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Monte Cassino: The Hardest-Fought Battle of World War II - Matthew Parker
Hardcover Published: 2004-06-01 432 pages Amazon Sales Rank: 717245 List Price: $27.50 Lowest New Price: $9.99 (9 available) Lowest Used price: $2.59 (25 available)
Before D-Day there was Monte Cassino, the desperate six-month struggle in the mountains of central Italy that left more than 350,000 men dead or wounded. Hitler had declared that the Allied drive toward Rome must be stopped at all costs, and in the winter of 1943–1944 the German commander Kesselring chose the fortresslike monastery of Monte Cassino as the centerpiece of the Gustav line, one of the most impressive feats of defensive engineering ever conceived. With months to prepare his position, Kesselring took advantage of the treacherous terrain to establish a virtually impregnable position. As the Allied forces, which included Americans, British, Canadians, Indians, South Africans, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, Senegalese, Brazilians, and royalist Italians, pushed their way forward, the coldest, rainiest winter in Italian history rendered air and armor power useless and turned the landscape into a hellish killing ground. Similar Books
How To Write Military History (5) - Monte Cassino was a true "Battle of the Nations". The Orders of Battle at the end of this book list Divisions from the UK, the USA, Poland, New Zealand, India, France - including Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia - and, of course, Germany. All did honour to their respective countries. In particular, never did men fight so well for such a bad cause as the German parachutists did. Parker, a historian of whom I had heard little but of whom I would like to read more, shows exactly how military history should be written. He sketches the strategic outline concisely and then lets the men who fought tell their own stories, without boring us with his own opinions and theories. The result is a vivid account of the follies and horrors of war. The book's subtitle is a mistake - the hardest fought battle of World War Two was almost certainly Stalingrad, where both sides fought without relief - but to try to compare horrific battles is to miss the point: all are horrific. This book certainly destroys any subconscious illusions - based on experience of Italy only as a very pleasant tourist destination - that the Italian Campaign must not have been as unpleasant as some others. The fact is that even the most beautiful country can be turned into a place of torture by total war. Young men read about wars and wish that they could have fought, but reading books like this makes one thank God that one never had to fight. It left me with a profound sense of gratitude to the generation who went to war so that my generation did not. A good read (4) - This is a really good read from the soldiers view point - at times it felt like I was reading a novel - but it was actual wartime accounts. Very well written. Very Good History of this Forgotten Campaign (4) - Matthew Parker's "Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II" is a very good account of the four battles around Cassino, Italy, from January to May 1944. Parker relies heavily on veterans' accounts of the battle in his narrative. Parker's writing is excellent and his account very informative. Although he focuses on the infantryman's view of the battle, Parker effectively explains the plan behind each of the four assaults. He also included a large number of very useful maps (some with an excellent three-dimensional perspective) illustrating the key actions. Parker's approach to the battle is unique. He gives good in-depths looks at the lesser-known armies involved in the campaign: the Poles, French North Africans, Indians, and New Zealanders. He does not only focus on their actions but on their unique backgrounds. And with his perspective on the individual soldier, Parker highlights the psychological casualties in the battles, even describing the continuing suffering of many of the veterans after the war. However, despite these excellent perspectives, Parker does not focus enough on the operational side of the battle, nor does he offer much analysis or commentary on the difficult (and controversial) battles. He rarely discusses the plans and actions of any commanders above the corps level. Surprisingly, Parker's discussion of the bombing of the Monte Cassino abbey - the most famous incident in this battle - does not offer much analysis or comment. Ultimately, though, this is an excellent account of this overlooked battle. Although the book fails to discuss the bigger picture of the fighting in Italy or analyze the actions of the Allied armies in Italy, Parker does an excellent job writing and interesting and informative account of this campaign that would be enjoyed by anyone interested in World War II. "We are the D-Day Dodgers, in sunny Italy..." (4) - On February 15, 1944, American bombers dropped 350 tons of explosives on the ancient Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino. The hulking stone edifice, which had brooded over the north Italian town of Cassino for eight hundred years, was reduced to a smoking ruin. In the wake of this destruction, elite German paratroopers dug deep into the rubble, waiting for the Allied assault. The Allies did attack, unsuccessfully, and not for the first - or the last - time. By mid February 1944, the battle for Italy had concentrated around the town of Cassino and its mountaintop monastery - foundation site of the Benedictine order, seat of an ancient library, priceless artworks and holy relics, and a near-perfect defensive position, the key to the conquest of Rome. The Allies under Sir Harold Alexander and Mark Clark had landed at Salerno in September 1943 and rolled back the German defenders in steady fashion, driving straight up the Route 6 highway towards the Italian capital. Despite Allied bickering over strategy and widespread doubt over the utility of an Italian campaign, key objectives had been achieved: Mussolini had fallen and the Italians had been knocked out of the war, and Hitler had been forced to pull precious divisions from the Eastern Front to bolster the defense of Italy. Further success could gain continental bases for strategic bombers and a jumping-off point for an invasion of southern France. Now, with "United Nations" troops facing off against Kesselring's 10th Army across the Garigliano and Rapido rivers at the base of Monte Cassino, the Allied advance had stalled. In a series of precision rearguard actions, the Germans had gained the time needed to fortify the river valleys and flanking mountain ranges. The first Allied assault on the "Gustav Line" took place on a twenty-mile front against an enemy entrenched in hardened bunkers and hidden machine gun emplacements, behind barbed wire and minefields. In the end it would take four major assaults over a five-month period, and a second major Allied landing behind Cassino at Anzio, to force a German withdrawal and open the road to Rome. Matthew Parker's "Monte Cassino: The Hardest Fought Battle of World War II" relates the series of battles that was the Cassino campaign with a firm commitment to the viewpoint of the individual soldier. His first concern is with how the battle was fought at ground level - in essence, with what it was like to fight at Cassino. As Parker makes clear at the outset, this is not a book primarily about strategy or the decisions of generals. This is just as well, since military science is not Parker's strong suit. His book is perhaps best viewed as a social history of the battle and an exploration of the effects of warfare on the combatants. The particular battles and unit maneuvers are almost occasional. Parker's attention to psychiatric casualties and the psychological effects of the war experience open a too-often neglected avenue of insight into the human cost of war. Not that the reader won't gain a working appreciation of the campaign from this book. The author competently narrates the general thrust of battle and the movements of individual units down to battalion level. A series of decent campaign maps lends further clarity to the narrative. Unfortunately the maps show only Allied unit dispositions - German dispositions are indicated only by lines, without unit annotation. The book includes a comprehensive order of battle which reflects the remarkable diversity of the Allied coalition - North Africans with the French Expeditionary Corps, who fought with ferocious valor in the mountains north of Cassino; ANZAC Maori battalions; Sikh units with the British Army; the Polish 3rd Carpathians, who accepted the final surrender of the monastery; and the Japanese-American 100th Nisei Regiment, which suffered heavy casualties in the street fighting for Cassino town. Parker's real contribution to the history of Cassino is his research with British, American and German veterans. From personal interviews and judicious use of diaries, memoirs and after-action reports, a vivid tableau of suffering unfolds: the freezing winter climate of the Abruzzi, giving the lie to GI anticipations of "sunny Italy"; the constant terror attending soldiers defending mountain positions against an enemy who always holds the high ground; wave attacks across minefields defended by machine gun fire from hidden bunkers. And through it all, the strange overbearing presence of the monastery, "perched dramatically a thousand feet above the town, gleaming white in the sun, immense, ancient, beautiful, brooding, an enigma" (B. Smith, British 4/16th Punjab Battalion, quoted by Parker). The bombing campaigns against German and Japanese civilian centers have overshadowed the Cassino airstrike in the annals of morally questionable acts of the Allies. But the peculiar significance and symbolism of the Cassino monastery somehow sets this episode apart. It was a significance recognized by both sides: when it became clear that the Nazis would make their stand at Cassino, the Pope prevailed upon the German high command not to place troops inside the structure. The degree of German compliance has been questioned, and there is little doubt that the Germans were using the monastery as an observation post. But no German soldiers died in the bombing raid. (On the other hand, some one hundred refugees from the fighting in the surrounding mountains were killed.) Aside from the loss of life, the destruction of a priceless artifact of western civilization is to be much lamented. Of note, prior to the bombing the manuscript library and a number of artworks were removed to the Vatican for safekeeping, on German initiative. In one of the strange twists with which the history of World War II is so rich, the German commander at Cassino, Maj. Gen. von Senger und Etterling, was a devout Catholic who had served as a lay Benedictine in his youth; his troops would defend the ruins to their very deaths. The paratroopers in the monastery held out to the very end. On May 18, 1944, their position outflanked and bypassed, the handful of remaining defenders surrendered to Polish troops. They found that the Germans had set up a field hospital in the monastery's crypt, St. Benedict's holy resting place. Parker relates the impressions of a Polish officer, impressions which epitomize the terrible dark heart of a terrible battle: "What I saw - in the light of two wax candles - was macabre! Near the altar - among the boxes filled with corpses, on golden chasubles - three severely wounded young parachutists were lying. Almost boys..." Monte Cassino's Hell (4) - My father fought in this battle. He would always say that he could not remember or only tell me of the funny stories. After reading this book I can see why he wanted to forget it ever happened. If you are into detailed accounts of WWII battles and want to grasp what warfare was like 60 years ago you must read this book. |