Blunder or -----?

The costly and unsuccessful new attempt to take Cassino (see opposite page), following on the unfruitful landing at Anzio, brought to many Americans at home nothing but cumulative disillusionment with the war in Italy. Had the campaign from Salerno onward been badly bungled in the field? Or was the whole idea of the campaign a strategic blunder? Many an armchair strategist was last week drawing up an indictment of the wisdom of the Italian venture.

Great Stupidity? The case that could be made against the campaign:

P: In over six months since the landing at Salerno the Allies, in spite of heavy losses, have advanced less than 100 miles toward Rome.

P: This slow progress is mostly due to the fact that they picked as the scene of operations a narrow peninsula which limits them to frontal attack through mountainous country favoring the defender.

P: The only possible hope from such fighting is to force a war of attrition on the Germans, a strategy that cuts both ways and is futile, as was sickeningly demonstrated in World War I. Why waste lives to capture Rome when Italy is already out of the war?

P: The stalemate reached in this frontal attack led the Allies to attempt an amphibious flanking move at Anzio without sufficient forces--resulting merely in another ugly beachhead to fight for without any compensating gain.

P: The failure of the Italian campaign to achieve any worthwhile results, by breaking the Allied record of success (from El Alamein to Sicily), detracts from the aid they might have got within Europe when the second front is opened.

P: All the Allies have accomplished in Italy is to use up resources of men and materiel that they will badly need to make their "second-front" invasion a success.

Magnificent Coup? Nevertheless a case at least equally good can be made out for the wisdom of the Italian campaign:

P: The surrender of the Badoglio Government was conditioned on the invasion of Italy. Although the invasion did not result in the occupation of the entire peninsula, it was worthwhile on one ground alone: the surrender of the Italian Fleet, which released Allied warships for use in other theaters.

P:By the occupation of southern Italy the Allies deprived Germany of submarine and air bases for harassing their Mediterranean shipping. At the same time they themselves acquired 1) air bases for the strategic bombing of Austria and the Balkans, 2) Adriatic ports that make possible the direct invasion of Greece, Albania or Yugoslavia.

P: To hold up the Allied advance, the Germans have had to send into action 20 crack combat divisions and divert perhaps four or five more divisions to hold the threatened Balkans. Though these 20-odd divisions are under 15% of the German strength on the Russian front, they might have made a big difference last fortnight in the Ukraine.

P: If equal numbers of Allied and German troops--the more the better--are detained in Italy, the chances of the Allied "second-front" invasion will improve--partly because success in the dangerous initial stages of an invasion depends on how thin the defense is spread, partly because all defending troops can get into action long before the whole of a big invading army can get ashore.

P: Several green divisions got battle experience in the Italian campaign, and have apparently since been withdrawn. As a result, the hard core of veteran troops for the "second-front" invasion will be materially larger.

The Real Score. Probably the truth is neither so bright nor so black as either of these cases pictures it. Yet both views cannot be right. The real score can only be judged when a number of facts, now secret or unknown, become history. Among such facts: the exact quantity of Allied military resources; the details of Allied plans for the "second-front" invasion; German dispositions and Allied knowledge of them; how much of a diversion was needed to make Russia's winter campaign a success.

When these facts come out of military archives, it may at last be clear who blundered--the Allies, by wasting strength on an Italian campaign, or, alternatively by not pouring still more strength into another part of the Mediterranean; the Germans, by wasting their strength in holding Italian territory.

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