David Colvin & Richard Hodges. History Today. Volume 44, Issue 2, February 1994.
The Allies bombed the monastery at Monte Cassino in Feb 1944, because they erroneously thought that the German army had put the mountain facility to military use. In fact, no German troops were stationed there, and the destruction of priceless art objects was purposeless.
February 15th, 1944. The feast day of the Saints Faustinus and Giovita of Brescia. At 5.45am the 96th Bombardment Group based at Foggia were delivered the following brief in an underground cave:
The target is a huge ancient monastery which the Germans have chosen as a key defence and have loaded with heavy guns… Those crew members who have served through the African campaign will remember how we did not bomb mosques because of the religious and humanitarian training all of us have received… Because of that and because the Krauts and the Eyeties know this they lived in these mosques. They knew we would not bomb these places. The Germans are still capitalising on this belief… In the past few days this monastery has accounted for the lives of upwards of 2,000 American boys who felt the same as we do about church property and who paid for it because the Germans do not understand anything human when total war is concerned. This Monastery MUST be destroyed and everyone in it as there is no one in it but Germans! The monastery was Monte Cassino, birthplace of the Benedictine Order.
In the monastery, a little before 5 am, the abbot’s secretary, Don Martino Matronola, recorded in his diary that a German officer (Lieutenant Deiber) and a soldier arrived for an interview with Abbot Gregorio Diamare. The eighty-year-old abbot had been alarmed by Allied leaflets dropped the previous afternoon warning that ‘we must reluctantly train our arms on the monastery itself:
The officer replied that the leaflets were to intimidate and for propaganda purposes: he could not permit anyone to pass through the line, and if the population (taking refuge in the monastery) chanced to flee, about a third of hem, judging from previous experience, would perish on the road.
After the interview, the officer asked Don Martino if he might see the church. ‘It was not possible to see anything for the darkness, so with great care I lit a lamp briefly and immediately afterwards we left’. This German was the last foreigner to see Monte Cassino’s great shrine. Shortly before 9.45 am the B-17s of the 96th Bombardment Group arrived overhead.
The destruction of the monastery, more than any other episode from the Italian campaign of 1943-45, remains a matter of intense dispute. Monte Cassino was founded by St Benedict in 529. Here he wrote his Rule, destined to become a practical blueprint for Western monasticism. In 577 the monastery suffered the first of its four destructions when it was sacked by Lombards. In 717 it was restored, and during the ninth century played a leading part in the Carolingian Renaissance. Its riches, though, attracted the Saracens in 883 who once again sacked it. Its golden age was under Abbot Desiderius during the eleventh century. He amassed for it a great territory and a famous library. Two centuries later in 1349 it was destroyed by an earthquake. It suffered again under Napoleon’s armies, but outlived the new Italian state’s policy to suppress the monasteries in 1866. Its most fearful hours arrived on February 15th, 1944, when it became a household name throughout the world.
The Italian campaign was designed, in Winston Churchill’s words, as an assault on the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Axis. Following Allied landings in Sicily and Salerno, Monte Cassino was chosen by Field Marshal Kesselring, commanding the German armies in Italy, as the pivotal point in the elaborate defensive system known as the Gustav Line which ran across the waistline of the peninsular from the Adriatic to the Gulf of Gaeta on the Tyrrhenian Sea. General Mark Clark, Commander of the 5th Army, recorded bitterly in his autobiography that ‘a whole book could be devoted to the vast job the German Todt Organization had done in converting the mountains behind the enemy’s river defenceline into a bastion of reinforced steel and concrete…’. A neutral zone 300 yards wide was declared around the abbey. However, as we shall see, no one should be deceived by Field Marshal Kesselring’s specious remark that ‘the abbey was not included in the combat area. In fact, guards were posted to block the approach’.
The German defenders were evidently aware of the peril in which its position in the Gustav Line placed the building. On October 14th, 1943, Don Martino Matronola recorded in his diary the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel Schlegel who, on behalf of the Supreme German Military Command, offered the means to save all the monastery’s treasures because soon it would be ‘sulla linea del fuoco’ (in the line of fire). He also invited the monks to leave. That afternoon the community of monks met to discuss the matter. It was a ‘riunione agitatissima’.
No one wanted to be convinced of the gravity of their situation. Nevertheless, within two days, removal of the archive and library began, lasting until November 3rd. Accompanying the lorries loaded with Cassinese treasures destined for the Vatican’s care were most of the eighty monks; just five monks and six priests remained with the abbot to care for the building.
Below the monastery, the old Roman town of Casinum (population in 1944: 25,000) was the gateway to the Liri Valley and to Rome, 140 kms to the north. No large mechanised force could move up the valley except along Route 6, the old Via Casilina, which passed directly beneath the hill crowned by the monastery. ‘So sudden, so theatrical is the appearance of this mountain barrier three miles away across the valley, that one has the impression that it reaches out to the road for the sole purpose of menacing it’ wrote Fred Majdalany in his memorable portrait of the battle. But to capture or turn ‘Monastery Hill’ necessitated a considerable feat of arms. An outflanking movement to the north encountered deep ravines, rocky escarpments and knife-edges, limiting movements to anything except small parties of infantry. A wider turning movement was even more difficult, having to cross Monte Cairo, a precipitous peak now deep in snow. A direct attack from the south involved crossing the flooded and heavily mined Rapido River, beneath the eyes and enfilading artillery fire of the defenders in their emplacements immediately behind or west of Cassino and also from the foothills of mountains to the south of the Liri Valley.
General Sir Harold Alexander commanded the Italian theatre. Under him was General Mark Clark, commander of the newly-formed American 5th Army, and General Oliver Leese, Montgomery’s successor as commander of the British 8th Army, now bogged down on the Adriatic front. The Fifth Army was a coalition comprising: American, British, French, Algerian, Moroccan, Indian, Polish and New Zealand soldiers. Facing the Fifth Army was General von Senger und Etterlin’s 14th Panzer Corps, including part of the 1st Parachute Division. The first battle of Cassino was fought mainly by the 2nd US Corps between January 20th, and February 12th. The assault was launched hastily in appalling weather to facilitate the Anzio landings scheduled for January 22nd. On January 24th, Hitler ordered that:
The Gustav Line must be held at all costs for the sake of the political consequences which would follow a completely successful defence. The Fuehrer expects the bitterest struggle for every yard.
But far from weakening the Cassino front to meet the threat at Anzio, Kesselring reacted with remarkable speed, mobilising reinforcements that bottled up both Allied assaults. Hitler’s ‘bitterest struggle’ was the proximate cause of the bombing of the abbey: Clark’s armies suffered 14,375 casualties, more than at El Alamein, and the Germans 6,444 in the first battle of Cassino. These figures, including the virtual annihilation of two Brigade groups of the US 36th (Texas) Division attempting to force the Rapido River and the decimation of the tenacious US 34th Division as it pressed forward along Snakeshead Ridge towards the monastery, set the scene for a fateful Allied staff meeting on February 12th.
The Germans had assured the Vatican that their troops would not occupy the abbey. Don Martino’s diary records that the German Army respected this undertaking. Nevertheless, shells fired by both sides landed on the abbey. Like the Germans, the British and American governments had given an assurance that the abbey’s safety would be provided for. Even so, General Eisenhower wrote on December 29th: ‘if we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men’s lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go’. The building in question was very much in the minds of the 2nd New Zealand and the 4th Indian Divisions, drafted from the Adriatic front to replace the spent 34th and 36th Divisions. To them would fall the task of spearheading the attack known as the second battle of Cassino.
Presiding over this fresh attempt was Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg VC – ‘a difficult old cuss at times but we’d do anything for him’, as one of his officers put it. Under him was the exceptional commander of the Indian Division, Major-General Francis (‘Gertie’) Tuker, like Freyberg a veteran of North Africa. Tuker was a meticulous planner, familiar from the Eritrean campaign with mountain warfare. Freyberg’s First World War direct style and method worried him. His instincts, like those of the French General Juin, were to ‘turn’ Monte Cassino by a wide outflanking movement, followed by an assault river crossing south of Cassino town to establish a strong bridgehead along Route 6. However, if frontal attack it was to be, reasoned Tuker, it must be accompanied by an overwhelming concentration of fire power. He despatched a subaltern to Naples to find a book on the celebrated monastery so that he could judge what he was up against.
On February 11th, the Americans made their last and abortive assault on Monastery Hill. The following day they were relieved. That day, February 12th, ailing and in some discomfort Tuker travelled to the front to meet Freyberg. He showed the New Zealander ‘a book, dated 1879, which gives certain details of the construction of the Monte Cassino monastery’. These details revealed what a formidable building the abbey was, with walls about 150 ft high, of solid masonry and at least 10 ft thick at the base. He added that whether it was occupied by Germans or not, it would be occupied as a keep in extremis and it was therefore essential that it be destroyed. Tuker reiterated his tactical plan but Freyberg was unwavering. ‘I feel sorry for Freyberg (Tuker was to say) but he should never have been put in command of a corps. He had not the tactical understanding…’.
Mark Clark conspicuously glosses over this prologue to the bombing. In his account Tuker plays no part; Freyberg is cast as the blackguard of history. After the meeting, so Clark tells us, Freyberg called the 5th Army’s Chief of Staff, General Gruenther, to say ‘I want the convent attacked’. ‘You mean the monastery’ Gruenther allegedly replied. Freyberg continued, ‘The Divisional Commander making the attack feels that it is an essential target, and I thoroughly agree with him’. Gruenther consulted Clark who seems to have prevaricated, although apparently convinced that destroying the abbey would not only hand the Germans a propaganda victory but hinder the military task. Next, he contacted General Alexander’s Chief of Staff. Alexander supported Freyberg. Clark repeated his misgivings, but since he was at Anzio he was unable to make direct contact with Alexander until the following day. Clark maintains that he knew that there were civilians in the monastery but no Germans who, moreover, were making no military use of the building. He bowed, so he says, to the diplomatic prerequisites inherent in commanding a coalition army.
According to Herbert Bloch, the ancient historian who published an appraisal of the bombardment in Benedictina, the ‘British officers wanted to show their American counterparts how to conduct a war properly’. The reality was far more dramatic. Between February 4th and 14th, the planning for the second assault at Cassino was transacted against a deteriorating situation at Anzio where another Dunkirk seemed a real possibility. Tension bred its own rhythm of events. Freyberg drew his own conclusions from Tuker’s researches and grafted them on to the pre-existing tactics. The German parachute commander, Major Rudolf B6hmler, in his account of the battle admits that saturation bombing ahead of a flanking movement might well have cost them the hill. As it was, the attack was not well co-ordinated and Bohmler’s men had time to occupy the rubble of the monastery. The assault was repulsed.
Perhaps the most vivid description of the bombing was by the war correspondent, Christopher Buckley. The planes… flew in perfect formation with that arrogant dignity which distinguishes bomber aircraft… As they passed over the crest of Monastery Hill small jets of flame and spatters of black earth leaped into the air from the summit. Just before two o’clock… a formation of Mitchells passed over. A moment later a bright flame, such as a giant might have produced by striking titanic matches on the mountain-side, spurted swiftly upwards… For nearly five minutes it hung around the building, thinning gradually upwards into strange, evil-looking arabesque such as Aubrey BeardsIcy at his most decadent which is also his most attractive, might have designed as a decoration for the Yellow Book. Then the column paled and melted. The Abbey became visible again. Its whole outline had changed. The west wall had totally collapsed, and the whole side of the building along a length of about a hundred yards had simply caved in. It lay open to the attacker.
The morning bombardment comprised 257 tons of 500lb bombs and 59 tons of 100lb incendiaries; the afternoon formation dropped 283 bombs, each weighing 1000 lbs. All observers agree that it was a remarkable feat of precision bombing.
Don Martino’s diary records the ferocity of this action. He spent the day with the abbot. The other four monks were in an adjacent room. The deaf mute Giuseppe Cianci believed that he might be saved in the church. This was razed in the first bombardment. At 11.15am, during a lull in the bombing, the abbot asked to inspect the damage. They encountered refugees fleeing in terror, venturing onto the open ground in front of the monastery only to fall victim to artillery fire. While they were inspecting the Bramante cloister, three families emerged from beneath to beg the abbot to let them enter his refuge. At 1 o’clock the bombing began again. Once more the monks descended into the vaults to find safety. Not until evening did Don Martino venture out, when he discovered that the four monks were blocked in. Seeing a light, together they made a hole through which the brothers escaped. Later they gathered at the Cappella della Pieta; it was there that Lieutenant Deiber found them at 8 o’clock. He brought a message that the Pope had requested Hitler to call a truce from the Americans so the abbot and his party might escape. Deiber asked the abbot to confirm in writing that there were no German troops in the abbey when it was bombed. The weary old abbot immediately signed the declaration on the altar of the Pieta. No pressure was necessary. Don Martino announced the truce to the civilians but no one believed it. After a sleepless night, at dawn on February 16th, many civilians took flight. The cease fire never happened. There were doubts that the request was ever made or intended. Don Martino’s account of that day is coloured by the discovery of three small children, their mother dead, cruelly forsaken by their father. His diary entry ends with the reflection that man is beyond hope. At 7.30 am on February 17th, after waiting thirty-six hours for Lieutenant Deiber to return, the survivors led by the abbot carrying a large wooden crucifix set out across the hilltop. As they descended, Don Martino records ‘a shell exploded only two paces away’ which wounded him in the arm. At 10 o’clock they reached a small house where, with the abbot exhausted, they awaited an ambulance. This arrived at 4.30 pm. That evening, at dinner with General yon Sengerund Etterlin in his villa at Veroli, the German commander revealed that not a single German soldier had perished in the bombardment.
The BBC had already announced the bombing, declaring that the Germans had been occupying the monastery. Not surprisingly, the Germans took the opportunity to square their conscience with posterity. Abbot Diamare was pressed to speak on radio about his experience. In her diary, Iris Origo records the reaction of a friend who heard his broadcast:
Without a single adjective, quietly, in a tired and saddened tone, he told the story as if it had happened a hundred years ago. It was terribly moving and I can hardly imagine what the Benedictines from the monastery now scattered all over the world, must have felt in hearing that quiet, heartfelt account of the end of that source of civilisation—now, after fourteen centuries of religious life, buried for ever. Following this, Ambassador Weizsaecker, at Ribbentrop’s instigation, had him sign a prepared document. Goebbels made much of the bombing:
In the senseless lust of destruction is mirrored the whole fury of the British-US command… It is one of the grotesque manifestations of history that British-US youth risks its life to carry out the Jewish desire to destroy.
So began the war of words which, via countless war memoirs, histories, books, articles and broadcasts has rumbled on ever since.
Half a century later, it is possible to view these events with greater objectivity, notwithstanding the emotions which the subject still evokes. One thing is now indisputably clear: there were no Germans in the abbey when it was destroyed. Winston Churchill himself says so in his memoirs: ‘The Monastery did not contain German troops, but the enemy fortifications were hardly separate from the building itself’. His qualification is important because it casts the bombardment in rather different light. It is, moreover, supported by a remarkable document which only came to light in recent years and was drawn to our attention by the prior, Don Faustino Avagliano, when we visited Monte Cassino in October 1993 to prepare this article.
In the Vatican archives is a note by Monsignor Tardini, dated February 20th, 1944, summarising information that the abbot himself gave the Pope about the position at Monte Cassino prior to the bombing and subsequently. This document is emphatic that ‘within the abbey there were never any German soldiers, machine gun nests, guns or observation posts’. However, it goes on to state that this was by no means the case in the immediate neighbourhood of the abbey. Problems began with defining the so-called neutral zone of 300 metres, not least because the abbey’s elevation meant that a position 300 metres away could still lie almost immediately beneath its walls. Moreover, it states that little by little German military positions crept closer and closer to the building. Two tanks (probably self-propelled guns) moved around next to the abbey, especially at night, and fired at English positions to the north of Monastery Hill. An observation post was established immediately below the abbey which at night flashed signals to direct German artillery fire on to the English positions. Finally, the document states that:
In a cave which extended right underneath the Monastery an ammunition dump was created. The Abbot did not fail to point out the danger which such military installations represented to the Abbey: he received some vague promises but nothing was done about it.
These remarkable revelations, which were clearly unknown to previous authors like Majdalany, largely substantiate the consistent Allied contention, repudiated by General Clark for his own reasons, that the abbey at Monte Cassino formed an integral part of the German defensive system. They also help explain why soldiers involved in earlier attacks on Monastery Hill were convinced that it was occupied by German soldiers. Flashing signals at night must have appeared to be coming from the abbey itself, or at least linked to some communications centre within it. Perhaps if Clark had seen the Vatican document he might have conceded that he had been wrong in insisting that the Germans made no use of the abbey for military purposes.
Now over ninety but with all his faculties, Don Martino Matronola, perhaps the only man still living who experienced and survived the bombing, also bears out the Vatican document. He was in no doubt that the German commanders, and in particular yon Senger, knew full well that incorporating the abbey into the Gustav Line, coupled with Hitler’s order to defend it to the last man, inevitably sealed its fate. He adds, however, that von Senger himself was somewhat surprised at the crude manner of its destruction and associated propaganda. Sitting in the abbey library surrounded by the books saved by Colonel Schlegel, Don Matronola revealed other interesting information. He said that the monks had expected Cassino to fall under the first assault and had even prepared white flags to facilitate their own surrender. He remembers one or more German armoured vehicles near the abbey strategically placed to fire at Allied positions near Point 593.
That the Allies should eventually come from the north was no surprise. The entrance to the Liri Valley was impassable because of flooding and mines. Some disobedient monks had crept out of the abbey and watched the battle on the plain below. They had attracted shell fire when spotted. The Germans had been very correct. Apart from saving the library and other treasures, they severely disciplined their own men who broke the rules, for example for stealing food from the locals.
Even today, Don Martino plainly finds it hard to understand why the bombing occurred when there were no German troops inside the building and so much had been done to persuade the Allies of this. For example, he recalls how the movement of civilians into and out of the abbey had been controlled in case Allied spotter aircraft wrongly took them for German troops. The bombing was a tragic mistake, the more disillusioning because a higher standard of conduct was expected of the democratic armies. In Don Martino’s own mind the real reason is that General Freyberg insisted on it for psychological reasons, to boost the flagging morale of his troops and put heart into them before the attack. In short he shares the Majdalany thesis.
Asked for his opinion on the whole affair, fifty years on, Don Matronola recalls the words of Abbot Diamare on reaching Rome after fleeing the destruction: ‘If Providence permitted the bombing of Monte Cassino, in his plans it must be a blessing’. Good may indeed have resulted. On March 6th, 1944, Missie Vassiltchikov wrote in her Berlin diary: ‘Photographs of the battle of Monte Cassino are piling up. The destruction of that beautiful monastery is horrifying. What will happen to Florence, Venice, Rome? Will any of them survive? How strange: we never imagined that this war would be as bloody and destructive as it is now becoming …. In fact, it seems that greater care was subsequently taken by both sides to avoid the wanton destruction of Italy’s priceless cultural heritage. Rome was declared an open city and not bombed. The Germans spared the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Venice was spared completely. Perhaps it was also no coincidence that on February 17th, 1944, just two days after the bombardment, General Alexander sent a personal letter to the commanders of all formations and units entitled ‘Property of Historical and Educational Importance in Italy- Preservation of. This letter was subsequently amplified in ADM Instruction No 10, issued on March 30th, 1944, which set out detailed instructions on ways of minimising the risk of damage to such property. Ironically, the list of protected buildings for Lazio includes the abbey at Monte Cassino (Vatican property) and environs, with no indication that the building, at that moment, was a smoking ruin.
The drama of Monte Cassino, a tragedy of epic proportions, was defined by one Italian journalist ‘as a monument of such ineptitude to shock even the sheep in the mountains of the Abruzzi’ (Tempo, June 13th, 1950). Yet, as the visitor to Monte Cassino can now see for himself, fourteen centuries of religious life were by no means buried for ever. Restored to its former splendour, the abbey once again dominates the entrance to the Liri Valley and stands guard over the road to Rome.