The Savage Storm

It should have an easy victory. After the triumph in Tunisia, the sweeping success of Sicily, and with Italy finally knocked out of the war, the Allies were quietly confident that Rome would be theirs before Christmas 1943.And yet it didn't happen. Hitler decided not to give ground, and the stage was set for one of the grimmest and most attritional phases of the war. Even though they were short of supplies and support, German forces, even in retreat, made the Allies fight for every bitter yard.By early 1944, they had created a formidable defensive position across the Italian peninsular: the Gustav Line, a barrier of bunkers, mines, booby traps, dug-outs, bunkers and gun positions. Confronting this blocking position, the Allies soon became stuck, checked at Cassino, some sixty miles south of Rome, by the combination of dogged defence and utterly debilitating conditions.And so the stage was set for a brutal battle that would last more than four long months: a battle fought in the mud, in the rain, across flooded valleys and over jagged mountain ridges. A battle that saw German forces combatting a truly international army of Americans, British, Canadians, French, Indians, Poles, and Italians. A battle in which a large civilian population had their centuries-old community ravaged, savaged and destroyed by the typhoon of war.Following a rich cast of characters of all nationalities involved and including Italian civilians as well as combatants, CASSINO 44 will not only convey the immense human drama of the war in Italy, but will also weave into the narrative completely fresh perspectives, incisive analyses and evoke a unique sense of time and place.