Anzio

The battle of Anzio begun on January 22 1944 with the landing of 110,000 american and british troops under the command of general Lucas. The german were totally surprised. Kesselring, the german commander, hadn't any reserves to face the attack. He gathered all the disperse german units in the Rome zone and he ordered some troops in northern Italy to deploy defending the road to Rome. He also transformed some anti aircraft units into anti tank units and deployed them surrounding the allied beachead. Meanwhile he recalled from the Gustav line the recently deployed 3rd Panzergrenadier and Hermann Goering divisions two tough german units. The situation for the allies was excellent but general Lucas didn't ordered the troops to attack until it was too late for an easy breakthrough instead he prefered to consolidate the beachead first. This delay in the attack costed the allies a lot of casualties, when Lucas decided to attack his troops faced a rough german defense and finally it meant the failure of all the operation.