The “Abominable Autumn”: Ferruccio Montevecchi Recounts October 1944

CHAPTER XV
The “Abominable Autumn”

At the end of October, Clark ordered the British XIII Corps to advance as soon as weather conditions allowed. His plan called for the 6th Armoured Division to replace the 78th Infantry Division in the Santerno Valley, with the objective of capturing the town of Fontanelice and the western end of the Vena del Gesso ridge. Meanwhile, the Indian 21st Brigade, which had relieved the 1st Guards Brigade on Monte Battaglia, was to take control of the newly assigned sector, extending from the eastern slopes of Monte Battaglia to the Senio Valley.¹; at the same time, the 61st Armoured Brigade was to deploy astride the road to Imola. But before all this, the British 36th Brigade had to seize Monte Penzola, securing as its starting point the Salaretta spur, which dominates the upper Sellustra Valley, while the 11th Brigade was to capture Cà dell’Ortica; further to the west, the 38th Brigade’s objective was the Calvana ridge, on the left bank of the Sillaro.² .

Inexplicably, and despite the most pessimistic forecasts, on November 29 Monte Penzola was occupied without a single shot being fired. Continuing the action, the 36th Brigade cautiously advanced to take Monte Maggiore, the commanding height that blocked any further progress and where the Germans had built a strong fortress among the ruins of the church. At the same time, a detachment of the 1st Motorized Battalion entered Fontanelice—deserted and heavily damaged by artillery bombardment; German engineers had crossed it during the night, retreating toward Borgo Tossignano. Now the artillery of the XIII Corps could strike Imola and the Via Emilia.³ . But this was the only tangible success achieved after two and a half months of exhausting and bloody fighting.

The Promise Land

The first snow fell on November 9, and in the brief moments of clear sky, the British infantry crowding the bare, wind-swept slopes of Monte Grande could see the plain only a few kilometers away. It was like the Promised Land, and the weeks of exhausting and bloody fighting were soon forgotten. A British officer wrote in his diary that day, astonished: “I climbed a high mountain. There was nothing higher than me for many miles around. I looked down over the snow-covered hills, and beyond lay the great northern plain, with German trucks, sometimes visible, hurrying along the Via Emilia. I could see small clusters of houses and farms in the plain which, if all goes well, we may occupy before the end of the winter, for even the shabby country chalets that some of us are lucky enough to occupy at present are not fit for winter tourists. But that is not all I saw. You may not believe it, but I saw the Alps, though they were about a hundred kilometers away: they rose above the mist covering the Po Basin, sharply outlined on the horizon, with jagged edges surrounded by a bluish shadow. I was so excited that I ran back to write you a letter about it.”⁴.

Unfortunately, the Allies, with their endless play of moves and countermoves, had managed to drag their war machine into the dead end of a “trench-foot war”—the *Zentimeterkrieg*, as the Germans mockingly called it. Not even the arrival of fresh troops could set it in motion again. The Anglo-American commanders described that standstill as a “temporary phase of defensive-offensive operations.” But one might just as well have called it a “temporary shift to offensive-defense,” and the outcome would have been no different.

“After so much effort,” wrote General Clark gloomily, as he prepared to spend the winter at Traversa near the Futa Pass, “it is impossible to abandon the idea of completing the breakthrough before autumn’s end. It is inconceivable that such a detrimental situation should have arisen.”⁵. General Clark bitterly complained that the British, through their conduct, had allowed the Germans to transfer divisions to the Fifth Army front in order to give the Eighth “a chance to shine in Romagna”; and he went around grumbling that he had become trapped in the “British Empire machine,” though he was well aware that even the American officers at Allied Headquarters in Europe showed little interest in the course of the Italian Campaign.⁶.

As if he had been the chief culprit of the failure, the commander of the XIII Corps was summoned to the Fifth Army headquarters, where Clark criticized him for his lack of energy. Now, even admitting that Kirkman lacked fighting spirit, it was certainly unwise to reprimand publicly—especially an elderly—officer of the British Army; Clark had every right to demand greater cooperation from a subordinate, but the proper move would have been to meet him privately and, if that failed to yield the desired results, to ask Alexander to replace him. However, Kirkman did not take it too hard and, with typically Anglo-Saxon composure, replied that “everyone sees only his own difficulties and never those of others; the fact is,” he concluded euphemistically, “that we are all very tired.”⁷.

In reality, the British were by then close to exhaustion, but according to them, what had contributed to the general slowdown of the offensive were “the dreadful terrain and weather and the horrible roads,” while, in Alexander’s typically rhetorical interpretation of events, “the impetuous rivers of summer became the raging torrents of an abominable autumn.”

Kesselring, who was no less presumptuous, wrote that “the skill of the command and the admirable conduct of the German units had prevented the Allies from achieving the expected success,” pretending to ignore that the Anglo-Americans had been stopped mainly by their own strategic disagreements. After all, Kesselring’s problems were the same as those of the Allies, since the German field marshal had previously informed Hitler that he would be unable to maintain the coherence of the front without reinforcements, further noting that the soldiers’ will to resist had greatly diminished.⁸. A different view was held by General Hans Hauser, Chief of Staff of the Fourteenth Army, who, while supporting the Field Marshal in his belief that “by the end of October he had succeeded in finally halting the enemy offensive,” allowed himself a moment of reflection and admitted that “the initiative was, and remained, with the enemy.” He added that the German command based its assessments “on the difficulties of mountain warfare, which prevented rapid cooperation between units in heavily attacked sectors and those in quieter areas; that reconnaissance was too little and too late; that decisions were founded on assumptions; that measures were taken too slowly; that there was no material superiority, especially in tanks and artillery pieces; and that the lack of aircraft had severely reduced our operational capability.” According to Hauser, therefore—contradicting Kesselring—the only positive factor on which the German command could still rely “was always the excellent fighting spirit of the German units.”⁹.

In the Germans’ favor, however, there was a circumstance no less important than their reserves: while their supply lines grew shorter as they retreated, those of the Allies stretched farther across mountains that the rain was turning into heaps of mud.

The Month of Disappointments

The Italian Campaign had become a succession of battles fought to drive the Germans from commanding positions, and each time the Germans managed to fall back to others just as strong. Now the same situation was repeating itself: von Vietinghoff’s divisions were settling on the last barrier before the Via Emilia, a chain of hills overlooking Imola, and the offensive had turned into a battle fought mainly by engineering units repairing the destroyed bridges and roads. But if one lifts one’s gaze above the map of Italy, it becomes clear that even in France—and almost at the same time—the offensive was stalling, and in an even less justifiable way. It was no mere coincidence: perhaps the Allies did not wish to win too quickly.

Those paying the price for this paralysis were not only the civilians. “It was bitterly cold,” an Allied officer noted in his diary in October. And in November, the snow would make the cold even more biting. Thus, to the dangers of war, the soldiers added the squalid misery of often having to take shelter in water-filled holes or press themselves against rocks soaked with icy rain.¹⁰.

By the end of October, winter had struck the Apennines: the waters of the torrents, thick with mud, sucked at the creaking supports of the Bailey bridges, and everything that was not rock turned to slime. The old Bordona road, linking Castel del Rio to Sassoleone, collapsed under the weight of traffic and remained impassable for fourteen hours. Engineers worked day and night to reopen it and allow supplies to reach the front-line units; yet in the area the road network was still inadequate, and a new route had to be laid out in haste—from Cuviolo to Sant’Apollinare, where the headquarters of the 78th Division was located. All available infantrymen assisted the engineers in its construction, and the new road, opened to traffic on November 7, was used by the British division for the remainder of its stay in the sector.

Major Foxwell wrote that “the entire front was a colossal swamp; battle losses and the unhealthy climate had a decisive impact. Everyone struggled to keep the men at the front supplied with basic necessities. There was no work more noble than that done by the group of muleteers, who guided their convoys night after night, groping their way up the steep and muddy slope leading out of Apollinare to avoid the swamp near the Gesso cemetery, where a dozen mules had sunk, passing by the tanks bogged down along the road to Gesso or through the minefields, hurrying their pace through the ruins of Gesso to avoid the almost inevitable shelling, laboriously pushing on along the nightmarishly long trail to Hill 387, reaching the edge of the world after a four-hour journey. Then the same ordeal to go back again—feeling hungry, sweating from the effort of trudging through the mud, throwing themselves flat to avoid a whistling shell, stumbling into a bomb crater that hadn’t been there on the way up.”¹¹.

A radio broadcast on October 23 announced that “an entire Italian division is operating on the front, performing duties of vital importance. It is impossible to measure the tonnage this unit has transported; yet it is thanks to them that the supply lines have been maintained—at the cost of a heavy toll in fulfilling their duty.”

The British were practical people, and they managed to lift their wavering spirits by setting up in Castel del Rio two gathering places modeled after London pubs, with equally evocative names: **Wally’s Bar** and **Golden Chopper**. The slow, heavy roar of a *Mörser* howitzer positioned by the Germans near Tossignano, which struck the town during the night of November 13–14, blended with the rumble of the trucks carrying their sad load of fallen soldiers to the temporary cemetery at Cercetola. It was a grim reminder that the battle was still underway.

November was therefore the month of disappointments, which inevitably affected the political and military leadership of the Resistance as well. The heads of the Allied missions, “perfectly adapting themselves to the logic of military necessity,” had focused their attention on the strategic potential of the partisans—both Italian and Yugoslav—concluding that, against the German forces in their respective zones, the latter were capable of offering a more effective military contribution¹². This essentially meant the abandonment of military operations against Germany. It meant leaving the Italian partisans to their fate—and once that decision had been made, someone had to communicate it to those directly concerned. Since Alexander was the chief authority responsible for the Italian Campaign, the task naturally fell to him. From that moment began the most dramatic period for the liberation movement, for it also marked the start of Operation “Disband” — the dissolution of the partisan formations.

Essentially, Alexander had to inform the partisans that it was useless to go on fighting, for their country would be liberated only when the war was nearing its final conclusion.

Alexander’s “Instructions”

In this precarious situation came the psychological blow of the instructions broadcast by *Radio Italia Combatte* on November 13, in which Alexander advised the partisans, in view of seasonal obstacles, to “suspend large-scale operations, conserve ammunition until further notice,” and prepare for a “new phase of war against a new enemy”—that enemy being winter. This statement captures the Allies’ true attitude toward the liberation movement, implicitly acknowledging the failure of the autumn offensive while disregarding the conditions in which the partisan formations now found themselves. The call to demobilize, as SF Chief Holdsworth pointed out, was “absurd for an army living in hiding,” and the suggestion to remain ready for a hypothetical future advance would have been extremely difficult to implement, since it was unclear how the Apennine formations could resume fighting without assistance. The U.S. Secretary of War, Stimson, as soon as he saw a copy of the “instructions,” wrote to Churchill indignantly, noting that the “Italian Marquis” had done a magnificent job—far beyond expectations—and that it was “disloyal to drop him like a hot potato.”

The thinking of the Allies—or rather, of the British, since the Americans had delegated to them the political conduct of the war in Italy—regarding the partisan issue, is revealed by Alexander himself in the manner and timing of the proclamation’s release. The text, it seems, had been drafted by a Protestant clergyman attached to the Psychological Warfare Office, probably convinced he was performing a charitable act toward the partisans; what is startling is that it was broadcast over the radio—thus made public. Certainly, the time had come to think about the cold, and Alexander may even have been right; a shift in strategy was inevitable. But it should not have been done that way. And, tactically speaking, what advantage was gained from the dramatically obvious advice to adapt to harsh conditions—as though the partisans were unaware of them? Moreover, the clumsily worded message only gave the Germans another pretext to intensify their repression. To make matters worse, propagandists of the Italian Social Republic immediately seized the opportunity to gloat, announcing—just as the war correspondent Eicholz wrote in the weekly *Süd Front* of December 10—that the Anglo-Americans, after exploiting the partisans, were now “throwing them away like squeezed lemons.”

It may be a somewhat simplistic thesis to claim that behind Alexander’s plan lay the deliberate intent to crush the guerrilla movement by prolonging the war in Italy; if, on the other hand, his purpose was to spare the partisans further suffering—since he had no intention of fighting “in the rain and mud”—he merely provided yet another demonstration of his inability to understand the patriotic movement. Thus, however justified from a strategic standpoint, the instructions were a masterpiece of ineptitude on the psychological one.

There is no doubt that among the various interpretations, one may also consider that the guerrilla movement—having by then attained significant political standing—had become the element most at odds with Churchill’s intention to restore the old and decrepit monarchic state. Viewed from another angle, the message could be seen as a direct consequence of the agreement reached at the Moscow Conference of October 9, during which Italy’s inclusion within the Western sphere was never in question. That accord relieved Alexander of any urgency to drive the Germans out of Italy; and since there were no more laurels to reap on the peninsula, he could now dispense with the partisans’ help—casting them aside in the most ignoble of ways. Equally bitter is the realization that the contrast between the partisan goal of *liberation* and the Allied goal of *conquest* had by now taken clear shape. A rational use of the Resistance’s military potential could have lightened the burden of the wartime winter, but—after all—for the Allies, Italy was nothing more than a battlefield to be used as circumstances required.

The problems of the Italians—the destruction, the reprisals, the occupation—did not really exist for the Anglo-Americans, or existed only insofar as they interfered with military strategy. And it cannot be said that they felt them as their own problems: after all, the Italians were still the vanquished—and, as such, to be punished.

The most serious effects of Alexander’s instructions were felt precisely in Emilia-Romagna, the scene of both direct clashes and the harshest repression. The unease within the Emilian and Romagnol partisan formations was profound: many had already prepared for an early insurrectional action. But with the front stalled, the entire hilly belt would inevitably remain under German control. In this situation, the partisan formations could neither endure the winter in place nor maintain fixed positions, as the German anti-guerrilla units would have soon located and destroyed their hideouts. Caught between the front line and the Via Emilia, the partisan bands found themselves with no escape if they chose to remain still. Faced with this predicament, internal debate grew increasingly heated. The liberation movement had gained awareness and maturity through long months of struggle, and the partisan brigades made it known to the command that they did not intend to passively submit to Alexander’s instructions. The political and military leadership of the Resistance, aware of the difficulty of openly opposing the Allied Command, sought a diplomatic course. It could not openly reject Alexander’s directives—doing so would have jeopardized internal unity and relations with the Allies—but neither could it leave its formations disarmed. The response of the *Comando Volontari della Libertà* (CVL) was therefore skillful: it expressed the determination to continue the fight while reinterpreting the Allied instructions. “The battle continues, and must continue—for the Allied armies, and also for the partisan forces,” stated the final communiqué¹³.

Fear of Revolution

It is clear that the military contribution of the Italian guerrilla movement was not decisive in achieving final victory; yet its political significance was immense, for the war of liberation ensured that the return to democracy would not appear as a gift from the Allies, nor as an imposition by the victors upon the vanquished. In reality, the Allies aimed to keep Italy under supervision, so that the continuation of its political and civil life would depend entirely upon them. In this way, they would be free to shape its future as they pleased. A similar goal was shared by Italian conservatives, for whom the suppression of the partisan movement was the necessary condition for keeping the country tied to the Western system and for preventing any popular or revolutionary reform. For the most reactionary groups, alignment with the Allies’ plans served as the means to repress the democratic impulses that the guerrilla struggle had awakened within the Italian people.¹⁴. With Germany’s defeat by then a foregone conclusion, there was growing fear that the German surrender in northern Italy might leave the country in a state of near-anarchy—as Allen Dulles described it—and that power could fall into the hands of those who possessed rifles and machine guns: the partisans, particularly the *Garibaldini*, who were politically oriented to the left. Churchill’s concerns on this point were far from unfounded.

It is impossible to prevent politics from imposing certain operations, even against sound military judgment. In the battle for the Apennines, the political choice was, in fact, to keep German troops tied down in Italy, preventing their transfer to other fronts. Yet this was a weak justification—one that did not excuse the Fifth Army’s failure to break through into the Po Valley, especially after the capture of Monte Battaglia. The Italian Campaign had by then become an instrument of broader political strategies, foreshadowing the new European order. The offensive had turned into a mere war of attrition, aimed at keeping German divisions occupied in Italy. But, in reality, the Allies themselves became immobilized in the same theater of operations. One may conclude that the true reason why the Germans and Anglo-Americans bombarded each other across the Apennines throughout the winter was simply to prevent one another’s movement. Had the Allies launched their offensive a month earlier, they might well have broken through the front and reached the Po Plain already in the autumn.

By launching their offensive too late, the Allies soon found themselves constrained by the onset of autumn, which reduced the effectiveness of their armored units and air superiority—the only real advantages they possessed for swiftly defeating the Germans. The failure was not due merely to the lack of long-term strategic planning, but above all to the conflicting political priorities between the British and the Americans. In essence, it was a lack of political will on the part of the Allied military leadership to carry the offensive through. When it became evident that the Yugoslav partisans lacked the strength to liberate the northern Adriatic, Alexander acknowledged his mistake: he had neglected the Italian partisans, who—he admitted—had achieved better results than expected. Nevertheless, he declared that, while appreciating their personal bravery, they “had never been a serious problem for the Germans.”¹⁵.

The offensive that was meant to bring the war in Italy to an end sank into mud and rain, and Alexander was forced to admit bitterly that, in 1944, his armies would reach neither Austria nor the Venice–Padua–Verona–Brescia line that had been set as the summer objective.¹⁶. The Po faded in the distance, lost in the winter mist—just as Churchill’s dream of a swift advance on Vienna through Ljubljana was vanishing. All that the British Prime Minister could now do was to adhere to the agreements on the division of spheres of influence established in Moscow.

The failure in the Apennines prolonged the war by six months, consumed vital men and resources for the Allies, and gave the Germans renewed determination to resist. It was a strategic mistake that also fostered Italy’s disintegration and prolonged the nation’s suffering.

Thus, while the German infantry entrenched itself along the Vena del Gesso for the winter, even the illusion of capturing Imola “just to save face” was shattered. The city, which according to Clark’s plans was to have been taken by the end of September 1944, was abandoned by the German paratroopers only seven months later, on April 14, 1945—seventeen days before the remnants of Kesselring’s army finally surrendered.

Notes

1. The Tiger Triumphs: The Story of Three Great Indian Divisions in Italy, Burma, Syria and Malaya, Delhi, Government of India, 1946, p. 166.
2. Charles Ray, Battle for Italy, London, Odhams Press, 1950, p. 185.
3. Giovanni Pallotta, relazione manoscritta fornita personalmente all’autore.
4. Nigel Nicolson, The War Diary of the British Army in Italy, London, Collins, 1946, p. 484.
5. Martin Blumenson, Mark Clark: The Last of the Great World War II Commanders, New York, Congdon & Weed, 1984, pp. 230–231.
6. Douglas Graham – Shelford Bidwell, Tug of War: The Battle for Italy, 1943–45, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1986, p. 379.
7. Brian Harpur, The Impossible Victory: A Personal Account of the Battle for the Gothic Line, London, William Kimber, 1980, p. 90.
8. Albert Kesselring, Gedanken zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (“Riflessioni sulla Seconda guerra mondiale”), Bonn, Athenäum Verlag, 1955, p. 102.
9. Dietrich Beelitz – Gerhard Heckel, Die Schlacht um Bologna. Der Kampf um die Hauptstadt der Emilia Romagna im Herbst 1944, Stuttgart, Motorbuch Verlag, 1981.
10. Wilhelm Velten, The Gothic Line 1944: Germany’s Last Stand in Italy, London, Osprey Publishing, 1991, p. 168.
11. Brian Harpur, The Impossible Victory: A Personal Account of the Battle
12. Ruggiero Battaglia, Resistenza italiana, Milano, Garzanti, 1964, p. 436.
13. Charles F. Delzell, Mediterranean Fascism 1919–1945, New York, Harper & Row, 1971, p. 440.
14. Elemér A. Gáborosy – Basil F. Smith, Behind the Lines: The Story of Special Operations in Italy, London, William Kimber, 1956, p. 60.
15. Ibidem.