Anzio : the friction of war : Italy and the battle for Rome 1944 / Lloyd Clark.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 365-372) and index.

"The Allied attack of Normandy beach and its resultant bloodbath have been immortalized in film and literature, but the U.S. campaign on the beaches of Western Italy reigns as perhaps the deadliest battle of World War II's western theater. In his new book, acclaimed military historian Lloyd Clark delivers a fresh account of this decisive but often overlooked battle." "In January 1944, about six months before D-Day, an Allied force of 36,000 soldiers launched one of the first attacks on continental Europe at Anzio, a small coastal city thirty miles south of Rome. The assault, led by the VI Corps of the U.S. Fifth Army, was conceived as the first step toward an eventual siege of the Italian capital. The Allies captured the beach easily but, due to indecisive leadership by General John Lucas and his boss, General Mark Clark, they failed to break through the Germans' formidable "Gustav Line." Before long the advance stalled completely" "With the Americans distracted by plotting the upcoming D-Day landing, the Germans quickly gained strength - their forces swelled to 120,000 men - and crushed the thirty-five-mile-long Allied line in a counterattack. Anzio beach became a death trap. As winter beat down, the Allies regrouped and desperately poured more men, guns, and armor into the stalemate. They also replaced General Lucas with a dynamic new commander, General Lucian Truscott. In May, after five months of brutal fighting and monumental casualties on both sides - some 7,000 Allied and 7,000 German soldiers ultimately lost their lives - the Allies finally cracked the German line and marched into Rome on June 5, the day before D-Day." "Richly detailed, deeply moving, and fueled by extensive archival research of newspapers, letters, and diaries - as well as scores of original interviews with surviving soldiers on both sides of the trenches - Anzio is a harrowing and incisive true story by one of today's finest military historians."--BOOK JACKET.