Editing Gothic Line (section)

===Allied plan of attack===
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The original plan of [[General (United Kingdom)|General]] [[Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis|Sir Harold Alexander]], the [[Commander-in-chief|Commander-in-Chief]] (C-in-C) of the [[Allied Armies in Italy]] (AAI)—as formulated by his [[Chief of staff|Chief of Staff]], [[Lieutenant-general (United Kingdom)|Lieutenant-General]] [[John Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton|Sir John Harding]]—was to storm the Gothic Line in the centre, where most of [[Gothic Line order of battle|his forces]] were already concentrated. It was the shortest route to his objective, the plains of [[Lombardy]], and could be mounted quickly. He mounted a deception operation to convince the Germans that the main blow would come on the Adriatic front.

[[File:Gothic Line - Concept of OperationOlive 1944.png|thumb|380px|The Gothic Line, August 1944 and the concept of Operation Olive. The dark blue arrows represent major Allied attacks.]]

On 4 August, Alexander met Lieutenant-General Leese, the British Eighth Army commander, to find that Leese did not favour the plan.<ref>Jackson, p. 119.</ref> He argued that the Allies had lost their specialist [[French Expeditionary Corps (1943–44)|French mountain troops]] to [[Operation Dragoon]] and that the Eighth Army's strength lay in tactics combining infantry, armour and guns which could not be employed in the high mountains of the central Apennines.

It has also been suggested that Leese disliked working in league with Clark after the Fifth Army's controversial move on Rome at the end of May and early June and wished for the Eighth Army to win the battle on its own.<ref>Blaxland, p. 163.</ref> He suggested a surprise attack along the Adriatic coast. Although Harding did not share Leese's view and Eighth Army planning staff had already rejected the idea of an Adriatic offensive (because it would be difficult to bring the necessary concentration of forces to bear), General Alexander was not prepared to force Leese to adopt a plan which was against his inclination and judgement<ref>Orgill, p. 33.</ref> and Harding was persuaded to change his mind.

Operation Olive—as the new offensive was christened—called for Leese's Eighth Army to attack up the Adriatic coast toward [[Pesaro]] and [[Rimini]] and draw in the German reserves from the centre of the country. Clark's Fifth Army would then attack in the weakened central Apennines north of [[Florence]] toward [[Bologna]] with [[XIII Corps (United Kingdom)|British XIII Corps]] on the right wing of the attack fanning toward the coast to create a pincer with the Eighth Army advance. This meant that as a preparatory move, the bulk of the Eighth Army had to be transferred from the centre of Italy to the Adriatic coast, taking two valuable weeks, while a new intelligence deception plan (Operation Ulster)<ref>Jackson, p. 126.</ref> was commenced to convince Kesselring that the main attack would be in the centre.