Liberation of Rome
The Allies entered Rome on 4 June 1944 and the news was displaced from the front pages within forty-eight hours. The city had been declared open by the Italians in 1943 and occupied by the Germans after the armistice, and the nine months that followed included the deportation of over a thousand Roman Jews from the ghetto in October and the reprisal killing of 335 men at the Ardeatine Caves in March 1944 after a partisan bomb killed thirty-three German policemen. The Allied advance had been stuck at Cassino since January and at the Anzio beachhead, where a landing intended to unhinge the German line had been contained for four months. The Gustav Line was finally broken in May, and Operation Diadem sent the German Tenth Army retreating north. Mark Clark then made the decision that is still argued about. He turned the American forces from the line of retreat towards Rome instead of cutting it, against Alexander's intention, and let the Tenth Army escape to fight on the Gothic Line for another year. He entered the city on 4 June with photographers. Kesselring had withdrawn without fighting for it, which spared the city. The Normandy landings began two days later, and the Italian campaign became a secondary theatre for the rest of the war. Rome was the first Axis capital to fall, and the fact was noticed mostly by the people who lived in it. Clark's decision has defenders, chiefly on the grounds that his orders were ambiguous and that Rome was a political objective his own government wanted. His critics point out that he had the war's most quotable line ready for the photographers, and that the German Tenth Army fought for another eleven months.
- Year: 1944 CE
- Category: Military
