Germans Laughed at Black Troops — Until the 92nd Infantry Broke the Gothic Line
On the morning of December 26th, 1944, high in the frozen mountains of northern Italy, Oberst Heinrich von Schellenburg raised his binoculars and studied the Americans advancing through the fog below Monte Belvedere. He did not look concerned. He looked amused.
“Negro troops,” his intelligence officer had said the night before, with open contempt. “Railroad porters pretending to be soldiers.”
Von Schellenburg had fought at Stalingrad. He had seen entire divisions erased in weeks. He knew fear. But as he watched the dark figures climbing toward his fortress, burdened with heavy packs and moving slowly up ice-slick slopes, he felt none of it.
The Americans had sent their weakest men, he believed.
And the mountain would finish them.
What von Schellenburg did not understand—what German intelligence had completely failed to grasp—was that the men climbing toward the Gothic Line carried something heavier than rifles and ammunition.
They carried a lifetime of being told they were less than human.
An Army That Didn’t Believe in Its Own Men
The soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division fought for a country that did not consider them equal citizens.
They trained in segregated camps. They slept in separate barracks. They ate in separate mess halls. Many trained under white officers who openly expected them to fail. Some officers told them directly: Black soldiers couldn’t fight. Couldn’t lead. Couldn’t handle combat.
They were issued outdated rifles. Limited ammunition. Inferior vehicles. German prisoners of war were sometimes served food in restaurants that refused service to Black American soldiers in uniform.
And yet, they trained harder than anyone.
Because they knew that if they failed—even once—the failure would not be individual. It would be racial. It would confirm everything America and Nazi Germany already believed about them.
By late 1944, the 92nd Infantry Division was sent to Italy and assigned the impossible task: break the western anchor of the Gothic Line—Germany’s most formidable defensive system south of the Alps.
The Gothic Line had stopped Allied armies for months.
Concrete bunkers. Machine-gun nests. Minefields. Mortars hidden in rock. Artillery pre-registered on every approach. The mountains turned every German weapon into a force multiplier. One machine gun could dominate an entire valley.
White units had tried to break through. They had failed.
Now the job belonged to the Buffalo Soldiers.
“They Will Break Under Fire”
German intelligence assessments were blunt.
“American Negro units lack combat motivation. They will retreat when encountering serious resistance.”
Nazi ideology insisted Black soldiers were biologically incapable of sustained combat. German manuals advised defenders to apply heavy initial fire—the enemy would panic and flee.
That belief shaped von Schellenburg’s defense.
He expected the Americans to die on the slopes, long before they reached the wire.
At 0600 hours, American artillery opened fire—just fifteen minutes. Von Schellenburg smiled inside his bunker.
Only fifteen minutes of preparation. Proof of weakness.
Then the guns fell silent.
And the Buffalo Soldiers began to climb.
The Mountain That Was Supposed to Be Unclimbable
Monte Belvedere rose at angles so steep soldiers had to climb using both hands. Rifles were slung. Boots slipped on ice. Every man carried nearly sixty pounds of gear.
The climb burned lungs and muscles within minutes.
Then, at 0623, the mountain exploded.
German MG-42 machine guns opened fire, ripping the fog apart with interlocking streams of bullets. Mortars followed, walking explosions down the slope. Men fell. Others kept climbing.
“Keep moving!” shouted Staff Sergeant Edward Carter. “They can’t hit what doesn’t stop!”
Training doctrine said Black troops couldn’t maneuver under fire.
They did.
They advanced by fire and movement. They adapted. They climbed through casualties. When men fell, the man behind him stepped forward without hesitation.
At 0647, Company C reached the German wire.
That alone should not have been possible.
Bangalore torpedoes blew gaps in barbed wire thirty feet deep. Germans hurled grenades. Rifle fire poured into the breaches.
Private Vernon Baker charged a machine-gun nest alone.
He killed the entire crew.
American troops poured through.
The Breakthrough the Germans Never Expected
Company B attacked where no one was supposed to attack—up a nearly vertical rock face. German defenders had left it lightly manned, convinced no force would attempt it.
They were wrong.
By 0715 hours, Black American soldiers stood on the summit ridge of Monte Belvedere.
The first Allied troops to penetrate the Gothic Line’s main defenses.
German defenders were stunned. Radio reports came in confused, contradictory.
Von Schellenburg refused to believe them.
“Impossible,” he said. “Negro troops cannot be on the summit.”
But they were.
And they were not leaving.
Hand-to-Hand on the Summit
German counterattacks came fast and violent.
Elite assault troops surged forward. Fog reduced visibility to yards. Ammunition ran low. Fighting became personal—rifle butts, knives, entrenching tools.
Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers charged into enemy fire to hold his position.
He killed seven German soldiers before being killed himself.
The counterattack stalled.
The Buffalo Soldiers held.
Out of 97 men in one company, only 31 remained effective. They were wounded. Exhausted. Freezing.
They stayed.
A German lieutenant later wrote:
“They did not retreat. We threw them back, but they attacked again. These were not the soldiers we were told about.”
The Laughter Dies
By the afternoon, American artillery observers were calling fire from the summit itself. German positions that had dominated valleys for months were suddenly exposed.
Counterattacks failed again and again.
By December 28th, Monte Belvedere was lost.
The western anchor of the Gothic Line—once considered unbreakable—had been cracked by soldiers German propaganda said could not fight.
German intelligence reports changed immediately.
“Previous assessments based on racial theory were incorrect,” one report admitted.
“These troops fight with determination equal to any forces encountered.”
They Paid the Price Anyway
Victory did not spare them.
From December through February, the 92nd Infantry Division suffered over 2,000 casualties. Entire companies were reduced below half strength. Men fought in snow, wind, and temperatures below zero.
They broke the Gothic Line.
They helped open the road to the Po Valley.
They helped end the war in Italy.
Then they went home.
Home Was Not Victory
The soldiers returned to segregated buses. Jim Crow laws. Denied GI Bill benefits. Some were beaten for wearing their uniforms.
One veteran who survived Monte Belvedere was refused service at a diner months later. When he protested, police assaulted him.
“I took that mountain,” he said years later.
“But I couldn’t buy a hamburger in my own country.”
Recognition came late—decades late.
Medals were denied. Honors downgraded. Only in the 1990s were many awards corrected.
Vernon Baker received the Medal of Honor in 1997—52 years after earning it.
“Six of us had to die before America was ready to give us this,” he said.
“That tells you everything.”
The Mountain Is Quiet Now
Monte Belvedere stands silent today.
No gunfire. No fog-shrouded figures climbing through death.
But the mountain remembers.
So does history.
The Germans laughed when the Black troops arrived.
They stopped laughing in the mountains.
And the Buffalo Soldiers had the last word.
