That’s my point. The German forces in northern Italy were not destroyed. They were not broken. They were not wiped out. They were still combat effective. There was no Battle of the Seelow Heights in northern Italy. Under Kesselring, von Senger und Etterlin, von Mackensen, and von Vietinghoff, the Germans conducted an exemplary defensive campaign and were still an effective–even a formidable–fighting force right up until they surrendered on May 2, 1945. Kind of like the German forces in the Courland Pocket on the Eastern front. Not that it made a bit of difference to the end result.

No, not really. The Allied April offensive wiped them out, and it is worth noting that the surrender at Caserta happened a full day before Hitler suicided, and after Army Group B at Stalingrad and the confusingly Also-named/Army-Group-B at the Ruhr it was the third Army Group sized German formation to give up the ghost.

Indeed, frankly the Allied advances into Lombardy did more to destroy Kesselring’s forces than Seelowe did to break the defense of Berlin, since after the Allied breakthrough into Liguria the Axis on that front essentially collapsed while around Centeal Brandenburg the Germans were bitterly holding on in division sized forces and on very rare occasions even counterattacking (mostly notably at Bautzen, where German troops finished routing Communist Polish ones with some Soviet support on the very day Kesselring surrendered).

The idea that Kesselring’s Army Group C wasn’t wiped out or were still combat effective is belied by the timeline as well as by the records of the Axis leadership, including Kesselring himself.

Which is one reason why Mussolini was running for the Austrian border in a Nazi uniform when he was captured and executed on April 28th, why the Germans surrendered the next day well ahead of the other German military fronts in Europe, and why Kesselring himself noted that the Axis lacked the ability to put up organized resistance on the Divisional level for more than a couple days after when it actually gave up.

Some die hards did continue fighting into early May (and then there was a strange case of the Black Prince leading the X-MAS frogmen to the edges of Veneto to fight back invading Communist Yugoslav troops), but the game was well and truly up.

And I feel not acknowledging this does a great disservice to the Allied troops that fought through Italy.

OK, enough armchair general-ing. Got to get ready for movie night at my place. Tonight: “Cool Hand Luke” (1967).

Fair enough. Enjoy. It is a classic.

Turtler: “This is utter nonsense and not something I’ll sit for.” Wait till you hear my take on the war in Ukraine.

Actually, you express my meaning in one of your next sentences: “It is true there was nowhere near the kind of sudden, pre-mature breakdown in Axis organization we see in the likes of Operation Bagration or Operation Cobra and they retained a fair amount of integrity and even ability to strike back”.

That’s my point. The German forces in northern Italy were not destroyed. They were not broken. They were not wiped out. They were still combat effective. There was no Battle of the Seelow Heights in northern Italy. Under Kesselring, von Senger und Etterlin, von Mackensen, and von Vietinghoff, the Germans conducted an exemplary defensive campaign and were still an effective–even a formidable–fighting force right up until they surrendered on May 2, 1945. Kind of like the German forces in the Courland Pocket on the Eastern front. Not that it made a bit of difference to the end result.

OK, enough armchair general-ing. Got to get ready for movie night at my place. Tonight: “Cool Hand Luke” (1967).

the Nazi forces in northern Italy were never defeated in battle but surrendered intact) and most of Eastern Europe,

This is utter nonsense and not something I’ll sit for.

The Nazi forces in Italy were REPEATEDLY defeated in battle, which is one reason why they continued retreating. And they knew this. With their surrender being prompted by the massive Western Allied breakthroughs in the Spring of 1945 making their position untenable.

It is true there was nowhere near the kind of sudden, pre-mature breakdown in Axis organization we see in the likes of Operation Bagration or Operation Cobra and they retained a fair amount of integrity and even ability to strike back ( a lot of people don’t realize that the Winter of 1944 saw a sister offensive in Northern Italy were the Nazis and Italian Fascists acquitted themselves well against mostly US troops), but they were steadily getting beaten down (admittedly often after hard fighting and great sacrifice).

plus Denmark, Norway, and the Balkans, which I forgot to mention but you helpfully did.

Agreed.

As for North Africa, well, I think Tunisia, Libya, and half of Egypt qualifies as a “big chunk”, even if most of the fighting took place within a few miles of the Mediterranean coast. Your threshold for determining chunkhood may be higher

To be fair Libya was pre-war Italian territory and so they were mostly let in, but beyond that I agree.

. And yes, they had help–or “help”–from the Italians and Romanians, as well as the Blue Division (Spain) and Waffen-SS divisions composed of volunteers from occupied countries and territories. Finland was also an ally from 1941-1944.

Agreed.

Om: yes, it would be more accurate to say the Nazis “occupied” or “dominated” rather than “conquered” some of those areas. My point was that, for a largely horse-drawn army with chronic petrol and other logistics problems, they conquered, occupied, or otherwise controlled a pretty big swath of real estate–from the Norwegian Arctic Circle, to the English Channel, to the Caucasus Mountains, to the Tunisian Dorsal.

Agreed.

I haven’t read Overy’s latest book on WWII, but the reviews describe it as being organized around the theme of “empire” and focused primarily on the European variety. Not surprising the USSR doesn’t figure prominently in it.

Which does nothing to reassure me I’ve read some of his work and it seemed competent, if not overly amazing, but what you and the others mention make me worry.

And yet, and yet . . . the German’s came within a hair’s breadth of destroying the Soviet state.

It was, as Wellington remarked of Waterloo, a very “near-run thing.”

Agreed.

Even after the Battle of Kursk in 1943 Stalin was secretly putting out peace feelers to Germany, exploring the possibility of a negotiated settlement.

Indeed? I’ve never seen ironclad evidence of that, though I have heard accusations. Though I’m leery about it, especially that late in the war. Both the Soviets and Germans needed the foodstuffs and fuel of the Western Soviet Union. So even if Stalin was doing this, I figure they were more of a political move to jockey for position than an actual peace feeler.

WRT WWII I read an interesting account by a historian whose name I can’t recall.
His thesis: That Mussolini’s megalomanic blundering in Yugo and Greece made it necessary for Hitler to send in the Wehrmacht to help get him out of the mess he had made thus causing the planned launch of Barbarossa to be delayed by several weeks, if not almost an entire month.
The rest is…as they say, “history”….

I’ve heard of it, but I think it’s a bit too “pop history.” Certainly the expectation of an upcoming Barbarossa put the Axis under monumental strain and is one reason Hitler ordered preparations to invade the Balkans be conducted on such a quick scale, but the exact day or week I think mattered less than many expect. Especially since one reason for Barbarossa’s timing was the thawing and trying of early Spring. The Axis clearly had expectations they could and might have to delay it further than it already was. And in any case the real problems behind Axis failures in Barbarossa were deeper rooted (poor logistics, underestimating the Soviets, lack of Fall and Winter kit, probably the world’s largest act of insubordination by Halder etc. al. shifting the focus from the South and the conquest of cereals and oil to the center around Moscow, leading to more overstretching and a hungrier Reich to the justifiable-for-once rage of Shicklegruber, actively recruiting for the enemy by mass murder) than the exact timing.

(I’m more than a bit tickled by the idea that the Western world owes a tremendous debt to Mussolini…
OMMV certainly….)

Agreed. I think the issue has less to do with the timing of Barbarossa so much as it drained Axis resources playing bush war in the Balkans and also forcing the Axis to split focus.

They had forces in North Africa and the co-operation of Italy and Vichy France. They did not conquer North Africa.

This is true, though they were more than capable of strongarming both. In particular they were quick to occupy Tunisia under their own power after it became clear Vichy’s military was collapsing as a result of Torch.

They also did not conquer Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, or Albania.

Half-true.

They did not conquer Switzerland in spite of wanting to, mostly because they recognized it would be prohibitively expensive.

They did not conquer Portugal because it was neutral and closely aligned enough (especially due to Spain) that they deemed it counterproductive. Especially with Portuguese soldiers fighting alongside the Germans in the USSR with Salazar’s support.

One can make a pretty good argument they played a role in conquering Spain, due to their support of the Nacionalistas in the Spanish Civil War. Moreover, Franco heavily supported their war effort, to the point where Spanish and Portuguese fitted out the Azul Division.

Hungary they actually did conquer in 1944, as a result of getting word that Horthy was planning to turn his coat and either declare neutrality or join the winning side. However, it spent most of the war (and even the interwar period) as Germany’s staunchest European ally.

Albania is a similar story though even less successful. The Italians conquered it in 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, and the Nazis swept in and conquered it after they fell, but it was always quite weak and they were gradually pushed out.

Romania and Bulgaria were cases where the Nazis might have been able to pull a late war Operation Panzerfaust but were too slow on the draw, and in any case they primarily owed their allegiance voluntarily.

So to sum up:

Not Conquered, Too Tough: Switzerland.

Not Conquered, Allied: Bulgaria, Romania.

Allied, Conquered: Hungary, Albania

Not Conquered, Aligned: Portugal, Spain.

Their ‘conquest’ of Yugoslavia saddled them with years of counter-partisan warfare.

Agreed.

Their ‘conquest’ of northern Italy was an attempt to salvage the situation once the Italian government has switched sides.

Sure, but they still took over everything North of Naples in a remarkable campaign.

Deco: OK, make that most of Western Europe (the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Italy/Sicily from 1943-1945–IIRC, the Nazi forces in northern Italy were never defeated in battle but surrendered intact) and most of Eastern Europe, plus Denmark, Norway, and the Balkans, which I forgot to mention but you helpfully did. As for North Africa, well, I think Tunisia, Libya, and half of Egypt qualifies as a “big chunk”, even if most of the fighting took place within a few miles of the Mediterranean coast. Your threshold for determining chunkhood may be higher. And yes, they had help–or “help”–from the Italians and Romanians, as well as the Blue Division (Spain) and Waffen-SS divisions composed of volunteers from occupied countries and territories. Finland was also an ally from 1941-1944.

Om: yes, it would be more accurate to say the Nazis “occupied” or “dominated” rather than “conquered” some of those areas. My point was that, for a largely horse-drawn army with chronic petrol and other logistics problems, they conquered, occupied, or otherwise controlled a pretty big swath of real estate–from the Norwegian Arctic Circle, to the English Channel, to the Caucasus Mountains, to the Tunisian Dorsal. I haven’t read Overy’s latest book on WWII, but the reviews describe it as being organized around the theme of “empire” and focused primarily on the European variety. Not surprising the USSR doesn’t figure prominently in it.

IrishOtter49: thanks for the Gabriel connection–let us know his take on Desert Storm when/if you have a chance.

Less snarky, between restricted fire zones, limitations on supporting fires (In OCS, we were told that, three minutes after a call for arty, we would have rounds on the ground where we needed them. Figured that was cool. In the authorized fire class, we were told it might take a hour to get clearance, if ever. Didn’t care for that. So you figured where you were going, got clearance the day before, just in case) and really weird stuff going on wrt the air war up north–see Broughton, “Thud Ridge” and “Going Downtown, The Air War Against Washington and Hanoi–we got a lot of good guys killed to no point.
One intel guy told me that “gradual escalation” was the best way to get young Americans killed yet invented, and that wasn’t a military idea.

Met a captain who’d had a platoon come under fire while in choppers. Asked for gunships into the tree line. Nope. Restricted fire zone. Would prep it with his machine guns. Nope. Restricted fire zone. Twenty-six American 11B–God’s noblest creation–assaulted the tree line yelling BANG! BANG! until the VC fired at them and allowed them to fire back. Twenty were hit.

My father, veteran of a war fought with different rules, asked who was the traitor who put those limits. Johnson and McNamara.

Not sure the foregoing was the result of inadequate Clauswitzitis.

It was, as Wellington remarked of Waterloo, a very “near-run thing.”

Even after the Battle of Kursk in 1943 Stalin was secretly putting out peace feelers to Germany, exploring the possibility of a negotiated settlement.