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The Allies had secured the Mediterranean sea lanes and were advancing steadily into southern Italy. But then, suddenly, in October 1943, the action seemed to stop. A decisive thrust at the weakened Axis was called for to break the stalemate. A strong and immediate assault on Rome was necessary---and the gateway chosen was Anzio.
"The Beach Head has become a Death's Head!" The German propaganda leaflet told nothing but the truth. Fatal indecision led to months of loss and pointless bloodshed in the winter of 1943-44. "The Allies," Kesselring triumphantly recorded, "....missed a uniquely favorable chance of capturing Rome."
Contents
Introduction
1. Stalemate in Italy
2. Operation Shingle
3. The landing
4. The Allies attack
5. The Germans counterattack
6. Attrition
7. Lull
8. Breakout
9. Post-Mortem
BibliographyAnother Gallipoli? Introduction by Barrie Pitt It is hard to avoid seeing in Operation Shingle, the landing at Anzio, features which recall the First World War landing at Gallipoli, as the Corps Commander General Lucas noted.
Like that operation, Shingle was one of Winston Churchill's obsessions, one of the 'cat's claw' manoeuvres for which he had such high hopes. Also like that operation, Shingle would have been immensely useful had it gone according to plan; had the outcome been totally successful, it would have brought to Churchill the praise for inspired thinking that success deserves and failure, by however short a margin, denies. Like that operation, the landing which should have led to a devastating thrust degenerated into a campaign of attrition, in which the static trench warfare called to mind other terrible battles of the First World War. But unlike the Gallipoli operation, the outcome was not a withdrawal, although the German defenders almost succeeded in inflicting that ignominy on the Allies, but an eventual break-through, leading to the capture of the first Axis capital of the war.
Churchill's obsession apart, what were the aims of the Anzio landing?
The decision to invade southern Italy in the autumn of 1943 stemmed from the conference held by Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff at Casablanca in the preceding January. Once the Allies had secured the Mediterranean sea lanes by their conquests in North Africa and Sicily, they were in some disagreement about where to go next. The British and American commands agreed that the cross-Channel invasion into Normandy was to be the decisive thrust against the weakening enemy, but beyond that their views diverged. General Marshall, the US Army Chief of Staff, feared that a landing in Italy would absorb resources needed for the cross-Channel invasion. Churchill and the British, on the other hand, were keen to engage Hitler in a campaign in the Mediterranean, to draw off German resources from France and the Low Countries. Conquest of Italy would present the additional benefit of airfields to bomb the German war factories and Rumanian oilfields.
When it became obvious that no cross-Channel invasion could be staged during 1943, the prospects for a campaign beyond Sicily became feasible, and when the relatively easy invasion of Sicily and the downfall of Mussolini rendered the prospects even more inviting, Eisenhower, the Allied Commander-in-Chief, secured approval for a landing on the Italian mainland.
In fact there were three landings, all in early September, across the Straits of Messina by Montgomery's Eighth Army, in the Gulf of Taranto by the 1st Airborne Division of Eighth Army, and in the Gulf of Salerno near Naples by General Mark Clark's Fifth Army. The first two of these went virtually unopposed, but the Salerno operation met determined resistance from Field Marshal Kesselring's Panzer Divisions, and almost ran into disaster. Eventually, on 1st October 1943, Clark's forces entered Naples, and drove on until they were finally stopped again on the River Volturno on 7th October.
From then until the end of the year the situation in Italy remained one of stalemate, and the landing at Anzio came into prominence as a means of breaking the deadlock. It was intended as one half of a decisive pincer movement on western Italy. The bulk of the American Fifth Army would attack northwards in a land operation against the German defensive line, the Gustav Line, while the VI Corps landed behind the Gustav line. Whichever way the Germans moved would leave the way open for Allied victory: if they defended against the frontal assault, the troops landed in Operation Shingle would be able to penetrate their lines of communication; if they counterattacked against the landing their Gustav Line defenses would be weakened. That, in broad outline, was the theory. But inevitably subsequent developments perversely refused to conform. Firstly there was a further brilliantly organised and superbly fought defensive action by the Germans, led again by Kesselring and General Vietinghoff, which threatened to succeed where the defence at Salerno had failed and cut the beachhead in half with a counterattack. Then there was the pathetic indecisiveness of the VI Corps commander General Lucas who, abetted by General Clark, refused to seize the opportunity presented at the beginning of the invasion, and concentrated on building up his resources, while the Germans at the same time concentrated on deploying their defences. And finally there was the highly dubious action of Clark himself, who set his heart on a triumphant entry into Rome rather than on defeating the enemy.
In this book Christopher Hibbert examines all these aspects of the Anzio operation, and gives an enthralling account of the bitter fighting, backing his customary meticulous research with intelligent analysis.
Overall, the picture that emerges is one of lack of faith among the Allied leaders. Whether the Anzio operation fulfilled any purpose at all, by for example keeping German divisions away from the front in Normandy, is open to question. As Christopher Hibbert points out, probably the most useful outcome lay in the lessons its failure provided for the cross-Channel invasion itself. If that is all it did, it cannot be accounted other than an expensive failure. But then, one tends to judge everything, unjustly perhaps, by the highest standard, contrasting the Anzio operation with that in Normandy. What other story might now be told if the Allies had enjoyed the same quality of leadership in western Italy that they enjoyed in northern France, combining the single-mindedness of Marshall, the administrative skill of Eisenhower, the intelligence of Bradley, and decisiveness of Patton, and the nerve of Montgomery? But Anzio never carried the once-and-for-all finality of the Normandy landings. Nobody, not even Churchill, cared about it quite as much, and the entire half-hearted operation fell short of being a great amphibious landing.
In those circumstances, perhaps it is hardly surprising that Churchill could lament: 'I had hoped that we would be hurling a wildcat ashore, but all we got was a stranded whale.'
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