Thursday, October 11

"The Day of Battle"  WWII Italian Campaign -USA Review - Another Churchill Debacle

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Winston Churchill has the rare and dubious distinctions of having been the Architect of the Biggest Disaster in each of the World Wars.

In World War I it was Gallipoli. In World War II it was the Italian Campaign.

 

FIRST,  the ITALIAN CAMPAIGN: Churchill called Italy the "soft underbelly" of Europe. The only thing soft was Allied thinking.The Italian campaign was hard - to endure, to survive, to understand.

Their goals were modest (knock Italy out of the war) or pointless (seize Rome, despite its lack of military significance) or uninspiring (tie up German troops).As many Allied Field Officers observed throughout the Entire Campaign: "We got them just where they want us."

SECOND, Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, his previous Greatest Gaffe, the Plan at Gallipoli (near the Dardanelles,Turkey) was intended to end World War One early,  which became one of the Allies great disasters.  

 

Gallipoli, the ill-starred military campaign that all but destroyed Churchill's  career in 1915. After Gallipoli, Churchill's reputation plummeted, and he was attacked as a shameless egotist, an erratic policy-maker who lacked judgement, and a reckless amateur strategist with a dangerous passion for war and bloodshed.

 

England with a dearth of Leaders after Chamberlain the Appeaser's fall from grace,in 1939.  Churchill resurrected his reputation through a stupendous public relations campaign in which oratory, journalism, propaganda, and revised history were all pressed into service.

'Day of Battle': Stark, True Colors of the War in Italy

 

 

USA TODAY

By Rick Hampson

October 10, 2007

 

During World War II, Winston Churchill famously called the Mediterranean "the soft underbelly" of Nazi-occupied Europe. The Day of Battle, Rick Atkinson's horrifying, fascinating account of the war in Sicily and Italy, shows the British prime minister could not have chosen a less apt adjective.

The Italian campaign, in particular, was hard - to endure, to survive, to understand. The only thing soft was Allied thinking.

Their goals were modest (knock Italy out of the war) or pointless (seize Rome, despite its lack of military significance) or uninspiring (tie up German troops).

"We're not out for glory," said Gen. Terry Allen, commander of the First Infantry Division. "We're here to do a dirty, stinking job."

That it was. Convoys headed for the invasion of Sicily carried 6 tons of grave markers. Shortly after landing, one lieutenant said, "Hell, let's not wait for them to attack us. Let's attack them first." A second later, he was killed by a bullet in the head.

The 504th parachute infantry regiment was decimated by friendly fire. Atkinson describes how parachutes collapsed or failed to open, and men hit the ground with a sound like "large pumpkins being thrown down."

It got worse after the fight moved to mountainous Italy (as Ken Burns' new documentary, The War, also made clear). It seemed the Allies were always moving uphill against the entrenched Germans. As an artillery major observed from the besieged beachhead at Salerno, "We got them just where they want us."

As the grunts slog through the mud, Hitler and Churchill — "presiding deity of the soft underbelly campaign" — loom over the action like Greek gods whose whims, however irrational, determine men's fates.

The Day of Battle  would be harder to read if Atkinson did not leaven the war's horrors with its consolations: the beauty and history of the countryside, the smell of its flowers, the taste of its wines.

And there are great characters. Gen. George Patton wades ashore in Sicily with a Colt .45 Peacemaker on his hip, slapping a leather swagger stick and yelling at soldiers to "Get your asses off this beach and go kill those Kraut bastards." After his tanks roll into Palermo, he writes his wife, "How I love wars."

 

The ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (and are Archived) on:

Italia USA: http://www.ItaliaUSA.com [Formerly Italy at St Louis] (7 years)

Italia Mia: http://www.ItaliaMia.com (3 years)

Annotico Email: annotico@earthlink.net