Rome and Normandy June 1944

In the next few days we will rightly be remembering the fortitude and courage of those  who fought in Normandy and on the Home Front during D Day the 6th June 1944.

However we should not forget that the events in Normandy overshadowed the campaign in what Winston Churchill had called the “soft underbelly of Europe” but which turned out to be a very “tough old gut”. 

….a young university student from Puglia, Angelo Galiano realised in the spring of 1944 as he agonised over whether to heed the call-up for military service by the Republic of Salo…….There was also a very good chance that the British and Americans [and the rest of the multinational force fighting for the Allies in Italy] would soon be in Rome.

In March, as he was writing in his diary, Allied forces were launching furious assaults on the German lines around Monte Cassino, just 80 miles away, hoping to link up with the bridgehead they had established in January at Anzio, to the south of the capital.

Their casualties were huge-around 100,000 in four months of fighting-but towards the end of May they finally managed to break through. On 4 June they entered Rome, two days ahead of the Normandy landings. 

From Fascist Voices, An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy by Christopher Duggan