“Anzio: Italy and the Battle for Rome – 1944”

Lloyd Clark

This is the dramatic, well-told story of a campaign that’s been overshadowed by the Normandy invasion. It strikes a good balance between the personal and the strategic, mixing accounts of small unit actions and soldiers’ experiences with clear explanations of high-level command decisions. Clark argues that it was Churchill’s obsessive insistence on attempting to outflank the Nazi forces in Italy by sea (reminiscent of this disastrousGallipoli operation) that lead to the near-disaster of the Anzio campaign. He vindicates U.S. General Lucas’ cautious measured build up and criticizes General Mark Clark’s focus on the meaningless objective of Rome, a focus that allowed much of the German Tenth Army to escape.