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

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