Until recently, my understanding of the battle for Italy from 1943-44 was straightforward: After landing in Sicily, U.S. and British forces hopped across to Salerno, then Anzio, working their way up the boot until they reached Rome. I hadn’t given much thought about the terrain, the logistics of a multinational force that included New Zealanders, Poles, Moroccans, and Indians, not to mention the miserable weather and the strategic errors that cost countless lives. This lack of appreciation was a concern even at the time. In a letter to his family, Lawrence Franklyn-Vaile of the 38th Irish Brigade wrote in part, “There is also a strong feeling that the Second Front is being so glamourised that, when it does commence, people will forget all about this campaign and will be saying afterwards, ‘What, were you not in the Second Front, oh Italy, that was nothing.’”
It was not nothing, and historian James Holland has not forgotten it. In Cassino ’44: The Brutal Battle for Rome, Holland reminds us of the treacherous terrain that slowed the Allied advance to a snail’s pace. The French Expeditionary Corps, for instance, “had to drop down into the mountain valley of the Lago then climb up on to the end of the Cifalco massif, before dropping down again into the valley floor of the Secco, cross over to the other side and climb up nearly 3,000 feet again to reach Monte Belvedere and the summit behind it, Monte Abate.” All while facing enemy fire.
The Allies hoped the Germans would pull back to a defensive position north of Rome—they were mistaken. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring believed every inch of Italy should be contested (Hitler agreed, deeming Kesselring a better fit for the task than his rival, Erwin Rommel). The end result was a protracted campaign that began in September 1943 and did not end until May 1945 at a cost of more than 60,000 Allied lives.
Was it all worth the objective? And what exactly was that objective? Winston Churchill prized the liberation of Rome and all the Eternal City symbolized. Capture of the Foggia airfields would also expand the list of bombing targets to include armament factories in southern Germany and Austria, plus Vienna. But there was a larger strategic value to the campaign. As Holland explains, for British field marshal Harold Alexander, commander of Allied forces in Italy, the objective was “to destroy as many of their forces as possible so that, unless rapidly reinforced, they would be completely routed. This, he made clear, was how to most effectively help OVERLORD, and the best place to draw off enemy troops from France was here, in Italy. Gaining ground was no longer to be the prime objective; instead, it was destroying the Germans.” This they did—it is estimated that anywhere between 330,000 and 434,000 German soldiers died in the theater.
Many of these German casualties (there are no precise figures) were members of the vaunted Fallschirmjäger, though not because they were parachuting into war zones. With so many Luftwaffe transports destroyed, these paratroopers were repurposed as ground forces, albeit well trained. But as the campaign wore on, reinforcements were notably both younger and older—and vastly less experienced than the men they replaced. As for the Italians, their participation ended in the summer of 1943 following the government’s defection. There was no love lost: “As might be expected from a nation of southern temperament,” Kesselring writes in his memoirs, “the Italian armed forces were trained more for display than for action.”
As with Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Day of Battle, Cassino ’44 covers the biggest blunders of the war: the U.S. Army’s failed initial attempt to cross the Rapido River (1,330 Americans killed), the encirclement of the Rangers at Cisterna (“just 6 out of 767 made it back; 122 had been killed and 639 taken prisoner”), and one of the most controversial decisions the Allies would make—the bombing of the abbey at Monte Cassino. The Germans were not, in fact, using the 6th century monastery as an observation post, though, as Holland notes, “there were plenty around it and on the hill on which it was perched.”
Whereas Atkinson spends more time on the Ardeatine massacre, in which the Germans murdered 335 innocent men and boys as a reprisal for a partisan attack on SS troops, Holland provides more horrific details about the civilian rapes committed by the Goumieres, Moroccan units attached to the French Army. “In Lenola, a village north of Fondi,” Holland writes, “fifty women were raped and children and old men also violated.”
Cassino ’44 is most distinct in its assessment of General Mark Clark. As commander of the U.S. Fifth Army, Clark has been blamed for the Rapido River disaster among other military setbacks, “something I have always found utterly mystifying,” says Holland. Following the war, Congress investigated the operation and, although it absolved the general of blame, the inquiry was a stain on his legacy. “An alternative view, and one that I hope I’ve demonstrated, is that it was up to the army commander to provide the means, which [Clark] most certainly did, and the responsibility of the divisional commander to use those assets in the best possible way.” The divisional commander was Fred Walker, who in a postwar letter Clark referred to as “the snake in the grass” pushing for the congressional investigation. Holland is unequivocal in blaming Walker: “There was no doubt he’d been dealt a cruel hand, but there was no reason it should have been the tragic fiasco it was. … That battalion and company commanders had no knowledge of the artillery fire plan that was supporting them was unforgiveable.”
Another controversy stems from Clark’s decision to break from General Alexander’s plan of attack during Operation DIADEM, veering instead toward Rome—the assumption being that Clark wanted to beat out the British in liberating the capital. “His decision to split his force and turn up into the Colli Albani was both arguable and entirely reasonable now that the situation on the ground had changed,” writes Holland. “In any case, his troops were still driving towards Valmontone—but now only a proportion rather than all of them.” In The Day of Battle, Atkinson quotes Army sergeant Bill Mauldin, who perhaps put it best: “[Clark] had his limitations. But I think a lot of the criticism of him occurred because he was associated with a bad time.”
That’s putting it lightly. Holland excels at the personal level, sharing horrific anecdotes from the men who endured this ordeal.
Bechard was horrified by the number of dead GIs littering the slopes. Stumbling over three men killed by shell blast, he saw the skin on their faces had been burnt and rolled back with no eyelids or hair. “Awful sight to see,” he noted. He then came across a dead German whose head had been crushed within his helmet. Bechard was so repulsed he almost passed out. … Bechard then saw a 6th Infantry corporal hit by a bullet. As the man went down, clutching his guts, he shouted, “Son of a bitch,” only to fall on his knees and trigger a Schü-mine, which finished him off. “Scenes like these,” noted Bechard, “one never forgets.”
After a grueling eight months, the U.S. Fifth and British Eighth armies pushed the Germans back from one defensive position to the next, from the Winter Line to the Gustav Line to the Caesar Line and beyond. (Comically, as the Allies advanced toward the Hitler Line, it was renamed the Senger Line after a Panzerkorps commander, sparing the Führer embarrassment.)
U.S. forces finally entered Rome on June 5, 1944, prompting General Clark to say, “How do you like that? They didn’t even let us have the newspaper headlines for the fall of Rome for one day.” Their moment to bask in glory was brief, but their mission is not forgotten.
Cassino ’44: The Brutal Battle for Rome
by James Holland
Atlantic Monthly Press, 612 pp., $35
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