U.S. infantrymen push past the Temple of Neptune at Paestum, center of the American sector during the landings around Salerno Bay. For a more thorough description, click on this link.

By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.

The new Italian government under Marshal Pietro Badoglio on September 3, 1943, secretly signs an armistice with the Allies. The agreement allows the Allies to launch “Operation Baytown,” the invasion of mainland Italy, unopposed by Italian troops. Accordingly, the British Eighth Army crosses the Strait of Messina from Sicily and lands unmolested near Reggio di Calabria on the Italian mainland. In Berlin, the Nazis declare the Italian surrender cowardly and treacherous, and the SS in northern Italy begins deporting Italian Jews to labor and death camps, something even the Fascist Italian government had previously refused to do. In Belgium, the SS begins two days of raids in Brussels and Antwerp, arresting thousands of Jews for deportation.

The Australian 9^th Division lands in force to the east of Lae, on the north coast of Papua-New Guinea, on September 4. The first Allied troops to land there, they are quickly followed by the Australian 7th Division.

On September 5, the U.S. Army’s 503^rd Parachute Regiment jumps behind Japanese positions at Lae. The paratroopers capture Nadzab airfield, east of Lae, and trap about 20,000 Japanese troops between them and the Australian 9^th and 7^th Divisions.

A conference of 48 Republican governors, senators and congressmen on September 6 convenes at a Mackinac Island, Michigan, resort under the chairmanship of Sen. Arthur Vandenberg. The agenda is to hammer out a post-war foreign policy for the party. The meeting discards the isolationist stance that Republicans had adopted following The Great War (World War I) and adopts a cautious internationalism. The Red Army takes Konotop, Ukraine, about 130 miles northeast of Kiev. In Italy, British troops capture Palmi, in Calabria.

Britain’s Royal Air Force bombs German V-1 (flying bomb) launch sites on the northern French coastline on September 7.

U.S. Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 8 announces Italy’s unconditional surrender in a radio broadcast from North Africa. German reserves are rushed into northern Italy in the wake of the cease-fire between the Badoglio government and the Allies. Almost half of the 70,000 Allied prisoners of war being held in Italy simply walk out of their prison camps when the Italian guards suddenly leave.

On the Eastern Front, the Red Army on September 9 initiates an offensive at Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. In northern Italy, warships of the Italian fleet leave the port of Spezia heading for Malta, intending to surrender to the British Royal Navy. The Germans disarm all Italian forces within German-controlled areas of Italy, southern France, Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece and make them prisoners of war. “Operation Avalanche” sees the U.S. Fifth Army, under Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark, land at Salerno, southeast of Naples. The U.S. VI Corps and the British X Corps encounter heavy resistance from German defenders there. Meanwhile, Taranto — on the heel of the Italian “boot” 160 miles east of Salerno — is occupied by units of the British 1^st Airborne Division without resistance, the German defenders having already departed. Fearing a German advance on Rome, the Italian royal family and senior government leaders, including Prime Minister Badoglio, flee the city and head southward to Brindisi, on the Adriatic coast, to seek protection from the Allies.