Thread by @jaketapper

THE FORGOTTEN FRONT.

On this day 75 years ago, 2 days before #DDay, after months of bloody battle in Italy, the Allies finally liberated Rome.

2/ Mussolini had been ousted the previous Fall and Gen. Pietro Badoglio had sought peace w the Allies. But the Germans were still there and they were dug in at the Winter Line (Gustav, Hitler, & Bernardt lines), stretching across the peninsula.

3/ Finally the Allies made it to Rome & recaptured it. The 5th Army “paid a high price for liberating the Eternal City," wrote GEN Mark Clark, its commander, noting the 5th Army casualties in Italy, including 11,292 American KIA, 5,017 UK, 3,904 French, and 176 Italian.

4/ GEN Clark later wrote a book, Calculated Risk, in which he recalled the 5th Army entering Rome as liberators. “There were gay crowds in the streets, many of them waving flags, as our infantry marched through the capital....

5/ “... Flowers were stuck in the muzzles of the soldiers’ rifles and of the guns on the tanks. Many Romans seemed to be on the verge of hysteria in their enthusiasm for the American troops.”

books.google.com/books/about/Ca…

6/ GEN Clark worked his way to the town hall, the balcony of which Mussolini once used to give his bombastic speeches. But "the road was blocked by curious and cheering people."

7/ He finally got to the Town Hall but the "door was locked and there didn't seem to be a soul around." He pounded on the door but to no avail. "(N)ot feeling much like the conquerer of Rome," he later wrote.

8/ As the NYT later put it, “Nazi Berlin rather than Fascist Rome was the main objective...Because of the unglamorous, hard-slogging” by the US 5th and UK 8th Armies “over the winter and spring of 1943-44, the Mediterranean theater came to be called the ‘forgotten front.'”

9/ Wrote another at the time: “Rome is the first enemy capital to fall to our advance. The Germans took so many capitals: Warsaw, Copenhagen, Oslo, The Hague, Brussels, Paris, Belgrade, Athens, Tirana, to say nothing of Vienna, Prague, or the satellite capitals."

10/ FDR was more strategic, saying in his address to the nation: "the 1st of the Axis capitals is now in our hands. One up and two to go."

The Allies would ultimately win, he pledged, but "it will be tough and it will be costly."

And it was.