The Battle of Anzio, or Operation Shingle, began on 22 January with an amphibious landing by the Allied troops. The brainchild of Winston Churchill, the landing was successful and caught the Nazis by surprise. But Nazi Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was able to hold the high ground around Rome and kept the Allied troops pinned to the coast for over four months. It was a bloody battle with over 80,000 casualties, among those 13,000 were killed.