Rome Falls to Allies: First Axis Capital Liberated

American troops entered Rome on June 4, 1944, and the city barely noticed the war was over. There was no climactic battle. German forces under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring had already begun withdrawing northward to the Gothic Line, and the population greeted the liberators with wine, flowers, and a relief that bordered on indifference. Rome became the first Axis capital to fall in World War II, yet the achievement was overshadowed within 48 hours by an event of far greater consequence. The campaign to reach Rome had been grinding and bloody. Allied forces had landed at Anzio in January 1944, expecting a quick thrust to the capital, but four months of trench warfare on the beachhead produced 43,000 Allied casualties and virtually no territorial gain. The monastery at Monte Cassino, blocking the road to Rome, required four separate assaults and the controversial destruction of one of Europe’s oldest religious sites before the German defensive line broke in May. General Mark Clark, commanding the U.S. Fifth Army, diverted his forces to capture Rome instead of cutting off the retreating German Tenth Army, a decision that infuriated British commanders and likely prolonged the Italian campaign by months. Clark wanted the glory of liberating the Eternal City. He got his photograph in front of the Colosseum and a brief burst of headlines before the world’s attention moved decisively to Normandy. D-Day landed on June 6, two days after Rome’s liberation, and immediately reduced the Italian theater to a sideshow. Churchill had called Italy the "soft underbelly" of Europe; it had proved anything but. The Italian campaign continued for nearly another year, tying down German divisions but never achieving the strategic breakthrough its architects had promised. Clark’s capture of Rome remains one of the war’s most pyrrhic victories: a prize won at enormous cost and forgotten almost immediately.