Cassino '44 by James Holland

Cassino ’44: The Brutal Battle for Rome

By James Holland

Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024

With the publication of his new book, Cassino ’44: The Brutal Battle for Rome, James Holland continues to solidify his place as one of the preeminent popular historians of the Second World War, vis-à-vis the combined efforts of America, Britain and her dominions. It’s an uneven record, admittedly. Sometimes he bears down on comparatively neglected battles and campaigns, his book Burma '44 being the best example, while at other points he more or less adds to an already groaning pile, as with Normandy ’44. But however needed or original his histories, what is always present – indeed, what has noticeably increased in power as he has published and matured as a historian – is his outright and inviting readability. Holland’s energy, handling of the relevant facts, and control of his narrative are done with a feeling of ease that attends a confident and enthusiastic historian.

Dry histories are too common, and histories of battles more narrowly can grind into minutiae that stultify and turn away readers who might otherwise be welcomed into what is, in this case, a brutal sliver of arguably the most dramatic large-scale event in human history.

Holland’s book is not dry, it manages to be detailed and specific while also covering a bigger picture, and the net effect is a communicable vessel for World War Two intrigue. For those already invested, while you won’t find much unfamiliar source material, Holland’s framing of the campaign and assessments of Generals like Mark Clark and Francis Tuker is totally refreshing.

Sandwiched between the United States entering the jaws of this conflict via North Africa in 1942 against the German’s Afrika Korps and the massive 1944 Operation Overlord, which conquered Hitler’s so-called Atlantic Wall and initiated the Allied liberation of Western Europe, the most significant battles for Italy don’t hang in the popular imagination so prominently as they might. Holland’s new book itself exists in a middle of a trilogy written out of chronological order about this Italian campaign (bracketed by The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943 and Italy's Sorrow: A Year of War, 1944-1945). Despite being well-covered ground, this volume, centered on the fights leading up to and encompassing the Battle for Rome, feels new and is certainly the best contemporary work readers will find in their bookstores on these battles.  

Unhelpful for our collective memory, very early here dominating personalities such as Field Marshals Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel are sent away from Italy to prepare for that coming fight in France. Unhelpful for those at the time, these preparations for Overlord, coupled with an “overly optimistic” hope of a quick victory in Italy, meant the latter theater was relatively under-resourced. As Holland notes:

It wasn’t a lack of manpower that was the issue, or even guns or ordnance; it was the means of getting them there, because for all the many shipyards in the United States – and Britain, for that matter – there was simply not enough shipping being produced for the demand of a truly global war: supplying the Soviet Union; sending vast amounts of aid to Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist Chinese Army to fight the Japanese; the Indian Army’s campaign in Burma and the Americans’ across the Pacific. Then there was the primary effort in Europe: the future cross-Channel invasion of Normandy. . .Priority of shipping – both merchant shipping and assault shipping for landing on beaches – was for OVERLORD, not Italy.

Holland ably shows how this affects military decisions in, for example, Operation Shingle (the amphibious prelude to the Battle of Anzio) and adeptly ties this material concern into the personal drama as we find the US officer in command, General John Lucas, prior to the landing “sitting in his cabin that evening with a massive knot of anxiety in his stomach, wondering what the hell lay in store and trying to convince himself all would be OK.”

This is bad enough, but there was a more wrenching calculus involved at this point in Italy:

. . .although there were many reasons for the urgency to hurry up and get the war done and dusted, one of them was the rate at which all the major combatant nations were getting through the available manpower. There was, though, a balance to strike, because the harder commanders pushed their men, the greater were the casualties. OVERLORD was dictating the pace in Italy, but the alternative for the Allies was to do nothing, call off any further offensives and wait for better weather and longer days when their overwhelming airpower could achieve more. . .The risk, however, was that the Germans would do the same, reinforcing existing, badly depleted divisions in Italy but not drawing off any more from France, Germany and elsewhere. So in a way, Allied troops had to lose their lives and limbs in Italy in order for fewer to lose their lives and limbs in Normandy.

Knowing this, all the more painful is the insult from Viscountess Astor every book on this subject mentions, that these Allied servicemembers were the “D-Day Dodgers.” Dodgers who fought in battles compared to, by senior commanders on both sides, to the worst of World War One, including Passchendaele and the Somme.

These fights over supplies, the big picture of the bigger war, the reputations and interplay of personalities, strategic decisions made and not made, the worries of troops who battled loss, homesickness, trauma, the elements and, usually worse, the enemy are all here in this sizeable volume. As a product (in its essential accompanying material meaning maps, photographs, etc.), as a work of history, and as a gripping narrative, James Holland’s Cassino ’44 is easy to recommend. 

David Murphy holds a Masters of Finance from the University of Minnesota.