page_title: Brazilian Expeditionary Force
section_title: Combat
hierarchical_section_title: Brazilian Expeditionary Force / Campaign / Combat
caption_attribution_description: English: German General Otto Freter Pico, Commander of the 148th Infantry Division, and General Mario Carloni surrendering to the Brazilian FEB after the battle of Fornovo di Taro.
context_page_description: The Brazilian Expeditionary Force consisted of about 25,900 men arranged by the army and air force to fight alongside the Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II. This air–land force consisted of a complete infantry division, a liaison flight, and a fighter squadron.
  It fought in Italy from September 1944 to May 1945, while the Brazilian Navy as well as the Air Force also acted in the Battle of the Atlantic from the middle of 1942 until the end of the war. During the almost eight months of its campaign, fighting at the Gothic Line and in the 1945 final offensive, the FEB took 20,573 Axis prisoners, consisting of two generals, 892 officers, and 19,679 other ranks. Brazil was the only independent South American country to send ground troops to fight overseas during the Second World War, losing 948 men killed in action across all three services.
context_section_description: The FEB achieved battlefield successes at Massarosa, Camaiore, Mount Prano, Monte Acuto, San Quirico, Gallicano, Barga, Monte Castello, La Serra, Castelnuovo di Vergato, Soprassasso, Montese, Paravento, Zocca, Marano sul Panaro, Collecchio and Fornovo di Taro.
  The first missions the Brazilians undertook in close connection with the US 370th RCT, were reconnaissance operations to the end of August. Brazilian troops helped to partially fill the gap left by divisions of the US VI Corps and French Expeditionary Corps that left Italy for Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France. On September 16, the 6th RCT took Massarosa. Two days later it also took Camaiore and other small towns on the way north. By then, the FEB had already conquered Monte Prano, and taken control of the Serchio valley without any major casualties. After having suffered its first reverses around Barga city, and after the arrival of the 1st RCT at the end of October, the FEB was directed to the base of the Northern Apennines, on the border between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna regions, where it would spend the next months facing the harsh winter and the resistance of the Gothic Line. Allied forces were unable to break through the mountains over the winter and an offensive by German and Italian divisions to the left of the FEB sector, against the US 92nd Infantry Division, required the assistance of the 8th Indian Infantry Division before it was repelled.
  Between the end of February and the beginning of March 1945, in preparation for the Spring offensive, the Brazilian Division and the US 10th Mountain Division were able to capture important positions on the Northern Apennines (noteworthy in the Brazilian sector, for Monte Castello and Castelnuovo), which deprived the Germans of key artillery positions in the mountains, whose effective fire had since the fall of 1944 blocked the Allied path to Bologna.
  In the US Fifth Army's sector, the final offensive on the Italian Front began on April 14, after a bombardment of 2,000 artillery pieces; an attack carried out by the troops of US IV Corps led by the Brazilian Division took Montese. After the first day of the Allied offensive, the Germans, without much effort, had stopped the main attack of IV Corps led by the US 10th Mountain Division, causing significant casualties among the troops of that formation. The Germans were misled into thinking that the FEB's raid over Montese, using M8 armoured cars and Sherman Tanks, could be the real main Allied objective in that sector, which led them to shell the Brazilians with 1,800 artillery rounds from the total of 2,800 used against all four Allied divisions in that sector during the days of the battle for Montese, when they tried unsuccessfully to take Montese back from the Brazilians. After that, the breaking of the Germans' lines to the North by forces of IV Corps became unavoidable. On the right, the Polish Division, from the British 8th Army, and the US 34th Infantry Division, from Fifth Army, entered Bologna on 21 April.
  On 25 April the Italian resistance movement started a general partisan insurrection at the same time as Brazilian troops arrived at Parma and the Americans at Modena and Genoa. The British 8th Army advanced towards Venice and Trieste.
  At the Battle of Collecchio, Brazilian forces were preparing to face fierce resistance at the Taro river region from the retreating German-Italian forces in the region of Genoa/La Spezia that had been set free by troops of the 92nd US Division. These Axis troops were enveloped near Fornovo and after some fighting surrendered. On April 28, the Brazilians captured more than 13,000 men, including the entire 148th Infantry Division, elements of the 90th Panzergrenadier and the Italian 1st Bersaglieri "Italia" Division.
  This took the German Command by surprise as it had planned for these troops to join forces with the German-Italian Army of Liguria to counterattack against the Fifth Army. Fifth Army had advanced, as is inevitable in these situations, in a fast but diffuse and disarranged way uncoordinated with air su
caption: German General Otto Fretter-Pico, commander of the 148th Infantry Division, and Italian General Mario Carloni surrender to Brazilian troops on April 28, 1945.
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