Thoughts on the Italian Campaign and General Mark Clark

June 4, 2004

Mark Clark was the 5th Army Commander in Italy. He was heroic, smart, well liked and a favorite of Ike's and Jewish. The Italy campaign had very little strategic importance except to tie up more German Divisions. But the 5th Army faced smiling Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, who was a good general. They did miss “breakout” opportunities, but in reality they were effectively held up at Mount Casino. There, numerous armies attempted to circumvent the ancient abbey to no avail. Even when medium bombers destroyed it it became more of a problem.

The allies were lucky that they were able to hold on to Normandy so easily and get a great deal of material ashore. Normandy could have been a logistic nightmare. The storms that wrecked the Mulberries could have happened a few days earlier. So, on one hand they benefited from the lousy rough Channel weather, but on the other hand they lost their artificial harbors. The Germans never committed all of their heavy resources for months. They still thought that Patton's phony army group in East Anglia would come across to Pas d'Calais. But of course Monty was overrated and a pompous ass, and the securing of St. Lo, Cherbourg and the surrounding areas took hard fighting. The allies were especially unprepared for the hedgerows. But American innovation at the company level was excellent. Eventually the engineers retrofitted the tanks with huge metal beach obstacles attached to their fronts. These scoop-like claws enabled the tanks to cut huge gaps in the hedgerows allowing the infantry to flood through. Finally with a coordinated armor, infantry and air offensive the allies were able to break the back of the German defenses. During one of the massive bombing runs, many of our troops were killed by friendly fire including General Leslie Groves.

All in all Patton was the most effective of all of our generals. He used his men and equipment effectively, and pushed his subordinates. Patton was an anti-Semite and hated Clark. He blamed the “New York Jews” for getting Clark his Italian command. But the fate of most of the Jews was in the hands of the east. The Russians finally broke through and sealed Germany's fate. Could we have made greater progress in the initial days after June 6th? Probably the biggest mistake was Bradley's slowness in closing the Falaise Gap. He could have probably captured the whole German Army with a little luck. So if there was a big mistake it was with that lost opportunity.

You may be right about “risk taking”, but I rather doubt that we could have moved up our timetable any faster. Certainly we took risks in the Market-Garden “A Bridge to Far” episode and we got badly burned.

In the case of the Pacific, the Pelelieu Operation was a classic disaster. The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Nimitz, who in the joint conference with FDR and MacArthur, insisted on moving into the Palaus to protect the Philipino flank. It was unnecessary, bloody and a complete waste!  rjg