Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [231]
Anzio was the last important operation which sprang from the personal inspiration of the prime minister. Without his support, neither Eisenhower nor Alexander could have persuaded the American Chiefs of Staff to provide means for such a venture. It reflected his passion for what Liddell Hart called “the strategy of indirect approach,” the exploitation of Allied command of the sea to sidestep the difficulties of frontal assault amid some of the most difficult terrain in the world. In principle Shingle was valid. But, to an extraordinary degree, commanders failed to think through a plan for what was to happen once the troops got ashore. In this, the weakness of the Anzio operation closely resembled that of Churchill’s other notorious amphibious failure, at the Dardanelles in 1915—as American corps commander Maj. Gen. John Lucas852 suggested before it began. Alexander, as commander-in-chief, must bear responsibility for the inadequacy of strategic planning for Shingle. He and his staff grossly underestimated the speed and strength of the German response, believing that the mere threat to Kesselring’s rear would cause him to abandon the defence of his line at Monte Cassino. They never identified the importance of quick seizure of the hills beyond the Anzio beaches, a far more plausible objective than a dash for Rome. The Americans, always sceptical, displayed better judgement about the landing’s prospects than the British.
Moreover, all operations of war must be judged in the context of the forces available to carry them out. The Allies had insufficient shipping in the Mediterranean to put ashore an army large enough to risk a decisive thrust inland. Lucas has often been criticized for failure to strike swiftly towards Rome in the wake of his corps’ successful landing. He was certainly a poor general. But had he done as the fire-eaters wished and dashed for the capital, he would have exposed a long, thin salient to counterattack. The Germans always punished excessive boldness, as they did nine months later at Arnhem. The likeliest outcome of a dash for Rome from Anzio would have been the destruction of Lucas’s corps. As it was, despite four months of misery which the defenders of the Anzio perimeter now resigned themselves to endure, they were rewarded with belated success.
So bitter was the struggle on the coast, matched by the battle farther south for the heights of Monte Cassino, that the Allies experienced little joy in the capture of Rome when it came in June 1944. But what took place was preferable to what might have been had a more daring commander led the Anzio assault. Shingle confirmed the U.S. Chiefs of Staff in their conviction that Italy offered only poisoned fruits. “The more one sees of this peninsula853, the less suited it seems for modern military operations,” agreed Harold Macmillan. The campaign could not be abandoned, but henceforward the Americans viewed it as a liability. They would support no more of Churchill’s adventures, in the Mediterranean or anywhere else.
Events in Italy in the winter of 1943–44 once more highlighted the gulf between the prime minister’s heroic aspirations and the limitations of Allied armies fighting the Germans. “I gather we are still stronger than the enemy,” he signalled to Alexander on February 10, “and naturally one wonders why over 70,000 British and Americans should be hemmed in on the defensive by what are thought to be at most 60,000 Germans”—in reality there were 90,000. He wrote to Smuts on February 27 that his confidence in Alexander was “undiminished,” adding sadly: “Though if