Bedell Smith

Simply, the US was not ready to fight. The debacle that became known as Kasserine, where the Allies allowed Rommel to slip away even though the German was faced with severe shortages of fuel and ammunition, led the British Tommies to derisively sing “How Green Was My Ally” and to begin calling the American’s “our Italians.”

But a morose- some say utterly depressed- Eisenhower decided that the American Army would immediately start to profit by these mistakes and that the jittery American public would soon see some positive result of what, till then, had been one monstrous disappointment after another.
 
Although the learning curve was steep, and several well documented and less-then-stellar campaigns and battles were still in the future, the US Army did, slowly at first but steadily, learn to fight.  More importantly, and in deserved respect for the men on the ground, the grunts that carried the load, the American staff officers learned to command.

By the time the Allied army reached Italy, the decisions being made at the command level, while certainly not always solid, were getting better. Mark Clark is excepted from this generalization for reasons well documented.

But, as difficult and painful as these early experiences had been for Allied command and the American public, it was outside Rome that Eisenhower Chief of Staff Bedell Smith almost single handedly caused what would have been, even Anzio and Salerno considered, the most ill conceived and thoughtless waste of American lives yet, a horribly and deeply flawed operation to capture Rome with elements of the 82nd Airborne code named Operation Giant II.

Giant II remains a prime example of a plan that, from a meddling senior staff perspective, had a certain theoretical attractiveness to it. Unfortunately, as is so often the case and as exampled by the Salerno operation, theory and ground truth are not good bed partners.

The plan called for the 82nd to be dropped in division strength outside Rome, where they would be joined by four divisions of Italian troops. Once linked, the two forces would attack the city where Italian citizens, weary of and eager to throw off the German yoke, would assist in a sort of citizen uprising, armed with pots, pans and bricks.

Bedell Smith was all in on the plan and he successfully sold Eisenhower on its merits. Smith believed that the operation would lead to a retreat of the German forces in central and southern Italy to the north and would intimidate Albert Kesselring, the German commander in the Mediterranean theater.

The commander of the 82nd Airborne, Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, refused to commit his division to the half-baked pots and pans plan. In addition Mark Clark, fearing the loss of his only reserve force for the equally unimpressive Avalanche plan to take Salerno, argued
against Giant II.

Maxwell Taylor