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Archive 1Archive 2

Mount Calvary

Edit of 31 March. First thing: Point 593 was just one of many offensive objectives of II Corps. On 11/12 May it was attacked directly by one battalion. Altogether 3-4 battalions from 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division took part in fighting in this area during first assault(Point 593 and Massa Albaneta farm - 3rd Div objectives). Writing that 800 Germans stopped two divisions is ridiculous. Second - The Polish Corps lost 281 officers and 3,503 other ranks during whole Monte Cassino campaign, from end of April to end of May !! Not in assaults on a German Regiment. Pre battle losses and losses from Piedimonte are included. 3rd Division alone lost fewer than 1,500 troops during the first and second assault (11/12 and 16/17 May).

My knowledge comes from Melchior Wankowicz book Bitwa o Monte Cassino. Book contains information about the losses and directions of Polish attacks down to the level of a single company.

(ps Please leave in peace my writing skills in English. I really tried to write well :))


Reinstated the Mount Calvary revision of 31 March, which was reverted by anon IP and restored by Shadowjams and once again reverted by IP. The 31 March revision is sourced from authors Matthew Parker and Charles Whiting, some of it verbatim within quotation marks. "Just eight hundred Germans had succeeded in driving off attacks by two divisions" is a citation from Parker, but opined as "ridiculous" by the IP; Whiting writes:
As [the Poles] came within sight of the German positions the artillery bombardment stopped. Now it was the turn of the paras, armed for the most part with automatic weapons. They mowed the Poles down mercilessly and the Slavs reeled back. Thus it went on all day and the night that followed until, in despair, Anders called off the attack. In the last three days his two divisions, plus the armored brigade, had lost 281 officers and 3,503 other ranks and it was with bitter pride ..... [etc.]
These given casualties (understood as dead/wounded/missing) are verifiable in the referenced English literature. The reverting anon IP is encouraged to create an account and contribute with his material according to Wiki convention on sourcing, rather than shout "ridiculous" from the sideline.
Gamahler (talk) 19:13, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Reason for bombing

In the Illustrated encyclopedia of the second world war, it mentioned a different reason for the bombing of Monte Casino. It mentions a conversation overheard by allied radio listeners. "Vor sint den apt, Das apt ist in der Kino." (Please excuse spelling and grammar) This was interprited to mean, "where is the Artillary oberservation point (abreviated to APT in German), It is in the church (meaning Monte Casion). Unfortunately as you German speakers will know Apt also means abbot.

Unfortunately I no longer have access to the Encyclopedia and so cannot reference this. If anyone else knows can they verify this, in the mean time, I will continue see if a friend can look it up CompteVincero (talk) 19:08, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


This episode – after the bombing – is dealt with in Hapgood & Richardson’s Monte Cassino and only provided "momentarily" some confusion. A poor translation of an intercepted German radio message sent in 'clear' and using the word "Abt" (a common military abbreviation for Abteilung [detachment] and translated initially as "h.q.," but it also means "abbot") was cleared up with a correct translation by David Hunt, then an aide to Alexander, after Hunt asked for the full original message. The text is covered in H&R on pages 206–207.–Gamahler (talk) 18:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Władysław Anders

Who think, that he was just an add??? On polish page about Monte Casino is write: "commander-in-chief of polish army in battle of Monte Casino". So, if I want to add him to this article, I will do that. And I will also add Alphonse Juin. Thank You. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.156.157.66 (talk) 09:07, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

No. This has been fully discussed (see Talk:Battle of Monte Cassino/Archive 1#Anders in the commanders' section of the Warbox and Talk:Battle_of_Monte_Cassino/Archive_1#Alphonse_Juin_as_major_commander). It is understandable that Anders receives a more prominent listing in the Polish language article. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:14, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
You' re right, that's understandable, but on Britian pages is more than "more" prominent about England. You think, that evrythink did England, but other conturies helped England. No! No helped! England, like other conturies won WWII.

So please, belive me, Anders was important commander on Battle of Monte Cassino. All hill of Monte Cassino is in graves of POLISH soliders. See Britian page about Anders "Anders was the commander of the 2nd Polish Corps in Italy 1943–1946, capturing Monte Cassino in the Battle of Monte Cassino." "After failed 3rd strike of Aliants army, gen. O. Leese, Commander of 8st British army pleased to gen. of 2nd corp of Polish army, to captured the hill (...) 17th May 2sd corp captured chain of hills, and Nazi army run away" Popularna encyklopedia Powszechna (popular encyclopedy). Thank You. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.156.157.66 (talk) 11:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

American POWs in Italy

Hello, curious about American soldiers as prisoners of war in Italy -- possibly at Monte Cassino-- and whether or not there was a raid by the Polish army that resulted in a rescue of these POWs? 76.125.214.58 (talk) 00:03, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Hill 593

I wonder if the Hill 593 is notable enough to have its own article, like Hill 16, to name just an example? I was just looking at a painting dedicated to the battle for that place, titled "Hill 593". --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:46, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

B-class review failed

Agree with milhist, the referencing is insufficient (there are entire unreferenced paras). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 19:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Pyrrhic victory?

User:Dlmt3 has today changed the description in the info box from Pyrrhic victory to Strategic victory. User:Denniss promptly undid the change without explanation. I have now undone again, back to Strategic. I believe this is the correct description. Two sources are cited for "Pyrrhic" (Parker and Crwys-Williams), and I assume both use the word (I don't have them to hand). However, while that's fair enough as a rhetorical and personal judgement on the outcome of the battle within a considered assessment – and perhaps one or both authors deserve to be quoted in full in the Aftermath or Legacy sections – it's not an appropriate term for the purely technical and factual infobox. The battles did allow the Allied forces to advance on Rome and into northern Italy, which was their strategic aim, albeit at immense cost. In that sense, the battle was undoubtedly a strategic victory, not a Pyrrhic victory. GrindtXX (talk) 13:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

And I have reverted it again, as said in the comment if it's referenced to pyrrhic victory than it has to be kept or, if changed to strategic, the refs have to be removed. My initial revert without further comment was just the standard revert for possible vandalism/troll edits as it's not unusual to use one-time user accounts for those controversial actions. --Denniss (talk) 14:56, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
The fact that one (or few) sources describe it as "Pyrrhic" does not mean that that is a mainstream view. You may include this information into the "Aftermath" section and write that an author X believes the outcome was a Pyrrhic victory. However, to talk about Pyrrhic victory in the infobox would imply that the Italian campaign as whole was lost by the Allies, which obviously was not the case.
The authors simply used the word Pyrrhic as a synonym for "bloody", which is incorrect. I myself had a similar discussion over the Battle of Borodino, where I was a proponent of the word "Pyrrhic" in the infobox (and I had more ground for that, because the battle was the last, and bloody, Napoleon's victory during the Russian campaign, which was totally lost by France). However, the arguments put forward during the discussion convinced me in incorrectness of the usage of this term despite the fact that some sources (more than two) did use it.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:33, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Paul, you're missing the point here. You cannot take "Pyrrhic" out but leave the "Pyrrhic" citation in: you have to take the ref out as well. Convention dictates that if you replace cited text you should 1) establish consensus in the talk page and 2) introduce a new citation(s) to support the new view. In my view Pyrrhic should remain until this is done (even though I agree that Pyrrhic is wrong). Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 15:18, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Of course we can. Noone requires us to reproduce everything the source says. --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:34, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Agreed: "Pyrrhic" should disappear (from the infobox), as should the two citations. It's actually quite unusual to have citations in an infobox, the purpose of which is "to summarize key facts in the article" (MOS:INFOBOX): in other words, it should consist of uncontentious hard facts which are also provided (and where necessary referenced) in the body of the article. The fact that Parker (and, presumably, Crwys-Williams – a South African book to which I don't have access) describe Cassino as a Pyrrhic victory deserves mention in the article, perhaps balanced by some more triumphalist comments from Mark Clark et al. – but not in the infobox.
As an aside, the article currently lacks an overall "Conclusions" section on the military usefulness of the battle where this would naturally belong. Such a section could also incorporate a unified recapitulation which attempted to pull together the three separate threads included in the "Aftermath" section; the paragraph on "Casualties"; and the interesting paragraph on the differing "Meaning"(s) of the battle, which to my mind is rather stranded in its current location with "Evacuation and Treasures". GrindtXX (talk) 18:41, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes. The infobox summarises the article, so the word "Pyrrhic" should be there only if it is clear from the article that the victory had a disastrous long term outcome for the Allies. Currently, there is no need in the references in the infobox, because the fact that the outcome was an "Allied victory" is not challenged by any source.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:46, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Categories

Category:World War II operations and battles of the Italian Campaign and Category:World War II operations and battles of the Western European Theatre are both sub categories of Category:World War II operations and battles of Europe. So it is not appropriate to have this article in both categories. The first one is enough. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 22:19, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Good point.VolunteerMarek 04:13, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Recent edits in the Fourth Battle

Recent edits by User:Grunwald-Tannenberg have been repetitive of what already appears earlier in the article, are out of order in the timeline, read poorly in English and are in an uncyclopaedic breathless style. In the first instance I eliminated the repetition and breathlessness and reordered what was left to be more logical to the timeline. User:Grunwald-Tannenberg has taken to reverting these changes (and I in turn restoring them). Since User:Grunwald-Tannenberg does not use edit summaries it is difficult to see what the ultimate intention is here. I have left a message on his talk page offering to discuss the matter here and give my assistance in achieving User:Grunwald-Tannenberg's intentions while maintaining a suitable level of integrity in the article. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 16:16, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

How many battles?

Hello. Interesting article. But it's left me wondering whether the "Battle of Monte Cassino" was one battle that consisted of four assaults, or, as some phrasings in the article seem to suggest, was four separate battles. If it's the latter, shouldn't the article be renamed "Battles of Monte Cassino"? 213.246.91.158 (talk) 02:45, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Allied commanders.

I would like to point out an issue regarding the Allied commanders at the Battle of Monte Cassino.

As you can see in the chart at the beginning of the article, only three Allied commanders are mentioned: namely, Harold Alexander, Mark Clark and Oliver Leese.

Gen. Juin (French Expeditionary Corps) and Gen. Anders (2nd Polish Corps) were – surprisingly – not cited in this chart, despite the fact that both commanders had a crucial influence on the course of the battle. I therefore edited the chart.

User:Denniss promptly deleted my edit, pleading that "This [chart] covers Army Group and Army commanders. Anders and Juin were corps commanders and should not be listed" – albeit I did list the aforementioned officers into a subsection entitled "Corps commanders".

I maintain that Alphonse Juin and Władysław Anders should be cited. For at least three reasons. As pointed above, the two Corps commanders proved to be key masterminds behind the final victory. Also, as found in many Wikipedia articles dealing with military actions, an exhaustive list of commanders and leaders are often displayed (for instance, see link: Northern Mali conflict (2012-present)). Last but not least, the flag icons of both the Free French Forces and Poland are duly displayed in the chart – ergo, it would be illogical to cite a fighting force without quoting its corresponding field commander in the same chart.

Dear Wikipedia community, what's your take on this?

Antechristo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Antechristo (talk • contribs) 17:35, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Lower level commanders such as Juin and Anders are given due credit in the text of the article. But the battle ran for 4 months and there were several lower-level commanders involved. The infobox is a summary of the overall battle not an exhaustive specification. Keeping it simple is the intent, not to fill it with minutinae. GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:54, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
Agreed. This was discussed before and at the time it was in essence agreed that you couldn't pick out a couple of Corps commanders because they were "key masterminds" because this would represent POV. The corollary to this is you have to include all Corps commanders. As GraemeLeggett points out, the battle went on for 4 months: during this period there were about 6 or 7 Allied Corps commanders involved! With possibly ten names, the infobox would become just noise. By sticking to the three AG and Army commanders you have just the men responsible for the strategic and operational conduct of the battle. Beneath them were many commanders and staff who made significant contributions which should be drawn out in the text in a balanced way. Stephen Kirrage talk - contribs 10:56, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Australia

Given discussions in the archives, it seems Australia shouldn't be in the infobox. Should Australia be removed? 108.207.36.86 (talk) 06:15, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Talking about moroccan-french division isn't correct. There were colonials troups with french NCO and officers, not especially from Morocco. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E35:87FA:ACF0:7466:FAA8:5E30:25BD (talk) 15:13, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

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Rolled back edits

@Hohum and Denniss: - could you explain the reasons for rolling back the recent IP edits please? O Still Small Voice of Clam (formerly Optimist on the run) 18:21, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

See the section immediately above this. The addition of a bear to the infobox strength is inappropriate. (Hohum @) 18:35, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing with that, but it seems like a content dispute rather than deliberate vandalism, and therefore the use of rollback is inappropriate. O Still Small Voice of Clam (formerly Optimist on the run) 22:04, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
No, it's vandalism. Addition of the bear is not in any way related to the strength field in infobox. It's just nationalism/fanboism vandalismus. Look at the article history and countless reverts because of this BS, mostly done by IPs.--Denniss (talk) 22:25, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
If you're convinced that the edits all come from the same person then I agree it's vandalism/trolling. However if its a good faith attempt by multiple people to introduce this information then it's a content dispute. I leave the decision to you. O Still Small Voice of Clam (formerly Optimist on the run) 12:11, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Use of (Twinkle) rollback doesn't assume bad faith. Where do you get that idea? The options for rollback I have are: "[rollback (AGF)] || [rollback] || [rollback (VANDAL)]" I used [rollback]. (Hohum @) 18:57, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Hi thought i'd throw my two cents in, I keep changing it cause its historical fact that the bear was present in the battle and doesn't fit under the other catergories — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.151.170.48 (talk) 23:07, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Impact on the Abbey building itself ? Impact on the town ? The Marocchinate ?

I find it astonishing that there is almost nothing about the impact and the almost total destruction of the abbey (especially the building) itself. That especially since this abbey is and was so much important as one of the original abbeys of the Benedictine Order. This historical importance is nowhere emphasized.

Compared against the great amount of detail and wealth of information of the battle itself, the destruction of the abbey's building itself is nowhere actually described. The battle is explained and described in every possible detail - but the actual destruction of the building - and what has actually been destroyed - is almost silenced to death.

Even more disturbingly, there does not even exist an English-language article about the abbey's building itself; there is only one single artice titled "Monte Cassino", and´the article begins as a description of the hill, not of the abbey. It does contain an description of the abbey - but the overall article's wording is always about the hill, not the actual abbey's building. Through this downplaying, readers can get the impression as if this special Benetictine founding abbey was "just another target" and didn't have any importance in Christian history at all.

I can also see no article on the destruction of the town of Cassino, nothing about its bombing, and no article how much of the ancient roman town of Casinum was destroyed through the bombing. And nothing about the fact that many civilians lost their lives there.

There is also almost no mentioning of the Marocchinate and its reasoning. That an Ally officer apparingly implicitely allowed the mass rape (or so I understand its article) is something that should be within the Battle article. Although this is clearly a part of the actual war, it is never mentioned within the main article, and the proposed thousands of cases of rape (if the numbers of the Marocchinate article are true) are thus downplayed as some kind of minor collateral damage. There is no mention of an scientific approac to the event, only the mention of an "claims of exaggeration" by a French Marshal, but this claim does not look to me like an the result of a scientific study.

When I compare the sheer amount of words of the paragraph called "the Battle" with the paragraph about the Marocchinate, then the reader can see how unimportant actual civilians are. Even the paragraph about "troop honours" is placed higher than the paragraphs about the civilians.

The article "Battle of Monte Cassino" is an military article. It should, however, show *everything* about the battle, and not downplay aspects of it, like the destruction of the actual, Abbey building, the mass rape called Marrocchinade, and the destruction of the town of Casino.

On the page about the town Cassino there is a picture of the destroyed town "ruins of Cassino after the bombing". What I do not understand is that it is not shown within the "Battle of Monte Cassino" page, although its destruction was clearly a part of the whole battle. Alrik Fassbauer (talk) 13:34, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

The simple reasons for your first two questions is that this is an article about the battle in the context of the campaign in Italy and not about the building or town except where that has relevance to the fighting. And that's where the focus of the article lies. That does not preclude anyone writing an article about the buildings or the town but if volunteer editors don't have resources or inclination to write about those then they won't. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:54, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Bear

I reverted this edit, adding the bear to the list of combatants. Note that I did so solely based on this being Aelimian21 (talk · contribs) acting inappropriately (see WP:SOCK). I take no stance on whether or not the bear should be included in the list, and my revert should not be understood as me advocating any position on that subject. I do really like the story of the bear, though. --Yamla (talk) 11:32, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

This has been an issue on this page for several years, with some (usually drive-by) editors repeatedly adding "1 bear" to the allied belligerent strengths, and others (usually the regular editors of this page) reverting them. I completely support the reversions: even though Wojtek (bear) was technically enrolled in the Polish army, the belligerent strength numbers are necessarily very round figures, and there is absolutely no justification for singling out one "individual" who was present at but played no significant part in the battle. However, having said that, Wojtek is considered notable enough to have his own article (and was even once the subject of a "Did you know?" entry), and I would have no objection to his being given a very brief mention somewhere appropriate in the body of the article; or alternatively just being listed in the "See also" section. What do others think? GrindtXX (talk) 13:55, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Can we revisit this? Wojtek was an enlisted soldier and since bears cannot be categorized under men, tanks, or planes it is entirely appropriate to add in the "1 bear." It is misleading and detrimental to the article’s integrity to leave Wojtek out, GrindtXX. How does it actually hurt the article to add 1 bear? It is historically accurate and doesn't actually affect anyone. Aelimian21 (talk) 17:35, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

So im gonna raise this again, the bear, why can't he be a fixture of the page? or can he, i think this needs revisting. Lindwigtoon 00:24, 28th September 2020 (BST)

I take it no one is going to comment on this, so I'm going to make the change, if we discuss this at a later date and decide otherwise. Lindwigtoon 12:57, 9th October 2020 (BST) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:4C75:C500:C81F:19C7:DA7F:E33D (talk) 11:57, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
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