Italian Campaign (1943–1945) lied and disobeyed orders while alternately carping that Montgomery was secretly conspiring to beat him to Rome, or alternately, that Montgomery was not moving fast enough Clark’s insubordination and frequent command recklessness broke all bounds once he smelled a Roman triumph for himself following the breakout from Anzio His disobedience culminated in the liberation of Rome on June 4, 1944, but only because he ignored Alexander’s order to cut off and destroy retreating German 10th Army Instead, Clark took a different road than ordered That permitted 10th Army to escape north while he personally drove into Rome in the role of conqueror-liberator History does not record that achievement as decisive Most historians have judged Clark ever more harshly as time passed, and the cost of his vanity in lives and wasted strategic opportunity became more clear Clark’s own comment on June 6, 1944, that the D-Day landings would steal his headlines from Rome, speaks volumes on its own Some Western commanders were exposed in Italy as incompetent, others as vainglorious A few were both However, everyone was impressed by the combat power and fighting quality shown by the Wehrmacht in defense, and by the high level of command skill displayed by Kesselring The Germans had to fight at a growing material disadvantage, but did so with tenacity Smaller armies, such as the Canadian Army, Free French, and Polish Army, found lasting moral significance and great pride in blood sacrifices made on the slopes of Cassino and elsewhere in Italy Some British and French soldiers and many of their officers reacted differently, recalling with bitterness experiences along the Somme and at Ypres during the last war Most lamented the low command imagination of Clark, the slowness of Montgomery, and lack of closer oversight of subordinates by Alexander Meanwhile, relations between the British and American armies and among some top officers deteriorated in tandem with a growing gulf between London and Washington over the strategic morass that Italy had become Arguments that began south of Rome among participants continued for decades after the war among historians Some viewed the entire campaign as another “Churchillian mistake.” Nigel Hamilton even argued that it approximated a replay of Churchill’s disastrous Dardanelles campaign during the Great War, with Anzio playing the role of Gallipoli However, Douglas Porch has argued that the North African, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns sponsored by Churchill and the British High Command were all essential preludes to the decisive Normandy campaign in France in 1944 While U.S 5th Army was driving to break out of the Anzio perimeter, British 8th Army—with units of Free French, Canadians, Poles, New Zealanders, and others included—drove up the Adriatic coast of Italy, making comparably slow progress against the Hitler Line There followed two failed American assaults on Monte Cassino Fresh New Zealand and Polish attacks were complicated rather than helped by preliminary heavy bombing that destroyed the monastery and gave more effective cover to the defending Germans The Poles finally took the heights, at great cost in casualties The Germans, too, were nearly broken by the defense of Cassino The French Expeditionary Corps stormed and broke the Hitler Line simultaneously with the Anzio breakout, but Clark’s fixation on Montgomery and Rome robbed the Western powers of the chance to wipe out German 10th Army and race 585