Battle Of Monte Cassino

The Battle of Monte Cassino, also known as the Battle for Rome and the Battle for Cassino, was a series of four assaults made by the Allies against German forces in Italy during the Italian Campaign of World War II. The ultimate objective was to break through the Winter Line, and facilitate an advance towards Rome.

At the beginning of 1944, the western half of the Winter Line was anchored by Germans holding the Rapido-Gari, Liri and Garigliano valleys and several of the surrounding peaks and ridges. Together, these features formed the Gustav Line. Monte Cassino, a historic hilltop abbey founded in 529 by the Benedict of Nursia, dominated the nearby town of Cassino and the entrances to the Liri and Rapido valleys. Lying in a protected historic zone, it had been left unoccupied by the Germans, although they manned some positions set into the slopes below the abbey's walls.

Repeated artillery attacks on assaulting allied troops caused their leaders to conclude incorrectly that the abbey was being used by the Germans as an observation post, at the very least. Fears escalated, along with casualties, and in spite of evidence, it was marked for destruction. On 15 February 1944, Allied bombers dropped 1,400 tons of high explosives, creating widespread damage. Fallschirmjäger forces then occupied the area and established defensive positions amid the ruins.

Between 17 January and 18 May, Monte Cassino and the Gustav defences were attacked on four occasions by Allied troops. On 16 May, soldiers from the Polish II Corps launched one of the final assaults on the German defensive position as part of a twenty-division assault along a twenty-mile front. On 18 May, a Polish flag followed by the British flag were raised over the ruins. Following this Allied victory, the German Senger Line collapsed on 25 May, and the German defenders were driven from their positions. The capture of Monte Cassino resulted in 55,000 Allied casualties, with German losses estimated at around 20,000 killed and wounded. The battle has been described as a Pyrrhic victory, or a victory which was not worth the effort.

Background

The Allied landings in Italy in September 1943 by two Allied armies, following shortly after the Allied landings in Sicily in July, commanded by General Sir Harold Alexander, the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the 15th Army Group (later retitled the Allied Armies in Italy), were followed by an advance northward on two fronts, one on each side of the central mountain range forming the "spine" of Italy. On the western front, the American Fifth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, which had suffered very heavy casualties during the main landing at Salerno (codenamed Operation Avalanche) in September, moved from the main base of Naples up the Italian "boot" and on the eastern front the British Eighth Army, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, advanced up the Adriatic coast.

Clark's Fifth Army made slow progress in the face of difficult terrain, wet weather and skillful German defences. The Germans were fighting from a series of prepared positions in a manner designed to inflict maximum damage, then pulling back while buying time for the construction of the Winter Line defensive positions south of the Italian capital of Rome. The original estimates that Rome would fall by October 1943 proved far too optimistic.

Although in the east the German defensive line had been breached on the Adriatic front and Ortona was captured by the 1st Canadian Division, the advance had ground to a halt with the onset of winter blizzards at the end of December, making close air support and movement in the jagged terrain impossible. The route to Rome from the east using Route 5 was thus excluded as a viable option leaving the routes from Naples to Rome, highways 6 and 7, as the only possibilities; Highway 7 (the old Roman Appian Way) followed along the west coast but south of Rome ran into the Pontine Marshes, which the Germans had flooded.

Highway 6 ran through the Liri valley, dominated at its south entrance by the rugged mass of Monte Cassino above the town of Cassino. Excellent observation from the peaks of several hills allowed the German defenders to detect Allied movement and direct highly accurate artillery fire, preventing any northward advance. Running across the Allied line was the fast flowing Rapido River, which rose in the central Apennine Mountains, flowed through Cassino (joining to the Gari River, which was erroneously identified as the Rapido) and across the entrance to the Liri valley. There the Liri river joined the Gari to form the Garigliano River, which continued on to the sea.

With its heavily fortified mountain defences, difficult river crossings, and valley head flooded by the Germans, Cassino formed a linchpin of the Gustav Line, the most formidable line of the defensive positions making up the Winter Line.

In spite of its potential excellence as an observation post, because of the fourteen-century-old Benedictine abbey's historical significance, the German commander in Italy, ''Generalfeldmarschall'' Albert Kesselring, ordered German units not to include it in their defensive positions and informed the Vatican and the Allies accordingly in December 1943.

Nevertheless, some Allied reconnaissance aircraft maintained they observed German troops inside the monastery. While this remains unconfirmed, it is clear that once the monastery was destroyed it was occupied by the Germans and proved better cover for their emplacements and troops than an intact structure would have offered.

First battle

Plans and preparation

The plan of the Fifth Army commander, Lieutenant General Clark, was for the British X Corps, under Lieutenant General Richard McCreery, on the left of a thirty-kilometer (20 mi) front, to attack on 17 January 1944, across the Garigliano near the coast ( 5th and 56th Infantry Divisions). The British 46th Infantry Division was to attack on the night of 19 January across the Garigliano below its junction with the Liri in support of the main attack by U.S. II Corps, under Major General Geoffrey Keyes, on their right. The main central thrust by the U.S. II Corps would commence on 20 January with the U.S. 36th Infantry Division making an assault across the swollen Gari river five miles (8 km) downstream of Cassino. Simultaneously the French Expeditionary Corps (CEF), under General Alphonse Juin would continue its "right hook" move towards Monte Cairo, the hinge to the Gustav and Hitler defensive lines. In truth, Clark did not believe there was much chance of an early breakthrough, but he felt that the attacks would draw German reserves away from the Rome area in time for the attack on Anzio (codenamed Operation Shingle) where the U.S. VI Corps ( British 1st and U.S. 3rd Infantry Divisions, the 504th Parachute Regimental Combat Team, U.S. Army Rangers and British Commandos, Combat Command 'B' of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, along with supporting units), under Major General John P. Lucas, was due to make an amphibious landing on 22 January. It was hoped that the Anzio landing, with the benefit of surprise and a rapid move inland to the Alban Hills, which command both routes 6 and 7, would so threaten the Gustav defenders' rear and supply lines that it might just unsettle the German commanders and cause them to withdraw from the Gustav Line to positions north of Rome. Whilst this would have been consistent with the German tactics of the previous three months, Allied intelligence had not understood that the strategy of fighting retreat had been for the sole purpose of providing time to prepare the Gustav line where the Germans intended to stand firm. The intelligence assessment of Allied prospects was therefore over-optimistic.

The Fifth Army had only reached the Gustav Line on 15 January, having taken six weeks of heavy fighting to advance the last seven miles (11 km) through the Bernhardt Line positions, during which time they had sustained 16,000 casualties. They hardly had time to prepare the new assault, let alone take the rest and reorganization they really needed after three months of attritional fighting north from Naples. However, because the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff would only make landing craft available until early February, as they were required for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Northern France, Operation Shingle had to take place in late January with the coordinated attack on the Gustav Line some three days earlier.

First assault: X Corps on the left, 17 January

The first assault was made on 17 January. Near the coast, the British X Corps (56th and 5th Divisions) forced a crossing of the Garigliano (followed some two days later by the British 46th Division on their right) causing General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, commander of the German XIV Panzer Corps, and responsible for the Gustav defences on the south western half of the line, some serious concern as to the ability of the German 94th Infantry Division to hold the line. Responding to Senger's concerns, Kesselring ordered the 29th and 90th Panzergrenadier Divisions from the Rome area to provide reinforcement. There is some speculation as to what might have been if X Corps had had the reserves available to exploit their success and make a decisive breakthrough. The corps did not have the extra men, but there would certainly have been time to alter the overall battle plan and cancel or modify the central attack by the U.S. II Corps to make men available to force the issue in the south before the German reinforcements were able to get into position. As it happened, Fifth Army HQ failed to appreciate the frailty of the German position and the plan was unchanged. The two divisions from Rome arrived by 21 January and stabilized the German position in the south. In one respect, however, the plan was working in that Kesselring's reserves had been drawn south. The three divisions of Lieutenant General McCreery's X Corps sustained some 4,000 casualties during the period of the first battle.

Main attack: II Corps in the centre, 20 January

The central thrust by the U.S. 36th Division, under Major General Fred L. Walker, commenced three hours after sunset on 20 January. The lack of time to prepare meant that the approach to the river was still hazardous due to uncleared mines and booby traps and the highly technical business of an opposed river crossing lacked the necessary planning and rehearsal. Although a battalion of the 143rd Infantry Regiment was able to get across the Gari on the south side of San Angelo and two companies of the 141st Infantry Regiment on the north side, they were isolated for most of the time and at no time was Allied armour able to get across the river, leaving them highly vulnerable to counter-attacking tanks and self-propelled guns of ''Generalleutnant'' Eberhard Rodt's 15th Panzergrenadier Division. The southern group was forced back across the river by mid-morning of 21 January. Keyes pressed Walker to renew the attack immediately. Once again, the two regiments attacked but with no more success against the well dug-in 15th Panzergrenadier Division: the 143rd Infantry Regiment got the equivalent of two battalions across, but, once again, there was no armoured support, and they were devastated when daylight came the next day. The 141st Infantry Regiment also crossed in two battalion strength and, despite the lack of armoured support, managed to advance . However, with the coming of daylight, they too were cut down and by the evening of 22 January, the 141st Infantry Regiment had virtually ceased to exist; only 40 men made it back to the Allied lines.

Rick Atkinson described the intense German resistance:

The assault had been a costly failure, with the 36th Division losing 2,100 men killed, wounded and missing in 48 hours. As a result, the army's conduct of this battle became the subject of a Congressional inquiry after the war.

II Corps try north of Cassino: 24 January

The next attack was launched on 24 January. The U.S. II Corps, with 34th Infantry Division under Major General Charles W. Ryder spearheading the attack and French colonial troops on its right flank, launched an assault across the flooded Rapido valley north of Cassino and into the mountains behind with the intention of then wheeling to the left and attacking Monte Cassino from high ground. Whilst the task of crossing the river would be easier in that the Rapido upstream of Cassino was fordable, the flooding made movement on the approaches each side very difficult. In particular, armour could only move on paths laid with steel matting and it took eight days of bloody fighting across the waterlogged ground for 34th Division to push back General Franek's German 44th Infantry Division to establish a foothold in the mountains.

French Corps halted on the right flank

On the right, the Moroccan-French troops made strategical initial progress against the German 5th Mountain Division, commanded by General Julius Ringel, gaining positions on the slopes of their key objective, Monte Cifalco. Forward units of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division had also by-passed Monte Cifalco to capture Monte Belvedere and Colle Abate. General Juin was convinced that Cassino could be bypassed and the German defences unhinged by this northerly route but his request for reserves to maintain the momentum of his advance was refused and the one available reserve regiment (from 36th Division) was sent to reinforce 34th Division. By 31 January the French had ground to a halt with Monte Cifalco, which had a clear view of the French and U.S. flanks and supply lines, still in German hands. The two Moroccan-French divisions sustained 2,500 casualties in their struggles around Colle Belvedere.

II Corps in the mountains north of Cassino

It became the task of the U.S. 34th Division (joined temporarily by the 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division, which had been held in reserve and unused during the Rapido crossing) to fight southward along the linked hilltops towards the intersecting ridge on the south end of which was Monastery Hill. They could then break through down into the Liri valley behind the Gustav Line defences. It was very tough going: the mountains were rocky, strewn with boulders and cut by ravines and gullies. Digging foxholes on the rocky ground was out of the question and each feature was exposed to fire from surrounding high points. The ravines were no better since the gorse growing there, far from giving cover, had been sown with mines, booby-traps and hidden barbed wire by the defenders. The Germans had had three months to prepare their defensive positions using dynamite and to stockpile ammunition and stores. There was no natural shelter, and the weather was wet and freezing cold.

By early February, American infantry had captured a strategic point near the hamlet of San Onofrio, less than from the abbey and by 7 February a battalion had reached Point 445, a round-topped hill immediately below the monastery and no more than away. An American squad managed a reconnaissance right up against the cliff-like abbey walls, with the monks observing German and American patrols exchanging fire. However, attempts to take Monte Cassino were broken by overwhelming machine gun fire from the slopes below the monastery. Despite their fierce fighting, the 34th Division never managed to take the final redoubts on Hill 593 (known to the Germans as Calvary Mount), held by the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Parachute Regiment, part of the 1st Parachute Division, the dominating point of the ridge to the monastery.

Aftermath

On 11 February, after a final unsuccessful 3-day assault on Monastery Hill and Cassino town, the Americans were withdrawn. U.S. II Corps, after two and a half weeks of battle, was worn out. The performance of the 34th Division in the mountains is considered to rank as one of the finest feats of arms carried out by any soldiers during the war. In return they sustained losses of about 80 per cent in the Infantry battalions, some 2,200 casualties.

At the height of the battle in the first days of February von Senger und Etterlin had moved the 90th Division from the Garigliano front to the north of Cassino and had been so alarmed at the rate of attrition, he had "mustered all the weight of my authority to request that the Battle of Cassino should be broken off and that we should occupy a quite new line. ... a position, in fact, north of the Anzio bridgehead". Kesselring refused the request. At the crucial moment von Senger was able to throw in the 71st Infantry Division whilst leaving the 15th Panzergrenadier Division (whom they had been due to relieve) in place.

During the battle, there had been occasions when with more astute use of reserves, promising positions might have been turned into decisive moves. Some historians suggest this failure to capitalize on initial success could be put down to Clark's lack of experience. However, it is more likely that he just had too much to do, being responsible for both the Cassino and Anzio offensives. This view is supported by the inability of Major General Lucian Truscott, commanding the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, as related below, to get hold of him for discussions at a vital juncture of the Anzio breakout at the time of the fourth Cassino battle. Whilst General Alexander, C-in-C of the AAI, chose (for perfectly logical co-ordination arguments) to have Cassino and Anzio under a single army commander and splitting the Gustav Line front between the U.S. Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army, now commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese, Kesselring chose to create a separate 14th Army under General Eberhard von Mackensen to fight at Anzio whilst leaving the Gustav Line in the sole hands of General Heinrich von Vietinghoff's 10th Army.

The withdrawn American units were replaced by the New Zealand Corps ( 2nd New Zealand and 4th Indian Divisions), commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg, from the Eighth Army on the Adriatic front.

Second battle (Operation Avenger)

Background

With U.S. VI Corps under heavy threat at Anzio, Freyberg was under equal pressure to launch a relieving action at Cassino. Once again, therefore, the battle commenced without the attackers being fully prepared. As well, Corps HQ did not fully appreciate the difficulty in getting the 4th Indian Infantry Division into place in the mountains and supplying them on the ridges and valleys north of Cassino. This was evidenced in the writing of Maj. Gen. Howard Kippenberger, commander of New Zealand 2nd Division, after the war:

Freyberg's plan was a continuation of the first battle: an attack from the north along the mountain ridges and an attack from the southeast along the railway line and to capture the railway station across the Rapido less than south of Cassino town. Success would pinch out Cassino town and open up the Liri valley. Freyberg had informed his superiors that he believed, given the circumstances, there was no better than a 50 percent chance of success for the offensive.

Destruction of the abbey

Increasingly, the opinions of certain Allied officers were fixed on the great abbey of Monte Cassino: in their view it was the abbey – and its presumed use as a German artillery observation point – that prevented the breach of the 'Gustav Line'.

The British press and C. L. Sulzberger of ''The New York Times'' frequently and convincingly and in (often manufactured) detail wrote of German observation posts and artillery positions inside the abbey. The commander in chief of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker accompanied by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers (deputy to General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, the Supreme Allied Commander of the Mediterranean Theater) personally observed during a fly-over "a radio mast ... German uniforms hanging on a clothesline in the abbey courtyard; ndmachine gun emplacements from the abbey walls."Hapgood & Richardson, p. 185. Countering this, U.S. II Corps commander Geoffrey Keyes also flew over the monastery several times, reporting to Fifth Army G-2 he had seen no evidence that the Germans were in the abbey. When informed of others' claims of having seen enemy troops there, he stated: "They've been looking so long they're seeing things."

Kippenberger of the New Zealand Corps HQ held it was their view the monastery was probably being used as the Germans' main vantage point for artillery spotting since it was so perfectly situated for it no army could refrain. There is no clear evidence it was, but he went on to write that from a military point of view it was immaterial:

Major General Francis Tuker, whose 4th Indian Division would have the task of attacking Monastery Hill, had made his own appraisal of the situation. In the absence of detailed intelligence at Fifth Army HQ, he had found a book dated 1879 in a Naples bookshop giving details of the construction of the abbey. In his memorandum to Freyberg, he concluded that regardless of whether the monastery was currently occupied by the Germans, it should be demolished to prevent its effective occupation. He also pointed out that with high walls made of masonry at least thick, there were no practical means for field engineers to deal with the place and that bombing with "blockbuster" bombs would be the only solution since 1,000 pound bombs would be "next to useless". Tuker said he could not be induced to attack unless "the garrison was reduced to helpless lunacy by sheer unending pounding for days and nights by air and artillery".

On 11 February 1944, the acting commander of the 4th Indian Division, Brigadier Dimoline, requested a bombing raid. Tuker reiterated again his case from a hospital bed in Caserta, where he was suffering a severe attack of a recurrent tropical fever. Freyberg transmitted his request on 12 February. The request, however, was greatly expanded by air force planners and probably supported by Eaker and Devers, who sought to use the opportunity to showcase the abilities of U.S. Army air power to support ground operations. Clark and his chief of staff Major General Alfred Gruenther remained unconvinced of the "military necessity". When handing over the U.S. II Corps position to the New Zealand Corps, Brigadier General J.A. Butler, deputy commander of U.S. 34th Division, had said "I don't know, but I don't believe the enemy is in the convent. All the fire has been from the slopes of the hill below the wall". Finally Clark, "who did not want the monastery bombed", pinned down the Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies in Italy, Alexander, to take the responsibility: "I said, 'You give me a direct order and we'll do it,' and he did."

The bombing mission in the morning of 15 February 1944 involved 142 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers followed by 47 North American B-25 Mitchell and 40 Martin B-26 Marauder medium bombers. In all they dropped 1,150 tons of high explosives and incendiary bombs on the abbey, reducing the entire top of Monte Cassino to a smoking mass of rubble. Between bomb runs, the II Corps artillery pounded the mountain. Many Allied soldiers and war correspondents cheered as they observed the spectacle. Eaker and Devers watched; Juin was heard to remark "no, they'll never get anywhere this way." Clark and Gruenther refused to be on the scene and stayed at their headquarters. That same afternoon and the next day an aggressive follow-up of artillery and a raid by 59 fighter bombers wreaked further destruction. The German positions on Point 593 above and behind the monastery were untouched.

Damningly, the air raid had not been coordinated with ground commands and an immediate infantry follow-up failed to materialize. Its timing had been driven by the Air Force regarding it as a separate operation, considering the weather and requirements on other fronts and theaters without reference to ground forces. Many of the troops had only taken over their positions from II Corps two days previously and besides the difficulties in the mountains, preparations in the valley had also been held up by difficulties in supplying the newly installed troops with sufficient material for a full-scale assault because of incessantly foul weather, flooding and waterlogged ground. As a result, Indian troops on the Snake's Head were taken by surprise, while the New Zealand Corps was two days away from being ready to launch their main assault.

After the bombing

Pope Pius XII was silent after the bombing; however, his Cardinal Secretary of State, Luigi Maglione, bluntly stated to the senior U.S. diplomat to the Vatican, Harold Tittmann, that the bombing was "a colossal blunder … a piece of a gross stupidity".

It is certain from every investigation that followed since the event that the only people killed in the monastery by the bombing were 230 Italian civilians seeking refuge in the abbey. There is no evidence that the bombs dropped on the Monte Cassino monastery that day killed any German troops. However, given the imprecision of bombing in those days (it was estimated that only 10 per cent of the bombs from the heavy bombers, bombing from high altitude, hit the monastery) bombs did fall elsewhere and killed German and Allied troops alike, although that would have been unintended. Indeed, sixteen bombs hit the Fifth Army compound at Presenzano from Monte Cassino and exploded only yards away from the trailer where Clark was doing paperwork at his desk.

On the day after the bombing at first light, most of the civilians still alive fled the ruins. Only about 40 people remained: the six monks who survived in the deep vaults of the abbey, their 79-year-old abbot, Gregorio Diamare, three tenant farmer families, orphaned or abandoned children, the badly wounded and the dying. After artillery barrages, renewed bombing and attacks on the ridge by 4th Indian Division, the monks decided to leave their ruined home with the others who could move at 07:30 on 17 February. The old abbot was leading the group down the mule path toward the Liri valley, reciting the rosary. After they arrived at a German first-aid station, some of the badly wounded who had been carried by the monks were taken away in a military ambulance. After meeting with a German officer, the monks were driven to the monastery of Sant'Anselmo all'Aventino. On 18 February, the abbot met the commander of XIV Panzer Corps, Lieutenant-General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin. One monk, Carlomanno Pellagalli, returned to the abbey; when he was later seen wandering the ruins, the German paratroopers thought he was a ghost. After 3 April, he was not seen again.

It is now known that the Germans had an agreement not to use the abbey for military purposes. Following its destruction, paratroopers of the German 1st Parachute Division then occupied the ruins of the abbey and turned it into a fortress and observation post, which became a serious problem for the attacking Allied forces.

Battle

On the night following the bombing, a company of the 1st Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment (one of the British elements in 4th Indian Division) serving in 7th Indian Infantry Brigade attacked the key point 593 from their position away on Snakeshead Ridge. The assault failed, with the company sustaining 50 per cent casualties.

The following night the Royal Sussex Regiment was ordered to attack in battalion strength. There was a calamitous start. Artillery could not be used in direct support targeting point 593 because of the proximity and risk of shelling friendly troops. It was planned therefore to shell point 575 which had been providing supporting fire to the defenders of point 593. The topography of the land meant that shells fired at 575 had to pass very low over Snakeshead Ridge and in the event some fell among the gathering assault companies. After reorganising, the attack went in at midnight. The fighting was brutal and often hand to hand, but the determined defence held and the Royal Sussex battalion was beaten off, once again sustaining over 50 per cent casualties. Over the two nights, the Royal Sussex Regiment lost 12 out of 15 officers and 162 out of 313 men who took part in the attack.

On the night of 17 February, the main assault took place. The 4/6th Rajputana Rifles would take on the assault of point 593 along Snakeshead Ridge with the depleted Royal Sussex Regiment held in reserve. 1/9th Gurkha Rifles was to attack Point 444. In the meantime, the 1/2nd Gurkha Rifles were to sweep across the slopes and ravines in a direct assault on the monastery. This latter was across appalling terrain, but it was hoped that the Gurkhas, so expert in mountain terrain, would succeed. This proved a faint hope. Once again, the fighting was brutal, but no progress was made and casualties heavy. The Rajputanas lost 196 officers and men, the 1/9th Gurkhas 149 and the 1/2nd Gurkhas 96. It became clear that the attack had failed and on 18 February Dimoline and Freyberg called off the attacks on Monastery Hill.

In the other half of the main assault, the two companies from 28th (Māori) Battalion from the New Zealand Division forced a crossing of the Rapido and attempted to gain the railway station in Cassino town. The intention was to take a perimeter that would allow engineers to build a causeway for armoured support. With the aid of a near constant smoke screen laid down by Allied artillery that obscured their location to the German batteries on Monastery Hill, the Māori were able to hold their positions for much of the day. Their isolation and lack of both armoured support and anti-tank guns made for a hopeless situation, however, when an armoured counterattack by two tanks came in the afternoon on 18 February. They were ordered to pull back to the river when it became clear to headquarters that both the attempts to break through (in the mountains and along the causeway) would not succeed. It had been very close. The Germans had been very alarmed by the capture of the station and from a conversation on record between Kesselring and von Vietinghoff, had not expected their counterattack to succeed.

Third battle

Plans

For the third battle, it was decided that whilst the winter weather persisted, fording the Garigliano river downstream of Cassino town was an unattractive option (after the unhappy experiences in the first two battles). The "right hook" in the mountains had also been a costly failure and it was decided to launch twin attacks from the north along the Rapido valley: one towards the fortified Cassino town and the other towards Monastery Hill. The idea was to clear the path through the bottleneck between these two features to allow access towards the station on the south and so to the Liri valley. British 78th Infantry Division, which had arrived in late February and placed under the command of New Zealand Corps, would then cross the Rapido downstream of Cassino and start the push to Rome.

None of the Allied commanders were very happy with the plan, but it was hoped that an unprecedented preliminary bombing by heavy bombers would prove the trump. Three clear days of good weather were required and for twenty one successive days the assault was postponed as the troops waited in the freezing wet positions for a favourable weather forecast. Matters were not helped by the loss of Kippenberger, wounded by an anti-personnel mine and losing both his feet. He was replaced by Brigadier Graham Parkinson; a German counter-attack at Anzio had failed and been called off.

The battle

The third battle began 15 March. After a bombardment of 750 tons of 1,000-pound bombs with delayed action fuses, starting at 08:30 and lasting three and a half hours, the New Zealanders advanced behind a creeping artillery barrage from 746 artillery pieces. Success depended on taking advantage of the paralysing effect of the bombing. The bombing was not concentrated – only 50 per cent landed a mile or less from the target point and 8 per cent within 1,000 yards but between it and the shelling about half the 300 paratroopers in the town had been killed. The defences rallied more quickly than expected and the Allied armour was held up by bomb craters. Nevertheless, success was there for the New Zealanders' taking, but by the time a follow-up assault on the left had been ordered that evening it was too late: defences had reorganised and more critically, the rain, contrary to forecast, had started again. Torrents of rain flooded bomb craters, turned rubble into a morass and blotted out communications, the radio sets being incapable of surviving the constant immersion. The dark rain clouds also blotted out the moonlight, hindering the task of clearing routes through the ruins. On the right, the New Zealanders had captured Castle Hill and point 165 and as planned, elements of the Indian 4th Infantry Division, now commanded by Major General Alexander Galloway, had passed through to attack point 236 and thence to point 435, Hangman's Hill. In the confusion of the fight, a company of the 1/9th Gurkha Rifles had taken a track avoiding point 236 and captured point 435 whilst the assault on point 236 by the 1/6th Rajputana Rifles had been repelled.

By the end of 17 March, the Gurkhas held Hangman's Hill (point 435), from the monastery, in battalion strength (although their lines of supply were compromised by the German positions at point 236 and in the northern part of the town) and whilst the town was still fiercely defended, New Zealand units and armour had got through the bottleneck and captured the station. However, the Germans were still able to reinforce their troops in the town and were proving adept at slipping snipers back into parts of the town that had supposedly been cleared.

19 March was planned for the decisive blow in the town and on the monastery, including a surprise attack by tanks of 20th Armoured Regiment working their way along an old logging road ("Cavendish Road") from Caira to Albaneta Farm (which had been prepared by engineer units under the cover of darkness) and from there towards the abbey. However, a surprise and fiercely pressed counter-attack from the monastery on Castle Hill by the German 1st Parachute Division completely disrupted any possibility of an assault on the monastery from the Castle and Hangman's Hill whilst the tanks, lacking infantry support, were all knocked out by mid-afternoon. In the town the attackers made little progress and overall the initiative was passing to the Germans whose positions close to Castle Hill, which was the gateway to the position on Monastery Hill, crippled any prospects of early success.

On 20 March Freyberg committed elements of the 78th Infantry Division to the battle; firstly to provide a greater troop presence in the town so that cleared areas would not be reinfiltrated by the Germans and secondly to reinforce Castle Hill to allow troops to be released to close off the two routes between Castle Hill and Points 175 and 165 being used by the Germans to reinforce the defenders in the town. The Allied commanders felt they were on the brink of success as grim fighting continued through 21 March. However, the defenders were resolute and the attack on Point 445 to block the German reinforcement route had narrowly failed whilst in the town Allied gains were measured only house by house.

On 23 March Alexander met with his commanders. A range of opinions was expressed as to the possibility of victory, but it was evident that the New Zealand and Indian Divisions were exhausted. Freyberg was convinced that the attack could not continue and he called it off. The German 1st Parachute Division had taken a mauling but had held.

Aftermath

The next three days were spent stabilizing the front, extracting the isolated Gurkhas from Hangman's Hill and the detachment from New Zealand 24th Battalion which had held Point 202 in similar isolation. The Allied line was reorganised with the exhausted 4th Indian Division and 2nd New Zealand Division withdrawn and replaced respectively in the mountains by the British 78th Division and in the town by British 1st Guards Brigade. The New Zealand Corps headquarters was dissolved on 26 March and control was assumed by British XIII Corps. In their time on the Cassino front line the 4th Indian Division had lost 3,000 men and the 2nd New Zealand Division 1,600 men killed, missing and wounded.

The German defenders too had paid a heavy price. The German XIV Corps War Diary for 23 March noted that the battalions in the front line had strengths varying between 40 and 120 men.

Fourth and final battle

Alexander's strategy

Alexander's strategy in Italy was to "force the enemy to commit the maximum number of divisions in Italy at the time the cross-channel invasion f Normandyis launched". Circumstances allowed him the time to prepare a major offensive to achieve this. His plan, originally inspired from Juin's idea to circle around Cassino and take the Aurunci with his mountain troops to break the Gustav Line, was to shift the bulk of the British Eighth Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, from the Adriatic front across the spine of Italy to join Clark's Fifth Army and attack along a front between Cassino and the sea. Fifth Army (U.S. II Corps and French Expeditionary Corps) would be on the left and Eighth Army (British XIII Corps and Polish II Corps) on the right. With the arrival of the spring weather, ground conditions were improved, and it would be possible to deploy large formations and armour effectively.

Planning and preparation

The plan for Operation Diadem was that U.S. II Corps on the left would attack up the coast along the line of Route 7 towards Rome. The French Corps to their right would attack from the bridgehead across the Garigliano originally created by British X Corps in the first battle in January into the Aurunci Mountains which formed a barrier between the coastal plain and the Liri Valley. British XIII Corps in the centre right of the front would attack along the Liri valley. On the right Polish II Corps (3rd and 5th Divisions) commanded by Lieutenant General Władysław Anders, had relieved the British 78th Division in the mountains behind Cassino on 24 April and would attempt the task which had defeated 4th Indian Division in February: isolate the monastery and push round behind it into the Liri valley to link with XIII Corps' thrust and pinch out the Cassino position. It was hoped that being a much larger force than their 4th Indian Division predecessors they would be able to saturate the German defences which would, as a result, be unable to give supporting fire to each other's positions. Improved weather, ground conditions and supply would also be important factors. Once again, the pinching manoeuvres by the Polish and British Corps were key to the overall success. Canadian I Corps would be held in reserve ready to exploit the expected breakthrough. Once the German 10th Army had been defeated, U.S. VI Corps would break out of the Anzio beachhead to cut off the retreating Germans in the Alban Hills.

The large troop movements required for this took two months to execute. They had to be carried out in small units to maintain secrecy and surprise. U.S. 36th Division was sent on amphibious assault training and road signposts and dummy radio signal traffic were created to give the impression that a seaborne landing was being planned for north of Rome. This was planned to keep German reserves held back from the Gustav Line. Movements of troops in forward areas were confined to the hours of darkness and armoured units moving from the Adriatic front left behind dummy tanks and vehicles so the vacated areas appeared unchanged to enemy aerial reconnaissance. The deception was successful. As late as the second day of the final Cassino battle, Kesselring estimated the Allies had six divisions facing his four on the Cassino front. In fact, there were thirteen.

Battle

The first assault (11–12 May) on Cassino opened at 23:00 with a massive artillery bombardment with 1,060 guns on the Eighth Army front and 600 guns on the Fifth Army front, manned by British, Americans, Poles, New Zealanders, South Africans and French. Within an hour and a half the attack was in motion in all four sectors. By daylight the U.S. II Corps had made little progress, but their Fifth Army colleagues, the French Expeditionary Corps, had achieved their objectives and were fanning out in the Aurunci Mountains toward the Eighth Army to their right, rolling up the German positions between the two armies. On the Eighth Army front, British XIII Corps had made two strongly opposed crossings of the Garigliano (by British 4th Infantry Division and 8th Indian Division). Crucially, the engineers of Dudley Russell's 8th Indian Division had by the morning succeeded in bridging the river enabling the armour of 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade to cross and provide the vital element (so missed by the Americans in the first battle and New Zealanders in the second battle) to beat off the inevitable counterattacks from German tanks that would come.

In the mountains above Cassino, the aptly named Mount Calvary (''Monte Calvario'', or Point 593 on Snakeshead Ridge) was taken by the Polish 2nd Corps, under the command of General Władysław Anders, only to be recaptured by German paratroops. For three days Polish attacks and German counterattacks brought heavy losses to both sides. Polish II Corps lost 281 officers and 3,503 other ranks in assaults on ''Oberst'' Ludwig Heilmann's 4th Parachute Regiment, until the attacks were called off. "Just eight hundred Germans had succeeded in driving off attacks by two divisions", the area around the mountain having turned into a "miniature Verdun". In the early morning hours of 12 May, the Polish infantry divisions were met with "such devastating mortar, artillery and small-arms fire that the leading battalions were all but wiped out".

By the afternoon of 12 May, the Gari bridgeheads were increasing despite furious counterattacks whilst the attrition on the coast and in the mountains continued. By 13 May the pressure was starting to tell. The German right wing began to give way to Fifth Army. The French Corps had captured Monte Maio and were now in a position to give material flank assistance to the Eighth Army in the Liri valley against whom Kesselring had thrown every available reserve in order to buy time to switch to his second prepared defensive position, the Hitler Line, some to the rear. On 14 May Moroccan Goumiers, travelling through the mountains parallel to the Liri valley, ground which was undefended because it was not thought possible to traverse such terrain, outflanked the German defence while materially assisting the XIII Corps in the valley. In 1943, the Goumiers were colonial troops formed into four ''Groupements des Tabors Marocains'' ("Groups of Moroccan Tabors"; GTM), each consisting of three loosely organised Tabors (roughly equivalent to a battalion) specialised in mountain warfare. Juin's French Expeditionary Corps consisted of the ''Commandement des Goums Marocains'' ("Command of Moroccan Goumiers"; CGM) (with the 1st, 3rd and 4th GTM) of General Augustin Guillaume totalling some 7,800 fighting men, broadly the same infantry strength as a division, and four more conventional divisions: the 2nd Moroccan Infantry Division (2 DIM), the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division (3 DIA), the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division (4 DMM) and the 1st Free French Division (1 DM).

Clark also paid tribute to the Goumiers and the Moroccan regulars of the Tirailleur units:

On 15 May, the British 78th Division with an attached armoured brigade under command came into the British XIII Corps line from reserve passing through the British 4th Infantry Division's bridgehead to execute the turning move to isolate Cassino from the Liri valley.

On 17 May, General Anders led the Polish II Corps in launching their second attack on Monte Cassino. Under constant artillery and mortar fire from the strongly fortified German positions and with little natural cover for protection, the fighting was fierce and at times hand-to-hand. With their line of supply threatened by the Allied advance in the Liri valley, the Germans decided to withdraw from the Cassino heights to the new defensive positions on the Hitler Line. In the early hours of 18 May the British 78th Division and Polish II Corps linked up in the Liri valley west of Cassino town. On the Cassino high ground, the survivors of the second Polish offensive were so battered that "it took some time to find men with enough strength to climb the few hundred yards to the summit." A patrol of Polish 12th Podolian Cavalry Regiment finally made it to the heights and raised a Polish flag over the ruins.Molony, Vol. VI, p. 133. The only remnants of the defenders were a group of thirty German wounded who had been unable to move.

File:Monte Cassino transport.jpg, Polish soldiers carry ammunition to the front lines just before the capture of the abbey
File:Polish Bugler Monte Cassino.jpg, A Polish bugler plays the Hejnał mariacki, announcing the victory
File:Monte Cassino.jpg, Ruins of the town of Cassino after the battle

Aftermath

Hitler Line

Units of the Eighth Army advanced up the Liri valley and Fifth Army up the coast to the Hitler defensive line (renamed the Senger Line at Hitler's insistence to minimise the significance if it was penetrated). An immediate follow-up assault failed, and Eighth Army then decided to take some time to reorganize. Getting 20,000 vehicles and 2,000 tanks through the broken Gustav Line was a major job taking several days. The next assault on the line commenced on 23 May with Polish II Corps attacking Piedimonte San Germano (defended by the redoubtable German 1st Parachute Division) on the right and 1st Canadian Infantry Division (fresh from Eighth Army reserve) in the centre. On 24 May, the Canadians had breached the line and 5th Canadian (Armoured) Division poured through the gap. On 25 May the Poles took Piedimonte and the line collapsed. The way was clear for the advance northwards on Rome and beyond.

Anzio breakout

As the Canadians and Poles launched their attack on 23 May, Major General Lucian Truscott, who had replaced Lucas as commander of the U.S. VI Corps in February, launched a two-pronged attack using five (three U.S. and two British) of the seven divisions in the beachhead at Anzio. The German 14th Army, facing this thrust, was without any armoured divisions because Kesselring had sent his armour south to assist the German 10th Army in the Cassino action. A single armoured division, the 26th Panzer, was in transit from north of the Italian capital of Rome where it had been held anticipating the non-existent seaborne landing the Allies had faked and so was unavailable to fight.

Clark captures Rome but fails to trap German Tenth Army

By 25 May, with the German 10th Army in full retreat, Truscott's VI Corps was, as planned, driving eastwards to cut them off. By the next day they would have been astride the line of retreat and 10th Army, with all Kesselring's reserves committed to them, would have been trapped. At this point, astonishingly, Clark ordered Truscott to change his line of attack from a northeasterly one to Valmontone on Route 6 to a northwesterly one directly towards Rome. Reasons for Clark's decision are unclear, and controversy surrounds the issue. Most commentators point to Clark's ambition to be the first to arrive in Rome although some suggest he was concerned to give a necessary respite to his tired troops (notwithstanding the new direction of attack required his troops to make a frontal attack on the Germans' prepared defences on the Caesar C line). Truscott later wrote in his memoirs that Clark "was fearful that the British were laying devious plans to be first into Rome", a sentiment somewhat reinforced in Clark's own writings. However, General Alexander, C-in-C of the AAI, had clearly laid down the Army boundaries before the battle and Rome was allocated to the Fifth Army. Leese's British Eighth Army was constantly reminded that their job was to engage the 10th Army, destroy as much of it as possible and then bypass Rome to continue the pursuit northwards (which in fact they did, harrying the retreating 10th Army for some towards Perugia in 6 weeks).

At the time, Truscott was shocked, writing later: He went on to write: An opportunity was indeed missed and seven divisions of 10th Army were able to make their way to the next line of defence, the Trasimene Line where they were able to link up with 14th Army and then make a fighting withdrawal to the formidable Gothic Line north of Florence.

Rome was captured on 4 June 1944, just two days before the Normandy invasion.

Battle honours

Battle honours were awarded to some units by British and Commonwealth Armies for their roles at Cassino. Some units which participated in the first part of the campaign were awarded the battle honour ' Cassino I'. In addition, subsidiary battle honours were given to some units which participated in specific engagements during the first part. These were Monastery Hill, Castle Hill and Hangman's Hill.

Units which participated in the later part of the battle were awarded the honour ' Cassino II'.

All members of the Polish units received the Monte Cassino Commemorative Cross.

Casualties

The capture of Monte Cassino came at a high price. The Allies suffered around 55,000 casualties in the Monte Cassino campaign. German casualty figures are estimated at around 20,000 killed and wounded. Total Allied casualties spanning the period of the four Cassino battles and the Anzio campaign with the subsequent capture of Rome on 5 June 1944, were over 105,000.

The town of Cassino was completely razed by the air and artillery bombardments (especially by the air raid of 15 March 1944, when 1,250 tons of bombs were dropped on the town), and 2,026 of its prewar population of 20,000 were killed during the raids and the battle.

Legacy

Evacuation and treasures

In the course of the battles, the ancient abbey of Monte Cassino, where St. Benedict in AD 516 first established the Rule that ordered monasticism in the west, was entirely destroyed by Allied bombing and artillery barrages in February 1944.

Some months earlier, in the Italian autumn of 1943, two officers in the Hermann Göring Panzer Division, Captain Maximilian Becker and Lieutenant Colonel Julius Schlegel, proposed the removal of Monte Cassino's treasures to the Vatican and Vatican-owned Castel Sant'Angelo ahead of the approaching front. The officers convinced church authorities and their own senior commanders to use the division's trucks and fuel for the undertaking. They had to find the materials necessary for crates and boxes, find carpenters among their troops, recruit local labourers (to be paid with rations of food plus twenty cigarettes a day) and then manage the "massive job of evacuation centered on the library and archive", a treasure "literally without price". The richness of the abbey's archives, library and gallery included "800 papal documents, 20,500 volumes in the Old Library, 60,000 in the New Library, 500 ''incunabula'', 200 manuscripts on parchment, 100,000 prints and separate collections". The first trucks, carrying paintings by Italian old masters, were ready to go less than a week from the day Becker and Schlegel independently first came to Monte Cassino. Each vehicle carried monks to Rome as escorts; in more than 100 truckloads the convoys saved the abbey's monastic community.Hapgood & Richardson, p. 37 The task was completed in the first days of November 1943. "In three weeks, in the middle of a losing war, in another country, it was quite a feat." After a mass in the basilica, Abbot formally presented signed parchment scrolls in Latin to General Paul Conrath, to ''tribuno militum Julio Schlegel'' and ''Maximiliano Becker medecinae doctori'' "for rescuing the monks and treasures of the Abbey of Monte Cassino".

Among the treasures removed were Titians, an El Greco and two Goyas.

''A Canticle for Leibowitz''

The American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., a Catholic, served as part of a bomber crew that participated in the destruction of the ancient Monte Cassino monastery. As Miller stated, this experience deeply influenced him and directly resulted in his writing, a decade later, the book ''A Canticle for Leibowitz'', which is considered a masterpiece of science fiction. The book depicts a future order of monks living in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war, and dedicated to the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.

United States military history reviews

The U.S. government's official position on the German occupation of Monte Cassino changed over a quarter-century. The assertion that the German use of the abbey was "irrefutable" was removed from the record in 1961 by the Office of the Chief of Military History. A congressional inquiry to the same office in the 20th anniversary year of the bombing stated: "It appears that no German troops, except a small military police detachment, were actually inside the abbey" before the bombing. The final change to the U.S. Army's official record was made in 1969 and concluded that "the abbey was actually unoccupied by German troops."

Marocchinate

The day following the battle, the Goumiers, French Moroccan colonial troops attached to the French Expeditionary Forces, have been accused of rape and murder through the surrounding hills. Some of these units were accused of committing atrocities against the Italian peasant communities in the region. In Italy the victims of these acts were described as ''Marocchinate'' meaning literally "Moroccaned" (or people who have been subjected to acts committed by Moroccans).

War graves and memorials

File:Monte Cassino - the Polish War Cemetery - closer.JPG, Monte Cassino: the Polish War Cemetery
File:Monte Cassino Commonwealth Cemetery.jpg, Commonwealth cemetery
File:Cimitero militare Germanico Cassino 2010-by-RaBoe-52.jpg, German cemetery

Immediately after the cessation of fighting at Monte Cassino, the Polish government in Exile (in London) created the Monte Cassino campaign cross to commemorate the Polish part in the capture of the strategic point. Also during this time, the Polish song writer Feliks Konarski, who had taken part in the fighting there, wrote his anthem "'' Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino''" ("The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino"). Later, an imposing Polish cemetery was laid out; this is prominently visible to anybody surveying the area from the restored monastery. The Polish cemetery is the closest of all allied cemeteries in the area; an honor given to the Poles as their units are the ones credited with the liberation of the abbey.

The Commonwealth War Graves cemetery on the western outskirts of Cassino is a burial place of British, New Zealand, Canadian, Indian, Gurkha, Australian and South African casualties. The French and Italians are on Route 6 in the Liri Valley; the Americans are at the Sicily–Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno.

The German cemetery (''Deutsche Kriegsgräberstätte Cassino'') is approximately north of Cassino in the Rapido Valley.

In the 1950s, a subsidiary of the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza distributed Lamps of Brotherhood, cast from the bronze doors of the destroyed Abbey, to representatives of nations that had served on both sides of the war to promote reconciliation.

In 1999, a monument commemorating the Battle of Monte Cassino was unveiled in Warsaw and is located next to the street that is named after Władysław Anders.

In 2006, a memorial was unveiled in Rome honouring the Allied forces that fought and died to capture the city.

On 8 July 2021, the Chief of Army Staff, General M.M. Naravane, inaugurated the Indian Army Memorial at Cassino, to commemorate the Indian soldiers killed in action during the Battle of Cassino.

See also

* Barbara Line
* Battle of San Pietro Infine
* Bernhardt Line
* Cassino Band of Northumbria Army Cadet Force
* European theatre of World War II
* Operation Shingle
* Wojtek (bear)

Notes

References

Sources

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Muhm, Gerhard
German Tactics in the Italian Campaign
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

French

François Lescel (2002), ''Fédération des Amicales Régimentaires et des Anciens Combattants website article no. 366 (March 2002) "Goumiers, Goums, Tabors"''

German

* Emmanuel Munding (1947): ''Der Untergang von Montecassino am 15. Febr. 1944''. In: ''Zeugnis des Geistes''. Gabe zum Benedictus=Jubiläum, 547–1947, Beiheft zum XXIII. Jg. der Benediktinischen Monatsschrift, Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag, S. 112–138.
*
*
*

Italian

* Gerhard Muhm, La tattica tedesca nella campagna d'Italia, in Linea gotica avamposto dei Balcani, a cura di Amedeo Montemaggi – Edizioni Civitas, Roma 1993

Dal Volturno a Cassino
Le vicende, i luoghi e gli uomini che hanno segnato gli otto mesi più sanguinosi della Campagna d'Italia.

Polish

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Belarusian

*
*

External links

* SMU'
Frank J. Davis World War II Photographs
contai
28 photographs taken just after the Italian battle of Cassino

Illustrated article on the Battle of Monte Cassino at Battlefields Europe



Winter Line Stories
' Original stories from the front lines of the Italian Campaign by US Army Liaison Officer Major Ralph R. Hotchkiss''


The Polish II Corps' battle for the monastery

Oral history interview with Joseph J. Menditto, an infantryman in the Battle of Monte Cassino
from the Veterans History Project at Central Connecticut State University

Dal Volturno a Cassino
a website that has as its main purpose to collect and disseminate information on both, notably to the battle of Cassino is to all those events less known, but it must be related, temporally preceding and the following.
*
*
*
*
*
* A documentary about the battle of Monte Cassino �
"Cassino: 9 months of hell"
is available for free at YouDoc

{{Authority control