ALLIED STRATEGY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1944, Page 3

ALLIED STRATEGY

CRITICISED IN BRITAIN NEGLECT OF OPPORTUNITIES ALLEGED. “OVER-FRIGIDITY OF PLANNING.” (Special P.A. Correspondent.) LONDON, February 7. “It would be affectation not to recognise that the story of our latest beach-head in Italy has given rise to some public disappointment,” says “Scrutator” in the “Sunday Times.” “How far this is justified it is difficult to measure. It may be that the decisions taken at the Teheran conference affected the Italian campaign.” “Scrutator” says that the surprise was complete when the Allies landed at Nettuno and Anzio. They found no material resistance anywhere till the fourth day, yet, instead of using modern equipment to exploit it in the modern manner, they sat tight in the oldfashioned way and spent the time organising a beach-head only four miles deep, entirely within enemy gun range and not containing a single airfield. “On the face of it (and without excluding the possibility of compensations as yet undisclosed),” he continues, “there is no rewarding result for such an elaborate operation. The navy and air force performed their tasks magnificently, and put the troops ashore practically without opposition. The failure, if cliny, was not on their side.” The military correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph,” Lieutenant-General H. G. Martin, says: “Nettuno remains an enigma. We came, we saw, we settled down in seaside lodgings. After 13 days the enemy was ready to coun-ter-attack. By now the opposing fronts have evidently set hard. If either is now to expand it must first break the other. 1

“Why' did the landing force remain, so far as we may judge,, almost entirely passive throughout the first 10 days or so of its career? My guess, purely a '.surmise, is that, not for the first time, perhaps, British and American arms may have suffered from overfrigidity of planning.”

Captain Liddell Hart, in the “Daily Mail,” says that the Nettuno landing did not succeed in dislocating the enemy’s hold on the main front, though it may have helped to loosen it, and thus induce the enemy to make another short withdrawal there. “The limited effect,” he says, “was apparently due to a deliberate limitation put upon the exploitation of this amphibious turning move in the early stages when its surprise effect created admittedly a big opportunity] _ It is premature to criticise that decision.

“What is ""important to appreciate is that the battle now developing forms a different kind of operation. It is a case no longer of a strategic flanking manoeuvre to unhinge the front, but a dual offensive conducted on two separate lines of operation and directed against two distinct fronts.”