Chapter 160
Chapter 160
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: The Italian War (6)
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While the U.S. military bought time, the Western Allied forces reorganized their lines and began sending in reinforcements and supplies in droves.
The United States appointed Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had previously commanded the Western Allied forces, as the Supreme Commander of this expanded alliance.
Eisenhower could not refuse the position.
No one else could coordinate the alliance's complex communications.
The ground forces commander was also replaced with a tough figure.
The U.S. military appointed Lieutenant General Walton Walker as the commander of the newly formed U.S. Eighth Army.
Born in 1889, Walker had been expelled from West Point once but re-enrolled and graduated, demonstrating incredible willpower.
The new commander, Walker, assessed the dire state of the Allied forces pushed back to Calabria and rejected the government's directive to withdraw to Sicily and regroup.
He expressed his resolve to the troops with a single firm command.
“Hold your positions—or die there.”
Lieutenant General Walker also rejected Eisenhower's advice to move the Eighth Army headquarters, only 20 km from the front lines, to Sicily.
“If the Eighth Army HQ withdraws to Messina, what will our troops have to believe in to hold the line?”
Walker personally patrolled near the front lines every day to check the situation.
The troops drew courage from seeing their general risking danger daily.
Unlike other U.S. officers, Walker held the Southern Kingdom soldiers fighting alongside them in high regard.
“These soldiers know why they have to fight. I’ve never seen finer troops than these men. Italian soldiers just haven’t had the great commanders they deserve to lead them.”
Walker proved his strategy right to his superiors by repelling all the communist offensives in early August.
“That Walker fellow isn’t just a big talker after all.”
Eisenhower didn’t waste the time bought by nukes and Walker.
Including expeditionary forces from Western nations, eight Allied divisions prepared a massive landing operation from Sicily.
The target was Anzio.
Eisenhower planned to sever the waist of the Italian peninsula with this one attack and annihilate the communist main force.
While the Allies prepared their fateful counteroffensive, the Northern Italian camp was mired in infighting.
Party factions other than Secretary-General Grieco’s, who had led the push for war claiming it would end in three weeks, openly rebelled.
The largest opposition faction followed Palmiro Togliatti’s line—Luigi Longo’s group.
Luigi Longo, a heavyweight serving as deputy commander of the People’s Army, enjoyed widespread support in both the military and the party.
With such a figure openly rebelling, Grieco couldn’t focus entirely on the war.
“So when is this war going to end? It’s already been over six weeks.”
“It’s just a minor setback. Victory for the republic is certain.”
Grieco could only parrot the same lines like a broken record to defend himself.
But dodging responsibility wasn’t easy.
Luigi Longo seemed determined to oust Grieco this time, relentlessly unleashing political attacks.
“Adventurism that drags the Italian people into the risk of nuclear war—what do you have to say for that? Five nukes have already detonated on this soil, Secretary-General.”
As a show of discontent, Luigi Longo ordered work slowdowns in the military.
The army, already strained by the government’s demands for repeated reckless assaults on Calabria, gladly accepted Longo’s orders.
“We could just call a truce like this. Why do we have to occupy that whole narrow peninsula anyway?”
The Northern Italian People’s Army offensives visibly weakened.
The Eastern European armies, who had joined as volunteers, also turned passive.
“We’re just here to fill out the numbers anyway. Why should we shed blood for someone else’s war?”
Ideologically, there was the grand cause of aiding communist brothers.
But were communist nations truly brothers?
Not even the communists themselves believed that lie.
Communist states had more grudges against each other than against the Western nations they faced.
Poland snarled at East Germany, Czechoslovakia at Hungary, Hungary at Romania, Bulgaria at Romania, and Yugoslavia at Albania.
Given the chance, they’d gladly lend their armies to destroy their “neighboring” communist brothers.
So there was no reason for Northern Italy’s allies to fight with full commitment on a battlefield where Northern Italy itself wasn’t fighting properly.
The three weeks of communist hesitation proved fatal.
In that time, the prepared Allies landed at Anzio in central Italy.
Northern Italy had anticipated this attack and prepared defenses.
But they were caught flat-footed by the massive barrage of chemical shells the Allies unleashed.
“You did it too. Time to pay the piper.”
The Allies dropped astronomical quantities of chemical shells, crippling the four defensive divisions Northern Italy had deployed and securing a beachhead.
Northern Italy panicked late at the sheer force of the Allies pushing in relentlessly.
“Hey, this isn’t the time for slacking off.”
With the massive Allied landing hitting them from behind, Northern Italian and allied forces that had pushed down to Southern Italy faced the crisis of total encirclement and annihilation.
With sea control in U.S. hands, resupply by sea was a pipe dream.
“Retreat—retreat!”
The Northern Italian People’s Army hurriedly began withdrawing north.
But this time, the Western Allies didn’t allow their retreat.
“You’re not getting away.”
Lieutenant General Walker’s Eighth Army hounded the Northern Italian People’s Army relentlessly, firing tens of thousands of shells a day.
Strategic bombers like B-29s darkened the skies, pounding the retreating People’s Army nonstop.
The tide turned in an instant.
Italian Kingdom Prime Minister Bonomi seized the opportunity to push for a northern advance.
“Northern unification has long been the Kingdom of Italy’s dream. If we miss this chance, unification may never come again. March north!”
Umberto II, who had lost face with his blunders at the war’s start, cautiously added his voice.
“The kingdom cannot be divided. Achieve unification at all costs.”
On September 1, 1950, the Allies entered Rome.
By September 9, the situation was even clearer.
With much of the People’s Army and its support forces unable to withdraw, the Allies completely severed the Italian peninsula’s waist.
The Italian government swiftly returned its capital to Rome.
Rome’s citizens had hoped to hear some apology from the government that had abandoned them.
But the response they got was no apology.
“Rome is crawling with red sympathizers who collaborated with the commies. We can’t call the nation restored until we clean them out.”
Anti-communist tribunals were immediately set up across Rome.
These kangaroo courts, without even the pretense of formality, were run by the Mafia.
“Mario of Ostia. You stand accused of baking bread for the People’s Army.”
“No, I had no choice. If I didn’t, how was I supposed to feed my family?”
“It’s traitors like you that let the kingdom fall overnight! Seize him!”
Of course, the trials weren’t fair.
Innocent citizens were dragged before Mafia-run tribunals and torn apart.
To escape that fate, they had to bribe the Mafia.
“Filthy Southern scum.”
“What’d you say?”
“N-nothing.”
The Italian government turned a blind eye to these rampant anti-communist trials.
It was to suppress the citizens’ anger toward them through fear and terror.
‘Don’t resist. Keep your mouth shut and live. Then we’ll let you live.’
Italy wielded anti-communism like an all-purpose sword.
Western Allied troops watching this shook their heads in disgust at Italy.
“For a so-called Western nation, aren’t these guys a bit too low-class? What country lets its government overlook Nazi-style thuggery?”
Still, they didn’t intervene in the Italians’ anti-communist trials.
This was, after all, Italy’s internal affair.
And the Allied troops weren’t in a position to preach morals either.
Allied soldiers freely toyed with Italian women who’d spread their legs for a dollar bill or a few chocolates.
Near Allied bases, women making a living this way gathered to form red-light districts.
“This is going to spread STDs. We need to stop our soldiers from mixing with Italian women.”
“But how? Our boys are men too. How long can they hold back with girls coming and going?”
The Allied command had no choice but to look the other way.
The Bonomi government did the same.
‘It’s not like outright rapes are happening.’
Unless the government planned to feed all those women, they couldn’t just crack down.
As a result, “Italian woman” became synonymous with “whore.”
A truly miserable reality.
Italian women stood on streets frequented by Allied soldiers, selling sex.
When selling themselves, they usually smoked a cigarette and asked for a light.
The buyer would light it for her.
Anna, a former bookstore clerk in Rome, was one of the virgins who turned to prostitution for survival.
She hadn’t set out to become a whore.
Her bookstore collapsed under Allied bombing, and her father died, shattering her family’s livelihood.
Anna roamed Rome’s streets daily, begging and scavenging trash near the harbor to care for her bomb-injured mother.
But that wasn’t enough for her sick mother and siblings.
Anna decided to sell the virginity she’d guarded for nearly twenty years.
The first time she stood on the street with a cigarette, she burst into tears.
When an unknown man pinned her down and took her virginity, she wanted to die.
But she gritted her teeth and endured.
If she collapsed, she couldn’t protect her mother and siblings.
“Anna. I’m proud of you.”
‘Father.’
Thinking of her late father’s smiling face, Anna vowed to protect her family no matter what.
And so, she stood on the street selling herself again today.
Italy was full of girls with stories like Anna’s.
Dealing with men who didn’t even use condoms properly, the girls got pregnant with countless illegitimate children.
Tragedy begets tragedy.
No words captured the wretched lives of Italian girls more perfectly.
Jang Jun-ha, a Korean war correspondent covering the conflict, was deeply shocked by the sufferings of Italians amid the war’s underbelly.
Was this tragedy unique to Italy?
No.
It must have repeated endlessly in China and Japan, where Korea waged ugly wars.
‘We must truly repent for the sins we committed against our neighbors. How can we claim to be a proper civilized nation without seeking forgiveness from the victims of imperial violence?’
Jang Jun-ha resolved to launch a magazine compiling what he’d seen and heard in Italy.
The magazine ‘Thought,’ criticizing the Republic of Korea’s militarism and imperialism, took root in Italy’s muddy battlefield.