World War II Day by Day

Cassino, Italy • February 15, 1944

On this date in 1944 British Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, the highly decorated com­mander in chief of all Allied forces in the Medi­ter­ranean The­ater, ordered the aerial bombing of the his­toric Bene­dic­tine abbey towering majes­tically over the town of Cas­sino on the banks of the Rapido (Gari) River in Italy. Earlier in Janu­ary British, Ameri­can, and French troops had made a series of attacks on the main German defenses in main­land Italy, the Gustav Line—this around the town of Cas­sino (red line on map below), approx­i­mately 20 miles/­32 km inland from Italy’s west coast. Some­times called the First Battle of Cas­sino, these attacks pro­duced only limited gains, which “dis­heartened” the tens of thou­sands of sick and battle-weary sol­diers who had fought, suffered, and lost 11,000 of their own the pre­vious month in the sha­dow of the fortress-like abbey. The costly loss of 11,000 men to count­less German mines and booby traps, well dug-in tanks and trenches dug by con­scripted labor, and with­ering near pin­point accu­rate artil­lery and mortar fire didn’t include the 16,000 casual­ties in the 14 night­mare weeks and 50 miles/­80 km that Alex­ander’s war­riors required to arrive at Cassino town from Naples in the first place!

The bombing of the iconic abbey, which Alexander and his men wrongly claimed was being used by the Germans as an obser­va­tion post from which to direct deadly artil­lery fire below (the Germans vocif­er­ously con­tested the claim), was part of a broader effort by sol­diers from ten Allied nations and ter­ri­tories to break through the German lines and open one of only two unin­ter­rupted roads con­necting South­ern Italy, in Allied hands, and German-held Rome, Italy’s capital. Monte Cas­sino’s des­truc­tion, Alexan­der admitted later, was “neces­sary more for the effect it would have on the morale of the attackers than for purely material reasons.” Indeed, as news of the pending air raid on the abbey circu­lated, it occa­sioned a “holi­day atmo­sphere” as sol­diers, generals, and news reporters scrambled for posi­tions from which to watch what was to come. A group of doctors and nurses from a mili­tary hos­pi­tal in Naples brought a picnic of K‑rations and settled them­selves on nearby Monte Trocchio to enjoy the show, which ran four hours and included artil­lery shelling, all of which pro­duced flames and columns of smoke that blotted out the sun.

Surprisingly, a day and a half passed before the ini­tial air strike by 229 heavy and medium bombers, dropping 1,150 tons of high explo­sives and in­cen­di­ary bombs on the ancient monas­tery, leaving it smoking rubble, was followed up by a renewed (and failed) ground attack by a single com­pany. By then the Germans had plenty of time to scramble from their obser­va­tion and defen­sive posi­tions 200 yards/­183 m from the craggy hill­top and con­vert the ruins and the thick-walled found­a­tions of the seven-acre abbey into an even more im­preg­nable strong­hold from which they could direct mur­der­ous artillery fire against anyone sent against them.

More air and ground assaults would take place before the Allies, after suf­fering approx­i­mately 55,000 casual­ties (the Germans incurred at least 20,000 casu­al­ties, civilians a tenth of that), were able to raise their flag—an im­pro­vised Polish regi­mental flag—over the rubble of the abbey on May 18, 1944, as well as over 30 wounded soldiers left by their com­rades as the Ger­mans abandoned the western half of the Gustav Line for new defensive positions along the Adolf Hitler Line (green line on map). Monte Cas­sino’s cap­ture proved to be the breaking point of German defenses along the Gustav Line as well as the momen­tum behind the lib­er­a­tion of all but the remaining third of German-occupied Italy. How­ever, the utter deci­ma­tion of a reli­gious and cul­turally signif­i­cant icon over a four-month period forever remains a highly controversial wartime decision.

The Historic Hilltop Abbey of Monte Cassino, Founded in AD 529 by St. Benedict of Nursia

Above: This map depicts the extensive series of forti­fied defen­sive lines from the Tyr­rhe­nian Sea in the south­west to the Adri­a­tic Sea in the north­east that stretched across the Ital­ian penin­sula south of Rome, 1943–1944. Care­fully pre­pared and posi­tioned, the lines marked the fron­tier between German-occupied Italy to the north and Allied-occupied Italy to the south. The pri­mary line, cen­tered on the town of Cas­sino, was the Gustav Line (red line on map). The line leveraged the heights of the Apen­nine Moun­tains, afforded its defenders natural strong­holds and ample over­lapping fields of fire, and restricted north-south vehic­u­lar traffic to sev­er­al valleys. Perched on Mon­as­tery Hill above the small western Ital­ian town of Cas­sino was the medi­eval Bene­dic­tine abbey of Monte Cas­sino, today usually spelled as one word, Monte­cas­sino. Together the hill and abbey domi­nated the en­trance to the Liri River Valley, one of two west­ern approaches to Rome roughly 90 miles/­145 km due north. Adolf Hitler had ordered the Gustav Line defended “in a spirit of holy hatred not only against the enemy, but against all officers and units who fail in this decisive hour.”

Left: Ruins of the town of Cassino after the hellish four-month battle. In the back­ground are the ruins of the four-stories-tall Abbey of Monte Cassino. The abbey lay just over 1 mile/­1.6 km to the west of the town at an ele­va­tion of 1,700 ft/­518 m and had a com­manding view of the Liri and Rapido valleys, Allied gate­ways to German-held Rome. The four battles to take the town and iconic abbey cost the lives of more than 14,000 men from a dozen nations. Total Allied casual­ties span­ning the period of the four Cas­sino battles and the Anzio cam­paign with the sub­se­quent cap­ture of Rome on June 5, 1944, were over 105,000. Although the Allies’ drive to Rome was exces­sively bloody and all-consuming, the Ita­lian capital, para­dox­i­cally, was an open city of no strategic value.

Right: A Polish bugler proudly plays the traditional five-note Polish an­them, the Hejnał Mariacki (also called the Kraków Anthem), at the foot of Monte Cas­sino Abbey, an­nouncing the Allied vic­tory on May 18, 1944. Ele­ments of the battered Polish II Corps were the first among the Allied units to reach Monte Cassino’s summit.

Left: Abbey of Monte Cassino in ruins, February 1944, following Oper­a­tion Avenger, the first of two aerial bom­bard­ments of the hill­top mon­as­tery. (A second bombing occurred on March 15.) St. Bene­dict of Nursia estab­lished his first mon­as­tery, the source of the Bene­dic­tine Order, here around AD 529 and over time it become a repos­i­tory of valu­able art works and a world-renowned library. The con­tro­versial and tragic des­truc­tion of the abbey, fortun­ately empty of its mov­able art and library collections, and the death of as many as 250 Ital­ian civil­ian refugees who had sought sanc­tu­ary within its walls were an imme­di­ate pro­pa­ganda coup for the Nazis. Minister of Public Enlighten­ment and Pro­pa­ganda Joseph Goebbels played up the Allies’ “sense­less lust of destruc­tion” and deaths for all their worth. A spokes­person for Pope Pius XII branded the bombing “a colos­sal blunder . . . a piece of a gross stupidity.” Within time the U.S. Army reached the same con­clu­sion: the bombing had “gained nothing beyond destruction, indignation, sorrow and regret.”

Right: The restored Abbey of Monte Cassino balances atop Monas­tery Hill, a rocky out­crop some 90 miles/­145 km south­east of Rome. Recon­struc­tion of the abbey began in 1950, and in 1964 the new struc­ture was recon­se­crated by Pope Paul VI. Monte Cassino is still one of the most famous monasteries in Christendom.

The Allies’ Gethsemane: The Hellish Battle for Monte Cassino, Italy, January–May 1944