Battle of Monte Cassino (1944): Breaking the Gustav Line

The Battle of Monte Cassino was a series of four major Allied offensives fought between 17 January and 18 May 1944 against the German Gustav Line in central Italy. The hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino, founded in the sixth century, overlooked the main road to Rome, and its destruction by Allied bombers in February 1944 became one of the most debated episodes of the war. The line was finally broken in May, when Polish troops raised their flag over the ruins.

Background

After the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and landings on the Italian mainland in September, Italy surrendered, but German forces under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring occupied much of the country. Kesselring fought a slow retreat northwards through mountainous terrain that favoured the defender.

By the end of 1943 the Germans had built the Gustav Line across Italy’s narrowest point, from the mouth of the Garigliano River to the Adriatic. Its strongest section was at Cassino, where the town, Monte Cassino and the surrounding peaks commanded the entrance to the Liri valley and Highway 6, the route to Rome. The Allies had already spent the late autumn of 1943 fighting through a series of outer German defences, the Bernhardt or Winter Line, in rain, snow and mud that turned roads into quagmires and left the troops exhausted before the main battle began. On the summit stood the Benedictine abbey founded by Saint Benedict around 529 (see Monte Cassino and the Rule of Saint Benedict).

Before the fighting, German officers of the Hermann Göring Division arranged for many of the abbey’s manuscripts and art treasures to be moved to the Vatican and Rome for safekeeping.

The first battle

The Allied armies in Italy under General Sir Harold Alexander planned to break the line and link up with an amphibious landing at Anzio, behind German lines. The first battle began on 17 January 1944, when the British X Corps crossed the Garigliano. On 20–22 January the US 36th Infantry Division tried to cross the Rapido River below Cassino and was thrown back with heavy losses. The Rapido crossing, made across a fast, flooded river under direct German observation, became one of the most controversial American actions of the war, and after the war veterans of the division prompted a congressional inquiry, which did not censure the commanders. The US 34th Infantry Division then fought its way into the hills north of the town and came close to the abbey before exhausted troops were relieved in mid-February.

The bombing of the abbey and the second battle

The New Zealand Corps under Lieutenant General Sir Bernard Freyberg, including the 2nd New Zealand and 4th Indian Divisions, took over. Freyberg and the Indian division’s commander asked for the abbey to be bombed, convinced it was being used by the Germans or soon would be.

On the morning of 15 February 1944, about 230 American bombers dropped around 1,150 tons of bombs on the monastery, followed by artillery fire. The abbey was reduced to rubble. Monks, including the elderly abbot Gregorio Diamare, survived in the cellars, but Italian civilians who had sheltered inside were killed; estimates vary, with a figure of around 230 often cited. The Germans had not occupied the building itself, but after the bombing paratroopers moved into the ruins, which made excellent defensive positions. Ground attacks by the Indian division over the following nights failed.

Post-war investigations and the official histories accepted that no German troops had been inside the abbey before the raid. The destruction handed Germany a propaganda victory and gave its paratroopers a stronger position than the intact building would have offered, which is why the bombing is widely regarded as a mistake.

The third battle

On 15 March the town of Cassino was heavily bombed and shelled, and New Zealand infantry and tanks attacked it. German paratroopers of the 1st Parachute Division fought from cellars and craters. Rubble blocked tanks, and heavy rain flooded the craters. Gurkhas of the Indian division reached Hangman’s Hill just below the abbey, but by 23 March the attack was called off with much of the town still in German hands.

The fourth battle and the Polish capture

For the final offensive, Operation Diadem, Alexander concentrated much of the British Eighth Army alongside the US Fifth Army on the Cassino front. It opened late on 11 May 1944. A deception plan persuaded Kesselring that another seaborne landing was coming further north, so German reserves were held away from the main front when the assault began. The Polish II Corps under General Władysław Anders attacked the heights north of the abbey, suffering heavy losses in its first assault on 12 May.

The breakthrough came elsewhere. The French Expeditionary Corps under General Alphonse Juin, with many troops from North Africa, crossed the trackless Aurunci Mountains and turned the German flank, while British and Canadian forces pushed up the Liri valley. Threatened with encirclement, the Germans withdrew. On 17 May the Poles attacked again, and on the morning of 18 May a patrol of the 12th Podolian Uhlans raised a Polish pennant over the abbey ruins. Behind the Gustav Line the Germans had prepared a second barrier, the Hitler Line, which was broken by Canadian and Polish attacks in the following week.

The advance was marred by mass crimes against Italian civilians, particularly rapes in villages of southern Lazio, attributed mainly to colonial troops of the French corps; these events are remembered in Italy as the marocchinate.

Key people

• Harold Alexander, commander of the Allied armies in Italy.
• Albert Kesselring, German commander-in-chief in Italy.
• Bernard Freyberg, New Zealand commander who requested the bombing of the abbey.
• Władysław Anders, commander of the Polish II Corps that took the summit.
• Alphonse Juin, French commander whose mountain advance broke the line.

By the numbers

Consequences

The breakthrough allowed Allied forces to link up with the Anzio beachhead and enter Rome on 4 June 1944, two days before the D-Day landings in France. But the German Tenth Army escaped and fell back to new defences further north, so the war in Italy continued until the German surrender there in May 1945.

The battle became notorious for its suffering, with soldiers from many nations fighting in mud, cold and rubble for months. Its multinational character was striking: Americans, Britons, New Zealanders, Indians, Gurkhas, Canadians, Poles, French and North African troops all fought there.

The abbey was rebuilt after the war, largely following its old plans, and was reconsecrated by Pope Paul VI in 1964. The bombing is still debated as a case of cultural destruction in war and an example of a military decision based on mistaken assumptions. Today Commonwealth, Polish, German and Italian cemeteries surround Cassino, and the Polish song “The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino” remains an emblem of Polish remembrance.

Timeline

• 1944, 17 January: The first battle opens with the British crossing of the Garigliano.
• 1944, 20–22 January: The US 36th Division’s attack across the Rapido fails.
• 1944, 15 February: Allied bombers destroy the abbey of Monte Cassino.
• 1944, 15–23 March: The third battle for the town fails.
• 1944, 11 May: Operation Diadem, the fourth battle, begins.
• 1944, 18 May: Polish troops raise their flag over the abbey ruins.
• 1944, 4 June: Allied forces enter Rome.

Why it matters

Monte Cassino was one of the hardest-fought battles of the Second World War in Europe. It opened the road to Rome, but its long cost in lives and the loss of one of Christendom’s oldest monasteries made it a lasting symbol of the price of war.