"I feel sorry for my Ma..."

The more I think about this, the more I agree with Jambo.

The Italian peninsula is a narrow, mountainous band of rugged highlands broken only by thin strips of swampy river deltas along the coasts and almost no flat plains to allow the Allies to use armor to its fullest potential.

By the winter '43-'44, Ike wanted a defensive line further north of Naples than he had, so the determination to push the Germans north of Rome was made... but Kesselring had highly disciplined troops who were happy to end their retreat from North Africa and eager to dig into such easily defensible areas as those provided by Italy's topography. He also knew he couldn't count on the Italians to stay in the fight, but COULD count on the Italian winter, which began to put snow in the mountain passes that year as early as Oct 10th.

The Krauts had a plan that if Italy pulled out of the Axis alliance, then the defensive line would be drawn from Pisa to Rimini (about 300 km north of Rome) to protect the southern approaches to the Fatherland. Had we fought only THAT far... the Italian campaign wouldn't have cost 312,000 allied casualties.

None the less... we inflicted 546,000 on the Germans ALONE. That's an awful lot of troops that WEREN'T fighting in France or Russia at the same time. Was there bad planning? Of course... Anzio and Monte Cassino are great examples. Were mistakes made? Obviously... because I don't think a casualty ratio of 3 Germans for every 2 Allied troops is an acceptable ratio, even in 1944-45.

Still... like Jambo keeps reminding us all... history remembers the victors, and things might have played out quite differently had those 26 crack German divisions been fighting in France, or defending against the Vistula-Oder Offensive in Poland... rather than slugging it out for every inch in Italy.

A really good "what if", though... I must say.