A little more discussion about Allied grand strategy and the invasion of Italy.
If World War 2 was a football fantasy draft between Hitler and Churchill, Hitler did a very bad job of drafting his allies. The only one he sort of lined up that was worth a damn was the USSR early on with his Non-Aggression Pact. And then he turned on the USSR. Otherwise, he lined up countries like Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Slovakia and Bulgaria. Not only did they offer very little war making capacity, they were very reluctant allies to say the least, and a good many of them absolutely despised the others. The Romanians and Hungarians kept their best forces in the Carpathians facing each other instead of sending them into the USSR to fight with the Germans. When Romania gets a chance in late 1944, their armies will actively fight with the Red Army to clear the Hungarians out of Transylvania.
Churchill on the other hand drafted France (who turned out to be a bust, going down in Game 2 with blown-out knee), Canada, Australia, the United States and the Soviet Union. Pretty much all top picks.
But I digress. The Grand Strategy for Italy is to knock Germany’s top ally out of the war. And that becomes a lesson for the lesser reluctant allies. They have already become nervous about staying in the war at Germany’s side. The capitulation of Italy will only reinforce their desire to desert at the first opportunity. Germany needed the soldiers of her little allies as cannon fodder. Now, there is absolutely no chance they will ever get cooperation from them again.
I agree knocking Hitler's principal ally out of the war was a worthy goal. But getting Rome was much more costly than anyone expected. I would have been tempted at that point to shut that front down and look at targets more likely to knock Germany out of the war than the Po Valley.
Although, I suppose in a sense that's really what happened when Truscott's VI Corps was pulled out of Italy and assigned to the Riviera invasion. The remaining units, however, kept advancing up the Boot.
Hindsight is 20-20, but it would have been nice to get Anglo-American troops into the Balkans as a counter to Soviet influence, as Churchill wanted.