Anzio Campaign

The Italian Campaign proved to be far more difficult than Allied planners had imagined, and when the advance that followed the Salerno landings stalled, it was decided to make a second landing on Italy's west coast in an effort to break through the Winter Line and speed up the capture of Rome. In conference at Marakesh, the Allies decided on Operation Shingle, sending Maj. Gen. John Lucas with elements of the VI Corps of the Fifth U.S. Army to land along a 15-mile beachhead near the resort town of Anzio, 30 miles south of Rome, on January 22, 1944. Units committed to the landings included the U.S. 3d Infantry Division; the British 1st Infantry Division and 46th Royal Tank Regiment; the U.S. 751st Tank Battalion, the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, and the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion; two British Commando battalions; and three battalions of U.S. Army Rangers. The U.S. 45th Infantry Division and Combat Command A (CCA), a regimental-sized unit of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, were to land as reinforcements once the beachhead was established. 66 ANZAC The landings were textbook perfect and encountered very little German resistance. Progress inland was rapid, with British and American units attaining their first day's objectives by noon. Before the end of the day, they had advanced three to four miles. Indeed, the Germans did not anticipate an amphibious assault at this time or place, but Lucas failed to move aggressively and thus lost the advantage gained by the element of surprise. Over the next week, his units busied themselves with consolidating their positions preparatory to the major breakout. This gave the Germans ample time to redeploy, and what had started with an easy landing would stretch agonizingly into a savage fourmonth campaign. Although Lucas would receive much blame, he was, in fact, acting on his understanding of the orders of Fifth Army commander Gen. Mark Clark. Clark outlined two missions for VI Corps: to divert enemy strength from the south and to prepare defensive positions in anticipation of a violent German counterattack. He was further instructed to advance toward the Alban Hills and points east to link up with the rest of Fifth Army seven days after the landings. Lucas did not see his mission as immediately capturing the Alban Hills. In support of the landings, some 2,600 Allied aircraft were available, as was a large naval flotilla, comprising ships from six nations. To preserve the element of surprise, the naval forces did not launch a major preinvasion bombardment. German general Albert Kesselring ordered a counterattack for January 28, but his subordinate commander, Eberhard von Mackensen, requested postponement until February 1, by which time the Fourteenth German Army in the area numbered some 70,000 troops. Lucas now raced to press the attack so that he could link up with Fifth Army forces in the south before the Germans counterattacked. However, thanks in no small measure to the vagueness of Clark's orders, Lucas had sacrificed the advantages of the surprise achieved by the landings. Kesselring had deployed a cordon around Lucas. Rangers under Col. William O. Darby made an initial attack on Cisterna. The 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions were to spearhead the assault, infiltrating the German lines to seize Cisterna until the 4th Rangers and 15th Infantry arrived. The German defenders, however, ambushed the Rangers. Of 767 men in the two battalions, only a half dozen returned to Allied lines. By January 30, Lucas had suffered 5,100 casualties, 3,000 American and 2,100 British. He was forced to relinquish the offensive and assume a defensive posture. Yet the picture was not entirely bleak. Thanks to the Allies' having broken German Ultra codes, Lucas had a remarkably thorough picture of Mackensen's plans and the German tank strength in the area. This allowed him to make a highly effective defense, which was very costly to the German counterattackers. Moreover, while Kesselring anticipated achieving a high degree of surprise with a counteroffensive near Aprilia, the Ultra decrypts tipped the Allies off, and the major operation was checked by February 20, just four days after it had been launched. Not only did the counteroffensive fail to push the Allied troops back, it cost the Germans 5,389 casualties. Yet Lucas's superiors were persuaded that wars are not won by defensive operations, no matter how well executed, and, on February 22, Lucas was relieved and replaced by his deputy commander, the highly aggressive Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott. He quickly beat back a renewed German assault on February 29, and it was now Kesselring's turn to readjust his objectives. He had hoped to wipe out the landings. He now knew this would not happen. Nevertheless, this tenacious commander maintained a stout perimeter around the Allies and kept their positions under almost continuous fire. What he could not prevent, however, was the steady reinforcement of VI Corps. Nevertheless, it was not until spring that Truscott felt sufficiently strong to make the final breakout. On the morning of May 23, he opened an artillery barrage on the Cisterna front, followed by violent armor and infantry attacks along the entire line of German defenders. By that evening, the enemy's main line of resistance had been breached. Cisterna, long the nexus of German strength, fell on May 25, and on that same day, elements of VI Corps began the link up with the main body of the Anzio Campaign 67 Fifth Army—the union that was supposed to have taken place within one week of the Anzio landings. The Anzio Campaign was concluded. During the campaign, the Allied VI Corps had suffered 29,200 combat casualties (4,400 killed, 18,000 wounded, 6,800 prisoners or missing) and 37,000 noncombat casualties. German losses were about 40,000, including 5,000 killed and 4,838 captured. They were losses the Germans could not replace. There can be no doubt that the campaign failed in its immediate objectives of outflanking the German positions and thereby restoring mobility to the Italian campaign and speeding the capture of Rome. Lucas complained that he had never been provided forces adequate to his mission, and most recent historians agree, although most also believe that Lucas was, indeed, insufficiently aggressive. Costly and disappointing as it was, however, the Anzio Campaign did, in effect, monopolize the troops of the German Fourteenth Army for four months, preventing these forces from being deployed elsewhere. The campaign intensified a war of attrition the Germans simply could not afford.