August 1943, General Dwight Eisenhower sat in his headquarters in Alers, facing a command decision that would shape the Italian campaign and cost tens of thousands of Allied lives. The invasion of Italy was scheduled for September. Allied forces would cross from Sicily to the Italian mainland and drive north toward Rome.
The operation required a field army commander who could execute complex amphibious operations, coordinate multiple nationalities, and defeat determined German resistance in mountainous terrain. Eisenhower had two obvious candidates. Lieutenant General George Patton, who had just led seventh army to victory in Sicily, and Lieutenant General Mark Clark, who commanded Fifth Army, but had never led troops in combat.
Eisenhower chose Clark. The decision was not based on military competence. Patton had proven himself across two campaigns in North Africa and Sicily. He understood mobile warfare. He moved faster than any Allied commander. His aggressive tactics consistently achieved results that methodical approaches couldn’t match. Clark had administrative experience and political connections.
He had served as Eisenhower’s deputy during the planning for Operation Torch. He was personable, photogenic, and skilled at managing relationships with Allied commanders and political leaders, but he had never commanded forces in battle. Eisenhower’s decision was fundamentally political. Patton had just been involved in the slapping incidents that nearly destroyed his career.
American newspapers were calling for his removal. Congressmen were demanding he be sent home. The political cost of giving Patton another high-profile command was considered too high. Clark, by contrast, was politically safe. He had no scandals. He cultivated positive press coverage. He was ambitious but careful never to create political problems for his superiors.
So Eisenhower sent Patton to England to prepare for the cross channel invasion. and he gave Mark Clark command of fifth army for the invasion of Italy. The decision reflected Eisenhower’s fundamental approach to coalition warfare. Political considerations took precedence over military effectiveness. Managing relationships with allied governments and American political leadership mattered more than putting the best tactical commander in the field.
General Omar Bradley later wrote that Eisenhower’s decision to sideline Patton after Sicily was the worst command decision of the European War. Bradley believed Patton in Italy would have shortened the campaign by months and saved thousands of lives. But Bradley understood why Eisenhower made the choice he did. Eisenhower was supreme commander because he could manage political complexity.
Patton was a political liability. Clark was a political asset. The military calculation was secondary. What Eisenhower apparently didn’t anticipate was how catastrophically Clark would perform as a field commander or how different the Italian campaign would have been under aggressive leadership instead of Clark’s methodical publicity seeking approach. September 9, 1943.
Fifth Army landed at Serno, south of Naples. The invasion began well. German resistance was lighter than expected. Allied forces established a beach head and began advancing inland. Then Clark made his first major command decision. He halted the advance to consolidate the beach head and build up overwhelming force before pushing north.
This was textbook doctrine. Secure your position before advancing. Never take unnecessary risks. It was also exactly what gave German forces time to organize resistance. Field Marshal Albert Kessler commanded German forces in Italy. He was an experienced defensive commander who understood that time was his most valuable resource.
Every day the Allies delayed was a day German forces could improve defensive positions, bring up reinforcements, and prepare obstacles. Clark’s cautious consolidation gave Kessler Ring exactly what he needed. By the time Fifth Army resumed its advance, German forces had established defensive lines that would hold for months.
The pattern repeated throughout the Italian campaign. Clark would plan operations carefully, build up overwhelming force, then advance methodically. German forces would retreat to prepared positions and force fifth army to fight for every mile of ground. What made Clark’s approach particularly costly was his obsession with personal publicity.
He insisted on being present at key moments for press coverage. He staged photographs of himself leading troops. He gave interviews describing his strategic vision. He ensured his name appeared prominently in news coverage of Allied operations in Italy. This wasn’t just vanity. It was command interference. Clark’s focus on publicity meant he was often at the front for photo opportunities rather than at headquarters making operational decisions.
His subordinate commanders learned quickly that Clark cared more about how operations looked in newspapers than how effectively they achieved military objectives. The clearest example came at Anzio in January 1944. Fifth Army conducted an amphibious landing behind German lines intended to bypass Kessle Ring’s defensive positions and threaten Rome from the rear.
The landing achieved complete tactical surprise. German forces in the area were minimal. The road to Rome was open. Clark ordered the landing force commander, General John Lucas, to consolidate the beach head before advancing inland. Lucas followed orders. He spent days building up forces at Anzio while German reinforcements poured into the area.
By the time Lucas was ready to advance, German forces had established defensive positions that surrounded the Anzio beach head. What should have been a breakthrough became a siege. Allied forces at Anzio were pinned down for months, taking casualties while achieving nothing. Patton, watching from England, wrote in his diary that Clark’s handling of Anzio was criminal incompetence.
An aggressive commander would have pushed inland immediately, accepting risk to achieve decisive results. Clark’s caution had turned a brilliant operational opportunity into a bloody stalemate. The contrast with how Patton operated was stark. When Patton landed in Sicily, he pushed inland immediately. When he broke out of Normandy in 1944, he advanced faster than logistics could support.
He accepted risk because he understood that in mobile warfare, speed creates its own security. Clark never understood this. He fought the Italian campaign as a series of methodical advances against prepared positions. This maximized Allied casualties while minimizing operational gains. By June 1944, Fifth Army had been fighting in Italy for 9 months and had barely reached Rome.
The campaign had consumed enormous resources, caused over 100,000 Allied casualties, and achieved minimal strategic impact. German forces in Italy had tied down Allied troops that could have been used in France while suffering far fewer casualties themselves. Clark declared the capture of Rome a great victory.
He ensured he was photographed entering the city. He gave press conferences describing fifth army’s achievement. He made sure American newspapers portrayed him as the liberator of Rome. Two days later, Allied forces landed in Normandy. The Rome story disappeared from front pages. Clark’s moment of glory was overshadowed by the invasion he wasn’t part of.
Military historians have spent decades analyzing what the Italian campaign would have looked like under different leadership. The consensus among serious scholars is that Patton’s approach would have produced dramatically different results. Patton’s command philosophy was built on speed and exploitation.
He didn’t consolidate beach heads. He pushed inland immediately, accepting risk to achieve breakthrough. He didn’t build up overwhelming force before advancing. He advanced on minimal supplies and forced logistics to catch up. At Serno, Patton would have pushed north immediately after landing. German forces in the area were disorganized in retreating.
An aggressive advance could have cut off their withdrawal and forced a collapse of German positions across southern Italy. Kessler Ring himself later testified that if Allied forces had pursued aggressively after Salerno, German forces would have been forced to retreat much further north, possibly to the Po River Valley.
The months of fighting through central Italy could have been avoided. At Anzio, the operational difference would have been even more dramatic. Patton would have pushed inland from the beach head immediately. His tanks would have advanced toward Rome before German forces could react. The strategic objective was cutting German supply lines and threatening Rome from the rear.
Patent would have achieved that in days, not months. German commanders captured after the war confirmed this assessment. They stated that the Anzio landing could have been catastrophic for German forces in Italy if Allied commanders had exploited it aggressively. The decision to consolidate the beach head rather than advance immediately gave German forces time to contain what should have been a decisive breakthrough.
The casualty implications are staggering. Fifth army under Clark suffered approximately 100,000 casualties in Italy from September 1943 to June 1944. German forces suffered roughly 50,000 casualties in the same period. The exchange ratio favored the defenders because Clark’s methodical approach forced Allied troops to attack prepared positions repeatedly.
Patton’s approach would have inverted that ratio. His rapid advances would have forced German forces to retreat before they could establish strong defensive positions. His exploitation of breakthroughs would have created opportunities to surround and destroy German units rather than pushing them back to fight another day. Military analysis suggests that an aggressive campaign in Italy under Patton’s leadership could have reached Rome by early 1944 with significantly fewer casualties.
German forces would have been forced to retreat much further north. The strategic impact on the overall war would have been substantially greater. But Eisenhower had made a political decision. Clark was politically safe. Patton was politically toxic after the slapping incidents. The military cost of that political calculation was paid by soldiers fighting through Italian mountains and beach heads for 9 months.
The decision to give Clark command in Italy instead of Patton had consequences that extended far beyond casualty figures. Strategically, the Italian campaign consumed Allied resources without achieving decisive results. The original justification for invading Italy was to knock Italy out of the war, which succeeded, and to tie down German divisions that could otherwise fight in France.
But the campaign became a grinding attritional fight that tied down allied divisions as much as German ones. A more aggressive campaign under Patton’s leadership could have achieved strategic objectives months earlier, freeing Allied divisions for use in other theaters. Instead, Clark’s cautious approach turned Italy into a resource sync that achieved minimal strategic impact.
Operationally, Clark’s performance in Italy validated cautious, methodical approaches over aggressive exploitation. Other Allied commanders saw that careful consolidation and overwhelming force brought positive press coverage and career advancement. Aggressive risk-taking, even when successful, brought political problems, as Patton had learned.
The lesson other generals drew from Clark’s Italy command was that political management mattered more than battlefield results. This influenced Allied operations throughout the rest of the war. Personally, the decision destroyed John Lucas, the commander Clark scapegoed for the Anzio failure. Lucas followed Clark’s orders to consolidate the beach head.
When the operation stalled, Clark relieved Lucas and blamed him for excessive caution. Lucas’s career was destroyed for following the same cautious approach Clark himself championed. Patton watching from England understood exactly what Eisenhower’s decision had caused. He wrote to his wife Beatatrice that giving Clark command in Italy was like putting a clerk in charge of a cavalry charge.
He believed thousands of soldiers died because Eisenhower prioritized political considerations over military competence. But Patton also understood the broader lesson in coalition warfare under political constraints. The general who managed relationships and avoided scandal would get commands. The general who won battles but created political problems would be sidelined.
Eisenhower’s decision to choose Clark over Patton for Italy was a perfect example of this calculus. Clark was politically skilled and militarily mediocre. Patton was politically toxic and militarily brilliant. Eisenhower chose politics over performance. The soldiers who fought in Italy paid for that choice with nine months of grinding combat, 100,000 casualties, and minimal strategic achievement.
After the war, Eisenhower defended his decision. He wrote that Clark performed adequately in difficult circumstances. He noted that Patton’s political liabilities made him unsuitable for command immediately after the slapping incidents. He claimed the Italian campaign achieved its strategic objectives of tying down German forces.
But Eisenhower never addressed the fundamental question. Would the campaign have been shorter, less costly, and more strategically significant under Patton’s aggressive leadership? The operational evidence strongly suggests yes. [snorts] Bradley was more direct in his memoirs. He stated that Eisenhower’s decision to sideline Patton after Sicily was driven by political necessity, but was militarily wrong.
Bradley believed Patton in Italy would have reached Rome by early 1944 with far fewer casualties than Clark’s methodical approach produced. German commanders were even more explicit. Kessler Ring testified after the war that he feared Patton more than any Allied commander because Patton understood mobile warfare and exploited opportunities aggressively.
Castle Ring stated he was relieved when he learned Clark, not Patton, would command Fifth Army. He knew Clark would be cautious and predictable. The Italian campaign under Mark Clark lasted from September 1943 to May 1945. It consumed enormous resources, caused over 300,000 Allied casualties across its entire duration, and ended with German forces surrendering only when Germany itself collapsed.
It was one of the least strategically productive campaigns Allied forces conducted in Europe. The campaign under Patton’s leadership would have looked completely different. faster, more aggressive, more costly for German forces and less costly for Allied troops, more strategically significant in its impact on German resources and the overall war.
But Patton chose political safety over military effectiveness, and 100,000 Allied soldiers paid for that choice in the first 9 months of the Italian campaign alone. History records the decision as Eisenhowers to make. It also records the consequences as soldiers to bear. The political appointment that prioritized Clark’s career over Patton’s competence cost lives that aggressive leadership might have saved.
That calculation is the enduring legacy of Eisenhower’s choice in August 1943. politics over performance, safety over speed, caution over capability, and soldiers dying on Italian hillsides for months longer than military necessity required.
