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00:00Winston Churchill once told Stalin the Mediterranean is the soft underbelly of the Crocodile.
00:23Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff were sure that attacking German-occupied Europe through Italy
00:28would help shorten the war.
00:32The Americans were not convinced, preferring to concentrate on the decisive blow across the English Channel.
00:39Only reluctantly did they agree to join their British allies on the road to Rome.
00:58What became the British military centreline?
01:09They don't think you...
01:19The End
01:48In the Royal Harbour, the American army prepared for its first encounter with the Wehrmacht.
01:59Operation Torch, code name for the Anglo-American landings in the French North African colonies of Morocco and Algeria.
02:10They met little or no resistance from the forces of Vichy France.
02:14The French command soon broke with the government of Tétain, and their troops became part of the Allied armies.
02:24An American general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was supreme commander.
02:29The American planners were never keen on the operation, but President Roosevelt was determined to get his ground forces into action against Hitler in 1942.
02:39Attacking the Germans in Tunisia was the next best thing to a second front in Europe.
02:46At Casablanca, within two months of the landings, an impressive array of British and American top brass assembled.
03:02The Russians were not present, but everybody there knew that they had to do something to take the pressure off the Red Army.
03:21Churchill and Roosevelt had now to decide where they went from here.
03:24At the beginning of 1943, the British and Americans were firmly established in North Africa.
03:34Hitler had reinforced Rommel's forces in Tunisia, but with the British Eighth Army closing from the east,
03:40it could only be a matter of time before the entire African coastline was in Allied hands.
03:46What then?
03:47We've got to face the fact that there was a big difference between the two sides about what the future strategy of the war would be.
03:57The British, the British Chiefs of Staff, Churchill, were all in favour of the future of the campaign being carried out through Italy
04:11and hitting at the underside of the underbelly of the Germans, moving up and eventually joining up with the Russians.
04:21The Americans held exactly the opposite view.
04:26They felt that the only way that you could defeat Germany was to take the shortest way into the centre of Germany,
04:34across the Channel, and advance into the areas of the Ruhr and Saar, the great industrial areas,
04:44and then destroy the German forces by that means.
04:49The British, led by Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, came to Casablanca determined to have their way.
04:56They got it.
04:57The Americans, under General Marshall, were persuaded that the next objective would be the invasion of Sicily,
05:03leading, it was hoped, to the surrender of Italy.
05:06Thus, the main second front was postponed for another year.
05:11At the time, however, the big news from the Casablanca Conference was an unexpected pronouncement by the American president.
05:18Mr. Roosevelt began by saying that when he was a young man,
05:24great reputation in the American military was General Grant,
05:29who had once sent an order saying that he would accept no terms but unconditional surrender,
05:36and that these, in fact, were the terms that the Allies or the United Nations wanted to present to their enemies.
05:44He then went on as though he did not understand how important a statement he had made.
05:53Mr. Churchill looked considerably surprised at this,
05:57and I think that Mr. Churchill felt that it was not the best way to present the Allied position to the enemy.
06:05However, as he said then and later, he was Mr. Roosevelt's ardent lieutenant,
06:09and he would go along with it.
06:11After the talking, Roosevelt appeared in his other capacity,
06:25commander-in-chief of the American armed forces.
06:28If this fresh, confident-looking American army had crossed the Atlantic expecting to carry all before it,
06:42it was very soon cruelly disillusioned.
06:44In a sudden onslaught through the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia,
06:57Rommel inflicted on the American army one of its worst defeats of the entire war.
07:01The Afrika Korps was far too well-equipped and experienced for the lightly armoured and underpowered American tanks.
07:29The morale of these raw young Americans was badly shaken.
07:38Many were taken prisoner.
07:39It brought the troops face to face with the fact that this was going to be a long war and a tough one,
08:04and the Germans were very good.
08:06He said, armies never learn from other armies.
08:09They have to learn by themselves, and a lot of the tactics that we used disastrously at Kasserine
08:14were those that the British army had used equally disastrously two years before in the western desert,
08:20then discarded.
08:21I think it helped our army.
08:23It also made them realize, because the British came down from the north and did help,
08:28that this was going to be a cooperative effort, that we couldn't win it alone.
08:31And also, it got the average GI accustomed to the fact that there was going to be one battle after another.
08:38But Rommel lacked the strength to exploit his victory.
08:43The Allies under Alexander regrouped and within ten days retook the path.
08:48The Germans in Tunisia were now hemmed in.
08:51The Allied sea and air blockade of the coastline made large-scale evacuation impossible.
08:56In the south, a forward patrol of the 8th Army linked up with the American 2nd Corps.
09:03The trap closed.
09:07Two Allied forces, once separated by 2,000 miles of mountain and desert,
09:13joined hands for the final onslaught on the German position in Africa.
09:17The Allied armies, vastly superior in numbers,
09:32drove the enemy, now without Rommel, who had been invalided home,
09:35back through the mountains of Tunisia towards the sea.
09:38The Allies, vastly superior in numbers, drove the enemy, now without Rommel, who had been invalided home,
09:39back through the mountains of Tunisia towards the sea.
09:47The Allied air forces had undisputed control.
09:55In seven days, it was all over.
10:17Finally, the Afrika Korps saw no point in fighting to the last man.
10:36They surrendered in droves.
10:38The unfortunate general von Arnim, who succeeded Rommel, also surrendered with all his staff.
10:50Nearly a quarter of a million men were taken prisoner.
10:53A victory to rank alongside Stalingrad.
10:57This was a major boost for the British and their Mediterranean strategy.
11:00Sicily, as agreed at Clasablanca, was the next item on the agenda.
11:13Only two months after the German collapse in Tunisia,
11:16the British and Americans began landing troops on Sicilian beaches.
11:19The British were led by Montgomery, the Americans by General Patton.
11:33The first time these two egocentric personalities have been involved in the same campaign.
11:38It was the British Eighth Army which met the fiercest German resistance.
12:01On their left, Patton's Americans swept across Sicily in style.
12:08They found useful allies in the Mafia
12:14and family connections among the civilian population.
12:19I think the situation was relieved somewhat by the fact that
12:22there was hardly a family in Sicily that didn't have relatives in the United States.
12:28The Sicilian landing, bringing the war onto their own soil,
12:32convinced most Italians that theirs was a lost cause.
12:35Giving themselves up, if possible, by the regiment,
12:37became the first objective of Italy's armed forces.
12:48Allied bombing raids on Rome provided another argument for getting out of the war.
12:58Benito Mussolini, il Duce, for 20 years,
13:01was outvoted in his own fascist grand council.
13:03On July the 25th, he was toppled from power.
13:14King Victor Emmanuel approved the elderly marshal Badoglio as head of the government.
13:21Badoglio declared publicly that the war would go on,
13:24but immediately began secret negotiations with the Allies for surrender.
13:35By now, Sicily, after only a few weeks, was almost all in Allied hands.
13:40This time, there was to be no great haul of German prisoners.
13:52German evacuation across the narrow straits of Messina was highly successful.
13:56Most of the Fairmark's personnel got away to the mainland.
14:09Even the last guard dog.
14:14General Patton beat Montgomery into Messina.
14:27The Allies had landed in Sicily, not knowing where they would go next.
14:31At the prospect of an early Italian collapse,
14:34the British were all for attacking the mainland.
14:36The Americans agreed to a limited campaign,
14:38but insisted that Overlord, the invasion of Normandy,
14:40must take priority for resources.
14:42A secret envoy, General Castellano,
14:47was sent by Badoglio to find out on what terms Italy could join the Allies.
14:52But the Allies simply wanted Italian surrender
14:54and refused to tell Castellano of their invasion plans,
14:57partly because they didn't want the Italians to know how limited their forces were.
15:02All we could say to General Castellano was this.
15:05Well, we will tell you two or three hours before it happens
15:11so that you can give any assistance you can to the Allied operations.
15:21Eventually, on the 3rd of September, these terms were signed.
15:25On that day, the Allies invaded.
15:33Montgomery went across the Straits of Messina to attack the Toa of Italy,
15:36but found no resistance.
15:38The Germans had moved north to counter the threat
15:41of an Allied landing further up the coast.
15:43The Italians had wanted a landing to safeguard Rome from German attack,
15:52but this was impossible.
15:55The furthest point north at which the Americans and British felt it prudent to land
15:59was nowhere near Rome but at Salerno,
16:01as far as the Allied air cover operating from Sicily could stretch.
16:05The operation had been mounted at great speed
16:11to take advantage of the confusion in Italy.
16:14The forces at the command of the American General Mark Clark
16:17were barely adequate for the job they had to do.
16:20On the way, the troops heard a broadcast by General Eisenhower.
16:30The Italian government has surrendered its armed forces unconditionally.
16:35As Allied Commander-in-Chief, I have granted a military armistice.
16:40The armistice was signed by my representatives
16:43and the representative of Marshal Bedolio,
16:46and it becomes effective this instant.
16:50The surrender of his Allies did not take Hitler by surprise.
17:02He had already moved reinforcements into northern Italy.
17:05Here, the Italians were quickly disarmed
17:07under a plan ironically codenamed Operation Access.
17:11At this point, Hitler had not decided just where he would hold the line.
17:16The Germans entered Rome to find it a capital without a government.
17:23Bedolio and his ministers had avoided the risk of being shot for treachery
17:26by leaping into their cars and driving away.
17:34South of Rome, Clark's invasion force was nearing the beaches.
17:38Salerno, if you go in on a boat, you'll look at the mountains that hem you in there
17:45and the passes through which you go.
17:47The enemy would be looking down your throat.
17:51The Germans were ready and waiting.
17:54The Germans were ready and waiting at the heavens.
17:55You as well...
17:55It was a very nice fish.
17:59Oh, no.
18:29Oh, no.
18:59After 48 hours, the Germans launched a furious counter.
19:15The situation in the beachhead became so precarious, Clark ordered plans for possible re-embarkation.
19:37But with massive support from air and sea, the Salerno invaders just managed to hold on.
19:45After a week of savage fighting, the Germans withdrew.
20:10It required the intervention of all the air forces to save us at Salerno.
20:25Of all General Eisenhower's battles, that is the one where I think we were nearest to a tactical defeat.
20:38I've never had any doubts in my mind that it was a completely successful operation.
20:44We were ordered to go in there.
20:46We were ordered to seize a bridgehead.
20:48We did it.
20:50We were ordered to capture the port of Naples.
20:52We did that within three weeks.
20:54So far, so good.
20:59At least a large part of southern Italy was in Allied hands.
21:02Naples was desperately short of food.
21:19What's wrong?
21:21There were bread riots.
21:22Water was scarce.
21:42There was a typhus evident.
21:44The advance continued, but just ahead laid the line of real German resistance.
22:01The Allied commanders had hoped Hitler would withdraw further north.
22:06Instead, greatly encouraged by his near victory at Salerno, he had decided to fight here, in the mountains south of Rome.
22:14Like a bad Lira, Mussolini turned up again.
22:28He was hoisted out of his hiding place by a German rescue party and taken to Hitler.
22:37The Fuhrer was aghast at his appearance,
22:39but thought he might still come in useful to encourage the fascists in German-occupied Italy.
22:44The German forces in Italy were led by Kesselring,
23:04one of the war's ablest defensive commanders.
23:07Kesselring had a lot going for him.
23:09The rocky spine, which runs almost the whole length of Italy,
23:14meant the Allies had to advance along the coastal plains on either side.
23:19The only way to outflank the Germans was by amphibious landings.
23:24But by now, the necessary landing craft were earmarked for Normandy.
23:28As they went north to their prepared defensive positions,
23:53Kesselring's men destroyed the only lines of communication.
23:56In the towns, the Germans left the booby truck.
24:12This was Naples.
24:13Well, there were well-trained troops.
24:34There were tenacious troops.
24:35There were well-led.
24:36And one point I like to make is they're homogenous.
24:42They were all of one nationality.
24:45They were all equipped with the same weapons and ammunition.
24:49They ate the same food.
24:51They believed pretty much in the same God.
24:53And I had 16 different nationalities with me,
24:58some of whom couldn't eat this and couldn't eat that,
25:01and some that didn't want to fight on Fridays or some other day of the week.
25:05And the British, with their infantry weapons and their artillery,
25:11completely different from ours,
25:14you couldn't move them with ease from one front to the other like the Germans could.
25:22Winter.
25:22The Allied ground commander, General Alexander, and his colleagues
25:26were now confronted with the unpleasant realities of their Mediterranean strategy.
25:31The Eighth Army, accustomed to swift advances across the desert,
25:36could only manage a few hundred yards a day.
25:38Across the mountains, Clark's Fifth Army was also mud-bucked.
25:55They issued us galoshes after the rains had stopped.
26:00And if anybody was in the galoshes business,
26:02they could have found them by the millions along the roadside.
26:06Because you couldn't walk with them.
26:08I mean, it was impossible to go through that mud.
26:13This was not the sunny Italy of the travel posters.
26:21And the only way an infantryman was going to come out of those mountains
26:25was to be carried out, you know.
26:26And that's why it was actually desirable to get wounded.
26:36Dreadful weather.
26:38Difficult terrain.
26:39Difficult terrain.
26:39Determined German resistance.
26:42To the men in the mud, this combination did not match up to Churchill's vision.
26:45I can see him now at his map and his persuasive way with his pointer,
26:51pointing out the soft belly of the Mediterranean.
26:55And after we got in there, I often thought of what a tough old gut it was
27:00instead of the soft belly that he had led us to believe.
27:03Before the end of 1943, the Allies were hammering at Kesselring's winter line.
27:24Alexander had 11 divisions, Kesselring 9, with 8 more in reserve.
27:29Every small mountain village had to be fought for.
27:54In December, the American 36th Division tried to take San Pietro.
27:59Oh, my God.
28:00Those are allaras for playing.
28:00발m�sa.
28:00We'll be down for about 2, 4.
28:01All Blue Line.
28:02If you want to see him, look.
28:04Fire!
28:05Fire!
28:07Fire!
28:08Fire!
28:08Fire!
28:09Fire!
28:09Fire!
28:10Fire!
28:10Fire!
28:11Fire!
28:11Fire!
28:12Fire!
28:12Fire!
28:13Fire!
28:13Fire!
28:15Fire!
28:16Fire!
28:16Fire!
28:17Fire!
28:18Fire!
28:18Fire!
28:21Fire!
28:25Fire!
28:26It was one of the things that most of our fighting wasn't at Lee.
28:39You got into a position, you dug in, and you just stayed.
28:44I mean, we'd shoot at them and they'd shoot at us.
28:48And it was only when they were ready to leave that we moved forward.
28:56After ten days, the Americans took San Pietro at heavy cost.
29:26In any unit, you would have a graves registration unit, and their job was to go around picking up bodies.
29:34And what they would do is either if someone had been hastily buried, they would disinter him,
29:39or if he was just lying there, they'd pick him up and they would slide them into the mattress covers
29:46and pile them up into the trucks and take them off to a temporary cemetery somewhere.
29:51I suppose some people probably got buried as many as four or five times that way,
29:58which is kind of unfortunate, really.
30:02I always thought people should be left where they were.
30:21The Italian people had once been told by Mussolini,
30:44war puts the stamp of nobility on those who have the courage to meet it.
30:49At Tehran in November 1943, Roosevelt and Stalin overruled Churchill
31:18and at last fixed a definite date for the landing in France, May 1944.
31:24Italy was to become a sideshow.
31:26But after Tehran, Churchill refused to accept the deadlock in Italy.
31:30He got on to Roosevelt and persuaded him to lend landing craft for the new amphibious landing.
31:35The plan was in two stages.
31:38First, Mark Clark's 5th Army would attack the Germans at Cassino, draw their forces southward, drain their reserves.
31:47Then the amphibious troops would strike behind their lines at Anzio, just 22 miles south of Rome.
31:54At Cassino, the Germans held the high ground.
31:59They could see everything that moved in the valley below.
32:02The 5th Army attacked on January the 20th.
32:05Its troops had not been reinforced.
32:07They were cold, wet, exhausted.
32:10The attack failed disastrously.
32:12But the second stage of the plan went ahead two days later, the assault on Anzio.
32:19Having gone into Salerno with not enough troops, no commander ever has what he thinks he ought to have.
32:28And I was determined that if I was to be the commander going into Anzio or be the overall commander,
32:34that we should not go in on a shoestring.
32:36I went in with one and two-thirds division, which was totally inadequate.
32:43But that's the way the ball bounces in war.
32:47You do what you're told to do or they'll get somebody else that will do it.
32:58The Germans expected the landing, but had no idea where it would come.
33:02They did not have enough troops to cover all the possible beaches.
33:06The Anzio force was completely unopposed.
33:11Nothing, an odd bang in the distance, but nothing.
33:15And when dawn broke, we'd got complete surprise.
33:21And a few minutes later, along the road, there came a marvellous drunken car swaying back and forth.
33:27It was full of the most happy Germans who had a night out in Rome, and they were staggering back.
33:31And they couldn't believe they were captured.
33:34They said, you're kind of camarade.
33:36And they kept on embracing me.
33:37So finally, they put them in the cling too.
33:40And that was the landing.
33:41Complete surprise.
33:42The Anzio beachhead was consolidated in an eerie calm.
33:50After Salerno, it seemed incredible that there was no instant German riposte.
34:11Perhaps now was the time for a lightning dash in the style of General Patton for the gates of Rome.
34:18But the American commander at Anzio was no Patton.
34:21General Lucas was a cautious man who believed the beachhead must be secured before striking inland.
34:27Alexander did not overrule him.
34:29London Churchill complained bitterly, I thought we'd flung a wildcat into the Auburn hills,
34:49but instead we got a whale floundering on the beach.
34:51There were only two battalions and some very old-fashioned coast batteries at the coast for defending.
35:07If the Americans had realized the situation,
35:18they could stay on the evening of the landing day in Rome.
35:24General Lucas could, but he would have soon been met by an overwhelming force which would have defeated.
35:30He'd have been defeated, no question about it.
35:32So we had to dig in on the biggest perimeter we could possibly digest.
35:37and wait for the onslaught which came.
35:44Caught off balance as he often was by Alexander, Kesselring recovered fast.
35:51Spurred on by Hitler's demands for the immediate liquidation of the Anzio abscess,
35:56he threw all he had into the counterattack.
36:00If Anzio were eliminated, then perhaps the Allies would think again about crossing the English Channel.
36:07There were no fears and fears of being submitted to be there...
36:11Chris, I couldn't go back and see you...
36:12It was extraordinary...
36:12It was extraordinary...
36:13Oh-hm.
36:13To be honest about you...
36:14I was here...
36:15Uh...
36:15We had to find out as well as this century says...
36:15that was absolutely permanent space.
36:16Oh-hm.
36:16Oh-hm.
36:17Ah-hm.
36:17Ah-hm.
36:18Ah-hm.
36:18Ah-hm.
36:18Ah-hm.
36:19Ah-hm.
36:19Ah-hm.
36:21Ah-hm.
36:22Ah-hm.
36:23Ah-hm.
36:23Ah-hm.
36:24Ah-hm.
36:25Ah-hm.
36:25Ah-hm.
36:26Ah-hm.
36:27Ah-hm.
36:28Ah-hm.
36:29Ah-hm.
36:29Ah-hm.
36:30Ah-hm.
36:30Allied advance units which had spread out from the beaches were overwhelmed by the weight of the
36:47German attack. There was one unit I know that simply packed in folded their great coats and
36:55handed themselves over. They couldn't take it anymore and they were young they hadn't seen
36:59this sort of thing before and I don't blame them one little scrap.
37:13Two American Ranger battalions were captured and humiliatingly paraded through the streets of Rome.
37:29The beachhead could only be relieved from the south by breaking through the German defensive line which ran through the monastery of Monte Cassino.
37:33The beachhead could only be relieved from the south by breaking through the German defensive line which ran through the monastery of Monte Cassino.
37:47Perched high above the valley an observation post here could see everything that moved for miles around.
38:05The Allies believed, wrongly, that the monastery had been fortified.
38:11It was the general view and the general belief of the troops who were involved on that front that Cassino, the monastery at Cassino,
38:23was being used for military purposes by the Germans. That being the case and it also being a part of my military philosophy and a great many other peoples too that you must not put troops into battle without giving them all possible physical and material support that you can to give them the best chance of getting a success.
38:47On February the 15th, 1944, over 200 Allied bombers pounded the monastery into rubble.
39:17The air and ground attacks were badly coordinated, giving the Germans time to swarm into the rubble, ideal cover for defense.
39:47The Gustav Line was hell.
39:50The Gustav Line was hell.
40:01At Anzio, Kesselring flung ten German divisions against the Allies four and a half.
40:06Hitler hoped Anzio would be a turning point in Germany's fortunes.
40:10The unit that broke through, he promised, would have the honor of escorting Allied prisoners through the streets of Berlin.
40:17Massed waves of German infantry were flung in.
40:37They came over a moon landscape pitted, wrecked tanks, abandoned jeeps along the road and I still to this day don't understand the German tactics.
40:48There was a moment when you actually could see them leaving their lines like those old films of the Somme battle and falling down as our machine guns took them.
40:56The German offensive lasted four days.
41:09In the end, it was the Allied superiority in heavy guns that tipped the balance.
41:15It was finally beaten back.
41:22The Minerva Cosgrove
41:24The Minerva Cosgrove
41:34The Minerva Cosgrove
41:40The Germans had pulled back, but the Allies still lacked the strength to break out.
41:58It was stalemate.
42:00We then had to form trenches, and Anzio then became an old-fashioned World War I trench system.
42:08And they were bombed, and they were mortared, and then they had to do trench patrols,
42:13and occasionally keen generals used to send up people to try and find out who was opposite us,
42:19and do a trench raid. It was right out of Journey's End.
42:26The two front lines were only yards apart.
42:31A couple of fellas were cleaning this machine gun, got it all to pieces,
42:35and Irish fellas named Tommy McGough.
42:40And he just looked up, and he said,
42:42Bloody Jesus Christ!
42:44And he rushed for this gun, trying to put the barrel back on it,
42:47putting it on upside down and all sorts.
42:49You know, of course, I just looked, and I said,
42:52Quite all right, Tommy, I can see this fella.
42:55I go down to the wire, and he speaks very good English.
42:58He says, Where's the friend?
43:00And I said, He's gone.
43:01Oh, I said, It's quite all right, what have you got?
43:05Danish pork and fresh lemons, good for giving me a tinny bully beef.
43:09And we got talking to him about the position and the war and all that, you know,
43:13and he come from a place near Emden, was it?
43:18Emden.
43:19Emden.
43:19And at the time, this city had had a thousand bomber raid, you know,
43:24and I said, Oh, you've had the bug of them.
43:26You've had it.
43:28No, no.
43:28He said, I come from a little village near Emden.
43:31He said, Me, OK?
43:31And he showed me photos of his wife.
43:34She was a bus conductor in Emden and that.
43:37And I says, Why don't you get back in?
43:43I said, You've had it now.
43:44I said, No.
43:45He says, German will not be beat.
43:48He said, We shall go right down, right down like that.
43:51He says, Till we get near to the bottom.
43:53He said, Then we shall join forces with Britain and America and fight Russia.
44:00And after that, he just went.
44:01I never seen him anymore.
44:02Like, he must have got to relieve the next night.
44:04And at mealtime, the cooks would shout, grub up.
44:23You go with your mess tins down for your grub.
44:26Before you could get down to the cook house,
44:30and you'd send one over, a big one,
44:32one of these cloud rays, you know.
44:35And automatically, as soon as that base, you'd drop to the floor.
44:40You were always used to it.
44:42You walk crouched.
44:44They called it, when you were walking about,
44:47you got the hands of your old crouched.
44:48And as you lay there,
45:03you used to tune in on the radios that you shouldn't have had,
45:06and to the voice of Sally.
45:10Sally lived in Rome, and she was a great, well, she sounded the most wonderful, sexy female ever.
45:17And she kept on giving messages to the troops.
45:20She said, hello, hello.
45:22One of the...
45:23Women always think that the lower they speak, the more sexy they sound.
45:27And she had the lowest register of any woman.
45:30She said, hello, this is Sally.
45:33Why don't you come over and see me?
45:36Private Fox, you remember him last night?
45:39He stepped on a shoe mine.
45:42Nasty thing, shoe mine.
45:43You could hear Private Fox yelling for most of the night.
45:47Don't be like Private Fox.
45:49Come over to see Sally.
45:54There would be a smart crack overhead,
45:56and down would flutter a propaganda pamphlet saying,
46:00the Yanks are least lending your women.
46:02They're having a lovely time in jolly old England.
46:06There was a picture of a naked woman being embraced by an American,
46:08or an American tactfully knotting his tie while she did up her panties.
46:16At Casino, the Allies maintained the pressure.
46:22Their aim, to tie up as many German troops there as possible.
46:25A third attempt to take the ruined monastery
46:27opened with a massive bombing attack on Casino Town.
46:31Five hundred planes went in under the sporting code word
46:34Bradman batting tomorrow.
46:36Among the places knocked for six
46:38was the headquarters of the British Eighth Army.
46:46Once again, there was poor coordination between air and ground forces.
47:12After the bombing, the Germans came out of the ground
47:26and were in position again before the New Zealanders launched their attack.
47:30The German defenders were elite paratroops.
47:42The battle raged from house to house,
48:03room to room,
48:05cellar to cellar.
48:05The New Zealanders lost 4,000 men.
48:32The Germans still held out.
48:34Three assaults on Monte Casino.
48:40Three bloody failures.
48:42The Allied commanders finally realized
48:44that to take the mountain,
48:45they must crush the defenders by weight of numbers.
48:47They massively reinforced the Fifth Army.
48:53They used, too,
48:55an elaborate deception plan
48:56to make the Germans think
48:57they were preparing another amphibious landing north of Rome.
49:00The Germans weakened their mountain defenses
49:04to prepare for it.
49:05In May, the Allies at last outnumbered the Germans at Casino by 3 to 1.
49:12After an artillery barrage by 2,000 guns,
49:15the monastery fell.
49:16Polish troops were the first to reach the ruins
49:23where they raised their national flag.
49:32The eyes of the captured Germans
49:34told the story of their ordeal.
49:36The Germans were now in headlong retreat.
49:51Kesselring declared Rome an open city
49:53and attempted to regroup north of the capital.
49:55On the 25th of May,
49:58the Casino Front linked up with the Anzio beachhead.
50:02Alexander's plan was for Clark
50:04to cut off the Germans' retreat.
50:07Instead, Clark threw everything into a drive for Rome.
50:13He was determined to get there before anyone else,
50:16and he did.
50:17On the evening of June the 4th, 1944,
50:20the first Allied troops entered the city.
50:23Those Romans who had backed the wrong side
50:35now paid the price.
50:53Clark's Roman triumph was short-lived.
51:07Kesselring would succeed in regrouping.
51:11Another Italian winter lay ahead.
51:14And in less than 48 hours,
51:16the world's attention would turn to another theater of war,
51:19the beaches of Normandy.
51:20The End
51:22The End
51:23The End
51:24The End
51:25THE END
51:55THE END
52:25THE END
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