The Background to the Battles for Monte Cassino

Smoke from Allied shells covers the town of Cassino, Feb 1944

Generals Juin, Leese and Alexander

Lt-Gen Sir Bernard Freyberg, commander of the Indian and New Zealand Divisions, Jan 1944

The four battles for Monte Cassino in Italy took place between January and May 1944. They saw the Allied Forces involved in some of the most bitter fighting of the Second World War, where steep mountain slopes and winter weather were combined with the German defenders' determination and skill. The battles involved troops from America, Britain, Canada, France, India, New Zealand and Poland in fighting that compared in its intensity and horror with the battles of the Western Front in the First World War.

Hitler was determined to contest every inch of ground and had directed his commander in Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, to construct a defensive line 100 miles south of Rome known as the Gustav Line, which ran across the Apennine mountain chain. It was country that was ideal for defence. The high ground, either side of the Liri Valley through which passed Route 6, the major road from Naples to Rome, barred the Allies' advance northward.

As the picture shows, the heights were dominated by Monastery Hill, as it was known in 1944, on the south-eastern spur of Monte Cairo. Here stood the sixth-century Benedictine Monastery of Monte Cassino, built as a fortress to guard the route to Rome, overlooking the junction of the Liri and Rapido rivers on the plains below. The Rapido (which becomes the Garigliano River further downstream) was as rapid as its name suggests and, although only 30 feet wide, tended to spill over its banks and flood in the winter months. It was a barrier to the Allied advance, as was the small town of Cassino that nestled at the foot of Monastery Hill and linked to the monastery by a narrow road that zigzagged up the precipitous slopes. Across the Liri Valley towards the coast the Aurunci Mountains presented a similar obstacle preventing any easy bypass. Monte Cassino was a bottleneck that had to be forced if Rome was to be reached. It was the linchpin of the German defence and was the responsibility of General Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, who commanded XIV Panzer Corps.

In 1944 the Allied conduct of the Italian Campaign demonstrated all the difficulties and potential failings of coalition warfare. In Italy the two major allies, Britain and the United States, could not agree on the campaign's aim and purpose. Italy was Churchill's 'soft underbelly'. He believed that the Italian Campaign could both tie down German forces and present opportunities to advance through the Alps into Austria and take Vienna before the Russians.

The United States did not want to fight in Italy but reluctantly agreed to British hopes of a rapid advance up the length of the country. They remained worried that it would become an excuse to delay the invasion of North-West Europe. The German defence frustrated hopes for a rapid Allied advance, but it was hoped that the invasion would distract German attention and its forces from France and the Eastern Front. This would then assist in Allied preparations for Operation OVERLORD (the landings in Normandy) and also weaken the Axis forces facing the Soviet Union.

In 1944 General Sir Harold Alexander controlled the Allied Armies in Italy, which consisted of the US Fifth Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Mark W Clark and the British Eighth Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese. Outwardly urbane and calm, General Alexander shared General Eisenhower's ability to weld together the very different personalities of his subordinate commanders. It was a skill that was to be sorely needed during the Cassino battles, where he lacked both resources in equipment and manpower needed to achieve a rapid advance. This was not helped by strong differences of opinion between his subordinate commanders.

The First Battle of Cassino (12 January – 9 February 1944) »