Original subtitles

- After their victory over Germany in North Africa,

American generals want to attack the Third Reich

directly through Northern Europe,

but Prime Minister Winston Churchill

and the British believe an operation

of that size and scope is premature.

Failure would be catastrophic.

Churchill proposes they attack Germany from the south,

for what he considers the soft underbelly of Europe,

Italy.

- All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world

like the Second World War did.

- Japan's on the march, Germany's on the march.

No one can imagine the nightmare

they're about to unleash.

The most destructive war in human history.

- Suddenly the world is turned upside down

and all hell is let loose.

- The West is stunned by the speed of the advance.

- You get the Allies led by the big three,

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin,

Men who were dealing with immensely complicated questions.

- It's the biggest military operation of human history.

- It's the biggest military operation of human history.

- The Allies have to come together,

not just militarily, but industrial scale.

It's a global perspective.

- They have to fight in every climate,

from the Arctic to the jungles of the Pacific,

to the deserts of Africa, and the depths of the ocean.

[rousing music]

But there was no certainty of victory.

It was going to be a horrific bloodbath.

- We see humans at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings,

and we see them at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives that others might live.

- World War II was a struggle

in which there could be one victor and one vanquished.

[rousing music]

[explosion booming]

[air raid siren wailing]

[slow suspenseful music]

- [Tom] In May, 1943,

the prime minister of Great Britain

and the president of the United States meet in Washington DC

for the third time since American entry into the war.

[suspenseful music]

Rarely in history have political leaders

forged as personal a bond

as Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

- Churchill still feels he's the senior partner.

He can get what he wants out of Roosevelt.

- [Robert] So after Tunis, after the big victory in North Africa,

Churchill's argument is that there's one logical next step,

and that next step is Sicily.

So campaigning in the Mediterranean

will not only knock over one of the three big Axis powers,

Mussolini's Italy,

it will also open a back door to Hitler's Germany.

- And the American commanders are saying, "Why?

Let's just go straight for Berlin.

What are we doing?

Why are we dancing around the edges here

with this Mediterranean nonsense?"

And they think that Franklin Roosevelt

is being persuaded by Churchill's pretty words.

- There were charges then and since

that Churchill wanted to go up through the bottom of Europe

in order to preserve the British Empire.

- Britain was a Mediterranean power.

The Americans suspected that this was all about

defending British interests in Egypt, in the Suez Canal

that controlled India and the Persian Gulf

where British oil was.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] FDR's not interested

in preserving the British Empire,

but he understands there are sound, strategic reasons

to capture Sicily.

- One of Churchill's arguments was,

they had these commitments

to take some pressure off the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin has been pushing for a second front.

Churchill says, "You have all of these armies

that are now freed up

after the North African campaign is over.

What are you gonna do with them?

They're right there."

- [Sarada] The truth is that the Allies

still don't have enough actual material

to conduct a cross-channel invasion and land in France.

- [Tom] Allied military leaders

are already planning a cross-channel invasion,

Operation Overlord,

but it will not be ready for months.

To relieve the military pressure on the Soviets,

and sustain the momentum established

by the victory in North Africa,

FDR agrees to attack Sicily.

- [Robert] After Sicily, they will pull, let us say,

the Allied A-team out of the Mediterranean,

the leadership team, most of the landing craft,

most of the air power, deploy it to Great Britain

to begin, finally, preparations in earnest

for an invasion of Western Europe.

- [Dan S.] Churchill's like, "Yes, of course,

I'm sure things will go really fast.

We'll be back in time for a nice early D-Day in 1944."

He goes, "Look, we're all dressed up,

we're ready to go to the ball.

Let's do Sicily."

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] The invasion of Sicily is given the code name

Operation Husky.

- At the time, Operation Husky

is the biggest amphibious operation in history.

The scale of shipping and manpower is unprecedented.

They're gonna put onshore, 160,000 troops.

[shellfire booming]

- [Tom] Both Italian and German troops

oppose the Allied landings.

[shellfire booming]

[airplane droning]

[explosion booming]

But the Allies achieve surprise,

and quickly secure the beaches.

- [Saul] You've got two field commanders on Sicily,

Montgomery for the British.

Montgomery is given the key role, Patton for the Americans.

Patton's job is really as a shield.

- [Tom] The British Eighth Army,

under general Bernard Montgomery,

will advance north to Messina,

while the American Seventh Army,

under General George Patton, guards his left flank.

- If you get to Messina, any troops that are

on Sicily cannot cross back over it into Italy proper.

And now you've captured all the troops that are on Sicily

and you own Sicily.

- [Robert] And that's especially crucial

for the German divisions,

so that the Allies won't have to face them

at some future point in some future battle.

- [Tom] As in North Africa, British and American forces

are required to operate as one force.

- [Dan S.] This is a really ambitious attempt

to just bring two nations with two different traditions

very, very close into harmony.

And as you might expect, there's teething trouble.

- [Saul] Montgomery and the British senior commanders

all had a similar attitude to the Americans,

which is, they're green.

There were disasters and setbacks in North Africa,

they're still learning their trade.

We've been at this since 1940.

Patton, on the other hand, thinks Montgomery

has no kind of understanding

of what American servicemen can actually achieve.

[explosions booming]

- [Tom] Both armies endure horrendous conditions.

[gunfire cracking]

The mountainous terrain,

the 100-plus degree heat, thousands are felled by malaria.

- [Col. Douds] Sicily in the summertime is incredibly hot,

it is disease ridden.

Fighting there is brutal for everyone.

- Fire!

[shellfire booming]

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] Facing stiff German resistance,

Montgomery's army stalls.

He's given access to the road

Patton's army has already taken.

- [Robert] Patton goes ballistic.

To his credit, Patton doesn't just sit there seething.

He comes up with a plan.

- [Col. Douds] What Patton sees is, a drive north up to Palermo

would put a feather in his cap.

- [Robert] The Americans overrun the western half of Sicily

before the Germans and Italians know what is happening.

- [Tom] Patton captures the Sicilian capital of Palermo

less than two weeks after the initial landings.

[rousing music]

- [Robert] This is the signal moment for the US army

so far in World War II.

[spectators cheering]

- Patton's forces are greeted in the streets of Palermo

by Sicilians who were never a hundred percent on board

with fascism anyway,

and they're gonna greet the arriving American army

as liberators.

[spectators cheering]

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] Yet again, Adolf Hitler must adjust

for Italian military weakness.

- [Robert] His major ally on the European continent,

Benito Mussolini, seems unable

even to defend his own home territory.

- [Tom] Benito Mussolini

and his Italian fascist movement

had set the stage for Adolf Hitler

and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

[Mussolini speaking in Italian]

[spectators cheering]

[rousing music]

- Mussolini is the inventor of fascism,

is the embodiment of the virility of the fascist man.

In the early phases of this relationship,

Hitler himself looks up at Mussolini, and he aspires to do

what Mussolini has been able to achieve in Italy.

- [Tom] Hitler consciously copied

Mussolini's grab for power.

- [Crowd] Duce! Duce! Duce!

- [Tom] The symbolism.

- Sieg heil.

[spectators cheering]

- [Tom] The political tactics,

[spectators chanting]

the violence.

But Mussolini no longer commands an iron grip on his nation

like Hitler does.

- [Robert] Mussolini's war has brought Italy

nothing but misery.

The Italian people wanted very little part

of this war at the beginning, they want no part of it now.

Things cannot go on like this.

- [Saul] Hitler's getting situation reports

of what's going on in Sicily,

basically saying the Italians aren't fighting.

He makes the decision to go to Italy

to put some spine into Mussolini.

[ominous music]

He is shocked by the sight of Mussolini,

who's really a broken man after the defeat in North Africa.

There isn't much fight left in him,

and Hitler is horrified by what he's seeing.

- [Robert] Hitler harangues Mussolini

for hours about his failures.

His failure to instill a war-like spirit

into the armed forces,

his failure to make true fascists of the Italian people,

his failure to prosecute the war with sufficient vigor,

and Mussolini has no choice but to sit there and take it.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] As Hitler and Mussolini meet,

[bombs whistling]

[explosion booming]

the Allies begin a bombing campaign on Rome.

- [Marco] The news comes as a shock to Mussolini,

and he tries to convey to Hitler

the gravity of the situation.

Hitler continues as if nothing had happened.

[suspenseful music]

- [Martin] The bombing of Rome adds fuel

to this already simmering fire

of questioning and doubt about Mussolini's leadership.

[suspenseful music]

[ominous music]

- [Tom] The bombing of Rome is a shock to the Italians.

The battles have been fought elsewhere,

but now the price of Mussolini's war hits home.

- [Robert] There's grumbling in the streets.

Mussolini thinks he has the fascist

brand counsel in his pocket,

he thinks he has the top leadership

in the military in his pocket,

he thinks he has the King in his pocket.

- [Marco] Victor Emmanuel III has been

the King of Italy since 1900,

and he's the one that handed the government

over to Mussolini in 1922.

- [Tom] On July 25th, the day after the fascist council

passes a vote of no confidence for Mussolini,

the King summons him to his palace.

- And he's told not to wear his uniform.

This should have been an indication to him

that trouble was afoot,

and his wife, in fact, advises him not to go.

Mussolini tells her, "No problem, I've got this."

- [Tom] But the King has Mussolini arrested.

He's rushed away in the back of an ambulance

to hide him from public view.

[rousing music]

[radio host speaking in Italian]

- [Tom] His 21-year fascist reign is over.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] The fall of Mussolini

leads to a very confusing situation.

The new head of state is the marshal of the Italian army,

Pietro Badoglio.

He actually makes an announcement

that the war goes on,

"We remain Germany's loyal ally."

- [Tom] After Mussolini is deposed,

FDR addresses the nation.

- My fellow Americans,

our terms to Italy are still the same,

unconditional surrender.

- [Marco] Publicly, Badoglio states repeatedly

that the war effort is going on alongside the Germans.

Privately, he is actually starting to make arrangements

for the Italians to get out of the war.

- [Tom] Badoglio signals that Italy might be open

to an armistice.

He sends one of his generals

to secretly negotiate directly with the Allies.

- [Robert] Badoglio might wish to surrender,

but he needs to have someone at his back.

He knows that there will be retribution

from the angriest man in Europe at the time,

and that will be Adolf Hitler.

[rousing music]

[tank rumbling]

- [Saul] In Sicily, Patton's army leaves Palermo

to get to Messina,

while the British are advancing from the south.

Meanwhile, the Germans are taking advantage

of the delay in getting to Messina

to begin getting off the island.

[rousing music]

It's effectively the German Dunkirk,

because pretty much everyone who could walk

and was able-bodied, got off,

and not only that, they got off with all their equipment.

- [Robert] The entire purpose of the Allied operational plan

was to trap the Germans on Sicily, and they fail.

[suspenseful music]

- [Dan S] Still, things in Sicily

go pretty much as Churchill would've wished.

Not only do Allied troops successfully

drive Axis forces outta of Sicily,

and it also proves to be the death nail

of Mussolini's fascist regime.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] With the potential deal

for an Italian surrender in the works,

FDR and Churchill meet in Quebec.

- [Saul] And it's at this point

that Churchill is able to say to Roosevelt,

"Look, the Italians are pulling out of the war.

We have an opportunity bloodlessly take

the Italian peninsula.

You know, what's not to like in this operation?"

- [Dan S.] Churchill says, "The Italians are begging us

to come and help liberate them and switch sides.

We could be in Rome in a couple of weeks here.

If we land in Italy, it'll be a cakewalk.

We can't do Sicily and then go home."

- [Tom] FDR agrees,

but only with assurance that Operation Overlord

will remain the Allies' highest priority.

- [Saul] The difficult trade off in the Italian campaign

is that the key resources,

the landing craft and the best troops,

are gonna go back to the UK to prepare for D-Day.

[rousing music]

- [Tom] Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower

now picks one of America's youngest generals

to lead the Italian invasion,

Mark Clark, commander of the US Fifth Army.

- [Martin] Clark has a flare for showmanship.

Because once you pin on a star,

you're also becoming a little bit of a politician as well.

- [Col. Douds] Mark Clark has an immense amount of talent,

but he also has a corresponding ego.

He travels with a press corps.

He will only let them take pictures of his favorite side,

which I think is his left side,

based on all the pictures we see of him.

[rousing music]

- [Tom] The Allied strategy in Italy

calls for two large forces.

The first will land in and Calabria,

and the second will land a few days later at Salerno.

The two forces will then link, and push north towards Rome.

[tanks rumbling]

At Calabria, Montgomery's Eighth Army

lands almost uncontested

- [Robert] Badoglio was supposed to take to the airwaves

on the evening of September 8th

and announce the Italian surrender,

and this is crucial to the plan,

because it will tell the hundreds of thousands

of Italian troops how in beach defense positions

not to fire at the Allies as they land.

- [Tom] At his headquarters,

Eisenhower waits by his radio.

The Salerno landings are just hours away.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] 6:30 comes, no Badoglio.

Seven o'clock, no Badoglio.

The entire plan hinges on a well announced,

orderly Italian surrender.

- [Tom] Eisenhower decides to force the issue

by going on the radio himself.

- The Italian government

has surrendered its armed forces unconditionally.

All Italians who now act to help eject

the German aggressor from Italian soil

will have the assistance

and the support of the United Nations.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] Hitler anticipates the announcement

of the armistice.

- [Saul] From the moment Mussolini falls,

Hitler's convinced that Badoglio's government

is going to withdraw from the war.

- [Tom] For weeks,

Hitler has been moving German troops into Italy.

He orders Operation Axis.

- [Saul] The Germans have an operation

they've been preparing,

which is that, if the Italians do the dirty on us,

we're gonna disarm them

and we're gonna take over the security of all of Italy.

- [Tom] Italy will become an occupied nation.

[suspenseful music] [train whistling]

- Operation Axis is the disarmament of the Italian army

and the occupation of the entire Italian Boot

by German forces.

[vehicles rumbling]

It occurs with lightning rapidity.

[suspenseful music]

The Italian army is on its back foot.

They aren't so sure about who they should be firing at,

if anyone.

[automatic gunfire cracking]

- [Tom] Local Italian resistance movements

form and fight the Germans.

Nazi retaliation is fierce.

- [Dan C.] The Italians were being executed by the Germans

after they switched sides.

There were a lot of terrible things going on,

villages wiped out.

[ominous music]

- [Tom] When the Allied invasion force

lands at Salerno,

they believe they'll be welcomed by Italian troops.

- [Robert] Underlying this operational plan is intelligence

that the German army may evacuate Italy,

that it has no desire to defend Italy.

If all goes well, the Allies should be up to Rome

with almost no casualties at all.

- [Saul] So what they're gonna do is they're gonna land

without any pre-bombardment,

and they're gonna hope for tactical surprise.

- [Robert] The Allies are expecting to meet

happy Italian faces,

perhaps handshakes, taking over Italian positions

now that Italy had surrendered,

and instead, what the troops at Salerno experienced

was a wall of German fire.

[shellfire booming]

[gunfire cracking]

[explosion booming]

- [Saul] The whole of the beach

is being saturated with shellfire.

It's an absolute inferno.

[shellfire booming]

[gunfire cracking]

[suspenseful music]

It was a grim experience for those first few crucial days

in which they're trying to defend the beachhead.

[suspenseful music]

[planes droning]

[gunfire cracking]

And it's the fighting at Salerno

that really convinces Hitler

to make them fight for every inch of Italy.

- [Tom] Hitler moves more forces to defend Italy.

[suspenseful music]

He also discovers that Mussolini

is being held at a hotel in the Apennine Mountains,

and decides to take action.

- [Robert] Hitler just can't quit Mussolini, apparently.

He orders a commando raid onto the Gran Sasso

to rescue Benito Mussolini.

[suspenseful music]

That force lands,

overcomes Mussolini's guards.

- [Tom] Mussolini is flown back to Germany.

- [Marco] Hitler thinks that Mussolini

would give legitimacy to the German occupation of Italy.

- [Robert] For the rest of the war, Mussolini will be ruling

a kind of puppet regime in northern Italy.

But he's a shadow of the figure

who used to strut across the world stage in the 1930s.

The situation has changed drastically

since Mussolini was the top dog and Hitler the imitator,

to now, Mussolini as Hitler's lap dog.

[shellfire booming]

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] After a massive air and naval assault,

Clark's Fifth Army breaks out of Salerno and moves inland.

- [Martin] A modern mechanized army is going to experience

great difficulty in driving north,

because the Germans recognized,

the terrain's gonna do half the work for us.

[suspenseful music]

- [Marco] Mountain ranges, ravines, and fast flowing rivers

made Italy a sort of natural fortress.

[explosions booming]

- [Saul] What the Germans do effectively

is scorched earth policy.

They rip up the railway tracks,

they flood the river valleys.

They make it almost impossible to move through this terrain

unless you've taken the high ground.

[suspenseful music]

It was very clear very quickly that they were gonna struggle

to fight their way up the Italian peninsula.

General Mark Clark relabeled

Churchill's description of Italy as the soft underbelly

as the tough old gut.

[suspenseful music]

[vehicles rumbling]

- [Tom] It is said that all roads lead to Rome,

but in the fall of 1943,

for the Allies, there was only one,

Highway 6.

- As Allied forces are lured deeper and deeper

by moving north up Highway 6,

the German strategy very quickly becomes,

we're going to set up a series of defensive lines,

and you come to us, and we will then maul you.

[suspenseful music]

[explosions booming]

- It looked a lot like World War I defenses look.

There are mines, and mortars, and machine guns.

[gunfire cracking]

On the high ground, you have artillery observers,

who could have a full view of the advance of the Allies,

and they would call artillery to fire on the advances.

[shellfire booming]

The frustration grows with the costliness of this advance,

the slowness of this advance up the Boot.

- [Robert] There's some historical wisdom here,

and it traces back to the great Napoleon who once said,

"Italy is a boot, and like all boots,

has to be entered from the top,"

where there's a nice broad plain,

plenty of room to maneuver.

- [Dan C.] To fight up from the toe of Italy

after coming from Sicily...

Look at the terrain of Italy.

Big mountain range all down the center spine.

This is the big problem in Italy.

Who would wanna put an army into that area,

especially if it's raining?

- [Robert] It rains every day.

And General Clark once said,

"Anyone who ever talks about sunny Italy

should be here in October,"

which is when the Allies were there.

Gains are measured not in miles, but often in yards.

The Italian campaign soon turns into a slog for the Allies.

- [Col. Douds] And it's sapping their energy.

They're wet, they're cold, they're tired.

All of that is draining morale, as well as manpower.

[mule neighing]

One of the things that they resort to

is using mules to carry supplies forward,

'cause at least mules can get through that kind of terrain

in those kind of conditions.

- [Robert] I think it's fair to say, when the war began,

in the war department in Washington,

no one was thinking of mules.

- [Saul] It was arguably the most horrendous fighting

that the Western Allies had to experience

in the whole of the European theater.

There's no question that some of the Americans

who've given the go ahead for the Italian campaign

are now having second thoughts.

[ominous music]

- [Sarada] Churchill and the British commanders

promised the Americans that, basically,

Italy would fall relatively quickly.

- [Jon] Churchill argues again and again

that it would be folly not to continue

once one has set out on the Italian campaign,

arguing they must capitalize on their gains.

- [Dan S.] What do you do, evacuate Italy?

No, you fight the enemy in front of you.

Before you know it, you're embroiled in a massive, costly,

brutal war in Italy.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] Highway 6 snakes into the Liri Valley

on its way up the Italian peninsula.

[suspenseful music]

Overlooking the valley is a 1,700-foot rocky peak

called Monte Cassino.

Perched on top is a sixth century Benedictine abbey.

Monte Cassino is the strong point

of the German's defensive formation,

the Gustav Line.

[suspenseful music]

- [Saul] It must have seemed to the Allies,

as they gazed up there,

that this is a kind of perfect defensive position

for the Germans to use.

- [Martin] From the commanding heights of this terrain,

the Germans can rain down

accurate and effective artillery fire at all times.

[suspenseful music]

- [Col. Douds] There is no way to get to Rome

without in some way dealing with Monte Cassino.

- [Tom] The Allies hope to get to Rome by Christmas,

but it's here in the shadow of Monte Cassino

that the advance stalls.

[suspenseful music]

In November, Allied leaders gather in Tehran.

FDR is meeting Stalin for the first time.

- [Dan S.] And the first thing that happens

is Roosevelt and Stalin

seem insistent on building their own relationship,

sometimes freezing Churchill out,

and he takes this really badly.

- [Jon] He has to cede center stage with Roosevelt to Stalin.

And Churchill is in an interesting kind of

no man's land.

- [Robert] There's this old line

that Stalin didn't know much English, but he knew two words,

second front,

because he said it over and over and over again.

And when Stalin says second front,

he doesn't mean Sicily or even mainland Italy,

he means France.

[suspenseful music]

- [Jon] Churchill says, "I was the little British donkey

sitting between the great American eagle

and the Soviet bear,

and I was the only one who knew the way home."

- [Sarada] Churchill is still sticking

with his Mediterranean plan.

But he knows that, coming out of Tehran,

it's really important to be able to go back

and win this victory.

- [Robert] Winston Churchill, the master of

out-of-the box thinking,

has an idea for a left hook,

an amphibious landing on the western shore of Italy

behind the Gustav Line.

- [Tom] Troops will land at Anzio,

50 miles behind the German forces,

then drive inland,

drawing German defenders away from Monte Cassino.

- [Col. Douds] Winston Churchill thinks

that this could break the whole thing free.

This is the wildcat we need to shatter this stalemate.

- [Saul] The Allies agree to do it,

mainly because Churchill is convinced it can work.

- [Robert] But because so many men and landing craft

have been shipped back to Britain to prepare for D-Day,

the an Anzio landing winds up being two divisions only,

the an Anzio landing winds up being two divisions only,

a drop in the bucket.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] The Allied force at Anzio lands on an empty beach.

There are almost no Germans in front of it.

Surprise has been achieved.

- [Saul] Speed is of the essence.

As soon as you land, you must get off the beachhead

as quickly as possible, strike inland.

One jeep patrol actually gets as far

as the outskirts of Rome.

So clearly, there is a route of advance open.

- [Tom] The commander of the invasion

is General John Lucas.

- [Robert] Instead of driving boldly into the interior

and seizing the high ground over the Anzio beachhead,

General Lucas stays put.

- His thought is, "I need to secure this port,

'cause that is how we will be reinforced",

and so he sits.

As he sits, the German commander Kesselring

will basically pull all the cooks, bakers,

and candlestick makers from round Rome

and build them up to pen in the Anzio landing.

[suspenseful music]

- [Marco] The Germans have the high ground again,

and are able to control the situation

by subjecting the Allied forces to constant shelling.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] Leading the way in the German bombardments

were two enormous railroad guns,

known colloquially to the Allies

as Anzio Annie and the Anzio Express.

[shellfire booming]

These fire a 500-pound shell 30 miles.

[shellfire booming]

- [Saul] It would've sounded like a freight train.

You could hear it kinda whistling in, and then boom.

[explosion booming]

- [Robert] The Allies at Anzio are sitting in a marsh.

They have no cover.

[shellfire booming]

Around them are mountains and German artillery,

and the artillery never stops firing.

[shellfire booming]

- [Saul] There was nowhere on the beachhead you could go to

and get respite from enemy fire.

And so, what you basically gotta do

is burrow down into the ground and hold tight.

It was just this horrendous grind

of being under fire for 24 hours a day.

[shellfire booming]

- [Robert] This is as miserable a position

as any force in World War II found themselves.

- [Saul] Anzio is Churchill's plan.

And he said, famously, after the event,

"I thought we landed a wildcat on the shore.

What we got was a beach whale."

[gunfire cracking]

- [Tom] The Luftwaffe strafes

Allied troops on the beachhead.

[plane droning]

[explosion booming]

Included in the effort to help Lucas's forces off the beach

is the 99th Fighter Squadron,

part of what will become known as the Tuskegee Airmen.

- [Col. Douds] During that era of segregation,

most African Americans serve in rear echelon units.

Tuskegee airmen are frontline fighting units,

and they're changing everyone's minds.

[suspenseful music]

On one of their mission, 16 of them fly over Anzio,

and then what they find is the German aircraft

working over the landing craft.

[plane droning]

They shoot down 10 of those German aircraft.

[gunfire cracking]

[explosion booming]

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] To the south,

multiple attacks on the Monte Cassino abbey fail.

The Allies debate whether to bomb

the mountaintop Abbey from the air.

- [Col. Douds] The Benedictine abbey that sits on Monte Cassino

is a cultural relic.

The law of armed conflict would say, we don't touch those.

- [Marco] Of course, this is one of the most important libraries

of Christian thought for millennia,

and many civilians had taken refuge there.

- [Martin] But the assumption was that the Germans

were inside the abbey and using it

as the perfect field artillery observer's position.

We cannot allow the enemy

to continue to harass us with artillery fire.

So, the abbey's gotta go.

[suspenseful music]

Allied forces distributed pamphlets

warning that there would be a bombardment,

and the residents, they thought,

they're not actually going to do it.

[bombs whistling]

[explosions booming]

[bombs whistling]

- [Marco] Allied bombers flatten this shrine of Christianity.

[explosions booming]

The bombing actually resulted in the killing

of hundreds of civilians who were taking refuge there.

- [Tom] Allied intelligence was wrong.

The German observation posts

had not been inside the monastery walls.

- [Saul] The Germans who weren't occupying the abbey

have now decided to occupy the rubble,

which is incredibly effective for defensive purposes.

So the Allies got the exact opposite

of what they hoped to achieve.

[shellfire booming]

- [Robert] Bombing the monastery gets the Allies

no closer to their goal.

At some point, infantry is going to have to

ascend a mountain under enemy fire.

[explosion booming]

[suspenseful music]

[gunfire cracking]

- [Tom] The Allies have bombed the Monte Cassino abbey,

but the Germans still hold the summit.

[shellfire booming]

When the weather improves in May,

the Allies make yet another assault.

- [Robert] They take nearly their entire force in Italy

and cram it into the narrow western half of the peninsula,

using overwhelming strength now,

tanks, aircraft, ceaseless waves of artillery bombardment.

- You've got this extraordinary United Nations of troops.

I mean, people from all over the world are Cassino.

- [Col. Douds] We got the British, we got the Americans,

we got New Zealand Maoris, we got Canadians, we got Indians,

we got French Moroccans, Goumiers,

that are wonderful mountain fighters.

It is one of the places where Japanese Americans fight.

Who gets assigned Monte Cassino? The Pols.

[suspenseful music]

- [Tom] World War II began in Europe

when Germany invaded Poland.

As much as anyone, the Polish people

have suffered from the brutal rule of the Nazis.

[suspenseful music]

- [Col. Douds] The idea that Pols

would never miss an opportunity

to take it back out on the Germans

for what they did to them should be lost on no one.

[suspenseful music]

[gunfire cracking]

- At Monte Cassino,

the Pols are that final wave of fighters,

and they, with incredible bravery and toughness,

go up this huge inclines.

[rousing music]

- [Saul] As you advance up the hill, you have to show yourself.

You're gonna be picked off, you're a sitting duck.

[rousing music]

[gunfire cracking]

- [Col. Douds] We're talking almost 4,000 casualties

for the Polish units attacking against Monte Cassino.

[rousing music]

- [Tom] The Pols

finally overrun the ruins of the abbey.

- [Alexandra] The Polish flag is unveiled

on the top of the monastery.

[bugle sounding]

And they play this very, very famous bugle call,

HejnaB Mariacki,

which translates to St. Mary's trumpet call.

It's a symbol of resilience, of national identity,

of hope for the future, and of the fight for Poland

for every single Polish person.

[bugle sounding]

And it sounds out over the monastery

once the fighting has died down.

- [Tom] The Gustav Line is broken.

The Americans are finally able

to break out of the Anzio beachhead.

[suspenseful music]

- [Robert] There's a plan to encircle

and destroy the Germans.

- [Saul] The plan is for Mark Clark

to angle his troops to the northeast

and cut off Highway 6 at Valmontone.

Those were the orders he was given.

- [Robert] But Clark decides to make a swift left turn,

that is north, towards Rome.

[suspenseful music]

- [Col. Douds] Rome is an irresistible target.

Nothing screams we are making progress

than to have captured Rome.

And Mark Clark fundamentally thinks that the Fifth Army,

who has slogged their way up the Italian peninsula,

and him in particular, should get credit for this.

[rousing music]

- [Dan C.] The conquest of Rome is to take out

one of the great Axis capitals

in the war.

And what you're doing

is pointing out to the rest of the world

that we're on the march, it's happening,

and next stop, Berlin.

[spectators cheering]

- The first of the Axis capitals is now in our hands.

One up

and two to go.

- [Sarada] However, the liberation of Rome

is gonna be entirely overshadowed

because the next day is going to be the launch of D-Day,

and Roosevelt can't say anything about it.

[spectators cheering]

- [Tom] After 10 months,

the Allies have reached the Italian capital.

But General Clark's decision to take Rome

allows the Germans to escape once again.

- [Robert] Ever since, he's had to answer questions

about those orders.

Was his ego simply too large to pass up Rome?

- [Tom] Ultimately, the liberation of Rome

has more symbolic than strategic value.

The Allies would continue to fight the Germans in Italy

for almost another year.

- [Dan S.] I think Churchill went to his grave thinking

there was an opportunity there that was missed.

Churchill always believed that it had been a good idea,

but it had been undone by a bit of foot dragging

and some bad luck.

[tranquil somber music]

- [Robert] The Italian campaign is the moment

at which Churchill overreaches himself.

He had insisted on this vast continental campaign

that had led to nothing but misery.

- [Tom] Because of difficult terrain,

military miscalculation,

and determined resistance from a skillful enemy,

the Allied effort in Italy gained little and cost much.

- [Jon] The Italian campaign is the last time

the British will have a predominant presence

in the Allied forces.

America has been building airplanes and tanks,

and creating soldiers.

As the American strength rises,

Winston Churchill's influence wanes.

[tranquil somber music]

- [Tom] The battle for Italy,

which will go on until the end of the war,

was fought with determination and bravery.

Ordinary soldiers fought for their nation,

but also for each other.

This kind of comradery is found

in all theaters and on all battlefields.

War tests the best of us.

And nowhere would men be tested more

than in the skies over Germany.