Mark Clark, Salerno

ANZIO: THE FRICTION OF WAR — ITALY AND THE BATTLE FOR ROME 1944 By Lloyd Clark, Headline, £12

On September 9, 1943, the Allied forces landed at Salerno in Italy. The Italian campaign was presumed to be a short and swift blow at the soft underbelly of Hitler’s Festung Europa. But the Italian campaign continued for more than two years. The German units in Italy finally surrendered when Berlin fell to the Russians in May 1945. Historians continue to debate whether the Italian campaign was a fiasco or not for the Western powers. British historian Lloyd Clark, focusing on the Anzio campaign and the ‘liberation’ of Rome, attempts a fresh assessment of the Italian War.

After the Axis collapse in Tunisia in late 1943, the American and the British strategic managers agreed to continue to fight the Nazis but disagreed where to fight them. The Americans wanted to invade France and then rush towards Germany. But the British thought that the Germans were too strong in France. The Wehrmacht, argued London, would be able to push the Allies back to the sea. Rather than invade France, the Anglo-American force ought to go for the soft target of Italy.

Winston Churchill supported the idea because, unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt, he thought about the political aspects of warfare. While Washington wanted to win the war as quickly as possible, Churchill considered the post-war scenario. From mid-1943, the Germans had started to retreat in Russia. Churchill argued that very soon the Red Army would move into the Balkans and communism would overrun south Europe. The only way to checkmate the Soviets was to push up Italy and cross the Alps.

As the Allied forces landed in Italy, Benito Mussolini’s government collapsed, and Hitler thought of a strategic retreat over the Alps. However, Field Marshal Albert Kesserling, convinced the Führer of a slow but engaged retreat in Italy. Hitler accepted the plan. Taking advantage of Italy’s mountainous terrain and poor infrastructure, only a few German divisions held up a large number of Allied troops.

While the Americans insisted on winding up the Italian misadventure, Churchill hit upon the idea of accelerating the Italian campaign by putting ashore a force at Anzio. On January 22, 1944, Allied troops landed at Anzio. But, the prompt response by the panzer divisions prevented them from breaking out of the Anzio perimeter.

Finally, on June 2, the heavy use of airpower and better material resources helped the Allied troops to break out of Anzio. But the retreating German troops escaped unhurt, declaring Rome an “open city”. The author blames the American Lieutenant General Mark Clark’s hunger for fame for this fiasco; Clark sent his troops to occupy Rome rather than encircle the Germans.

Lloyd Clark shows that though the Italian campaign was not a total military success for the Allies, Italy was saved from Soviet influence. Anzio created bad blood between Moscow and the West. Josef Stalin accused the West of deliberately delaying the invasion of France so that the Red Army could bleed to death. From the military perspective, Anzio was a sideshow with only 7,000 Allied troops dying. In terms of casualties it is not comparable to Stalingrad or Kursk. As for strategic significance, Anzio became redundant with the Normandy landings of June 1944. It, however, provides an instructive narrative about Allied Mediterranean strategy.