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.
Truscott’s VI Corps was an elite unit in the campaign in southern France. That campaign gets far too little credit.
But I digress again.
I was never sold on a Balkans campaign. The terrain was bad, and the logistics worse. There were no ports that would have supported an army, and no rail nets from any port that could have projected power inland. All of the logistic routes ran favorable to the German-Soviet axis, not a southern one.
And what would it have netted us? Yugoslavia? Not really; it was a basket case and still is. The Soviets would still have gotten Romania, Poland and Hungary, in all liklihood.