The fluid, disordered German retreat up Italy's boot suddenly hardened. Five new divisions, one each from Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, the Balkans and North Italy had joined the rearguard defense.
They brought the Allied pursuit to a walk halfway between Rome and Florence, gave the battered Tenth and Fourteenth German Armies time to collect their wits. For the first time since the breakthrough below Rome, the Germans made counter attacks.
But their stand. in the center near Lake Trasimeno, where Hannibal once (217 B.C.) bloodily wiped out a Roman army under Flaminius, seemed only...
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