The gist of this article seems to be that the Allies should have chosen to attack the Nazis in the place that the enemy was most expecting and had prepared for.
Breitbart is a good site for current events, but it isn't quite up to snuff on its military history.
It turned out great...except for that first wave of men at Omaha beach that received minimal firepower compared to the other invasion points. Slaughtered. Treachery. But they still got it done.
From Anzio until V-E Day, the Itlay campaign was a hard slog; tough battles against experienced German troops, defending rugged terrain. Without opening a second front in Normandy (and later, in southern France), Hitler could have easily focused his troops and resources in Italy, slowing our advance even further and inflicting many more casualties.
It’s also worth noting that General Clark was among our least capable commanders. His forces achieved near-total surprise at Anzio, but failed to exploit their opening; a jeep patrol made it to the outskirts of Rome a few days after the landing, but the local commander, General John Lucas, preferred to dig in. That gave the German commander time to rush thousands of troops to Anzio and pin us inside the the beachhead for months.
After the breakout at Anzio, Clark pushed on to Rome instead of turning to disrupt the German’s interior lines. This allowed large numbers of German troops to escape and redeploy to the next major defensive line, where they bloodied Allied troops again.
There is no compelling evidence that Clark would have made better use of additional resources. Perhaps the writer is inferring that if Italy were the “only show” Clark would have been replaced by men like Patton or Bradley. There may be some truth in that, but regardless of who was in command, they would have faced the difficult challenges of fighting their way up the Italian boot.
And here’s another inconvenient fact: to reach Germany from Italy, you have to advance across the Alps and through Austria. Not exactly tank country. The Italians and Austrians fought in those mountains for years during World War I, and we might have encountered a similar, bloody stalemate. Meanwhile, Stalin’s tank divisions would have advanced well past Berlin and wound up with much of Western Europe.
If I’m not mistake, the author of this article had a similar offering earlier in the week, criticizing FDR for not re-inforcing the Philippines after our entry into World War II. With most of our Pacific Fleet on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, we lacked the naval power to send reinforcements across the Pacific to the Philippines and defend the sea lanes from superior Japanese forces.
Incidentally, the situation was made worse by General MacArthur’s calculation that Tokyo wouldn’t attack until April 1942 at the earliest; as a result, defensive preparations were way behind and his staff was on a “peacetime” schedule up until the first bombs fell.
FDR was no saint; there is compelling evidence that he deliberately left our fleet exposed at Pearl Harbor, trying to bait the Japanese and give us an entry into the war. He denied critical intelligence to his commanders in Hawaii and thousands of pages of intel documents from that period remain sealed. FDR even fired a PACFLT commander (Admiral J.O. Richardson), who demanded the fleet return to its home base in San Diego, realizing it was unprepared for war and dangerously positioned at Pearl.
But suggesting that Italy should have been the “only” ground campaign in Europe is ridiculous, as are the claims about the Philippines. As conservatives, we often criticize liberals for re-writing history to satisfy a particular agenda. These attempts are no better and they reflect a complete misunderstanding of the military situation at the time.
Yeah no kidding. If they enemy was EXPECTING those divisions to attack, then they were READY for them to attack. If we Trying to push from northern Italy into France or Germany would have been HARD. Very hard. Has anyone successfully invaded across that boarder except Hannibal and some Vandals?