Military History

Operation SHINGLE: D-Day at Anzio

January – 24 May 1944

The Allies landed thirty miles south of Rome on 22 January, surprising the Germans who were confident that they would not attempt an amphibious assault in January, and as a result it took the Germans several days to adjust their positions for a proper defense. But when they had done so, they set the stage for a long, bitter struggle.

General Eisenhower was the ranking Allied commanding officer in the Mediterranean theater, under whom the decision was made in December 1943 to shelve the planned invasion at Anzio. When he left to take command of OVERLORD, control of the Mediterranean passed to the British, who revived the plan for Operation SHINGLE at the urging of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. To Churchill the success of the Mediterranean operation was dependent upon the liberation of Rome, and the key to that was to land an assault at Anzio. One reason was that it was within range of Allied aircraft operating from Naples.

In an instance where egomania played a crucial part in the operation, the eleven nations in the allied forces saw an opportunity to defeat the Germans’ Gustav Line – under the command of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring – by enveloping the German forces. This operation needed for the U.S. Fifth Army under command of General Mark Clark to commit to an easterly drive from Cisterna. But Clark didn’t want the British Eighth Army to get to Rome before him, and his negligence and egotistical maneuver of diverting most of his troops in part caused the mission to fail in its primary objective.

Much controversy surrounds the facts and figures of the Anzio invasion, in that it was so costly and failed to accomplish many of its stated goals. The campaign took four months and Allied casualties totaled almost 30,000, with 4,400 killed and 6,800 missing or captured (German casualties were similar in number). Allied troops were essentially immobile for the four months of the campaign, making very little progress prior to the advance of the Fifth Army to the south. Many thought that Major General John P. Lucas, in charge of the invasion, was considered too cautious whereas a bolder, more strident “Patton-like” approach would have proven more successful.

As much as has been written about the failure of the Anzio invasion, two facts remain. First, Churchill was correct in his opinion that the liberation of Rome was indisputably an important objective as a key to holding Italy. For that reason, the Germans couldn’t turn their back on Southern Italy. Second, German troop reserves as well as materiel and equipment were already drained to a critical point. Having been put on the defensive, Germany couldn’t move the 135,000 troops of their Fourteenth Army out of Italy. The Anzio campaign wasn’t officially over until 24 May 1944, less than two weeks before the Germans were surprised yet again at the beaches of Normandy.

There’s no way to know whether the world would have seen a drastically different outcome had the Germans been able to move those troops and materiel to Normandy in time for D-Day, but it certainly could have made a significant difference in terms of casualties.

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