During 1943 and early 1944 while the Allies were planning ‘Overlord’ for the D-Day invasion of France across the English Channel they were also planning a companion diversion called ‘Anvil’. This would be a smaller invasion of southern France from Italy in order to prevent the Germans from moving troops to northern France during the main invasion. As the date got closer it became obvious that this could not occur due to the tougher than expected continued fighting in Italy. However the end result was the same as the Germans had to reinforce their troops in Italy which kept some troops away from France. Rome was finally captured on June 5th which was the original planned date for Overlord which got delayed one day due to weather conditions. Russia was also supposed to start a major offensive in coordination with D-Day and that finally happened a couple weeks later.

(Book – The Second World War – Winston S. Churchill)