Telegrams, letters and telephone calls flowing on both fronts between military commanders and political leaders in the days leading up to what was later variously described as a “tragic error” or “barbarism,” document the complex, anxious decision process which led to the annihilation of a medieval monument and hundreds of civilians who sheltered inside. A necessary evil or an error of judgment? Sacrilege or a calculated counter measure? Seventy years have passed since the Allies’ bombs fell on the Abbey of Monte Cassino, but author Nando Tasciotti proves that these, and many more questions about the much discussed event can still be asked – and answered.

 A product of extensive studies of European and American archives, paired up with analyses of the accounts given by the survivors, recorded in diaries and interviews, “Montecassino 1944” is a new voice in the long-standing debate over the rationale behind and the ramifications of the order to attack the Benedictine monastery regardless of its cultural and spiritual importance.

 For decades historians maintained that there was no evidence which could justify the claim that the controversial decision was made on a political, and not merely a military level, and yet the telegrams exchanged between Churchill and his generals Alexander and Wilson between 26 January and 14 February, preserved in the Churchill Archives in Cambridge, clearly prove otherwise: "When do you propose to launch the Freyberg attack?” reads the “most secret cipher telegram” from the prime minister to General Alexander dispatched on 14  February, twenty hours prior to the air assault, “I suppose it is the bad weather which has delayed it since the 11^th.” Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, Tasciotti carries out a step-by-step investigation into what was going on behind the scenes of the world’s diplomacy in 1944, evaluating the decisive steps taken –- and not taken –- by its main actors before, during, and after the infamous bombing.

 Excerpts from diaries are densely intertwined with a multitude of quotes from public announcements in this revealing book, without, however, weighing down the flow of the narrative. The opening chapters are already proof of that, abounding in facts, yet effectively setting the scene for the forthcoming events, allowing the tension to build unaided. A detailed description of the monastery, accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue of the artistic and literary treasures brought there from across Italy to ensure their safety, reveals the tragic irony of how a seemingly inviolable asylum, within whose walls people and art were to remain unharmed in the epicentre of the raging war, became the very target of a fatal attack.  

 No one seemed to believe that Monte Cassino was facing any real danger from either of the sides in the conflict, and a fragment from Father Tommaso Leccisotti’s diary quoted by the author expresses such unwavering trust of the monastery’s archivist, who did not “admit the possibility that the Allies would not respect [that] place,” and hence opposed transporting any of the manuscripts outside its walls. Little did he know of the content of the correspondence exchanged between the Holy See and Washington, London, and Berlin, in which the importance of Monte Cassino as part of the world’s cultural heritage was unanimously recognised, however, with one major reservation: if, as it was suspected, the Nazis should take over the monastery, “the Allies will take all necessary counter-measures, aerial or else, which [their] military interests require.”

 A few days before the attack, on February 12, an article appeared in “L’Osservatore Romano” under the title “Lives and stones,” referring to a discussion which took place in London’s House of Lords, dealing with this very pertinent dilemma: “if the necessity of war […] requires an attack on glorious cities […], should one prefer an immunity which costs a greater sacrifice of human lives, or a sacrifice of monuments and memories for a smaller price of existences crushed?”

 On the same day, St. Petersburg Times in Florida published an article headlined “Respect for Abbey Cassino is costing American lives.” The balance was shifting towards “lives” and away from “stones,“ and although the sentiments of the Catholic electorate were still being taken into account by the U.S. government, the significance of a European monastery was much less obvious in New Zealand, where, as the author points out, the idea that soldiers would have to sacrifice their lives to protect a monument of no particular value to its protestant inhabitants would not have met with much understanding.

 “That voice, sovereign and imploring, a defenceless champion of faith and civilisation, was not listened to. Montecassino was bombarded and destroyed,” said Pope Paul VI of the Vatican’s efforts to save the monastery 20 years after the bombing on the occasion of the consecration of the reconstructed basilica in Montecassino. It was Pius XII’s ambiguous ‘silence’ after the attack that provoked much criticism of the “political, not pastoral” pope whose sole concern at the time was “to save Rome,” whatever the price.

 Tasciotti addresses the issue in the Epilogue, where he reviews the reactions and attitudes of the world’s leaders in the aftermath of WWII, and leaves it to Jesuit historian Peter Gumpel, the relator in Pius XII's cause for beatification, to explain the pontiff’s much disputed neutrality: “Aside from the war on the front, soldiers against soldiers, there was a diplomatic, psychological, media warfare. […] Whatever the pope would have said, it would have created problems, whether from the Allies or the Germans, […] it would have compromised his impartiality.”   

 For years the parties involved tried to shift off and deny the responsibility for the episode which remains one of the dark pages in the history of the great effort of the Allied forces in the Second World War. Reattributing blame, however, is by no means the point of the book, which, in exposing the circumstances which led to the “tragic error,” never belittles the decisive weight of the “cynical choice” of the Nazi army to encroach upon a neutral territory, putting innocent lives – and hundreds years of history – at risk to keep the enemy in check. Montecassino is a “stain,” agrees the author, “but on an eternally praiseworthy and victorious battle against fascism.”

 And the foreword makes it poignantly clear: “To never forget the contribution of those leaders, generals and soldiers of so many nations to our and their freedom, among the books and documents used in this study there had always been in plain view a rock from the mountain of Montecassino and a pebble collected with feeling in Normandy, on the sands of Omaha Beach.” 

 “Montecassino 1944: Errori, menzogne e provocazioni” by Nando Tasciotti, Castelvecchi. 332 pages, €19,50.