Utente:Olonia/Sandbox: differenze tra le versioni

Versione delle 19:09, 28 gen 2016

Versione attuale delle 12:45, 29 gen 2016

Riga 116:

A battalion of the Nembo Division, which had reacted negatively to the news of the armistice, mutinied, killed the Divisional chief of staff, Colonel Alberto Bechi Lucerna, and joined the 90th Panzergrenadier Division.

In Corsica, after initial confusion and fruitless negotiations, General Giovanni Magli, commander of the 7th Corps ([[20th Infantry Division Friuli]] and [[44th Infantry Division Cremona]]), attacked the Waffen-SS "Reichführer-SS" brigade, while some French units landed at [[Ajaccio]] on 12 September. On 13 September, following the arrival of the 90th Panzergrenadier Division from Sardinia, [[Bastia]] (where [[Action off Bastia|a previous German attempt to capture the port and Italian shipping had been thwarted by Italian ships]]) fell in German hands, but the Wehrmacht Supreme Command ordered General Von Senger to leave the island and whitdraw to [[Piombino]]. The German forces were evacuated from Corsica by 4 October, despite attacks by the Italian and French forces (the latter consisting in the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division).

On 12 September a paratrooper units under Major [[Harald-Otto Mors]], which also included the SS officer Otto Skorzeny (who had located the different prisons where Mussolini had been held), carried out Operation “Eiche” and thus freed Mussolini from detention in Campo Imperatore, [[Gran Sasso]]; this was an essential premise for the creation of a new Fascist collaborationist government wanted by Hitler.

Riga 133:

The 71th German Infantry Division encountered more difficulty in occupying [[Friuli]] and the [[Julian March]]; whereas the [[3rd Alpine Division Julia]] and the [[2nd Infantry Division Sforzesca]], both being re-formed after their destruction in Russia, were soon disarmed, the [[52nd Infantry Division Torino]] made resistance in [[Gorizia]], where workers formed the first partisan groups. Meanwhile, Slovene partisan formations invaded part of this region, where they often committed bloody revenges against the Italian civilian population. Only towards the end of the month the 71th German Infantry Division, assisted by Italian collaborationist soldiers of the Italian Social Republic, regained control of the situation, repelled the Yugoslav partisans and occupied all the territory. In [[Trieste]] General Alberto Ferrero, after fruitless talsk with anti-fascist representatives, started negotiations with the Germans and then abandoned the city, and 90,000 Italian soldiers in the area, abandoned without orders, surrendered without a fight.

In Central Italy, north of Rome, the 5th Italian Army of General [[Mario Caracciolo di Feroleto]], headquartered in [[Orte]], was dissolved on 11 September, and its soldiers were disarmed and interned; the [[3rd Infantry Division Ravenna]], headquartered in [[Grosseto]], and the coastal formations of the Northern Thyrrenian Sea disintegrated, and German units entered in the cities; [[Livorno]] was captured on 10 September. In [[Florence]], General Chiappa Armellini immediately allowed the Germans to enter the city; Colonel Chiari in [[Arezzo]] and Colonel Laurei in [[Massa]] gave up their forces without attempting any resistance. Italian units and civilian volunteers in Piombino repelled a German landing attempt between 10 and 11 September, killing or capturing some hundreds of German soldiers, but on 12 September the Italian superior commands surrendered the town to the Germans.

Army Group B completed its task by 19 September, occupying all Central and Northern Italy, disarmino and capturing great part of the Italian troops and capturing a sizeable booty that included 236 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,138 [[field gun]]s, 536 [[anti-tank gun]]s, 797 [[anti-aircraft gun]]s, 5,926 [[machine gun]]s and 386,000 rifles. Along with 13,000 officers and 402,000 Italian soldiers, 43,000 Allied prisoners, previously held in Italian captivity, were also captured. Rommel organized a quick transfer to Germany of the captured Italian soldiers, which were sent through Brenner Pass, partly by train, partly on foot.

Riga 156:

Italian forces in [[Albania]] consisted of the six divisions of the 9th Army (General Dalmazzo); the headquarters of Army Group East (General Rosi) was in [[Tirana]]. Left without clear orders, Italian commanders showed undecision and insufficient fighting spirit; on the contrary, German forces (Superior Command "Kroazia" with two chasseurs divisions, one mountain division and the 1st Panzer Division) acted swiftly and with great aggressiveness. In the morning of 11 September, the command of Army Group East was surrounded and General Rosi was immediately captured along with his officers, while General Dalmazzo did not react to the German attacks, did not issue any order of resistance and started negotiations with the Germans, hastening the disintegration of his forces.

The [[11th Infantry Division Brennero]] (whose commander, General Princivalle, kept an ambivalent behaviour), [[38th Infantry Division Puglie]], [[49th Infantry Division Parma]] and [[53rd Infantry Division Arezzo]] handed over their weapons and were dissolved (most men of the Brennero Division however managed to return to Italy by sea, while a considerable part of the men of the Arezzo Division escaped and joined the partisans), while the [[41st Infantry Division Firenze]] (General [[Arnaldo Azzi]]) and the [[151st Infantry Division Perugia]] (General Ernesto Chiminello) tried to resist. The Firenze Division faced the Germans in battle but was defeated near [[Kruja]], after which the Division was dissolved and its men joined the partisan formations; the Perugia Division retreated to [[Porto Edda]] after a [[fighting retreat]] and some of its men managed to embark on ships headed for Italy, but most of the division, weakened by the exhausting march through the Albanian mountains and the continuous attacks, was surrounded and surrendered on 22 September, after which General Chiminello and 130 officers were executed. Some survivors joined the partisans, forming the [[Antonio Gramsci Battalion]].

Over 15,000 dispersed Italian soldiers were sheltered by the population; the 21st German Mountain Corps established its headquarters in Tirana already on 10 September.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the [[18th Infantry Division Messina]] resisted for four days, while the [[32nd Infantry Division Marche]] tried to defend [[Dubrovnik]], but the German forces crushed its resistance; the commander of the Division, General Giuseppe Amico, was captured by the Germans during a parley and released to convince his men to surrender, but he instead rallied them against the Germans. Recaptured later, he was executed. In Montenegro, the [[23rd Infantry Division Ferrara]] disintegated, while the [[155th Infantry Division Emilia]] defended the [[Bay of Kotor]] till 16 September, then it had to surrender; the soldiers of the [[19th Infantry Division Venezia]] and of the [[1st Alpine Division Taurinense]] joined Tito’s partisans and formed the “Garibaldi” partisan Division, which kept fighting agains the Germans, despite some violent “incomprehensions” with the Yugoslavs, till March 1945.

In mainland [[Greece]], as elsewhere, uncertainty and ambivalent behaviour of the Italian superior officers favoured a rapid German success; Italian forces in this region, consisting of the [[11th Army (Italy)|11th Army]] with headquarters in [[Athens]], were subordinate to Army Group E of General Löhr, whom had numerically inferior but more efficient units (three chasseurs divisions, part of the 1st Panzer Division and a Luftwaffe field division). General [[Carlo Vecchierelli]], commander of the 11th Army, issued at first an order ditctating that no initiatives where to be taken against the Germans, and on 9 September, believing the German assurances of [[safe-conduct]]s to return to Italy, he ordered his troops to avoid any resistance and hand over the weapons to the Germans, without fighting.

The consequence was the disintegration of most of the units: the [[29th Infantry Division Piedmont]], [[36th Infantry Division Forlì]], [[37th Infantry Division Modena]], [[56th Infantry Division Casale]] and [[59th Infantry Division Cagliari]] were easily disarmed and their soldiers were captured and sent to Germany. The [[24th Infantry Division Pinerolo]], stationed in [[Thessalia]], rejected Vecchiarelli’s orders; General Adolfo Infante, after fighting in [[Larissa]], retreated to the [[Pindus]] massif, where he tried to obtain collaboration of the [[ELAS]] partisans. At first the Greek partisans agreed, but then they attacked the Italians to capture their weapons; Infante left for Italy, and his men partly dispersed among the local population, partly were imprisoned.

=== Ionian Islands and the Dodecanese ===

{{vedi anche|Dodecanese Campaign|Cefalonia massacre}}

German commands believed that it would be of great importance to retain conrol of the [[Ionian Islands]] and the [[Dodecanese]], garrisoned by Italian troops, as they were believed to be of great strategic importance as a peripheric naval and air base and a defensive stronghold against possible Allied attacks on the Balkan front. Therefore, German forces launched a series of operations aimed at capturing the most important of these islands, with a sizeable concentration of land and air forces. These operations caused some bloody battles against the Italian garrisons (who tried to resist, relying on their numerical superiority, geographical isolation and in some cases Allied assistance) and atrocities after surrender.

The Allied commands, despite insistence from [[Winston Churchill]] who supported a powerful Allied intervention in these islands to support the Italian garrisons and to secure valuable naval and air bases (which would turn useful for attacks on the southern Balkan front of “Fortress Europe”), only sent weak contingents with scarce air support, and were thus unable to change the course of the events, which progressively turned in favour of the Wehrmacht.

In [[Crete]], the [[51st Infantry Division Siena]] was immediately neutralized and disarmed by the German forces in the island (the “Kreta” fortress brigade and the [[22nd Air Landing Division (Wehrmacht)|22nd Air Landing Division]], a veteran of the [[German invasion of the Netherlands]] and of the [[Siege of Sebastopol]]); part of the Italian soldiers joined the Germans, whereas most of them were imprisoned and transferred to mainland Greece by sea, but at least 4,700 of them drowned in the sinking of two of the ships that were carrying them ([[MS Sinfra|Sinfra]] and [[SS Petrella|Petrella]]). [[Rhodes]] also quickly fell to the Germans; Italian forces there (the [[50th Infantry Division Regina]] and part of the [[6th Infantry Division Cuneo]], with 34,000 men), enjoyed numerical superiority over the German forces of General Kleeman (7,000 men of the “Rhodos” Division), but after [[Battle of Rhodes (1943)|an undecisive battle]] the Italian commander, Admiral [[Inigo Campioni]], surrendered when the Germans threatened to launch heavy bombings against the town of Rhodes. [[Karpathos]] was occupied by German forces on 13 September, after Campioni had ordered the island garrison to surrender. Over 6,500 Italian soldiers of the Rhodes garrison died after surrender, most of them in the sinking of the steamers [[SS Oria (1920)|Oria]] and [[Italian ship Gaetano Donizetti|Donizetti]] that were carrying them to mainland Greece; Campioni was later executed by [[Italian Social Republic|Fascist authorities]] for having defended the island.

British units landed in [[Leros]] and [[Kos]], where they joined the Italian garrisons in contrasting the German invasion (carried out by the 22nd Air Landing Division), but mediocre coordination, better German efficency and German air supremacy led to a German victory and the capture of both islands. [[Battle of Kos|Kos fell on 4 October]], with 2,500 Italian and 600 British soldiers taken prisoners; 96 Italian officers, including the garrison commander (Colonel Felice Leggio), were executed. Leros, defended by its 7,600-strong Italian garrison reinforced by 4,500 British soldiers, [[Battle of Leros|resisted for much longer]]; after weeks of continuous bombing, on 12 November 2,700 German soldiers landed or were parachuted in different points of the island and, despite numerical inferiority, they prevailed by 16 September, forcing both Italians and British to surrender. The Italian commander, Rear Admiral [[Luigi Mascherpa]], was later executed by RSI authorities like Campioni.

The most tragic events took place in the Ionian Islands, namely [[Corfu]] and [[Cephalonia]], which the German command considered to be of utmost importance for defense of the Balkan coast against possible Allied landings. The Italian garrison, consisting in the [[33rd Mountain Infantry Division Acqui]] with 11,500 men under General [[Antonio Gandin]], at first did not take any initiative against the much smaller German garrison (2,000 mountain troops under Lieutenant Colonel Hans Barge), and waited for clear orders. On 11 September, the Germans presented an [[ultimatum]] which ordered the Italians to surrender; Gandin at first decided to hand over the weapons, but after signs of protest and unrest among his men, he decided to resist. On 14 September, after receiving clear oders from the superior commands in Brindisi, Gandin rejected the ultimatum and attacked the German forces.

On 15 September, the Germans intervened in forces, landing five battalions of mountain troops of the [[1st Mountain Division (Wehrmacht)|1st Mountain Division ''Edelweiss'']] of General [[Hubert Lanz]], supported by [[self-propelled gun]]s. The Germans repelled the Italian attack and then, after fierce fighting, went on the offensive on 21 September and forced the Italians to surrender at 11:00 on 22 September. After the surrender, the Germans began a bloody reprisal; General Gandin, about 400 officers and 4,000 to 5,000 men of the Acqui Division were executed. 1,300 men had previously been killed in the battle, and another 1,350 subsequently perished in the sinking of ships that were carrying them to mainland Greece.

In Corfu the 4,500-strong Italian garrison easily overpowered and captured the 500-strong German garrison; the German prisoners were transferred by sea to Italy (and their presence in Italian hands is probably the reason that prevented the Germans from committing another full-scale massacre like in Cephalonia), while the garrison was reinforced by 3,500 more men. Between 24 and 25 September, however, more German forces, with Luftwaffe support, landed in the island, and on 26 September the Italians, after losing some hundreds of men and running out of ammunition, surrendered. The Italian commander, Colonel Luigi Lusignani, was executed along with 28 of his officers; 1,302 Italian prisoners perished in the sinking of the [[Italian ship Mario Roselli|motorship Mario Roselli]] which was to transfer them to the mainland.