ROME, the first Axis capital to fall to the Allies, was finally liberated at 9.15 last night. And the men who completed the mopping-up were warriors from the Anzio beachhead. Heedless of the German shells bursting overhead as the victorious Fifth Army tanks rumbled into the city, the people rushed to welcome them. Some were killed by steel splinters as they shouted with joy for their liberators.
General Mark Clark personally directed the operation. At the approaches to Rome he ordered his men to suspend fire so that the enemy could withdraw in accordance with international law concerning open cities. The Germans, however, disputed every inch of ground and with big, self-propelled guns and tanks laid down an almost continuous barrage.
Compelled to fall back, the enemy still poured shells and bullets into the outskirts of the capital.
Hitler early yesterday issued a communiqué announcing that he had "ordered the withdrawal of the German troops to the north-west in order to prevent the destruction of Rome".
The Reuters special correspondent writes: The Huns' convulsive last kick, as always, was the most powerful. The whole day he manoeuvred his big self-propelled guns and tanks, creating an almost continuous barrage along Highway Six into Rome. Around us the rolling country no longer smiled. Scattered through the ripening wheat were the bodies of the dead. In the fields of brilliant poppies death lurked among hidden mines. Behind us lay miles of strewn wreckage and the spoils of war. But we were in Rome.
Late in the afternoon, following the savage artillery duel, Allied armoured units rushed on into the capital, fighting it out with the German rearguard.
The mopping-up of Rome was completed at 9.15pm last night. The city was liberated by Fifth Army tanks which fought German rearguards to the edge of the ancient Roman Forum.
? The fall of Rome on June 4 1944 was a key turning point in the Second World War, coinciding as it did with the D-Day landings in northern France. As the Germans retreated northwards and westwards from Russia, Hitler knew that Germany's capitulation would only take a matter of time. Albert Kesselring, a veteran of the Great War, was a former German air force chief of staff who had commanded the Luftwaffe during the invasions of Poland and France and during the Battle of Britain (1940). By 1944 he was supreme commander of the Axis forces in Italy and, after conducting the long retreat, he became German commander on the Western Front. After the war Kesselring was tried at Nuremberg for the murders of POWs. Imprisoned as a war criminal he died in 1960. Edited by Eamon Phoenixe.phoenix@irishnews.com