Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [252]
The British won a notable victory that spring when they repulsed a Japanese offensive in northwest India, against Imphal and Kohima. This, however, increased tensions with the Americans. They intensified demands for a major offensive into northern Burma, to open the land route into China. Churchill deplored the prospect of a campaign in steaming, fever-ridden jungles, to no purpose that he valued. But, in the absence of U.S. shipping for amphibious landings in Southeast Asia, Slim’s Fourteenth Army was indeed committed to invade northern Burma.
On May 14, there was belated good news from Italy. Alexander’s Diadem offensive broke through the German line, a notable contribution being made by Gen. Alphonse Juin’s French colonial forces. On the twenty-third, the Anglo-Americans launched their breakout from the Anzio perimeter. Churchill urged on Alexander the importance of cutting off Kesselring’s retreat, a much more important objective than the seizure of Rome. General Mark Clark disagreed, however. His U.S. Fifth Army drove hard for the Italian capital, diverting only a single division to impede the enemy’s withdrawal. So skilful were German disengagements927, in Italy as later in northwest Europe, that it is unlikely Clark could have stopped Kesselring, even had he committed himself wholeheartedly to do so. But he did not. The liberation of Rome on June 4 prompted celebration among the Allied nations for a symbolic victory, but its strategic significance was small. As everybody concerned, from the prime minister downwards, should have perceived, the Italian capital was a mere geographical location. Kesselring was once more able to establish a defensive line. The Italian campaign continued as it had begun, in frustration and disappointment for its commanders and above all for its principal sponsor, Winston Churchill.
The prime minister seems quite wrong to have supposed that the Allied cause would have profited from an increased Italian commitment in 1944. For all Churchill’s personal enthusiasm for Alexander, the Guardsman was an inadequate commander whose chief virtue was that he worked amicably with the Americans, as Montgomery did not. He seldom pressed a point, because he rarely had one to make. The terrain of Italy favoured the defence, which Kesselring conducted brilliantly. It was right for the Allies to take Sicily in July 1943, right to land and fight in Italy two months later. It was essential, once committed, to sustain a limited campaign there until 1945. But the Americans were correct, first to insist upon Overlord, then to accord its interests overwhelming priority. It is hard to believe that the forces later diverted to Operation Anvil would have achieved commensurate results if they had been retained in Italy. The Germans were too good, the battlefield unsuited to Allied purposes. Moreover, with the northern French rail net wrecked by bombing, Marseilles later proved a vital logistics hub for all of Eisenhower’s armies, a channel for 40 percent of their supplies up to December 1944.
The prime minister thus expended capital in a struggle with Washington that he was bound to lose, and deserved to. He might have fared better in some of his trials of strength with the United States in 1944 had he not chosen to challenge his ally on so many fronts. On June 4, following the news of Rome’s fall, he cabled Roosevelt: “How magnificently your troops have fought928. I hear that relations are admirable between our own armies in every rank there, and here certainly it is an absolute brotherhood.