Did he resist arrest? From what I remember, he was broken in his last years. When the Council voted him out, someone was going to salute and he told him to stop. He seemed to know that it was over.
Was the invasion of Italy necessary in ww2
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McPherson
Banned
No sensible general who knew the situation logistically wanted that assignment. Lucas was not the only reluctant.
Because he was good at his job. VI Corps was a mess which was why Lucas replaced Major General Ernest J. Dawley, who in my opinion was Peter Principled above his competency level.
I have been accused of after the fact arm-chair generalship on occasion.
Now let me point out a few things.
a. On Lucas right is the Pontine Marsh.
b. In front of Lucas is Anzio town.
c. You got horrible ground in front of Alban Iulus.
d. German reinforcement route by 3 rail lines straight from Rome less than 45 km away,
Now you just landed a rump corps of about 45,000 men including tail, and the frontage you have to cover is 40 km and your superiors want you to expand it behind 100,000+ desperate Germans to a 200 km frontage, aforesaid Germans who just REPULSED an attack (The Rapido disaster.). The miracle is that the Germans were so damned slow to react to SHINGLE. Lucas used those eight days to get ready. Lucky the Germans gave him time!
Have you ANY idea just how insane Lucas thought his position really was on 17 February? You have a lot of people lying and alibiing about their parts in this fiasco. AND THAT INCLUDES CHURCHILL.
It is not just Churchill in the execution and not just Lucas (^^^). You can add Clark, Alexander, the USN and even Eisenhower and Marshall and you would not have named all the principles. Lucas is only the fall guy.
I'm a realist. I look at time/distance/terrain/weather/logistics and I think ANZIO was an amazing SUCCESS. Churchill's "wildcat" should have killed upwards 60,000 Allied troops, but instead it broke the German defenses south of Rome in spite of all the mistakes. I am the glass half full here.
c. You got horrible ground in front of Alban Iulus.
You make a convincing argument, though I've seen the opposite too. But I'm replying here just to nitpick. Look closely, those are the Alban Hills, not a locale named "Alban Iulus".
TDM
Kicked
Churchill is ....complicated if you are British and of a certain age he's a national hero who won the war through stubborn bulldog spirit and what other positive national traits people see fit to pin on him* (and by reflection themselves), and for many of us that was the received wisdom on the man. So there's also a tendency to make an unspoken refutation of that. But he had qualities, not least of which was an insane work rate and ability to involve himself in lots of things at once. Which is fine if he's right, but a fucking liability when he's not. While at times a self aware man, he was also mercurial in the extreme and that self awareness cannot be guaranteed on any given decision being made. (Quite often his self awareness arrived after the event).
*plus the man could turn a phrase both in person and on the page and had no issues with pining them on himself at times as well!
He was good at his job, but not a good pick for *this* job. Of course, the blame for *that* has to go on Alexander and Clark.
If I were Lucas, I'd have refused the job.
But as to what *should* have been done: The commander of SHINGLE WAs going to have to run some risks to make it work. And that required a more aggressive commander.
Consider what Blumenson contends in that link I included:
If security rather than an offensive intention had become the most important aspect of the operation, the Alban Hills still figured prominently. The capture of the Anzio port was an obvious objective. But because of the commanding position of the Alban Hills, early occupation of this terrain feature was vital to secure a limited force landed in a beachhead. The VI Corps forces that remained isolated in the Anzio beachhead for four long months of agony were to appreciate the importance of the dominating terrain. German observers enjoyed an excellent view over the entire beachhead, a view obscured occasionally by atmospheric haze, more frequently by a heroic Allied expenditure of smoke, and German artillerymen found all parts of the beachhead within range of their guns.
Was then General Lucas completely justified in building up the beachhead for seven days before starting his offensive? Or could he have got away with the gamble of an immediate drive to the Alban Hills? Certainly the complete surprise achieved at Anzio could have been exploited. And according to Tenth Army estimates, only a quick cutting of the lines of communication would have led to major Allied success, a success more than likely encompassing the capture of Rome. According to Kesselring's chief of staff, "The road to Rome was open, and an audacious flying column could have penetrated to the city.... The enemy remained astonishingly passive."
What if General Lucas had taken advantage of the surprise gained? Suppose he had not waited but had instead made an immediate aggressive move to the heights dominating the southern approaches to Rome? Could the Germans have massed enough forces to withstand a dynamic front as they did against the static front at Anzio? In view of the greater mechanization and mobility of Allied forces, would the Germans have dared to hold on to both the Anzio and Garigliano fronts if threatened by the much greater menace that an Allied force ensconced on the Alban Hills would have posed?
The answers may be found within the realm of speculation only. But the wisp of a nagging doubt remains. According to General Alexander, an aggressive commander at Anzio would have given the Fifth Army order to advance "on" the Alban Hills an interpretation different from that of General Lucas. Seizing upon the surprise attained, he would have-and could have-pushed patrols and light forces in perhaps regimental strength to the Alban Hills. The shock of finding Allied troops directly threatening Rome and the vital lines of communication might have so demoralized the Germans as to make possible Allied retention both of the hill mass and of a corridor between Anzio and the hills. A bluff, if prosecuted with imagination and daring, if carried through with vigor, if executed with the intention of raising havoc in the German rear, might have worked. Suppose, for example, General Patton had commanded the corps that came ashore at Anzio.
Link: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_13.htmWas then General Lucas completely justified in building up the beachhead for seven days before starting his offensive? Or could he have got away with the gamble of an immediate drive to the Alban Hills? Certainly the complete surprise achieved at Anzio could have been exploited. And according to Tenth Army estimates, only a quick cutting of the lines of communication would have led to major Allied success, a success more than likely encompassing the capture of Rome. According to Kesselring's chief of staff, "The road to Rome was open, and an audacious flying column could have penetrated to the city.... The enemy remained astonishingly passive."
What if General Lucas had taken advantage of the surprise gained? Suppose he had not waited but had instead made an immediate aggressive move to the heights dominating the southern approaches to Rome? Could the Germans have massed enough forces to withstand a dynamic front as they did against the static front at Anzio? In view of the greater mechanization and mobility of Allied forces, would the Germans have dared to hold on to both the Anzio and Garigliano fronts if threatened by the much greater menace that an Allied force ensconced on the Alban Hills would have posed?
The answers may be found within the realm of speculation only. But the wisp of a nagging doubt remains. According to General Alexander, an aggressive commander at Anzio would have given the Fifth Army order to advance "on" the Alban Hills an interpretation different from that of General Lucas. Seizing upon the surprise attained, he would have-and could have-pushed patrols and light forces in perhaps regimental strength to the Alban Hills. The shock of finding Allied troops directly threatening Rome and the vital lines of communication might have so demoralized the Germans as to make possible Allied retention both of the hill mass and of a corridor between Anzio and the hills. A bluff, if prosecuted with imagination and daring, if carried through with vigor, if executed with the intention of raising havoc in the German rear, might have worked. Suppose, for example, General Patton had commanded the corps that came ashore at Anzio.
One other point you made I would like to pick up, while I am at it, because it's also important: "Churchill should have been kept away from tactical planning period."
The problem is: Who is going to keep him away from it? There's no one he reports to. The PM is literally at the top of the food chain. Even Roosevelt could not *make* him pull out of all tactical planning.
This is the risk you have to accept, even in a democratic system. The man at the top gets to make the final call. Some leaders in his position would defer more of these calls to the commanders below them; but they don't *have* to.
SHINGLE wasn't a bad idea in basic conception. Unfortunately, it ran into competing objectives and operations, and it ended up being a compromise as a result. But that doesn't mean it could not have been made to work, if the commander was willing to run some risks.
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These are all good points.
No political leader is perfect. But if he's a good one on balance, you have to take the bad with the good (and hope you can mitigate the bad).
There's an argument out there that Churchill was the best man and maybe the *only* man for the job in 1940-41 (maybe as late as early 1942, when he played a critical role in shaping the American role in the war with his trip to Washington), but that he was more of a liability later in the war. That maybe, if he dies in a tragic plane crash mid-war, that Britain might have been better off with a new leader. (Certainly Admiral Keyes thought so!)
I don't buy that view, and not least because anyone you replace him brings a different set of advantages and disadvantages. His most likely replacement (at least from 1941 onward) after all was Anthony Eden. Eden surely wouldn't have intervened like Churchill did in things like SHINGLE, but then Eden also is not going to command the kind of respect and deference, both in the Empire and abroad, that Churchill did, either; he wouldn't have the political capital built up in 1940 that Churchill did; if a crisis comes, Eden is going to have a harder time surviving it. And as we saw with Suez in 1956, he had his own political myopias, too. And likewise as you observe, no other possible PM would have had anything like Churchill's rhetorical gifts, and that kind of thing really *does* matter in that job.
I think the postwar consensus on Churchill is still the correct one: Churchill brought a lot more good to the job than bad, even if you put the worst construction on episodes like SHINGLE (which I do not).
Sir Roger Keyes was a prime mover in the July 1942 no confidence vote in Churchill folllowing Tobruk.
Actually: Even more on point, in exemplifying this perspective, was Lord Winterton's remarks in the no-confidence debate:
We all agree that the Prime Minister was the captain-general of our courage and constancy in 1940. I think that not even to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) does this country, both the present generation and posterity, owe more than it does to the Prime Minister. But a lot has happened since 1940. If this series of disasters goes on, the right hon. Gentleman, by one of the greatest acts of self-abnegation which any man could carry out, should go to his colleagues—and there is more than one suitable man for Prime Minister on the Treasury Bench now—and suggest that one of them should form a Government, and that the right hon. Gentleman himself would take office under him.
TDM
Kicked
I think there are two levels to look at here, first the man and his record overall (which is where you get into balancing the good with the bad), Second you can also look at specific events and choices some of which are good and some of which are bad
There's also the point that the British perspective on Churchill is not the only one, nor the only relevent one!
I’m not a big Churchill fan, but it doesn’t seem fair that they blamed h8m for defeats in a North Africa. He was a politician. Wouldn’t the training of British troops, fall to British officers?
McPherson
Banned
Of the men available and who had proven themselves to be capable of managing a high risk Salerno-type operation, who was Clark supposed to pick?
And end my career? And tell my army I cannot do it? And admit to myself that I am a moral coward? That is not how American generals are raised to think.
1. I would not be taking the Germanic words or advice of those incompetents who could not figure out how to cross 20 miles of English Channel.
2. From your link hidden inside the spoiler... Note that this goes into HOW the fighting in Italy progressed once the Gustav Line was reached. Skip it if you, reader, either know it or just want to strictly develop the thesis of the opening post further.
(McP insert. This was Lucas' understanding. Not only that seems to be his understanding, but he appears to not have been told just how terrible the Disaster at the Rapido, was. Given that crossing the river was supposed to have been the opening move in a 5th Army breaching operation, it seems to not have occurred to anyone at Mark Clark's or Harold Alexander's higher HQ to either forward the information of that failure 2 days ahead of SHINGLE; or to tell Lucas to take the hills and sit on them for dear life. Nevertheless, Lucas KNEW that the breach operation at the Rapido had failed and he was not about to risk the beachhead on any crazy gamble. He was told to fort up for seven days in his orders. He forted up as per his orders.)
^1 And post hoc, we now know that anything less than a Normandy sized assault was going to be ridiculous. THAT is what Alexander told Churchill at the time. Churchill bulled ahead, and then it got into an Anglo American fight about Landing Ship Tanks. Lucas needed at least 70 of the 90 locally available to lift the minimums for his 2 infantry divisions. Eisenhower needed at least 50 of those to add for Overlord's requirements, because the Americans had overruled the British (again) and said we go in with 5 assault divisions at Normandy and not the 3 the British planned. This is part of the SHINGLE mess that gets overlooked when everyone piles on poor Lucas. He was not equipped to go racing north to Rome. It took a week to LAND ALL HIS MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT. And why head toward Rome? Shouldn't Lucas cut Route 6 and get into the rear of 10th Army's escape route along the Liri Valley? (See Map.) He needs a tank corps and he doesn't have one for that mission.
Atkinson, Rick (2008). The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944. The Liberation Trilogy. New York: Henry Holt & Co. p323.[/quote]
About Churchill and his Mediterranean scheming...
His party. This was what almost happened at the Tobruk disaster and should have happened with Singapore.
Now the next spoilers discuss Anzio and Churchill and how political leaders handle such questions as to whether or not to fight in Italy and WHY such questions should not reach down into the op-art level. Skip it, reader, if you are not interested.
Explanation of how political leaders screw up at the op-art level. This is about what happens when politicians try to be military op=artists.
There is a fundamental difference between strategic policy (Stalin screwing up policy as to where to dispose Russian forces before Case Blue, or FDR plonking the PACFLT right inside the sortie range of Kido Butai at Pearl Harbor,) and tactical policy, such as suggesting a 2 division landing at Anzio to unhinge the German right, as Churchill conceived when he was recovering from pneumonia. Churchill was great at arrow drawing and conceptions in his mind's eye but he was a little short on shipping manifests, combat lift and turnaround times. That is the nuts and bolts stuff of amphibious warfare and of SEAPOWER projection which the Americans were GOOD at and which the British frankly were not.
Given the mission that Churchill desired, Harold Alexander drew up his own estimate for Anzio. ^1 That estimate will kill you when I get to it, because Sir Harold and Mark Clark both had thought about the Alban Hills before the amateur Churchill had his own inspiration. More on it in a moment.
Given the mission that Churchill desired, Harold Alexander drew up his own estimate for Anzio. ^1 That estimate will kill you when I get to it, because Sir Harold and Mark Clark both had thought about the Alban Hills before the amateur Churchill had his own inspiration. More on it in a moment.
More discussion on Anzio. Skip it if you want to stick to the Italy question solely.
As you can see from Naples to Monte Casino the 5th Army had blasted through 4 German defense lines to reach the Gustav Line, quite an achievement actually. Now a quick look along Route 6 and the Liri Valley and one sees what the ONE major obstacle WAS. Just how does Anzio change this problem on the ground? The Alban Hills are along Route 6. Move there and every footloose German REMF within 50 km is going to make a beeline for it. 10th Army does not have to move one centimeter from where it sits in the meantime. THAT is not the German way of war. Salerno should have taught Clark and Alexander that one. How many happy go lucky German divisions does Lucas eventually draw toward him? 14 equivalents. That is correct. 14. What are 5th and 8th Army doing with 2 out of every 5 Germans in central Italy trying to push VI Corps into the sea? Sitting on their own personalities. If Lucas is going to do any good he has to cross Route 7 and reach Route 6 . The Alban Hills accomplishes nothing if he; a) cannot reach them and he could not for the lack of sufficient transport and the lack of sustainment for what he did have, b) every German and his cousin in Rome comes barreling down Route 7 as they eventually did. As I said, it was a miracle that Kesselring and Mackensen screwed up as badly as they did. As I noted previously, both Clark and Alexander had looked at Anzio and the Alban Hills and concluded that a whole 5 division force minimum was needed to make the ANZIO plan work. They did not have the lift for it. Nowhere near the number of hulls. They needed at least 200 and they had 90.
There are good reasons to delineate sharply between why and what (civilians) and how and when (military).
It took the Americans clear until well after Vietnam (Grenada actually) and the Goldwater-Nichols act to formalize CHAIN OF COMMAND discipline. No more MacNamara throwing darts at a North Vietnam map to decide the air target for today, or LBJ getting on the phone to some poor Marine captain outside Da Nang to tell him how to fight an infantry brawl. President sets policy, SecDef issues a mission statement and the theater command staffs draw up plans and it goes down the line until some captain briefs his platoon leaders or some ship captains receive the admiral's con-ops. Or an air tasking order comes down from the air staff. The military takes care of how or tells the civilian bosses, no can do and no should do until the MEANS and WILL to do are present. That is the POWELL Doctrine.
And IF the means were there to sustain the risk.(^^^)
And IF the means were there to sustain the risk.(^^^)
Eden would have been a disaster.
Churchill wanted the Balkans. He had to settle for Italy because of airpower, sealift and military logistics reasons. In the spoiler is another problem with Churchill. Skip it if you want to stick strictly to Italy, but it goes directly to WHY the Americans balked at his Balkans schemes.
Churchill personally picked the generals before 1944. He changed them like he changed his socks. Maybe if he had been a little more patient and been a little more sensible as to what to expect and achieve (Auchinleck could have worked things out.) and given them time to TRAIN and EQUIP and apply LESSONS LEARNED, he would have gotten better results faster from his ground forces commanders. FDR left it to his army and navy to fire their duds. It worked out. Kasserine was a HORRIBLE disaster and embarrassment, but the American army adjusted. In the Pacific, there was nothing as awful as the circus MacArthur ran, and he gave Roosevelt plenty of rope to hang that brass-hat, but FDR kept hands off and let the Army have MacArthur. Turns out that the Army had a cure for Mister Corncob pipe. Give him excellent subordinates and let the peacock strut while THEY fought the war's nuts and bolts. It worked. I rather think it was how Alan Brooke handled his problem children, Churchill and Montgomery.
The Med was going to be a British show and it was going to divert from the Schwerepunkt in France. Give Churchill his head and the way he meddled in the war at the op-art level and you would have bewildered Americans fighting in Yugoslavia in tough hill country and weather as bad as Italy with no chance in hello of getting at the Germans in Germany proper for at least 2 years. The Russians would be on the Rhine before the Wallies reached Hungary. France to inside Germany took 9 months.
TIME is a precious resource in War. Hitler and Churchill both missed that one.
Attachments
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To get back to the original question. Invading Italy was in my eyes right for political reasons. What isn't mentioned yet is the constant pressure from Stalin to open the several times promised second front. As @McPherson already mentioned there were no other good options at that moment. Preferably in Stalin's eyes was France, but that would have been out of the question for the Wallies at that time. The Balkans (Churchill liked that option) would have made Stalin extremely suspicious. And what would really be gained by Norway. The Italian campaign didn't go as planned, but even that failure offered several advantages to the Wallies as already discussed by others.
The OP's question is open-ended, and it forces us to clarify the premises.
Do we assume that the rest of the ETO's history has played out exactly as it has OTL, right up to HUSKY?
If so, we're too far along to try ROUNDUP - so we are, indeed, looking for some kind of op to keep the Germans on the backfoot and Stalin from erupting.
Of course, at this point, Badoglio has entered negotiations for a surrender. If the Allies handle that more aggressively, a lot more real estate could be gotten for free than was the case OTL. But really, this is just getting me to what I think is the unasked question so far: Was the invasion of Italy we actually got historically necessary?
Consider the alternatives:
1) The Allies could immediately follow up HUSKY with operations for securing Sardinia and Corsica, paired with no more than a minimal move into Southern Italy via BAYTOWN and SLAPSTICK. This puts virtually all of Italy within both fighter and bomber range, and forces the Germans to deploy forces up and down the peninsula against possible landings - or, they just retreat to Northern Italy on the Gothic Line, or even further (though this was against Kesselring's belief).
2) The Allies could immediately follow up HUSKY with AVALANCHE, BAYTOWN, and SLAPSTICK, but leave nothing more than a credible holding force at the Volturno Line, with no further offensives planned for the theater. No meatgrinders on the Moro River, or Cassino, or Anzio. This still gets them their air base at Foggia, and still ties down Tenth Army more or less as happened OTL.
The advantage of either of these alternatives is a great reduction in casualties as well as resources in Italy by declining major combat through horrifically brutal terrain, leaving more available for OVERLORD and DRAGOON the following spring. The Allies suffered over 300,000 casualties in the Italian Campaign (exclusive of HUSKY) and almost all of those were post-AVALANCHE. And let us not forget, 150,000+ Italian civilians killed, too. Can we really say they were worth it? German casualties were not much greater, so we can hardly even justify it just on attrition grounds.
No offense to the men who fought and served honorably in Italy (which includes at least one close relation of mine), but when I look at the Italian Campaign as it actually unfolded, what I mostly see is a terrible waste, a campaign waged at high cost over horrible ground, to little obvious strategic benefit.
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Patton or Truscott could fit the bill.
The ONLY remotely serious effort to challenge Churchill's position during the war was the July 1942 no-confidence vote. And that vote generated...all of 25 votes against Churchill.
We can talk about what should have been done to restrain Churchill. But the cold hard political reality, I'm afraid, is that there no prospect of that being done in the war as it unfolded. Churchill was pretty much bulletproof after the May Cabinet Crisis. No one was going to force him to keep out of tactical operations. Alan Brooke could try his gentle arts of persuasion, and occasionally that might temper Churchill's decisions, but that's the most you can possibly hope for.
McPherson
Banned
Patton was slotted for an army command. So.. no. Truscott was available and he was slotted, but even he was not the panacea. He took months to develop the situation and prepare a proper breakout with the means he had. As I wrote, Lucas was the fall guy.
A question of, "We tossed out the old boar, now which one of us wants the hot seat?" Sometimes it comes down to that simple explanation. Cowardice. I've given my opinion on the likely next guy in the barrel. Peacetime, Eden, would do, but as a warfighter politician, he lacked nerve and Chutzpah; which Churchill for all his faults possessed in exuberant amounts.
FDR did. That is not what a lot of people like to hear. Overlord was, Torch was, and Italy was, because FDR listened to his military professionals lay out the options, listened to BRITISH military professionals lay out their options and he told Churchill no on more than one occasion to "mad" schemes and "suggested" America would look most favorably on certain "British" schemes that coincided with American interests and plans.
Good points. This quoted scenario is in my eyes the best possible outcome, and i agree that they should have stopped after reaching the heavy defenselines and certainly not have wasted resources that could have been used later in France. There's however a lot of hindsight in this IMO.
thaddeus
Donor
that was my thought if they went into Greece, maybe not as easy as first glance, and it really could cause problems with Stalin?
McPherson
Banned
Clearing Libya still leaves Vichy North Africa. Torch in some version still might be necessary.
Logistically and operationally, Crete is a lousy platform. Port accommodations are crude and infrastructure for cargo transport is hideous. Road net from ports to the few existent airfields is almost non-existent. Everything has to be built or improved. Italy, for its own faults, has a good port harbor in Naples, heavy cargo transfer at Taranto many good anchorages for fleets to hide from the weather, and it has a present existing supply and combat support capable road-net from ports to airfields in her south of the Tiber. She is an excellent platform, requiring far fewer build-ups: which means, repair damage here and there and you can bomb from Foggia almost right away. TIME in war is crucial. Time wasted in building from scratch is not time spent in bringing the war to a close sooner. Each day that the war lasts costs an average of 200 human lives, for the Americans in killed wounded and maimed; and 1,000,000 USDs. Sooner that it is successfully ended the better. This is a paramount driver for a lot of American decision making.
What goes for Crete is magnified by 2 orders of magnitude for the entire Balkan peninsula.