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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly:

In the months before D-Day, the Italian campaign dragged on with huge casualties on both sides. Parker (The Battle of Britain) details, with the aid of hundreds of survivor interviews and war diaries, the Allied siege of the monastery at Monte Cassino, a mountainous fiefdom massively fortified by the German commander, Albert Kesselring. With command and ground-level detail that buffs will savor, Parker goes over what seems like every inch of the multinational force's campaign, which reduced the site (and its countless artifacts) to a ruin.

From Booklist:

The abbey of Monte Cassino sits on the peak of a steep slope overlooking the Liri Valley, which is the most direct approach to Rome from the south. The monastery was a repository of numerous artistic treasures and priceless manuscripts. For five months in 1944, a multinational Allied force pounded away at superbly entrenched German troops in a desperate attempt to force their way through to Rome. Parker's account of this campaign is both disturbing and uplifting. Using interviews with survivors and wartime letters, Parker captures the heroism, horror, and sheer brutality of a battle that rivals Stalingrad for savagery. In the end, the road was cleared and the Germans abandoned Rome, but they reestablished their strong defensive line further north, and they remained ensconced there until the end of the war. An outstanding chronicle illustrating both valor and futility.

From the Inside Flap:

A gripping chronicle of the greatest and most terrible confrontation between Allied forces and the Nazi army, based on groundbreaking archival research and the compelling first-person accounts of four hundred survivors on both sides of the conflict.
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 1943–44 the German commander Kesselring chose the fortress-like 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 POLISH TROOPS, 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.

The Battle of Monte Cassino is a story of the horrors of war seen from the perspective of the soldiers on the battlefield. Through interviews with hundreds of survivors, as well as wartime letters and diaries, Matthew Parker vividly captures the savagery of conflicts fought with grenades, bayonets, and bare hands. His extensive research in the military archives of the participating nations brings to light how incessant disagreements and backbiting at the Allied command level contributed to the carnage and confusion. The destruction of the fourteenth-century monastery itself becomes a powerful symbol of the toll war takes on history and culture. Monte Cassino was one of the most sacred sites in Christendom and the home to valuable religious artifacts, artworks, and manuscripts. In massive Allied bombings, the building and many of its irreplaceable treasures were reduced to rubble.

The first book in twenty years about Monte Cassino, this monumental work of history conveys the human face of war with authoritative power and unforgettable emotional resonance.

About the Author:

MATTHEW PARKER is the author of The Battle of Britain. He is a writer and editor specializing in modern history, and lives in London, England.