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At week's end General Alexander announced that the strength of the German armies had been broken. There was plenty of evidence to support him. Prisoners had been taken from 40 different units. German casualties in a month of defense and retreat were estimated at 70,000 (a loss of nine out of 22 divisions).
Three new divisions had been rushed in to replace Colonel General Eberhard von Mackensen's shattered Fourteenth German army on the Adriatic. One was the 20th Luftwaffe Field Division, hauled from Denmark only a week before. An-other was composed of second line troops; the third was unidentified.
The Arno River line (Pisa-Florence-Rimini) still looked to Allied strategists like "Smiling Albert's" next stop. The big question was: could Alexander catch him before he got there?