What do we do next? After the North Africa Campaign the question was

What do we do next?

After the North Africa Campaign the question was

Casablanca

• The U.S. decided at the Casablanca Conference of 1943 to invade Italy

• The meeting between FDR and Winston Churchill in Casablanca, Morocco decided the allies next move

• To Invade Italy

The Invasion of Italy• Also known as

“The Italian Campaign”

• The plan was to invade

Sicily and all Italian

mainland until the surrender of Italy

• The Invasion began on

September 3rd of 1943 an ended on May 8th, 1945

AFHQ Involvement

• Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) were responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre

• The AFHQ made the plans for taking Sicily and the mainland in late July

-Both U.S. Airplanes and Ships landed on the Gulf of Gela in Southern Italy

-The main goal was to

open up the allied traffic

for shipping

- Would allow allies

to ship goods to Soviets

Taking Sicily

- Invaded Italy through Gela on July 10th of 1943 prior to the invasion of the mainland

-Codename “Operation Husky”

- After taking Sicily they would work their way up the toe of Italy

- Attack the air force were carried down after midnight of July 9

- Strong winds up to 45 MPH scattered them off course

- Troops spread out all along the southern coast of Italy between Syracuse and Gela

- Attacked vital points and created widespread panic

- July 27th the Axis commanders decided the outcome of the campaign would be

evacuation

Evacuation

• Hitler transferred over 12,000 men

• 4,500 vehicles

• 5,000 tons of equipment

• All done between August 1st-10th

Operation Baytown

- British Eighth Army would depart from the port of Messina on Sicily

- Go across the Straits of Messina

- Land near tip of Calabria ("toe of Italy”)

- On September 3rd 1943

Operation Avalanche

• One week later on 9 September

• Would land in Salerno on western coast

• Seize the port of Naples to ensure resupply

• Cut across to the east coast, trapping Axis troops further south

Germans Fight Back

• On September 13th

• The main attack was on the boundary between the Allied Corps (which ran from Battipaglia to the sea)

• The Attack failed

Salerno• Invaded Salerno on September 9th 1943

• The landings were resisted nearly failed

• Germans exhausted their resources in unsuccessful

counterattacks

• Which led to their new plans

New Plans

• September 16th, Allied air and naval superiority dominated the Axis troops

• Von Vietinghoff told Kesselring

that they needed to end the battle of Salerno

• Pivot on Salerno to form a

defensive line

• The allies had then secured Salerno beach

Cold Winter

• Second amphibious landing north of Salerno

• Allies wanted to advance through the great chain of mountains through central Italy

• Not wanting to wait and deal with freezing winter weather

• Decided to leave in October

Stalemate

• Winter had began

• Allies had failed to break the Gustav Line

• The Italian

Campaign was

stalemated in

December of

1943

Anzio

• January 22nd 1944, Allied ground commander in chief, Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, launched an amphibious end run behind the German lines at Anzio

• Wanted to catch them off guard

• Kesselring quickly contained the Allied threat

• Held them off throughout February

• Stalemate went on through Spring with few attacks

An Opening

• May resulted in the

collapse of the Gustav

Line

• German forces retreated into northern Italy

• A final Allied offensive resulted in the surrender of all German forces in Italy on May 2nd, 1945

Aftermath

• The Italian campaign lasted 602 days

• Allied casualties were 312,000

• German losses were estimated at 434,646

Battle of the Atlantic

• Was the longest campaign of WWII

• Germany used the U-boats to try to sever the allied sea lines of communication

• Tried to end the trade of Britain and Allies

-The Allies made ASDIC (Allied Submarine Detection Investigating Committee)

-Nazis then make U-boat wolf packs to attack ASDIC and

other allied ships

-Battle then became battle between the German U-boat and allied Merchant ships

Phase I

• September 1939 – June 1940

• U-boats went west of British Isle into Bay of Biscay intercepting Allied merchant ships

• U-boats attacked at first according to prize rules, providing safety for the crew

• Allies then equipped merchant ships with weapons to fight back causing surprise attacks

Phase I

• Karl Donitz the U-boat commander planned to attack with his wolf packs

• With small numbers of U-boats and insufficient torpedo's the U-boats had failed

Phase II

• July 1940 – May 1941• The U-boats again used the “Wolf Pack”

plan• They began to attack the weak convoy ships• Royal Navy couldn’t help out they were

guarding against a German invasion• German air forces also had major attacks on

the British Harbors

Phase II

• Germans got support from Italian Submarines at Bordeaux

• Spring of 1941 the British invasion began to crumple so they sent out destroyers

Phase III

• May 1941 – December 1941

• Destroyers made U-boats fight from greater distances form shore

• British able to escort the convoys

• Able to push U-boats down to West Africa

Phase III

• March 1941

• Allies Captured cipher materials

• May 7th Royal Navy captured German Arctic meteorological vessel

• German U-boats seemed to decline as battle went on

• Now able to save 1.5 million gross tons of shipping with Atlantic becoming safer

Phase IV

• January 1942 – July 1942

• U-boats began sinking unescorted individual ships off the U.S. east coast in the gulf of Mexico

• Interlocking Convoy system ended the mass sinkings

Phase V

• July 1942 – May 1943

• Became battle of technology

• Germans introduced M-4 Cipher machine and were now able to decrypt Allied convoy signals

• March 1943 the U-boats achieved greatest success against the convoys

Phase V

• Allies countered back with dispatch of surface and air escorts supporting convoys

• Allies developed more weapons and high-frequency direction findings

• Fall of U-boat offensive May 1943

Phase VI

• June 1943 – August 1943

• Allies began to block U-boats in Bay of Biscay

• Forced U-boats

to distant areas

Phase VII

• September 1943 – June 1944

• Allies strengthen Cipher and made it hard to be located

• German ships

began attacking

in North Atlantic

and then in

Gibraltar

• Failed

Final VIII Phase

• June 1944 – May 1945• Allied invasion of Normandy• U-boat

construction

was delayed

by allied

bombings• German

defensive collapsed

Statistics

• Lasted 69 months without stop

• 2,850 Allied and neutral merchant ships sank

• 2,520 of them sunk in Atlantic or Indian Oceans

• Germans lost 1large battleship, 1 pocket battleship, and 650 U-boats (522 sunk in Atlantic/Indian Ocean)

- Allies won this battle due to superior resources in battleship and airplane building

- Also due to superior antisubmarine detection equipment