War Politics - Summer 1944. The Time of Decisions. The 2nd World War is going towards its end with the defeat of Germany. Now politics come into first place and Generals must obey their Governments. Whilst von Stauffenberg rebels against Hitler in the attempt to save what is still possible, the Anglo-Russian-American "Strange Alliance" is showing its first splits. The Russian Joseph Stalin plans to sovietize Europe (Khrushchev) and points to the destruction of Germany and to the mastery of the Mediterranean, key of three continents, the British Winston Churchill, following his nation's traditional policy of the balance of power in Europe and of the control of the Mediterranean, because "the control of the Mediterranean means the control of the Western World", points at the Balkans as a barrier against the Red Tide spreading from the East, the American Franklin D. Roosevelt, who aims at the destruction of all colonialism (British inclusive) is pro-Stalin (Teheran) and, besides, being severely ill, depends heavily on his pro-soviet advisers, the political Harry Hopkins and the military George C. Marshall.

The decisive struggle on the Gothic (Green) Line

 Gothic Line n 2

 Gothic Line n 1

 and

 Alexander's

 Pincer Manoeuvre

Was the Gothic Line offensive the first battle of the imminent "Cold War" ?

 

In that fatal Summer truth will out. Unbelievably by the military point of view the Americans break off the pursuit of the Germans defeated in the battle for Rome and send the bulk of their forces away from Italy into Southern France against Churchill's will. The British Premier, who believes that "it is in Italy where the future of the Balkans and Europe will be decided" and who had been informed  that in Yugoslavia the situation was still uncertain between the friendly Serb Mihajlovic and the communist Croat Tito, now  thinks that only Alexander can solve the situation leaping from Italy into the Balkans and decides to launch a decisive strategic stroke with what is entirely British and under British command.I hope to turn and break the Gothic Line, break into the Po valley and ultimately advance to Trieste and the Ljubljana gap to Vienna".

 

On 25 August 1944 Churchill himself launches Alexander's "Summer Offensive", or "offensive of the Gothic Line", which in its first decisive phase until 30 Sept. 1944 is known as the "Battle of Rimini". The "important divergence" between Churchill and Roosevelt, the reluctant will of the Americans to trespass the Gothic Line, together with the bravery of the German soldiers and tactics, make a failure of  the offensive. "The weakened forces in Italy were stalled and the Russian armies swept into Eastern Europe". (Churchill)

But Churchill doesn't give up his British plans of a balance of power in Europe. France and Italy were too weak to forestall the Soviet Armies. Only Germany could do it. In the 2nd conference of Quebec he is obliged by Roosevelt to sign the Morgenthau Plan, outlined by the soviet agent Harry Dexter White, that anticipates the destruction of Germany to a pastoral state which could feed only 30 millions of Germans out of 80, and in October he goes to Moscow in the vain attempt to get from Stalin a Balkan compromise. But the soviet dictator, too elated in his presumptuousness of a total, final victory over his naïve Allies, who in Yugoslavia betray their friend Mihajlovic to help Tito and in China betray their friend Chiang Kai Shek to help Mao-tze-tung, makes a pawn of the British Aristocrat, pretending to give credit to his farcical Balkan agreement.

Then against the Americans' will Churchill decides to attain his Balkan aims by his most temerarious plan enlarging the Gothic offensive into Greece that was almost completely in the hands of the red partisans. Later he wrote: "Alexander's offensive failed.Italy was not to be wholly free for another eight months, the right-handed drive to Vienna was denied to us and, except in Greece, our military power to influence the liberation of South-Eastern Europe was gone." Actually Alexander's offensive was not really a failure. The Gothic Line offensive though it attained limited aims in Italy, with the corollary in Greece allowed the Western World to keep the control of the Mediterranean in the "Cold War" of the war aftermath.