Battle of Ortona

The Battle of Ortona (20–28 December 1943) was a battle fought between two battalions of elite German Fallschirmjäger (paratroops) from the German 1st Parachute Division under Generalleutnant Richard Heidrich, and assaulting Canadian troops from the 1st Canadian Infantry Division under Major General Christopher Vokes. It was the culmination of the fighting on the Adriatic front in Italy during "Bloody December". The battle was known to those who fought it as the "Italian Stalingrad," for the brutality of its close-quarters combat, which was only worsened by the chaotic rubble of the town and the many booby traps used by both sides. The battle took place in the small Adriatic Sea town of Ortona (Abruzzo), with a peacetime population of 10,000. By late 1943, the entire Italian campaign was not intended to win the war but to remove Italian troops from other areas of Europe, divert German forces from France and reduce the strength of the German army; the D-Day invasion was already in the planning stages for the following spring or summer. As one source indicates, "By dividing Nazi forces between several separate fronts, the Allies would prevent Hitler from striking a deadly blow at the USSR or from concentrating an invincible army along the coast of Normandy". The British Eighth Army's offensive on the Winter Line defences east of the Apennine mountains had commenced on 23 November with the crossing of the river Sangro. By the end of the month, the main Gustav Line defences (the major part of the Winter Line) had been penetrated and the Allied troops were fighting their way forward to the next river, the Moro, north of the mouth of which lay Ortona. For the Moro crossing in early December the exhausted British 78th Infantry Division on the Allied right flank on the Adriatic coast had been relieved by the 1st Canadian Infantry Division, under the command of Major-General Christopher Vokes.