Spring 1945 offensive in Italy

Spring 1945 Offensive
Part of the Italian Campaign of World War II
British troops of the 5th (Huntingdonshire) Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment, part of 11th Brigade of 78th Division, pick their way through the ruins of Argenta, 18 April 1945
Date 6 April 1945 – 2 May 1945 Location Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and the Veneto regions, northern Italy Result Allied victory German surrender in Italy Partisans capture & execute Mussolini Italian Social Republic disestablished
Belligerents
United Kingdom  United States Polish Army  British India  Brazil  New Zealand  South Africa  Mandatory Palestine  Italy and others	Nazi Germany  Italian Social Republic
Commanders and leaders
Harold Alexander Richard McCreery Mark Clark Lucian Truscott	Heinrich von Vietinghoff (POW) Traugott Herr (POW) Joachim Lemelsen (POW) Benito Mussolini  Rodolfo Graziani (POW)
Strength
15th Army Group British Eighth Army 632,980 fighting strength U.S. Fifth Army 266,883 fighting strength	Army Group C 394,000 fighting strength German Fourteenth Army German Tenth Army
Casualties and losses
16,258 casualties incl. 2.860 killed	30–32,000 casualties

Allied victory

15th Army Group

Army Group C 394,000 fighting strength

The Spring 1945 offensive in Italy, codenamed Operation Grapeshot, was the final Allied attack during the Italian Campaign in the final stages of the Second World War. The attack into the Lombardy Plain by the 15th Allied Army Group started on 6 April 1945, ending on 2 May with the formal surrender of German forces in Italy.

The Allies had launched their previous major offensive, on the Gothic Line, in August 1944 with the British Eighth Army, under Lieutenant-General Oliver Leese, attacking up the coastal plain of the Adriatic and the U.S. Fifth Army, led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, attacking through the central Apennine Mountains. Although they managed to breach the formidable Gothic Line defences, they narrowly failed to break out into the Po Valley before the winter weather closed in and made further progress impossible. Their forward formations spent the rest of the winter in highly inhospitable conditions while preparations were made to renew the campaign when better conditions returned in the spring.

When Field Marshal Sir John Dill, the head of the British Mission in Washington, died on 5 November, Field Marshal Sir Maitland Wilson was appointed his replacement. General Harold Alexander, having been promoted to Field Marshal, was in turn appointed to replace Wilson as Allied Supreme Commander Mediterranean on 12 December. Lieutenant General Mark Clark succeeded Alexander as commander of the Allied forces in Italy (renamed 15th Army Group) but without promotion. Lieutenant General Lucian K. Truscott had been commanding U.S. VI Corps from its time in the beachhead at Anzio and the capture of Rome to its current location in Alsace, having landed in the South of France during Operation Dragoon. He returned to Italy to assume command of U.S. Fifth Army.

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