Advancing through Italy, as tempting as it was to the Imperial-minded Churchill, would not only have been bloodier and slower than advancing into France, the Low Countries, and western Germany herself; it would have been battering away at the arms but not delivering a knockout blow to end Hitler’s reign of terror.

If the war had lasted longer, the Holocaust would have continued. Instead of six million Jews and countless more Gypsies, Socialists, homosexuals, dissenters, and other “enemies of the Reich,” the final figures for the Endlosung might have been far higher.

In addition, the war in the East might have ended differently than it did in 1945. The two most likely scenarios would have been either a negotiated peace between the two totalitarian monsters of the era (Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin) or a “liberation” of Europe by a victorious Red Army.

A third possibility, of course, is that the Allies could have muddled through in Italy until the first atomic bombs were ready for use against Berlin and other Nazi targets in the summer of 1945. This still meant the war would have dragged on with most of Western Europe still under German occupation, with Stalin either coming to terms with his fellow dictator or conquering Germany on his own.