Liberation of Rome 1944 US Army; World War II Italian Campaign

• Report rights infringement
• published: 01 Sep 2015
• views: 1471

more at http://news.quickfound.net/intl/rome_news.html "DOCUMENTARY FILM ON THE CAPITULATION OF ROME IN WORLD WAR II." "Reel 1, Gen. Montgomery and the British 8th Army land at Reggio Calabria. The Italian navy surrenders to the Allies. Gen. Mark Clark and the U.S. 5th Army land at Salerno behind an intense naval bombardment. The Luftwaffe bombards the beachhead. The 5th and the 8th Armies meet. The Allies take the Foggia airfield and later enter Naples. Refugees return to the city. U.S. troops cross the Volturno River and advance through mud. Reel 2, Ortona is taken after street fighting and a savage tank battle. Gens. Eisenhower and Clark inspect Cassino defenses. 5th Army units land at Anzio. Gens. Rommel and Kesselring direct the arrival of Nazi reserves. British Gen. Alexander directs an artillery bombardment on the Gustav Line. Cassino falls. Allied tanks roll toward Rome. The Nazis evacuate the city and 5th Army units enter. " Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass color correction & mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Anzio The Battle of Anzio was an important battle of the Italian Campaign during World War II that took place on January 22, 1944, with the Allied amphibious landing known as Operation Shingle against the German (and several Italian R.S.I.) forces in the area of Anzio and Nettuno. The operation was commanded by Major General John P. Lucas, of the U.S. Army, commanding U.S. VI Corps, and was intended to outflank German forces at the Winter Line and enable an attack on Rome. The success of an amphibious landing at that location, in a basin consisting substantially of reclaimed marshland and surrounded by mountains, depended completely on the element of surprise and the swiftness with which the invaders could move relative to the reaction time of the defenders. Any delay could result in the occupation of the mountains by the defenders and the consequent entrapment of the invaders. Lieutenant General Mark Wayne Clark, commander of the United States Fifth Army, understood that risk, but Clark did not pass on his appreciation of the situation to his subordinate, General Lucas, who preferred to take time to entrench against an expected counterattack. The initial landing achieved complete surprise with no opposition and a jeep patrol even made it as far as the outskirts of Rome. Despite that report, Lucas, who had little confidence in the operation as planned, failed to capitalize on the element of surprise by delaying his advance until he judged his position was sufficiently consolidated and his troops ready. While Lucas consolidated, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the German commander in the Italian theatre, moved every spare unit to be found into a ring around the beachhead, where his gunners had a clear view of every Allied position. The Germans also stopped the drainage pumps and flooded the reclaimed marsh with salt water, planning to entrap the Allies and destroy them by epidemic. For weeks a rain of shells fell on the beach, the marsh, the harbour, and on anything else observable from the hills, with little distinction between forward and rear positions. After a month of heavy but inconclusive fighting, Lucas was relieved and sent home, replaced by Major General Lucian Truscott. The Allies finally broke out in May, but instead of striking inland to cut lines of communication of the German Tenth Army's units at Cassino, Truscott, on Clark's orders, reluctantly turned his forces north-west towards Rome, which was captured on 4 June. As a result, the forces of the German Tenth Army fighting at Cassino were able to withdraw and rejoin the rest of Kesselring's forces north of Rome, regroup, and make a fighting withdrawal to his next major prepared defensive position on the Gothic Line...