Winston Churchill thought that Italy was the “soft underbelly” of Hitler’s Europe and saw a campaign in Italy as not only an opportunity to knock Italy out of the war, but to use Italy as a springboard into the Balkans where he hoped he could insert forces in front of the advancing Soviet army. To the Allied generals however, they saw Italy as an area unsuited for the type of fast, mobile armored that the Germans could not successfully halt. Instead, if Italy was to be invaded, the only real advantage according to the military was a new area for Allied bombers to hit Germany from a different direction.
Then the politicians and the Generals egos stepped onto the stage. How could Italy be invaded, and Rome and the Vatican not liberated? How could any of the Generals be satisfied with limited objectives when on the other fronts Allied armies were surging forward? Who wanted to be stuck in a combat theater where the opportunity for promotion was limited? And so, step by step, the original limited set of objectives were expanded as invasions of Salerno and Anzio were thought up as opportunities to by-pass the German defenders, so Italy could be conquered via a series of leap frog maneuvers. But no one bothered to consult the Germans who poured troops into Italy and forced the Allies to fight battles that they did not want.
Reputations were made and broken as Field Marshal Montgomery quickly exited the theater to politically capture the overall command of the invasion of France. Generals such as Clark had tarnished their reputation as they proved to be hesitant despite a glowing academic background at West Point. In the end, it was the common soldier who had to pay the price at botched battles, river crossings, head on assaults on mountains honeycombed with defensive positions and forgotten as glory was won elsewhere.
The Italian campaign is widely forgotten, not as much as the campaign in Burma, but one must wonder if the losses in Italy were worth the effort and diversion of effort from the main theaters. But then, there have to enough commands for all those Generals who want to be known as the victor of this town or that city. An interesting book, especially in the last quarter where more individual stories are provided.
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