Seeking guidance from the mastermind of the Gothic Line Winston Churchill and his failed efforts to use northern Italy as a launchpad to head off the Soviets in Eastern Europe

**Thereare 37 WWII British Commonwealth Grave cemeteries spread across theentire Italian peninsula. A visit to any one of them is a solemnexperience. However impeccably landscaped and manicured all of themare, many are now a small oasis surrounded by noisy, traffic-congested urban sprawl or even motorways where cars and lorries zoomby oblivious to the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice to turnback the wave of Nazism and Fascism that gripped continental Europemore than 80 years ago.** **Ihave visited many of those cemeteries over the last three years whiledoing the research for this podcast. Most recently I visited one thatreminded me of the geopolitical ramifications of the Gothic LineOffensive and the role that British Prime Minister Winston Churchillplayed and how those lessons are more poignant than ever as themurderous, war criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds on in itsfifth year.** **Thecemetery was the Argenta Gap. It is located on the southern farmlandfringe of the Po River Valley and northwest of the city of Ravenna. The wind howled as storm clouds moved in and thunder and lightningboomed and flashed all around. That was indeed a fitting metaphor forthe existential crisis looming on the horizon throughout Europe asthe relentless Putin hot and hybrid war machine is engaged.** **Afterwalking the rows of tombstones and reading some of the personalepitaphs from the families of soldiers struck down only weeks andeven a few days before WWII ended in Europe, I read a commemorativeplaque near the entrance and exit of the Argenta Gap cemetery that could haveeasily been scripted based on a Churchill speech or his memoirs.** **It underscores how frustrated Churchill and the British were about decisions by the American military to pull seven divisions of troops out of Italy before the Gothic Line offensive started and send them to France.** T**he plaque states:** \`\`s**o complete was the eventual Allied success in this bitter and at times frustrating campaign that it must be a matter for speculation how much more far-reaching it might have been if the divisions and aircraft withdrawn for operations elsewhere had been retained in Italy.''** **Of course that statement is a direct reference to the post WWII turn of events that led to the IRON CURTAIN imposed by the Soviet Union and Stalin after WWII. Moreover Churchill and other British historians insist the US failed to understand at this late stage of WWII the threat that Stalin and the Soviets were to Eastern and Central Europe. And so the implication is clear that if the U.S. had not moved those military assets out of Italy before the Gothic Line, the Allied Forces would have been in position to enter Eastern Europe and gain territory before the Soviets did.** **Eighty one years later if the failure by a United States president to understand the threat posed by the Russians in eastern and central Europe sounds familiar, it is because that is exactly where we are allover again. Of course, with U.S. President Donald Trump it is notso much naivety to blame for his failure to take the Russianthreat seriously. It is something far more sinister and everyday thatgross negligence lingers, the post-WWII transatlantic economic and securityalliance becomes ever more fragile.** **With all of the above in mind I thought it necessary to take a step back from the battlefield ghosts and an enemey territory secret operations and seek guidance from Churchill himself. I did that by visiting the site where all his speeches, notes, documents , memoirs and other papers at the University of Cambridge's Churchill College that are pertinent to the British leader's time in office before, during and after the Gothic Line Offensive in Northern Italy.** ,