Ep 230 - Monte Cassino, the Battle Begins - January 21, 1944

So they have big rubber boats to cross the, river? Okay, don’t the Germans have machine guns? They do. I see a possible flaw in the plan to cross the river then. So do the men. Then why are they going? Orders. Yeah. That’s how it works. Very soon the Allies will make an amphibious landing in Italy behind the enemy, but before that they must try to advance the front lines so they are in a position to link up with the landing force. Something that stands in their way is Monte, Cassino. This week, the fight there begins. I’m Indy Neidell; this is World War Two. At the very end of last week, the Soviets began attacks up near Leningrad, a huge offensive to try and liberate the region. They were in fact attacking along the whole. Eastern Front, though only really with success in Ukraine and at Mozyr. Air raids against Rabaul and Germany continued, and in Italy a new offensive got going in the west. French attacks that began last week to break. into the mountains behind and above Monte Cassino continue for the first few days of. this week but are unsuccessful. On the 15th, US 2nd Corps takes Monte Trocchio,, the last thing they must take before the Rapido River Valley and Monte Cassino. 5th Army is now at the Gustav Line all along. its front, but cannot rest. They need to attack to draw in enemy reserves. ahead of next week’s Anzio landings. On the 17th, the Battle of Monte Cassino begins as British 10th Corps attacks along the Garigliano River. This is the 5th and 56th Divisions crossing. and the German 94th infantry defending. “The Allied effort here was intended primarily as a diversion, but the British attack was so successful and the bridgehead the troops. established so threatening that Kesselring felt the fate of the German right wing ‘hung. by a slender thread’. Knowing the weakness of the 94th division,, he played what one of his subordinates called his ‘trump card’. Kesselring pulled in his only strategic reserves,, two divisions from the Rome-Anzio area, to clear up the mess.” (Robert Wallace, “The Italian Campaign”). Smiling Albert Kesselring is the German Commander in Italy. So, though 5th Army Commander Mark Clark doesn’t know it, the Allies have achieved one of their three objectives that I talked about last. week, the diversion of reserves from Anzio and Rome. However, further attacks to expand the bridgehead and take the heights of Sant’Ambrogio fail, which means that the US 36th Division attack, across the Rapido will have to go off with zero flank protection, but go off it must. Fred Walker, 36th Commander, has serious doubts, about this attack. He even writes in his diary, “The river. is the principal obstacle of the German main line of resistance. I do not know a single case in military history. where an attempt to cross a river that is incorporated into the main line of resistance has succeeded. So I am prepared for defeat.” The river itself is only like 10-15 meters, wide, which isn’t so much, but it is 3-4 m deep, icy cold, fast running, and with steep, banks more than a meter high. The Germans have also deforested both sides, of it so there’s no cover for anyone attacking. They’ve also turned the American flood plain, side of it into a marsh by messing with the dams upstream. They’ve also mined the area pretty heavily. There are also no roads across said marsh. that can handle trucks so everything must be carried- boats, bridges- everything a few. kilometers. And of course they’ll have to do it at night to avoid being under constant mortar fire. If you’re wondering what the German defenses, are like here, they have loads of concrete bunkers and dugouts, booby traps and barbed, wire, and thousands and thousands of mines, but the whole defense is a zig zag pattern. so their machine guns can hit the flanks of any and all attack groups. And the 36th, though a great division, is. not in great shape at the moment. They went through a lot last month at San. Pietro and haven’t fully recovered. The plan is for one regiment to cross north. of Sant’Angelo and one to its south- the town itself has been destroyed by artillery. They are then to converge behind the town,. and of course they have plenty of engineers with them who have cleared routes through. the mines to the river and marked them with tape, and will help launch the boats. On January 20th, attacks begin to cross the, Rapido toward the Liri Valley and Monte Cassino. The first attack begins at eight in the evening in a heavy fog, as the men move forward carrying 24 man rubber rafts and 12 man wooden assault boats. “Almost at once, while they were still a. mile from the river, German shells began to fall among them. One infantry company lost 30 men in a single, volley; the commander was killed and his second in command wounded before they had got halfway. to the Rapido. Shell fragments punctured the rubber boats, and splintered the wooden ones. The tapes that marked the safe lanes were. torn up or buried in the mud. Some had been removed by the Germans, who. earlier that evening had crossed the river and laid new mines. In the darkness and fog, guides lost their, way and stumbled into minefields. Bodies, wounded men, and wreckage clogged. the way.” (Wallace) They have four footbridges with them- one. is lost to a mine, one turns out to be defective, and the other two are destroyed as they’re. being put into place. Many of the rubber b oats sink. The total number of men who eventually make. it to the far shore and dig in is below 1,000. Engineers do get another bridge set up by 0400 but fewer than 350 men cross it. With the dawn, German artillery destroys the, bridge; the phone wires are cut, the radio batteries fail and the men are completely

isolated. That’s the northern attack. The southern one gets 1,000 men across as. well, but by 1000 the 21st- today- all that are able to have crossed back over the river. The fighting continues today in both zones. and it is pretty much the same thing, so basically, for two solid days of fighting, 36th takes. heavy losses and does nothing to the German lines, and this action has no effect on German, troop dispositions. Tomorrow, as the attacks here finish, the Anzio landings will take place. Tomorrow. John Lucas is in charge of them. He writes in his diary, “I felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter.” He does not think they have the force for, success. Today, the Anzio landing forces set sail from. Naples. The amount of available shipping and the fear of stripping the current front lines of troops has whittled the number of men down to 40,000- the US 3rd Division and the British 1st, backed by Rangers, paratroopers, and Commandos. En route to Anzio they are undetected by the enemy. Someone else is worrying about his front lines becoming too thin, over in the Soviet Union. Okay, on the 17th Nikolai Vatutin’s 1st Ukrainian Front takes Slavuta, still heading for Rovno and still spreading and stretching his lines further. Obviously, he wants to shorten that line. Now, I talked last week about the salient, the Germans have in the Soviet lines facing Vatutin’s left wing and Ivan Konev’s 2nd. Ukrainian Front’s right. Well, Soviet Commander Georgy Zhukov is thinking, about objectives. “An obvious one was to cut off the bulge in the German line, not at its base but farther east where the distances were shorter and. the tactical problems fewer. By mid-January something of the sort had, in fact, become necessary in order to shorten the front… Tactically, the Russians had not had such, an opportunity for a set piece double envelopment since Stalingrad. First Panzer Army and 8th Army had their main force committed and tied down on their outer flanks, and their inner flanks, projecting. eastward, were depleted and exposed.” (Earl Ziemke, “Stalingrad to Berlin”) So they’re gathering force for an operation against that salient. Further south, 3rd and 4th Ukrainian front attacks that begin last week toward Krivoy Rog and Nikopol continue and come to their end. Army Chief of Staff Alexander Vasilevsky submits a plan to Stavka when the attacks end for a new offensive there to begin January 30th. Vasily Sokolovsky’s Western Front is attacking. east of Vitebsk this week, just like last week. The attacks begin the 15th and over a few, days tough fighting capture Krynki, driving the Germans back like 2 km. There are more attacks the 20th, but then it all comes to an end. “At a cost of more than 25,000 casualties,. including more than 5,500 dead, in 16 days of combat, the Shock Groups of Sokolovsky’s Western front advanced from 2-4 kilometers, severed the Vitebsk-Orsha Road, and expelled. German forces from the last segment of the Vitebsk-Smolensk railroad line under their, control. Despite these meager gains, as was the case with Bagramyan’s 1st Baltic Front, Sokolovsky’s forces failed dismally in their primary mission, of crossing the Luchesa Riover, reaching Ostrovno, and encircling the German Vietbsk grouping.” But the Soviets are doing anything but failing, in their new offensive against German Army Group North. In a thick morning fog at 0920 January 15th,. 3,000 big guns and mortars opened fire on the Axis positions in the north, firing off 200,000 shells over an hour and a half, and Leonid Govorov’s Leningrad Front attacks from Pulkovo. This is the follow up to the Volkhov Front. attacks that began yesterday. Elements of Soviet 42nd Army now advance 4, km into the enemy defenses, and remember what I said last week- the defenses here are more WW1 than 2, with barbed wire, pillboxes, trenches, and bunkers having been built up over the, past 850 odd days. However, the rest of the attacks are not so, successful, with tanks getting stuck in either the snow or minefields and infantry often. unsupported by artillery. On the 17th, though, the repeated attacks finally bust through, and the Germans pull back to avoid being trapped, even flooding. Krasnoe Selo by blowing bridges on the Dudergof. Two days later, on the evening of the 19th,, 2nd Shock, who launched the attack last week, and 42nd armies’ forward armor link up near Ropsha. When the Soviets capture Strelna they manage to capture 100 heavy artillery pieces that had been shelling them just a little while. earlier. Reserve troops are soon also thrown in- they’re taking enormous casualties- and 2nd shock and 42nd army begin crushing the left flank. of German 18th Army. 67th Army prepares to attack toward Mga. In fact, the night of the 20th the enemy even. begins to withdraw from Mga. As for the Kirill Meretskov’s Volkhov Front attacks against 18th army’s right flank- at the very beginning of the week a southern, force crosses Lake Ilmen by night in a snowstorm and establishes a bridgehead on the western, shore. They begin hitting the enemy there and 59th, army hits Novgorod from north and then both north and south of Novgorod. Then Meretskov has 54th Army on his right flank attack toward Lyuban to prevent reinforcements from heading for Novgorod. I mentioned reserves being thrown in- that’s

only in the second half of the week. See, until that time German Army Group North Commander Georg von Kuchler has the idea that his enemy isn’t really trying to do more, than break out of the Oranienbaum Pocket. “On 16 January, Kuchler told his army commanders that the Russians had committed all their forces, and Army Group North could win the. battle by taking some risks in quiet sectors. The next day his optimism started to fade.” He thinks that he’ll have to withdraw to, the Rollbahn Line on the Leningrad-Chudovo Road to shorten the front. Already by the 18th, though, there is a big possibility of the Germans being surrounded at Novgorod, so the Germans begin pulling out of Novgorod to Batetsky. On the 19th the Soviets make ready to storm Novgorod, not realizing that the enemy is leaving, so when they enter the city the morning of the 20th there are no enemy troops left there. The Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts have the. enemy outnumbered 3-1 in men, 3-1 in artillery, and 6-1 in tanks and aircraft, and by this time the double breakthrough by the two Fronts is a plain fact. Three more armies have been committed and. the attack Front runs from the Gulf of Finland down to Lake Ilmen. “As the first phase of the offensive drew to a close, Front commanders faced two problems: the first, to clear their operational plans. for the next phase with the Stavka, the second, to eradicate the tactical deficiencies which slowed up progress and to shake up army and corps commanders who persisted with frontal attacks and used infantry for almost everything, leaving their armor or supporting artillery. to idle on some road or track and too often to make adequate reconnaissance.” Speaking of reconnaissance, Erickson actually, talks about something else that’s important in this fight. Since November in the German rear, partisan forces have been stepping up their recon. They’ve also been blowing up railway lines, and even attacking stations and German units. This because by now there are 35,000 men in partisan brigades here, with a couple of the brigades having as many as 5,000 people in it. Their main strength is near Pskov and Novgorod. As for Kuchler and the Rollbahn Line, he’s. telling Adolf Hitler and Chief of Staff Kurt Zeitzler that the defeats at Novgorod and south of Leningrad are because of a lack of reserves and an overstretched front, but those, things are still the case even now. “The withdrawal to the Rollbahn would free three divisions, two to go into the front below Leningrad, the other west of Novgorod. With that, the Army Group would have exhausted, its resources for creating reserves. The three divisions would be used up in a short time, and an operational breakthrough could then be expected. He recommended that the pullback to the Rollbahn be made the first step in a continuous withdrawal to the Panther Position, pointing out that the Army Group was already so weakened that it would have just enough troops to man the front when it reached there.” And as the week ends, 42nd Army attacks toward. Krasnogvardeysk (now Gatchina), the junction of the main roads and rail lines from the. south and west. Kuchler flies to Hitler’s headquarters to. discuss the situation. And speaking of flying… Today the 21st, two German flying aces die. Heinrich Prinz du Sayn-Wittenberg, with 83 kills, shoots down 4 more planes attacking an Allied raid on Magdeburg, but is himself. killed. Manfred Meurer has 65 kills, the third highest German night fighter total. As he tries to score number 66, it blows up. above him and he crashes and dies. Air raids over Rabaul from recently opened Piva Airfield continue this week. On the 17th they hit shipping at Simpson Harbor and Blanche Bay. Five- and possibly more- ships are sunk for 30,000 tons, one of them with ten planes aboard that had yet to be unloaded for the garrison. and they too are all lost. “The attack was costly. Twelve Comairsols airplanes were lost… and, three Corsairs were lost two days later attacking Vunakanu. The price was worth it however. Rabaul was beginning to cost the Japanese too much shipping. While the Imperial High Command was willing. to absorb those losses for a while, they could not afford that rate of attrition for long”. And what will they do then? Well, that is for the future to say, but for the present this week is finished. A week with costly attacks for no gain in. Italy and costly attacks for important gains in the Soviet Union, but plans for new operations, to begin within days at Anzio and Korsun. The ships are heading for Anzio right now. 40,000 men. That’s not as many as they planned to have. even just two weeks ago, but they certainly have the element of surprise. And Kesselring has taken away his reserves, from the area, so that’s in their favor. But the main force, the force that is to fight, its way toward them, is nowhere near them at all, and certainly not in any position. to reach them in the next few days or possibly even weeks. That’s a huge negative. But hey, I’m not a military strategist, I don’t make the plans, and Winston Churchill is the real driver behind this one; the guy that got it all put together. Oh wait, he’s not either. Well, my plans are to continue to cover this, war week by week until it is over, and those plans involve the TimeGhost Army. If you wanna be part of this, then join the, Army at TimeGhost.tv or Patreon.com. These are the newest commissioned officers, and the TimeGhost Army member of the week is Robert Osmolski. The Army supports all of our series on this channel and beyond. And you might have missed Anna’s recent. On the Homefront episode about Pin-up girls, but it was great and it’s right here. 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