Cassino to the Alps - US Army Center Of Military History

242
terrain was less important to Kesselring
than overcoming the manpower losses
suffered in the defeat south of Rome
by rehabilitating severely mauled divisions.
8
Compared with several delaying lines
south of the Arno, the Gothic Line
appeared on the map to offer a secure
refuge for the German armies in the
mountain fastness of the Northern
Apennines, but in reality the line was
far from complete. Construction of fortified
positions in the relatively impregnable
western sector, toward which
the U.S. Fifth Army was advancing,
had progressed satisfactorily, but little
had been accomplished in the more
vital and vulnerable central and eastern
sectors, where the British Eighth
Army's objectives lay. Although OKW
had sent Field Marshal Kesselring additional
engineer, fortification construction,
and mountain battalions in order
to complete the line before Army Group
C withdrew beyond the Arno, the High
Command "vas unable to afford him
what he most needed-time. Kesselring
could gain that only with his own skill
and the steadfastness of his troops.
While he was determined to hold the
Allies as far south of the Arno as
possible, unremitting pressure, especially
against the Fourteenth Army on his
right wing, delays in the arrival of
reinforcements, and increasing difficulties
in maintaining contact between his
two armies across the barrier of the
Tiber would, in Kesselring's opinion,
leave little alternative to a fighting withdrawal.
"Greiner and &:hramm, cds., OKWIWFSt, K7B,
IV (I), pp, 513·,23, Kesselring's comments on Dn
Fl'idwg In Italim, Part II, in CMH files. Unless
otherwi;;e indicated the following section is based
upon these references,
CASSINO TO THE ALPS
Hitler disagreed. Even as Kesselring
prepared on 9 June to issue new strategic
guidelines to his army commanders,
Hitler ordered him to stand and
fight. Three days later the Fuehrer's
written instructions pointed out that
since another seven months were
needed to complete the Gothic Line,
the army group commander, if forced
fn:>m his first defensive position, the
Dora Line, had to be prepared to
stabilize his front on the Frieda Line,
forty miles farther north, Hitler also
insisted that Kesselring should quickly
disabuse his troops of any notion of the
existence of a secure haven in the
Northern Apennines into which they
might eventually withdraw. The Gothic
Line offered no advantages, Hitler
added, for combat conditions there
were less favorable than those south of
the Arno. Furthermore, the hazards of
flanking amphibious operations by the
Allies were even greater. As if further
to downgrade the importance of the
Gothic Line in the eyes' of both friend
and foe, Hitler ordered the name of
the line, with its historic connotations,
changed. He reasoned that if the Allies
managed to break through they ,,,,'ould
seize upon the more pretentious name
as ground for magnifying their victory
claims. Kesselring renamed it the Green
Line. 9
Essentially, despite Hitler's insistence
on a stand and fight strategy, it developed
rather that under Kesselring's
command the German armies in Italy
adopted a 20th-century variation of the
delaying strategy associated with the
"Greiner and Schramm, eds" OKW/WFSt, KTB,
IV(l), pp. 520-23, Since the Allies never adopted
the new name, the text will continue to use the
designation Gothic Line,