Cassino to the Alps - US Army Center Of Military History

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of the previous autumn and winter in
the mountains and were still considerably
understrength, as, indeed, were all
German combat divisions in the last
months of the war. A fourth division,
the 162d Turkoml'Tl, was deployed along
the Comacchio Lagoon's northeastern
edge and on a spit separating the
lagoon from the sea. 12
The front opposite the Fifth Army
was held by Lemelsen's Fourteenth Army,
with two corps deployed across a front
extending approximately 50 miles
southwestward from the Idice valley
southeast of Bologna to the Serchio
valley. The LI Mountain Corps held the
western half with the 232d Reseroe Division,
made up largely of older men and
convalescents; the 714th(l14th) Jaeger
Division, composed largely of ethnic
Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia,
and Alsace; and the 334th Infantry Division,
which had taken heavy casualties
while bearing the brunt of the Fifth
Army's drive through the Futa Pass in
October. Senger und Etterlin's XIV Panzer
Corps, long a familiar antagonist of
the Fifth Army, held the remainder
with the 94th Division, since the fighting
south of Rome a frequent, if somewhat
battered, opponent of the Fifth Army;
the 8th Mountain Division; and the 65th
Division, also long engaged on the Italian
front. Since the beginning of April
the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division had
been assembled in army reserve behind
the panzer corps sector and northwest
of Bologna.
Except fix the 8th Mountain Division,
which had over 3,000 combat infantrymen,
all divisions were understrength in
12 Heinz Greiner, GL T, a.D., Kampf um Rom,
Inferno am Po, pp. 150-58.
CASSINO TO THE ALPS
front-line soldiers. The 714th [114th]
Jaeger Division was in the worst condition
with only 984 combat infantry as of
the end of March 1945; the other
divisions were in somewhat better condition
with strength ranging from 1,766
to 2,542.
From those figures it is evident that
Lemelsen had concentrated his strength
south of Bologna on the XIV Panzer
Corps sector and opposite the U.S. II
Corps rather than the U.S. IV Corps.
The Italo-German Ligurian Army, under
the command of Marshal Graziani,
composed mostly of fortress and coastal
defense units, was deployed along the
gulf of Genoa as far as the Franco­
Italian frontier. 13
The German Defenses
The German front line from sea to
sea simply represented the line along
which the Allied offensive had ground
to a halt during the winter. Only on the
western coastal plain did it still embrace
portions of the Gothic Line.
Opposite the Eighth Army German
defenses were in considerable depth to
protect Bologna from an attack coming
from the southeast. They were based
upon a series of river lines, beginning
with the Senio, then the Santerno, the
Sillaro, a switch position along the Sellustra,
and, finally, the so-called
Genghis Khan Line, based on the Idice
River and anchored in the east in the
flooded plain west of the Comacchio
Lagoon. At their northern extremities
those river lines were linked to another
line of defense based on a stretch of the
Reno River that flowed eastward from
13 Records of German Field Commands, Arnn
Groups, HpeTPsgTuppe C, Microfilm Roll T -311',
National Archives, Captured Records Division.