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At the beginning of the battle for Sicily the Germans had roughly 30,000 troops arrayed in two mobile divisions (the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division and the Hermann Goering Division) that eventually formed the 14th Panzer Corps, commanded by General Hans Valentin Hube. The Germans later added most of the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division and elements of the 1st Parachute Division to the forces defending Sicily.

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On paper, Axis forces looked formidable, but much apprehension existed in the German high command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) concerning the reliability of the Italian units. The Italian soldiers on Sicily were ill equipped, poorly-trained, and led by officers and noncommissioned officers whose loyalty was to Italy, not Fascism, and certainly not to Germany. The coastal formations were static units organized to defend the coast and generally consisted of older men, approximately seventy-five percent of whom were locals. Their equipment consisted of antiquated armament, horse drawn artillery, inadequate antitank weapons, and no naval guns. Their principle weapons were automatic rifles and machine guns. The Germans suspected these units would be of low combat value, and this result was clearly proven on the day of the invasion, D day, 10 July 1943.

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Attacking on the southeast corner of Sicily the two Allied armies, the British assuming the main effort along the Sicilian east coast and the Americans protecting their left flank, pushed northward toward the cities of Syracuse, Catania, and Messina. Despite success in the early days of the operation, chiefly due to a lack of resistance on the part of the Italian divisions, Eighth Army soon found itself facing tough German resistance and in a tactical stalemate on the plains of Catania along highway 114 near the Primosole Bridge. On 17 July while Eighth Army struggled in the east, Patton paid a surprise visit to Alexander at Tunis and pressed for approval for a move by Seventh Army on the northwest Sicilian city of Palermo. Alexander acquiesced and on 19 July the drive to Palermo commenced.

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As the Allies continued their drive toward Messina, Kesselring knew he had a serious weakness in Calabria and southern Italy, where he had only small alarm units and one division spread thinly across a wide area. An attack in these areas could cut off and trap the entire 14th Panzer Corps on Sicily and open the door for an allied advance to the northern Apennines. He requested reinforcements so that he might have at least adequate forces to defend the toe of Italy and the west coast up through the Naples-Salerno area. Kesselring felt with these actions he could tie up eleven or twelve Allied divisions.

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The OKW and Kesselring both knew that to avoid the disastrous losses that befell the Germans in Tunisia they would have to prepare early to evacuate whatever forces they could. Consequently, on 26 July, OKW issued an order to Kesselring directing preparations for an eventual evacuation of Sicily. The order also directed Kesselring not to inform the Italians of German intentions to evacuate at that time.

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On 28 May, von Liebenstein assumed his position (two months before Kesselring’s direction to prepare for evacuation) and found an inefficient and chaotic operation. There were several large commercial steam ferries that could each carry as many as twenty-five rail cars between Messina and two primary termini on the mainland side, but von Liebenstein knew these ferries and their terminals were extremely vulnerable to Allied air, sea, and land attack. Fortunately, the German officers realized this before von Liebenstein arrived and had prudently acquired a variety of smaller coastal vessels to use on three dispersed routes outside the normal ferry routes. While a step in the right direction, von Liebenstein knew it would not be enough. Additionally, he found that the Luftwaffe and the army engineer construction battalion that serviced the ports each had their own ferry “fleets,” but operated them independently with complete disregard of each other’s requirements.

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The result of von Liebenstein’s modifications was a ferry service with plenty of built-in redundancy, ready to quickly and efficiently move large assemblies of troops and equipment across the Messina Strait. Combined with the Italian ferry service consisting of four ferry routes that by August had achieved a level of efficiency rivaling that of the Germans, the sea-transport pieces to ensure a successful evacuation were in place. The ferry services needed this built-in redundancy to act as a counterbalance to frequent Allied air raids on both sides of the strait.

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Baade’s authority allowed him to reorganize and strengthen the strait’s antiaircraft (AA) defenses. He established six flak sectors, three on each side of the strait, made up of sixty AA units. This added up to eighty-two heavy and sixty light AA guns on the mainland side, and forty-one heavy and fifty-two light AA guns on the Sicilian side. Baade also positioned over 150 mobile, dual-purpose, guns (of the three inch and four inch variety) along the shoreline for additional firepower against both aircraft and naval threats.

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The German evacuation took place in four discernable stages, the first two of which were actually accomplished before Kesselring’s 27 July direction to Hube (who further directed Baade and von Liebenstein) to prepare for the evacuation. The first stage began almost immediately after the 10 July Allied invasion as the Germans ordered all nonessential units to leave the island.

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Baade’s plan, known by the Germans as “Lehrgang,” was simple in that it was based on the premise of moving the troops first, followed by as much ammunition, supplies, and other equipment as possible. The real difficulty was in phasing the withdrawal of troops and equipment to avoid the type of chaos and exposure to Allied aircraft that resulted along route 113 during the Palermo evacuation.