Lo sbarco di Salerno e l'Operazione Avalanche (9 settembre 1943)

edited by Daniele Baggiani

The Salerno Landings and Operation Avalanche (September 9, 1943)
A Contested Victory in the Italian Campaign

The Salerno landing on September 9, 1943, marked the Allied entry onto the European mainland eight months before Normandy, at one of the most uncertain moments of the war in Italy. The country had only just emerged from Fascism, the armistice had been announced only a few hours earlier, and the German reaction — swift, organized, and almost victorious during the counterattack of September 13 — showed that the Italian campaign would not be the rapid march northward hoped for by the Allies, but the first in a long series of battles through successive defensive lines, from Cassino, the Gustav Line and the Albert Line, all the way to the Tuscan Apennines and the Gothic Line.

Background and Assumptions of the Operation

Operation Avalanche — the Allied landing in the Gulf of Salerno on September 9, 1943 — arose directly from the decisions taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943. There, while confirming the absolute priority of the future Operation Overlord in Normandy, the Allied Chiefs of Staff authorized Churchill to continue the Mediterranean campaign after the conquest of Sicily, Operation Husky in July 1943, in the belief that striking what the British prime minister called the “soft underbelly” of the Axis would force Germany to divert forces from both the Eastern Front and the Atlantic front. [1]The fall of Mussolini on July 25, 1943, and the secret negotiations that followed between the Badoglio government and the Allies accelerated the timetable. The armistice, signed in secret at Cassibile on September 3 and made public on September 8 — only a few hours before the landing — was intended to maximize confusion within the German ranks. The German command, however, and in particular Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, had for weeks anticipated a possible Italian collapse and had prepared a plan for the immediate disarmament of Italian units and the firm defense of the key points of the peninsula. [2].

Avalanche was not an isolated operation, but the centerpiece of an invasion along three axes. On September 3, General Bernard Montgomery’s British Eighth Army had already crossed the Strait of Messina and landed in Calabria, Operation Baytown. On September 9 itself, at the same time as Avalanche, the British 1st Airborne Division occupied the port of Taranto without encountering resistance, Operation Slapstick, thanks to the cooperation of the Italian Navy after the armistice. [3]Avalanche, conducted by the newly formed U.S. Fifth Army under General Mark W. Clark, was nevertheless the true strategic center of gravity of the invasion: a deliberate “leap” far beyond the tip of Calabria, designed to shorten the campaign by rapidly capturing Naples and its port, rather than slowly advancing up the Italian peninsula from the Strait. [4].

The Strategy: The Choice of the Gulf of Salerno

The choice of the landing site was, from the outset, a compromise between conflicting requirements. Officially, the decisive factor was the operational range of the single-engine Spitfire fighters based in Sicily, which could not provide continuous air cover beyond the Gulf of Salerno. For this reason, General Clark’s plan, which would have preferred a landing farther north, between Naples and the Volturno, was rejected by the British command. [5]Local Campanian historiography, however, has pointed out that this argument — the alleged lack of air cover — was in some respects a convenient pretext. In the sector north of Naples, the Germans had only the “Göring” Division, withdrawn and in the process of being reconstituted after the heavy losses it had suffered in Sicily. A landing in that area would have allowed the Allies to gain almost immediate access to Naples, its intact port, and the airfield at Marcianise, far safer than the one at Pontecagnano, which remained under German artillery fire throughout the battle. [6].

The Gulf of Salerno, by contrast, presented tactical flaws that would prove extremely serious. The Sele River divided the plain into two sectors, separating the future British X Corps in the north from the American VI Corps in the south, with a gap of about thirteen kilometres between them. The entire plain was also dominated by a ring of mountains that gave the German defenders ideal observation positions for their artillery. Above all, the sector was already held by a single but formidable German armoured formation at full strength: the 16th Panzer Division, with about 17,000 men and more than one hundred tanks. [7]The Allies expected that the simultaneous landings in Calabria and at Taranto would force the Germans into a rapid withdrawal northward for fear of being outflanked. As events would show, this calculation proved largely mistaken: the German divisions deployed in Calabria were not unnerved by the Taranto landing and instead moved directly toward Salerno. [8].

Operational and Logistical Preparation

The U.S. Fifth Army was created specifically for the operation less than two months before the landing day, and was organized into two corps: General Ernest J. Dawley’s U.S. VI Corps, built around the 36th Infantry Division — the Texas National Guard, with no previous combat experience — which was to land at Paestum, with the 45th Infantry Division held in floating reserve; and General Richard McCreery’s British X Corps, with the 46th and 56th Infantry Divisions assigned to the Salerno–Vietri–Maiori sector. [9]Special forces operated on the two flanks of the landing force with interdiction tasks: Colonel William O. Darby’s U.S. Rangers, whose objective was to seize the Chiunzi Pass above Maiori, dominating the plain of Naples; and the British Commandos of Brigadier Robert “Lucky” Laycock’s 2nd Special Service Brigade, whose objective was Vietri sul Mare, in order to block the coastal road toward Naples. [10]The 82nd Airborne Division, still in Sicily, remained in reserve for a possible emergency drop.

Command of the landing fleet, the Western Naval Task Force, was entrusted to U.S. Vice Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt. It was Hewitt who opposed, unsuccessfully, the most controversial decision in the entire planning process: General Clark’s choice to forgo any preparatory naval and air bombardment, in the belief that this would preserve the element of surprise. Hewitt had correctly anticipated that tactical surprise would not be achieved in any case, since German air reconnaissance had already spotted the Allied convoys at sea. As a result, the decision to abandon the bombardment deprived the landing troops of fire support that would have proved invaluable in the hours immediately following the first landings on the beaches. [11]On the opposing side, General Rudolf Sieckenius, commander of the 16th Panzer Division, organized the defense into three Kampfgruppen: Dörnemann north and northwest of Salerno, Stempel between Salerno and the Sele, and Doering in the Paestum–Agropoli sector. They were deployed five to ten kilometres from the coast, with the artillery already pre-registered on the likely landing areas. [12].

The Landing of September 9, 1943

Nella notte fra l’8 e il 9 settembre 1943, una flotta di 463 unità navali, partite dai porti siciliani, algerini e da Tripoli, si avvicinò al Golfo di Salerno. I Rangers di Darby sbarcarono a Maiori verso le 3:10, senza incontrare resistenza, e nelle ore successive occuparono il Passo di Chiunzi; i Commandos britannici sbarcarono a Vietri sul Mare alle 3:50, dove dovettero sostenere combattimenti più aspri per il controllo dell’abitato, in uno scontro divenuto emblematico per l’impiego di un’arma anticarro portatile PIAT contro un carro tedesco nelle strette vie del paese [13]Farther north and south, the British X Corps and the U.S. VI Corps both landed at around 3:30 a.m. In the Salerno sector, the British immediately came under German artillery fire and had to capture Battipaglia at heavy cost. The Americans, on the open beach at Paestum, without the preparatory bombardment denied by Clark, were met by close-range barrage fire from German tanks and guns, as well as — according to a testimony often repeated in later accounts — by a German loudspeaker mockingly calling on the American soldiers to surrender: “we have you in our grasp already.” [14]. Despite the losses, both corps managed by the end of the day to establish a bridgehead, but a thin one and, above all, not joined up: the thirteen-kilometre gap along the Sele, foreseen in the planning as an acceptable risk, remained open and would become the weak point on which the Germans would concentrate their reaction. [15].

The Fighting in the Following Days (September 10–16)

In the days following the landing, while the Allies tried unsuccessfully to close the Sele gap, the German command — the 10th Army of General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, under Kesselring — brought reinforcements towards Salerno from Calabria, Naples and Apulia: elements of the 15th and 29th Panzergrenadier Divisions, the “Hermann Göring” Division and the 26th Panzer Division, concentrated precisely in the central sector more weakly held by the Allies. [16]. On 13 September — remembered in Allied memoirs as “Black Monday” — the 16th Panzer and the reinforcements that had arrived launched a counterattack along the Sele-Calore corridor that came within a short distance of the 5th Army command and of the landing beaches themselves, causing one of the most serious crises of the entire Italian Campaign: General Clark, fearing the collapse of the central sector, had emergency plans prepared that contemplated the possible partial re-embarkation of the American VI Corps — an order that would become, in the following years, one of the most controversial points in the historiography of the battle. [17]. The crisis was overcome thanks to the massive use of naval gunfire — cruisers and destroyers such as the Philadelphia, the Boise and the Savannah continuously bombarded the German columns — and of an air force that enjoyed clear numerical superiority, although it operated at the limit of its range from the Sicilian airfields. [18]. It was during these days that the Luftwaffe used the Fritz X radio-controlled glide bombs in combat for the first time, severely damaging the Savannah and causing around 197 deaths among the crew. [19].

On the night between 13 and 14 September, in an emergency operation conceived and carried out in just a few hours, General Matthew Ridgway’s 82nd Airborne Division was dropped directly onto the bridgehead, in the Paestum-Sele sector, contributing decisively to stabilizing the line at the most critical moment. [20]. On 14 September, the height of Hill 424, above Altavilla Silentina, was the scene of a “tug of war” in which the position changed hands several times between the British 56th Division and the American 45th Division, before remaining firmly in Allied hands. [21]. Having exhausted his offensive capacity and aware of the disproportion of naval and air power against him, Vietinghoff ordered, starting on 16 September, a gradual and contested withdrawal northwards, aimed at preserving the integrity of the 10th Army rather than risking its annihilation in an encirclement attempt that was now out of reach. [22].

Epilogue: The Link-up with the Eighth Army and the Fall of Naples

Between 16 and 20 September, the German rearguards withdrew in good order towards the north, leaving behind a wide series of road and railway demolitions. On 20 September, the vanguards of the 5th Army linked up, in the Auletta area, with the columns of the British Eighth Army that had advanced from Calabria through the Potenza area, definitively closing the bridgehead crisis and establishing a continuous Allied front from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic. [23]. The advance towards Naples, across mountainous terrain made even more difficult by German demolitions, was accompanied by an event that historiography places halfway between military history and civilian history: the “Four Days of Naples” (27-30 September), a popular uprising against German orders of deportation and requisition, which wore down the German rearguards even before the entry of Allied troops into the city, which took place on 1 October 1943. [24]. The retreating Germans carried out in Naples a systematic campaign of destruction of the port infrastructure and of the water and sewer systems, as well as planting a number of delayed-action explosive devices — including the one that, exploding in the Post Office building six days after the Allied occupation, caused more than seventy deaths — and deliberately setting fire to a significant part of the holdings of the University Library and the State Archives of Naples, which were lost. [25]. The rapid repair of the port, directed by U.S. Navy Commodore William A. Sullivan, restored within a few weeks a capacity sufficient to support the entire continuation of the Italian Campaign. [26]. In the same period, for reasons that were partly logistical and partly political — the need not to burden the supplies already destined for the Allied military base at Naples, and the greater food self-sufficiency of the province of Salerno — it was Salerno, rather than Naples, that was chosen as the provisional seat of the Badoglio government and of the Court of Auditors in the following months. [27]. The casualty toll of the battle proper (9-20 September) is estimated at around 5,500 British killed, wounded and missing, 3,500 Americans and roughly the same number of Germans. [28].

Consequences for the Italian Campaign

On a strictly operational level, Avalanche secured for the Allies possession of Naples and its port, indispensable as a logistical base for the rest of the campaign, and contributed, together with the Adriatic advance of the Eighth Army, to the capture of the Foggia airfield complex by the end of September — an air base that would prove crucial for Allied strategic bombing of the Balkans and southern Germany. [29]. The cost and precariousness of the battle, however, left a lasting mark on the choices of the Allied command: the near-crisis of 13 September reinforced a line of caution that would later condition — not without consequences, as the Anzio landing would demonstrate a few months later — the entire approach to the Italian Campaign, oriented towards a methodical advance up the peninsula rather than towards new, risky amphibious “leaps”. [30]. On the German side, the relative effectiveness of the defence of Salerno — capable of inflicting severe losses and delaying the Allied advance for days, though unable to prevent the landing — strengthened Hitler’s and the OKW’s confidence in the doctrine of defence in depth advocated by Kesselring, as opposed to the alternative proposal of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who favoured an immediate withdrawal to the Po Valley and northern Italy alone. [31]. Kesselring’s appointment, on 21 November 1943, as Commander-in-Chief of the South-Western Front (Oberbefehlshaber Südwest) definitively sanctioned the prevalence of the defensive strategy based on a succession of fortified lines — Volturno, Barbara, Bernhardt/Winter, Gustav and, finally, the Gothic Line on the Tuscan Apennines — along which, one year later, the Battle of Arezzo and the advance of the Indian Divisions, already documented in other articles in this archive, would also take place. [32].

Historiographical Reflections

The historiography on Salerno has moved, over the decades, along an axis ranging from a relatively triumphalist interpretation — characteristic above all of the Allied official histories written in the immediate post-war period, centred on the ability of naval and air firepower to save the bridgehead — to an increasingly critical reading of command decisions. [33]. The critical strand found its best-known and most enduring formulation in Hugh Pond’s book Salerno (1961), whose very subtitle in its Italian edition — “an avalanche of mistakes and deaths” — sums up a precise historiographical thesis: the operation, though victorious, was marked by a chain of interconnected planning errors, from the renunciation of preparatory bombardment against Hewitt’s advice, to the gap left along the Sele between the two corps, and to the underestimation of the 16th Panzer’s capacity for immediate reaction. [34]. A thesis taken up and developed further, twenty years later, by Des Hickey and Gus Smith in Operation Avalanche: The Salerno Landings, 1943 (1983), and repeatedly cited, also in Italy, by historical publications such as Storia in Rete. [35]. Significantly, the British Imperial War Museums itself, in its popular summary, titles the episode “The disaster at Salerno”: a title that shows how, in British public memory, the operation — although it ended in an Allied success — remained associated more with the perception of a narrowly avoided disaster than with that of a clear victory. [36].

A second strand of the historiographical debate concerns command responsibility: the removal of General Dawley from command of VI Corps, a few weeks after the battle, has been interpreted by several historians as an attempt by Clark to deflect onto a subordinate the criticism directed at his own initial decisions, first and foremost the one concerning the preparatory bombardment. [37]. A strand of more recent Anglo-American historical writing also frames Salerno within a broader critique of the strategic indecision of the Allied command in the Mediterranean in 1943, caught between Churchill’s Mediterranean ambitions and the growing priority, supported by the Americans, of the future Overlord. [38]. Finally, Italian local historiography, in particular the works produced by the State Archives of Salerno on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the landing, has shifted attention from military history to civil and political history: the war damage suffered by the population of Salerno, the role of the local clergy, the choice of Salerno as the provisional capital of the Kingdom and, above all, the so-called “Salerno turn” — Palmiro Togliatti’s return and his line of “national solidarity”, which would shape the balance of Italian politics for decades — demonstrate how the “Great History” of the landing cannot be understood separately from the local history it set in motion. [39]. Overall, the current historiographical assessment tends to recognize in Avalanche both the merit of a victory ultimately achieved thanks to the overwhelming Allied superiority in naval and air firepower, and the weight of planning errors that made it far more costly and uncertain than it needed to be. [40].

A Direct Source: Episodes and Testimonies from Hugh Pond’s Salerno!

The following pages supplement the previous reconstruction with several episodes drawn directly from Hugh Pond’s volume Salerno! (1961), a foundational work in the narrative historiography of the battle, consulted here through a selection of pages reproduced photographically and made available by the commissioner of this archive; the size of the volume made a complete reproduction impossible, so it was decided to give priority to the most significant passages in order to enrich the picture already outlined in the preceding paragraphs. [41]. These are largely minor episodes from a strictly operational point of view, but useful for restoring the daily and human dimension of the battle, just as Pond had gathered it from the oral testimonies of hundreds of veterans of all the nationalities involved. [42].

Nei combattimenti per il possesso della collina di Piegolelle e del vicino colle della Croce Bianca, nella notte fra il 17 e il 18 settembre, un plotone isolato del 41° Royal Marine Commando, comandato dal capitano John Parson e privo di qualsiasi contatto radio con il resto del reparto, riuscì a raggiungere la cima del colle attraversando un terreno costellato di cadaveri tedeschi in decomposizione e uliveti devastati dal bombardamento. Parson raccontò in seguito come i suoi uomini, esausti da giorni di combattimento ininterrotto, procedessero con lentezza e dovessero essere costantemente incitati prima di issarsi sulle posizioni di vetta, in un’atmosfera rarefatta resa ancora più inquietante dalla vicinanza di voci britanniche che, in un primo momento, i marines scambiarono per un inganno tedesco [43]. Il giorno seguente, gli alleati si accorsero solo con ore di ritardo che le unità tedesche di prima linea si erano ritirate durante la notte verso nuove posizioni sui rilievi: una sezione dei Coldstream Guards al comando del tenente Christopher Bulteel fu la prima a verificare, con una perlustrazione cauta lungo il letto di un torrente in secca, che il tabacchificio di Battipaglia — obiettivo conteso per giorni — era stato abbandonato dal nemico, in un silenzio innaturale che colpì profondamente i soldati dopo nove giornate di bombardamento ininterrotto [44].

Il 19 settembre, a Torello, il secondo battaglione del 7° reggimento Queen’s condusse un nuovo assalto preceduto da un quarto d’ora di fuoco di sbarramento combinato — navale, di artiglieria campale e di mortai pesanti — sulle posizioni tedesche; un tiratore appostato su un colle vicino riuscì comunque a colpire sei soldati britannici intenti a scavare una trincea prima che potessero ripararsi, episodio che Pond cita come prova della persistente capacità di reazione tedesca anche nelle fasi finali del ripiegamento [45]. Negli stessi giorni il generale McCreery definiva i piani per l’avanzata su Napoli, affidando alla 46ª Divisione l’attacco lungo la statale 18 verso Nocera e Pagani e disponendo che la Brigata delle Guardie, una volta conquistata Battipaglia, fosse subito trasferita a nord per partecipare all’offensiva finale [46].

Il capitolo conclusivo del libro, intitolato semplicemente Epilogo, abbandona la narrazione militare per raccontare la vicenda di Lucia Apicella, una negoziante di Cava dei Tirreni conosciuta come “mamma Lucia”, che a partire dal maggio 1946 si dedicò personalmente, e a proprie spese, al recupero dei resti dei caduti rimasti insepolti sui campi di battaglia intorno a Salerno e Montecorvino — tedeschi, inglesi, americani, italiani, senza distinzione di nazionalità — restituendone le spoglie alle famiglie o alle autorità militari competenti: un’opera che, secondo la stima riportata dallo stesso Pond, portò al recupero di circa settecento salme in pochi anni di ricerche solitarie tra trincee, grotte e campi minati [47]. Pond accosta esplicitamente la vicenda di mamma Lucia al mito greco di Antigone, la donna che sfidò Creonte per dare sepoltura al fratello caduto; l’autore registra anche l’udienza di Lucia Apicella con papa Pio XII, che le conferì la medaglia d’oro della Virtù, e la lettera di ringraziamento che le indirizzò il cancelliere della Repubblica Federale di Germania Konrad Adenauer a nome del popolo tedesco [48]. Alla domanda del nipote, raggiante per la notizia della decorazione pontificia, mamma Lucia avrebbe risposto soltanto: «Non più guerre!» — due parole che Pond pone, non senza un certo calcolo retorico, a sigillo dell’intero racconto della battaglia [49]. Nella breve nota dell’autore che chiude il volume, lo stesso Pond indica le proprie fonti principali, segnalando in particolare i lavori di Carlo Carucci e Arturo Carucci sullo sbarco vissuto dal versante della popolazione civile salernitana, le memorie del generale Mark Clark e del feldmaresciallo Kesselring, la storia operativa di Christopher Buckley, il volume sulle operazioni navali statunitensi di Samuel Eliot Morison e la storia della 16ª Divisione Panzer di Wolfgang Werthen — un repertorio che conferma l’ampiezza dell’indagine sottostante al racconto e la sua esplicita ambizione di sintesi fra il punto di vista militare alleato, quello tedesco e quello della popolazione civile italiana [50].

Bibliography

Rickard, J., “Operation Avalanche, the battle of Salerno, 9-18 September 1943”, historyofwar.org, https://www.historyofwar.org/articles/operation_avalanche_salerno.html.
Imperial War Museums, “The disaster at Salerno”, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-disaster-at-salerno.
Mazzetti, Massimo, “Salerno 1943”, in Dentoni Litta, Renato (a cura di), Schegge di Storia. Salerno e l’operazione Avalanche. Documenti, diari, memorie e reperti, Archivio di Stato di Salerno – Direzione Generale per gli Archivi, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Roma, 2014.
Pond, Hugh, Salerno!, Kimber, Londra, 1961 (ed. it. Salerno! Il giorno più lungo in Italia: Operazione Valanga, valanga di errori e di morti); pp. 234-286 consultate direttamente in forma di riproduzione fotografica, per gentile concessione del committente di questo archivio.
Hickey, Des – Smith, Gus, Operation Avalanche: The Salerno Landings, 1943, Heinemann, Londra, 1983 (Internet Archive, archive.org/details/operationavalanc00hick).
United States Army Center of Military History, Salerno: American Operations from the Beaches to the Volturno, 9 September-6 October 1943, Washington D.C., 1944.
U.S. Naval Institute, “The Allied Navies at Salerno: Operation Avalanche—September, 1943”, Proceedings, vol. 79/9/607, settembre 1953.
Axis History Forum, “16th Panzer Division, OB at Salerno Landing”, forum.axishistory.com.
Warfare History Network, “Crushing Counterattack at Salerno”, warfarehistorynetwork.com.
The Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum, “The Italian Campaign – Salerno Landings, 9th September 1943”, royalhampshireregiment.org.
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MilitaryHistoryNow.com, sulla campagna d’Italia 1943.
Storia in Rete, storiainrete.com.
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Focus.it, “Operazione Avalanche: lo sbarco alleato a Salerno del 1943”, focus.it.
SISSCO, “Operazione Avalanche. Lo sbarco alleato a Salerno del 9 settembre 1943”, sissco.it.
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Footnotes

[1]Sulla Conferenza di Trident e la strategia mediterranea del 1943, cfr. Rickard, J., “Operation Avalanche, the battle of Salerno, 9-18 September 1943”, historyofwar.org, https://www.historyofwar.org/articles/operation_avalanche_salerno.html; Wikipedia (EN), “Operation Avalanche”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Avalanche.

[2]Imperial War Museums, “The disaster at Salerno”, https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-disaster-at-salerno; sulla previsione tedesca del collasso italiano, Rickard, cit.

[3]Su Baytown e Slapstick, Wikipedia (EN), “Allied invasion of Italy”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_invasion_of_Italy; ww2db.com, “Operation Avalanche”, https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=307.

[4]Rickard, cit.; ww2db.com, cit.

[5]Mazzetti, Massimo, “Salerno 1943”, in Dentoni Litta, Renato (a cura di), Schegge di Storia. Salerno e l’operazione Avalanche. Documenti, diari, memorie e reperti, Archivio di Stato di Salerno – Direzione Generale per gli Archivi, Roma, 2014, pp. 13-19, in part. p. 15.

[6]Mazzetti, cit., pp. 15-16: sulla Divisione “Göring” arretrata e in ricostituzione, e sugli aeroporti di Marcianise e Pontecagnano.

[7]Sul fiume Sele e il vuoto fra i corpi d’armata, e sulla 16ª Panzer-Division (gen. Rudolf Sieckenius, circa 17.000 uomini e oltre 100 carri), cfr. Axis History Forum, “16th Panzer Division, OB at Salerno Landing”, https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=34854; Rickard, cit.

[8]Mazzetti, cit., pp. 15-16.

[9]Sulla composizione del VI Corpo americano e del X Corpo britannico, Rickard, cit.; The Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum, “The Italian Campaign – Salerno Landings, 9th September 1943”, https://www.royalhampshireregiment.org/about-the-museum/timeline/salerno-landings-9th-september-1943/.

[10]Sui Rangers al Passo di Chiunzi e sui Commandos a Vietri, Rickard, cit.; Imperial War Museums, cit.

[11]Sulla decisione di Clark e il parere contrario dell’ammiraglio Hewitt, Imperial War Museums, cit.; Rickard, cit.; Wikipedia (EN), “Operation Avalanche”, cit.

[12]Sui tre Kampfgruppen della 16ª Panzer (Dörnemann, Stempel, Doering), Axis History Forum, cit.

[13]Sullo sbarco dei Rangers a Maiori e dei Commandos a Vietri, e sull’episodio del PIAT, Rickard, cit.; Imperial War Museums, cit.

[14]Sull’altoparlante tedesco a Paestum e sul mancato bombardamento preparatorio, Imperial War Museums, cit.; Rickard, cit. Sui combattimenti per Battipaglia, Mazzetti, cit., p. 16.

[15]Rickard, cit.; Axis History Forum, cit.

[16]Sui rinforzi tedeschi convogliati verso Salerno (15ª e 29ª Panzergrenadier, Divisione “Göring”, 26ª Panzer) sotto la 10ª Armata di von Vietinghoff, Warfare History Network, “Crushing Counterattack at Salerno”, https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/crushing-counterattack-at-salerno/; Rickard, cit.

[17]Sulla crisi del 13 settembre (“Black Monday”) e sui piani di reimbarco predisposti da Clark, Rickard, cit.; Imperial War Museums, cit.; cfr. anche la discussione storiografica al par. 8.

[18]Sul fuoco di appoggio navale (Philadelphia, Boise, Savannah), U.S. Naval Institute, “The Allied Navies at Salerno: Operation Avalanche—September, 1943”, Proceedings, vol. 79/9/607, settembre 1953, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1953/september/allied-navies-salerno-operation-avalanche-september-1943.

[19]Sull’impiego delle bombe plananti Fritz X e sui danni alla Savannah (circa 197 morti), U.S. Naval Institute, cit.; Rickard, cit.

[20]Sul lancio d’emergenza della 82ª Divisione aviotrasportata (gen. Matthew Ridgway) nella notte fra il 13 e il 14 settembre, Rickard, cit.; Warfare History Network, cit.

[21]Sulla battaglia per Quota 424 ad Altavilla Silentina, Rickard, cit.; Warfare History Network, cit.

[22]Sul ripiegamento ordinato dal generale von Vietinghoff a partire dal 16 settembre, Rickard, cit.

[23]Sulla congiunzione con l’VIII Armata nella zona di Auletta, il 20 settembre, Rickard, cit.; Wikipedia (IT), “Sbarco a Salerno”, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sbarco_a_Salerno.

[24]Sulle “quattro giornate di Napoli” (27-30 settembre 1943) e sull’ingresso alleato in città il 1° ottobre, Wikipedia (IT), “Sbarco a Salerno”, cit.; Museo Nazionale della Resistenza, “Armistizio”, https://museonazionaleresistenza.it/story/armistizio/.

[25]Sulla campagna di distruzione tedesca a Napoli (porto, rete idrica e fognaria, ordigni a scoppio ritardato, incendio della Biblioteca Universitaria e dell’Archivio di Stato), Wikipedia (IT), cit.; Wikipedia (EN), “Allied invasion of Italy”, cit.

[26]Sulla riparazione del porto di Napoli diretta dal commodoro William A. Sullivan, U.S. Naval Institute, cit.; Wikipedia (EN), cit.

[27]Sulla scelta di Salerno come sede provvisoria del governo Badoglio, Mazzetti, cit., pp. 16-18, con la citazione della canzone popolare salernitana sul tema dei “loti” e dei “legnesante”.

[28]Sul bilancio delle perdite (circa 5.500 britannici, 3.500 americani, 3.500 tedeschi), Rickard, cit.

[29]Sulla conquista del complesso aeroportuale di Foggia, Wikipedia (EN), “Allied invasion of Italy”, cit.

[30]Sulla maggiore prudenza operativa alleata successiva ad Avalanche e sul collegamento con la pianificazione di Anzio (gennaio 1944), MilitaryHistoryNow.com, su Salerno e la campagna d’Italia 1943; Imperial War Museums, cit.

[31]Sul dibattito Kesselring-Rommel circa la strategia difensiva in Italia, Wikipedia (EN), “Operation Avalanche”, cit.; Wikipedia (EN), “Allied invasion of Italy”, cit.

[32]Sulla nomina di Kesselring a Oberbefehlshaber Südwest il 21 novembre 1943 e sulla successione delle linee difensive tedesche in Italia, Wikipedia (EN), “Allied invasion of Italy”, cit.; cfr. anche, in questo archivio, l’articolo dedicato alla battaglia di Arezzo (luglio 1944).

[33]Per l’impostazione delle storie ufficiali alleate del dopoguerra, cfr. United States Army Center of Military History, Salerno: American Operations from the Beaches to the Volturno, 9 September-6 October 1943, Washington D.C., 1944 (storia ufficiale, citata anche in Rickard, cit., e in Wikipedia EN, cit.).

[34]Pond, Hugh, Salerno!, Kimber, Londra, 1961 (ed. italiana con il sottotitolo “Il giorno più lungo in Italia: Operazione Valanga, valanga di errori e di morti”); la tesi è richiamata in Storia in Rete, storiainrete.com, sezione dedicata allo sbarco di Salerno. Per ulteriori episodi e riferimenti puntuali tratti direttamente dal volume, cfr. la sezione 9 del presente articolo.

[35]Hickey, Des – Smith, Gus, Operation Avalanche: The Salerno Landings, 1943, Heinemann, Londra, 1983 (disponibile in consultazione su Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/operationavalanc00hick); Storia in Rete, cit.

[36]Imperial War Museums, “The disaster at Salerno”, cit.

[37]Sulla rimozione del generale Ernest J. Dawley dal comando del VI Corpo, Rickard, cit.; Imperial War Museums, cit.

[38]MilitaryHistoryNow.com, sulla campagna d’Italia 1943 e l’indecisione strategica alleata nel Mediterraneo.

[39]Mazzetti, cit., pp. 17-19, sulla “svolta di Salerno” e il rientro di Palmiro Togliatti; sui danni di guerra e il ruolo del clero locale (mons. Demetrio Moscato Monterisi), Dentoni Litta (a cura di), op. cit., passim; cfr. anche SISSCO, “Operazione Avalanche. Lo sbarco alleato a Salerno del 9 settembre 1943”, https://www.sissco.it/calendario/operazione-avalanche-lo-sbarco-alleato-a-salerno-del-9-settembre-1943/.

[40]Sintesi storiografica complessiva dell’autore, sulla base delle fonti citate nei paragrafi precedenti.

[41]Pond, Hugh, Salerno!, cit. Le pagine consultate direttamente per la stesura della sezione 9 (pp. 234, 236-239, 259-261, 265-267, 281-286) sono state fornite in forma di riproduzione fotografica dal committente di questo archivio; non è stato possibile fotografare l’opera per intero a causa delle sue dimensioni.

[42]Sulla raccolta di testimonianze orali di reduci di tutte le nazionalità alla base del volume, cfr. la nota dell’autore in Pond, Salerno!, cit., p. 286.

[43]Pond, Salerno!, cit., pp. 238-239 (episodio del capitano John Parson, 41° Royal Marine Commando, nei combattimenti per Piegolelle e il colle della Croce Bianca, 17-18 settembre 1943).

[44]Pond, Salerno!, cit., pp. 259-260 (perlustrazione del tenente Christopher Bulteel, Coldstream Guards, e liberazione del tabacchificio di Battipaglia, 18 settembre 1943).

[45]Pond, Salerno!, cit., p. 265 (combattimento del 2° battaglione, 7° reggimento Queen’s, a Torello, 19 settembre 1943).

[46]Pond, Salerno!, cit., p. 265 (piani del generale McCreery per l’avanzata della 46ª Divisione e della Brigata delle Guardie verso Nocera e Pagani).

[47]Pond, Salerno!, cit., pp. 281-283 (vicenda di Lucia Apicella, “mamma Lucia”, di Cava dei Tirreni, e stima di circa settecento salme recuperate).

[48]Pond, Salerno!, cit., pp. 282, 286 (paragone con Antigone; udienza con Pio XII e medaglia d’oro della Virtù; lettera del cancelliere Konrad Adenauer).

[49]Pond, Salerno!, cit., p. 286: «Non più guerre!», risposta di mamma Lucia al nipote Vincenzo.

[50]Pond, Salerno!, cit., p. 286 (nota dell’autore e indicazione delle fonti: C. Carucci, A. Carucci, C. Buckley, M. Clark, A. Kesselring, E. Linklater, S.E. Morison, W. Werthen).