The Battle of Monte Cassino was a World War II battle fought between the Allied forces, under the command of US General Mark Clark, and German troops deployed on top of Monte Cassino hill, Italy, from January 17 to May 18, 1944.
On September 3, 1943, US 5th Army and British 8th Army had landed in Italy, at Salerno, with little opposition. Then they swerved north and headed for Rome. Nevertheless, the Allied advance had ground to halt when they reached the Gustav Line, which was a belt of German fortifications that included Monte Cassino, a 1,600 ft-high hill on top of which there was 6th-century Benedictine abbey. In an attempt to open a breach in the line, the 5th Army, commanded by Mark Clark launched several assaults on the German positions on the hill, in January, February and March of 1944, but they failed to break through. The rugged terrain and outstanding battle-hardened paratroopers of the 1rst Fallschirmjäger Division had enabled the Germans to hold out against far superior Allied forces.
Believing that the German elements were occupying the interior of its building, the Allied B-17 and B-25 bombers bombed the abbey on February 15, 1944, reducing it to ruins. The German paratroopers, who had occupied defensive positions on the periphery of the monastery, fell back and took new defesive positions in the ruble of the destroyed abbey from which they fought tenaciously. In every attempt to capture the torn-down abbey, the Allied forces suffered high number of casualties.
At 23:00 hours of May 11, 1944, the Allied launched the final assault on the ruins, initiating the last phase of the Battle of Monte Cassino. After six days ferocious fighting, in the early morning of May 18 a reconnaissance group of the Polish 12th Podolian Uhlans Regiment found the monastery abandoned and raised an improvised regimental pennant over its ruins. The last 200 German paratroopers, with supply lines threatened by the advance up the Liri valley, had withdrawn the night before to take up new defensive positions on the Hitler Line. The Allies had used 20 divisions (which included French and Polish elements) to storm a position sustained by only a handful of German paratroopers. Although the Allied had won the Battle of Monte Cassino, they suffered almost 100,000 casualties; the Germans 20,000.
German documentary film of the Battle of Monte Cassino
[...] service in 1943 and was fielded in the Italian Campaign, receiving its baptism of fire in the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944. A precise and devastating weapon, it was also used by the British 8th Army in the same [...]