The Battles of Monte Cassino

Before D-Day there was Monte Cassino, the desperate six-month struggle in the mountains of central Italy that left more than 350,000 men dead or wounded. Hitler had declared that the Allied drive toward Rome must be stopped at all costs, and in the winter of 1943–1944 the German commander Kesselring chose the fortresslike monastery of Monte Cassino as the centerpiece of the Gustav line, one of the most impressive feats of defensive engineering ever conceived. With months to prepare his position, Kesselring took advantage of the treacherous terrain to establish a virtually impregnable position. As the Allied forces, which included Americans, British, Canadians, Poles, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, Senegalese, Brazilians, and royalist Italians, pushed their way forward, the coldest, rainiest winter in Italian history rendered air and armor power useless and turned the landscape into a hellish killing ground. (more doubleday below)  Monte Cassino was one of the most sacred sites in Christendom and home to valuable religious artifacts, artworks, and manuscripts. In massive Allied bombings, the building and many of its irreplaceable treasures were reduced to rubble.

Excerpts from an essay by Carlo W. D’Este

January 1944-May 1944

Allied strategy in Italy during World War II centered on keeping the Wehrmacht fully committed so that its veteran divisions could not be shifted to help repel the cross-Channel invasion.  However, the Allied high command mistakenly believed that the determined German defense of the invasion beaches of Salerno in September 1943 masked their preparations for retreat to the north. They never reckoned that the Germans would effectively use the weather and the terrain to turn the Italian campaign into a costly stalemate at the Gustav Line.

Mark Clark’s disastrous attempt to split the Gustav Line in the Liri Valley died on the banks of the Rapido River ("the bloody Rapido") in January 1944, and when the Allied end run at Anzio failed, there was now a stalemate on two fronts. In early February the U.S. Thirty-fourth Infantry Division failed to capture the western anchor of the Gustav Line, and one of the holiest shrines of Roman Catholicism, the abbey of Monte Cassino. A second offensive in mid-February again failed and resulted in one of the most hotly debated incidents of the war—the destruction of the abbey by Allied bombers.

The Third Battle of Cassino in mid-March was preceded by a thunderous artillery barrage from nine hundred guns and a massive aerial bombardment of the town. Follow-up ground attacks by New Zealand troops once again ended in failure. Only with the launch of Operation Diadem in May 1944 did the Gustav Line finally collapse when the Second Polish Corps succeeded in capturing the abbey on May 17, thus ending one of the longest and bloodiest engagements of the Italian campaign.

For more details about the Battle of Monte Cassino and the role of Polish soldiers, visit: http://www.battleofmontecassino.com