Anzio: The "Stranded Whale" of the Italian Campaign

Allied forces landing in late January 1944

It's early 1944, and the tide of war is starting to swing in the Allies' favor. The Normandy landings are still in the planning phase, but Stalin begs the Allies to open another European front to take pressure of the Soviet Union. Italy is chosen as the "soft underbelly" of Hitler's Europe, as Winston Churchill put it. However, the campaign to sledgehammer up the Italian peninsula is time consuming and costly in terms of manpower. Therefore, a plan is divised to come at the Germans from behind and wreak havoc on their lines. In our continuing series on the role Italy played in the grand scheme of World War II in Europe, we now turn to the Anzio landings, and how a good plan floundered under bad leadership.

The Anzio landings took place on January 21, 1944. The point of the attack was to catch the Germans completely off their guard, and the landings themselves accomplished just that. In fact, front line reports from the landings indicated that there was barely any hostile fire during the entire landing. By the second night nearly all of the invasion force, 45,000 men and 3,000 vehicles, were on shore. As Winston Churchill said, the goal was "to hurl a wild cat ashore".

However, the plan would soon go awry. The problem was not from the tactical situation, but from the stragetic leadership of the operation. The generals commanding the operation were old, the American general John Lucas had just turned 54, and was not very optimistic about being leader of such an undertaking. Indeed, the expected advance to the German lines and eventually Rome was halted because of the "need for consolidation". While this was necessary, by the time it had happened, the orders to march were not given until it was too late.

By the end of January, the Germans were fully aware of the Allied forces on the beaches, now at 70,000 men. Under the command of Field Marshall Kesselring, the Germans moved eight divisions to surround the beach and for nearly four months they proceeded to rain thousands of shells on the beachhead. By this time the orders had been given to break out, bu the fighting would soon come to esemble the carnage reminiscent of World War I's trenches. Indeed, there seemed to be a quiet acceptance of stalemate on both sides. A baseball diamond was even built in Anzio, though the shelling would most certainly interfere with games.

It wasn't until May that the Allies finally launched an offensive capable of breaking through to the trapped men on the beach. The Allied 5th Army was finally able to link up with VI Corps near Anzio on May 25, 1944. In some ways, the Anzio operation can be compared to Stalingrad in the scale of its failure. While the Allies did not lose an entire army, Winston Churchill summed up the outcome most famously and succinctly by saying "We thought we had hurled a wild cat ashore. All we got was a stranded whale". Until next time take care, and thanks for reading.