I Will Stage A Coup D’état - Chapter 160



Only Noblemtl

EP.160 The Italian War (6)

While the US military was buying time, the Western Allied forces reorganized their formations and began sending troops and supplies one after another.

The United States nominated Field Marshal Dwight Eisenhower, who had previously commanded the Western Allied forces, as Supreme Commander of this expanded Allied Forces.

General Eisenhower could not refuse this position.

If not him, there was no one to coordinate the complex communications of the Allied forces.

The commander in charge of the ground war has also changed to a strong person.

The US military appointed Lieutenant General Walden Walker as commander of the newly created 8th Army.

Walker, born in 1889, was a man of great willpower who, despite being expelled from the military academy once, re-enrolled and eventually received a commission.

The new commander, Walker, rejected government instructions to withdraw to Sicily and reorganize after confirming the Allied forces’ situation in Calabria.

And he expressed his will to the soldiers with one firm word.

“Stand still or die where you are.”

Lieutenant General Walker also refused Eisenhower’s recommendation to move his command to Sicily, less than 20 kilometers from the front lines.

“If the 8th Army headquarters withdraws to Messina, what will our soldiers have to rely on to defend the front line?”

Walker personally traveled near the front lines to check the situation every day.

The soldiers also gained courage from seeing the general taking risks every day.

Walker, unlike other American officers, had high regard for the Southern Kingdom soldiers who fought alongside them.

“These soldiers know why they have to fight. I have never seen soldiers as good as these guys. It’s just that the Italian soldiers didn’t have a good commander to lead them, so they didn’t use their abilities to the fullest.”

Walker demonstrated to his superiors that his strategy was correct by repelling all communist offensives in early August.

“Walker, that guy wasn’t just a braggart.”

Eisenhower did not waste the time that the nukes and Walker had given him.

Eight Allied divisions, including expeditionary forces sent by Western nations, prepared for a large-scale amphibious landing in Sicily.

The goal is Anzio.

Eisenhower intended to cut the Italian peninsula at the waist with this one attack and destroy the main force of the communist forces.

While the Allies prepared for their fateful counterattack, the northern Italian camp was mired in internal strife.

Other factions within the party rose up against the faction of Secretary Grieco, who had initiated the war, claiming that the war would end in three weeks.

The main opposition was Luigi Longo’s faction, which followed Palmiro Togliatti’s line.

Luigi Longo was a big shot who was also the deputy commander of the People’s Army and enjoyed widespread support in the military and the party.

In a situation where such a big shot was openly revolting, Grieco could not fully concentrate on the war.

“So when will the war end? It’s been over six weeks already.”

“Things may have gone awry, but the Republic’s victory is certain.”

Grieco could only defend himself by repeating the same thing like a parrot.

But it wasn’t easy to avoid responsibility.

Luigi Longo seemed determined to use this opportunity to bring down Grieco, launching a relentless political offensive.

“Are you saying that you are putting the Italian people at risk of nuclear war through adventurism? Five nuclear bombs have already exploded on this soil, Secretary General.”

Luigi Longo ordered his troops to go on strike as a sign of his discontent.

The army, which had already been repeatedly launching unreasonable offensives in Calabria at the government’s request, gladly accepted Luigi Longo’s orders.

“We can just call a ceasefire like this. Why do we have to occupy that entire narrow peninsula?”

The offensive of the Northern Italian People’s Republic Army was noticeably weakened.

Then, the armies of Eastern European countries that participated in the war as volunteers also became passive.

“We’re an army that came here just to fill up the numbers anyway. Why should we shed blood in someone else’s war?”

Ideologically, there was a cause to help the communist brothers.

But are the communist countries truly brothers?

Even the communists themselves did not believe such lies.

The communist countries saved each other more than the Western countries they were confronting.

Poland was at loggerheads with East Germany, Czechoslovakia with Hungary, Hungary with Romania, Bulgaria with Romania, and Yugoslavia with Albania.

They were more than willing to contribute troops to destroy their ‘neighboring’ communist brothers if given the chance.

So, there was absolutely no reason for Northern Italy to fight with all its might on a battlefield where it was not fighting properly.

The three weeks that the communists hesitated were truly fatal.

Meanwhile, the Allied forces, fully prepared, landed at Anzio in central Italy.

Northern Italy was expecting this attack and was preparing for it.

However, they were helpless against the massive chemical bomb blast unleashed by the Allied forces.

“You guys have done the same thing. It’s time to settle your karma.”

The Allies dropped astronomical quantities of chemical bombs, crippling four defensive divisions deployed in northern Italy and creating a bridgehead.

Northern Italy was belatedly taken aback by the force of the Allied forces that was advancing in a reckless manner.

“Look, now is not the time to be slacking off.”

The northern Italian and its allies, who had come down to southern Italy due to the large-scale Allied forces that had fallen on the back of their heads, were in danger of being surrounded and annihilated in one fell swoop.

As long as sea control was in the hands of the US military, supply by sea was out of the question.

“Retreat, retreat.”

The Northern Italian People’s Army began a hasty retreat northward.

But this time, the Western Allies would not allow their withdrawal.

“You can’t go up.”

Lieutenant General Walker’s Eighth Army relentlessly pursued the People’s Army in northern Italy, firing tens of thousands of shells a day.

Strategic bombers such as B-29s, which filled the sky with pitch-black bombs, also continued to pound the retreating People’s Army.

The situation was reversed in an instant.

The Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy, Bonomi, took this opportunity to advocate a northward advance.

“Unification by advancing north has been a long-held desire of the Kingdom of Italy. If this opportunity is missed, there will never be another chance for unification. Advance north!”

Umberto II, who had lost face due to his disgrace at the beginning of the war, also cautiously added his voice.

“The kingdom cannot be divided. It must be unified.”

On September 1, 1950, Allied forces entered Rome.

By September 9, the situation had become clearer.

While a significant portion of the People’s Army and its support forces were unable to withdraw, the Allied forces completely severed the Italian peninsula from its midsection.

The Italian government quickly returned to the capital, Rome.

The Roman people expected some kind of apology from the government that had abandoned them.

But the reward I got back wasn’t an apology or anything like that.

“Rome is full of communist collaborators who collaborated with the Reds. We cannot say that the country is set right until we purge these people.”

An anti-communist tribunal was immediately set up in the city of Rome.

The mob trial, which did not even have this kind of formality, was led by the mafia.

“Mario of Ostia. You are guilty of baking and delivering bread for the People’s Army.”

“No, I had no choice but to do it. How would I make a living if I didn’t do that?”

“It’s because of traitors like you that the kingdom was overthrown overnight! Catch them!”

Of course, there was no way the trial could proceed properly.

Innocent civilians were put on trial and manipulated by the mafia.

To avoid that, I had to bribe the mafia.

“Dirty Southern bastards.”

“what?”

“Oh, no.”

The Italian government condoned these arbitrary anti-communist trials.

It was intended to suppress the citizens’ anger towards them through fear and terror.

‘Don’t fight back, keep your mouth shut and live. Then you will be allowed to live.’

Italy wielded the universal sword of anti-communism.

The Western Allied soldiers trembled at the sight of Italy.

“For a country like Western countries, aren’t those guys so low-level? What country would have a government that condones the actions of Nazis?”

However, he did not intervene in the anti-communist trials being held by the Italians.

This was purely an internal Italian matter.

And the Allied soldiers were not in a position to talk about morality either.

Allied soldiers enjoyed harassing Italian women who would spread their legs in exchange for a bill or a few chocolates.

Near the Allied forces’ garrison, women who made a living in this way gathered together to form a camp town.

“If this continues, venereal diseases will spread. We must prevent contact between our soldiers and Italian women.”

“But how? Our kids are also men. Girls come and go, how can we continue to tolerate that?”

The Allied governments had no choice but to turn a blind eye to this problem.

The Bonomi government also turned a blind eye to this problem.

‘It’s not like there’s an open rape incident going on.’

The government couldn’t just reach out to them unless they had to feed all of those women.

As a result, the word Italian woman became synonymous with prostitute.

It was truly a miserable reality.

Italian women stood on the boulevards frequented by Allied soldiers, buying and selling sex.

Usually, when selling sex, he would hold a cigarette and ask for a light.

Then the man who bought the castle lit the fire.

Anna, a bookseller in Rome, was one of the girls who turned to prostitution to make a living.

She didn’t plan on becoming a prostitute from the beginning.

When the bookstore was destroyed by Allied bombing and Anna’s father died, the family’s livelihood was ruined.

Anna spent every day begging on the streets of Rome and picking up discarded trash near the port to support her mother who had been injured in the bombing.

But that alone wasn’t enough to take care of his sick mother and siblings.

Anna decided to sell her virginity, which she had carefully protected for nearly 20 years.

The first time she went out on the street and lit a cigarette, Anna burst into tears.

When I lost my virginity to a man whose name I didn’t even know, I really felt like I wanted to die.

But she gritted her teeth and endured it.

If Anna herself collapsed, she would not be able to protect her mother and siblings.

“Anna. I’m proud of you.”

‘father.’

Anna thought of her deceased father’s smiling face and vowed to herself that she would protect her family.

So today, too, she stood on the street and sold sex.

There were countless girls in Italy with stories like Anna’s.

As women dealt with men who didn’t even use condoms properly, they ended up pregnant with many illegitimate children.

Tragedy breeds tragedy.

No words could describe the miserable lives of Italian girls more accurately than this.

Jang Jun-ha, a Korean journalist who came to observe this war as a war correspondent, was deeply shocked by what he saw of the suffering of Italians on the other side of the war.

Did such a tragedy only occur in Italy?

That wasn’t it.

This would have been repeated countless times in China and Japan, where Korea waged ugly wars.

‘We must truly reflect on the sins we have committed against our neighbors. How can we call ourselves a properly civilized nation if we do not ask for forgiveness from the victims of imperial violence?’

Jang Jun-ha decided to organize what he saw and heard in Italy and start a magazine.

The magazine ‘Sasan’, which criticized Korea’s militarism and imperialism, was sown in the muddy battlefields of Italy.