The British approach during the war was to let the USSR take the brunt for as long as possible, and to let the Germans wear themselves out fighting on that front. Churchill’s other annoying crap, such as his “soft underbelly of Europe” BS, all grew out of that strategy. The Italian campaign was some of the hardest fighting of the war, strictly because of the highly defensible terrain. Thanks, Winston.
Operation Market Garden was a fiasco, and probably couldn’t have been otherwise with Monty running it — and it was intended to succeed, but was launched in the first place to let the Germans keep busy fighting the Red Army advance. Stalin was continuously furious in those wartime conferences because he wanted a second front, and wasn’t getting it. North Africa wasn’t it, Italy wasn’t it, and D-Day came a full year after the Battle of Kursk.
“The British approach during the war was to let the USSR take the brunt for as long as possible,”
And that proved wise. The Dieppe Raid of August 1942 took over 50% casualties. Grabbing a beachhead on continental Europe wasn’t going to be easy.
For one thing we needed thousands of Higgins Boats and they weren’t ready until 1944. And as fruitless as the hard fighting in Italy might appear, it taught the American army a great deal about fighting the Germans while tying German divisions down away from the French coast. The Normandy Invasion took place one day after the liberation of Rome.