The Year of Returned Hope
Part 10: The Indirect Approach IX, August 3 – August 30, 1943
Many organizations, and in particular military organizations, are commonly regarded as being incredibly bloated bureaucratic entities whose fat needs to be trimmed down considerably. While there is some merit to such viewpoints, it is typically nowhere near as simple as such uninformed observers make out. Armed forces comprise and field many redundant capabilities, but this is due to the nature of war. Crises could and do come up at any moment that might require a capability that only hours previously had been considered redundant, enemy action is always across a broad spectrum of options that typically requires a broad spectrum in return. In unpredictable situations, and particularly in situations where hostile forces act intelligently, redundancy is not the luxury many take it to be: it is, in fact, necessary. This is because, again unlike their popular image, militaries tend to learn the lessons of the past and one of the major lessons is thus: to always have redundant capacity available.
The Soviets were finally applying their greater numbers with some concentration, thus provoking a crisis for Italian arms that there was simply not enough capability, redundant or otherwise, to adequately handle. Immediately, the Italians began losing their battles on a regular basis. Overstretched and tired from what had already been five months of constant campaigning, the Italians were no match for the great numbers of fresh Soviet troops who were finally making their appearance felt in the most damaging way possible. At Netanya, the Italians marked one of their few August victories, with less than seventy Italian casualties but nearly thirteen hundred Soviet dead. Kostinbrod, Pirot, Samokov, and Sofia were all Italian defeats. With defeat, and indeed repeated defeat, came the worst casualties the Italians had felt in a nine-day period, nearly seven thousand casualties aggregate from these four defeats! By comparison, the Soviets had lost only about four thousand eight hundred in these same engagements. Even taking Netanya into account, the casualty ratios had suddenly become frighteningly worse. On top of this, the Italian attempt to cut off the Soviet penetration had failed. Indeed, the Soviets had widened the base of their breakthrough and began exploiting it aggressively. Soviet infantry had already reached into Albania, and southern Illyria. Cei’s mobile corps was tasked with cutting off these offending spearheads and destroying them, in the first step to restoring some hope to the situation.
Cei’s cavalry divisions, and his motorized formation, on the way to encircle two Soviet infantry divisions.
Already in the south, Pintor’s and Vercellino’s armies had been making tactical withdrawals to shorten their front and achieve better positioning vis-à-vis their Soviet opponents. Graziani, at the northern end of the Soviet penetration, began doing the same on the 16th. There was indeed some indication that this was actually effective, for of the five battles the Italians fought against the Soviets in the second half of the month, four were successes. Casualties totaled an aggregate three thousand six hundred nonetheless, leading to a monthly total of nearly eleven thousand. It had been an expensive month for the Italians in the Balkans. In these same battles, the Soviets had suffered four thousand six hundred, returning the second half of August back to a vaguely favorable balance of casualties. At Gostivar, Cei’s cavalry attacked together with an unfortunate infantry division that had been pushed by the Soviet penetration all the way to Tirane to encircle and destroy one Soviet infantry division. The Soviet counterattack, initially aimed at relieving the division but failing in this task, quickly sent the cavalry retreating, however. Indeed, by the 30th of August, the Soviets had made inroads into Pintor’s and Vercellino’s defenses and it was at this time that de Stefanis’ division of old North Africa hands, veterans of Spain and all the campaigns of the Balkans, was largely cut off from friendly arms and would as a result be destroyed by Soviet action. Three brigades were lost in that nearly forgotten debacle. The Soviets also began pushing hard to the north, neatly beginning to roll up Graziani’s army and pushing deeper and deeper into Illyria.
Well, shit. The Soviets were pushing back hard.
Ultimately, the Italians did not have a plan or the capability to deal with the sort of crisis that faced them. The Soviets had finally brought enough forces into the theater to be able to negate superior Italian operational art through sheer manpower and attendant firepower. Then, with a relatively concentrated push, the Soviets had broken the Italian lines and were exploiting incredibly deeply into the Italian rear. It was an impossible situation.
