The Italian Campaign: The Long Road to Rome

After North Africa, the Allies invaded Italy. They expected a quick victory. Instead, they got a long, brutal slog up the peninsula. The Italian campaign lasted from 1943 to 1945. It was the forgotten front, overshadowed by Normandy and the Eastern Front. But the fighting was just as hard. The Germans defended every river, every mountain. The Allies fought at Salerno, Anzio, Monte Cassino. Monte Cassino was a medieval monastery perched on a mountain. The Allies bombed it, thinking the Germans were inside. They weren't. The Germans occupied the rubble and made it a fortress. The battle lasted four months. The Allies finally broke through, but the cost was staggering. Anzio was supposed to be an end run around German defenses. Instead, the landing force was trapped on the beachhead for months. Soldiers called it the Anzio vacation. But there was nothing vacation-like about it. German shells fell constantly. The Anzio beachhead became a symbol of the campaign's frustrations. Rome fell in June 1944, just days after D-Day. The Allies had hoped to take it earlier, to boost morale before Normandy. They missed the opportunity. The fighting continued in northern Italy until the end of the war. The Italian campaign cost over 300,000 Allied casualties. It was a secondary front that consumed resources and lives. But it tied down German divisions that could have been used elsewhere.