Monte Cassino: The Hardest-Fought Battle of World War II
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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. --Jay Freeman Copyright 2004 Booklist

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. (On sale June 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In winter 1944, Allied forces in Italy launched an offensive campaign against the Gustav Line. The strongest point in this chain of German fortifications was a promontory that hovered 1700 feet above the main road to Rome and was crowned by a Benedictine abbey. This was Monte Cassino. Here four bloody battles were fought involving American, British, New Zealand, French, and Polish troops against the tenacious troops of the German Tenth Army. Some of the bloodiest combat of World War II took place in this unmerciful terrain during one of the worst winters in Italian history. British writer Parker (Battle of Britain) captures the horrific nature of the combat. Like most historians of these battles, he is very critical of Allied leadership for deciding to strike at the strongest point in the German defenses. His sympathies are with the grunts from both sides, and through the use of diaries, memoirs, and oral accounts from participants he evokes the incredible ordeal of the Cassino battles and largely vindicates the title of his book. An outstanding example of military history, Parker's study is of the same caliber as John Ellis's masterpiece, Cassino: The Hollow Victory, and should be in every World War II collection. Jim Doyle, Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A careful reconstruction of the Allied campaign, throughout the winter of 1943-44, to break the Nazi hold on southern Italy. Veterans of Okinawa and Stalingrad may not endorse the subtitle, but the campaign to take the hilltop fortress of Monte Cassino was supremely bloody; as the British comedian Spike Milligan wrote to his parents from the battlefront, "I'm writing this in a hole in the ground, it's convenient, because if you get killed, they just fill the hole in." British editor and writer Parker (The Battle of Britain, not reviewed) writes that the mile-high summit of Cassino commanded the only readily negotiable route to Rome, and invaders would have to pass within range of the German guns that crowned the Cassino Massif. Ideal ground for those who possessed it--as Parker notes, it was "considered one of the finest defensive positions in Europe"--Cassino also boasted a vast sixth-century monastery whose walls were 20 feet thick at the base. The Allies enjoyed tremendous material superiority; one German paratroop officer remembers seeing "an unbroken stream of Allied tanks and vehicles . . . flowing westward" across the Liri River valley and wondering how anyone could stand up to such odds. But for all the cannons and planes the Allies commanded, uprooting thousands of crack German troops from Cassino had to be accomplished one by one, hand to hand--since, as Parker notes, the Allied air assaults that destroyed the monastery "had merely created ruins in which the defender had the advantage." The Allied ground attack was accomplished by a truly international force, with equal-opportunity slaughter; among Parker's finest moments is his account of ill-fated Indian and Maori units chewed up by German machine-gun and mortar fire. The battle, Parker concludes, was disorganized, politicized, and needlessly bloody; had Gen. Mark Clark blocked the earlier German evacuation of Sicily, he suggests, there would have been no crack paratroops to defend Cassino at the start. An accomplished study of a battle that figures in all the standard WWII textbooks but is rarely given much more than a mention. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.

In winter 1944, Allied forces in Italy launched an offensive campaign against the Gustav Line. The strongest point in this chain of German fortifications was a promontory that hovered 1700 feet above the main road to Rome and was crowned by a Benedictine abbey. This was Monte Cassino. Here four bloody battles were fought involving American, British, New Zealand, French, and Polish troops against the tenacious troops of the German Tenth Army. Some of the bloodiest combat of World War II took place in this unmerciful terrain during one of the worst winters in Italian history. British writer Parker (Battle of Britain) captures the horrific nature of the combat. Like most historians of these battles, he is very critical of Allied leadership for deciding to strike at the strongest point in the German defenses. His sympathies are with the grunts from both sides, and through the use of diaries, memoirs, and oral accounts from participants he evokes the incredible ordeal of the Cassino battles and largely vindicates the title of his book. An outstanding example of military history, Parker's study is of the same caliber as John Ellis's masterpiece, Cassino: The Hollow Victory, and should be in every World War II collection. Jim Doyle, Sara Hightower Regional Lib., Rome, GA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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. (On sale June 1) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.