One of the Greatest Military Tragedies of World War II

By Daniel L. Davis,The National Interest

Part one of a three-part series.

When most Americans think of World War II they think of stirring victories on the beaches of Normandy, rousing triumphs on the sands of Iwo Jima, or brilliant naval conquests at the Battle of Midway. The valor, courage, and sometimes tactical brilliance shown by U.S. troops and generals in those battles were pivotal to ultimate victory. There was one case, however—one bitter case—in which the same high standard of valor and courage shown was by US troops, matched instead with poor generalship, creating one of the greatest military tragedies of the Second World War: the January 1944 Battle of the Rapido River in Italy.

Shortly after the United States had entered the war, England’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill began advocating for an attack into southern Europe against what he termed “the soft underbelly” to . . . The allies began their attack against Italy when Gen/ George Patton led the US II Corps to help conquer Sicily by August 1943. After making initial success up the Italian boot, German defenses stiffened and by the late fall the Allied drive had stalled near the southern monastery of Monte Cassino, bordered along a small but fast-flowing river named the Rapido.

Churchill became impatient with the lack of success and pressed the American leadership to conduct a beach landing far behind German lines at the port of Anzio to accelerate the drive on Rome. At Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters on Christmas Day 1943, the decision to launch the operation, code-named Operation Shingle, was finally made.

To make the landings successful, it would be necessary to make a rapid breakthrough of the German lines south of Monte Cassino. While the Germans were not expecting an attack from the sea at Anzio, they were more than aware of the criticality of holding the line on the Rapido – and had put considerable effort into reinforcing defensive barriers.

Realizing the importance of holding back the Allies, months before the battle began German troops had taken masterful advantage of the terrain around that area in which to build a successful defense. The battle area included a large, flat plain (the Liri Valley), hilly terrain on either shoulder of the valley which offered commanding views of the valley (including long range observation to order airstrikes or artillery fire). And anchoring the defense was the Rapido River.

German Gen. Frido von Senger und Etterlin, commanding the XIV Panzer Corps, transformed the defensive line into “an infantryman’s nightmare.” Lee Caraway Smith wrote of von Senger’s actions in A River Swift and Deadly that the general “positioned machine-gun nests on the mountainsides in such a fashion that any attacker would face interlocking machine-gun fire. Both sides of the Rapido River were laced with barbed wire, mines with trip wires . . . (Von Senger) found the mountain gullies were the perfect places to set up mortars because the gullies not only provided the angle needed to fire the weapons but also provided protection from Allied artillery.” After months of preparation, the Germans were ready for the assault on the Rapido.