From left, Field Marshall Sir Harold Alexander, Supreme Commander MTO, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and Field Marshall Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, Chief of British Staff Mission in Washington, are chatting in the garden of Mr. Stimson’s house in the Potsdam Conference area in Germany. The Field Marshalls are luncheon guests. Alexander ordered the bombing of the great abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy. Wikipedia Commons.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
After suffering heavy casualties in attempting to take Cassino, Italy (up to 80% in some battalions), troops of the U.S. 34th Infantry Division are relieved by the 4th Indian and 2nd New Zealand Divisions of the British Eighth Army on February 11, 1944. The Allies are pushed back to a final defense line at Anzio. In Ukraine, German troops trapped in the Korsun Pocket attempt a breakout. Administrative control of Sardinia, Sicily and southern Italy is passed from Allied command to the government of prime minister Pietro Badoglio.
On February 12, Japanese submarine I-27 sinks the British troopship SS Khedive Ismail, sailing in a convoy near the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, with the loss of 1,297 lives, including those of 77 women. The sinking is the third-worst Allied shipping disaster of the war and the single-worst loss of female service personnel in the history of the British Commonwealth. I-27 is itself sunk by the destroyers HMS Paladin and HMS Petard with a combination of depth charges and torpedoes even as Khedive Ismail’s 214 survivors are being rescued from the water. En route from Rhodes to Piraeus, Greece, the Norwegian steamship SS Oria, carrying 4,116 Italian prisoners plus 21 German military personnel, the Norwegian captain and a Greek crew of 22, is caught in a storm and sinks. Only 21 Italians, 6 Germans, the Norwegian captain and one Greek are saved. This is the worst-ever loss of life in the Mediterranean caused by a ship sinking. From Moscow, the Soviet Union announces that a National Council of Poland — in opposition to the Polish government-in-exile in London — has been established in areas of Poland occupied by the Red Army.
American military officials announce on February 13 that any Japanese forces remaining in the Solomon Islands are effectively trapped there. In Italy, the Allies halt a German attack around Cassino. Italians in Cassino Monastery (monks and civilians seeking refuge there) are warned that the abbey will be bombed. (Some Allied commanders believe the abbey is occupied by the Germans, who are using the church atop the mountain as an artillery observation point. Not all — including U.S. Fifth Army commander Lt. Gen. Mark Clark — share this opinion.)
On February 14, an anti-Japanese revolt takes place on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. It is put down quickly by Japanese paratroopers. German resistance within the Korsun Pocket, in Ukraine, continues to be strong; a Belgian SS brigade is prominent in the defense. The German 3rd Panzer Corps (part of Army Group South) attempts to break through the surrounding Soviet forces from the outside to relieve the pocket but is unable to do so.
In Italy, on the orders of Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, Commander-in-Chief, Allied Armies in Italy, 422 tons of bombs are dropped over the great abbey of Monte Cassino on February 15 causing heavy damage. Indian and New Zealand troops begin an offensive to capture the monastery. However, shortly after the bombing stops, the abbey’s ruins are quickly occupied and viciously defended by “The Green Devils” of the German 1st Fallschirmjäger (Paratrooper) Division, who had been on the lower slopes of the mountain. (It is later determined that, in fact, the Germans had promised [to the Vatican] to neither occupy nor use the abbey for military purposes — and had kept their word. The only casualties in the abbey from the bombing were 230 Italian civilians. Collaterally, numbers of German and Allied soldiers were killed by bombs that missed the target. Ironically, after the abbey was destroyed, the ruins provided perfect cover for German defensive and artillery-observation positions that subsequently caused significant problems for the Allies.) In the Pacific, the U.S. Army Air Forces decimate a Japanese convoy off New Georgia Island. Over Germany, the heaviest raid ever on Berlin is conducted, during which 2,500 tons of bombs are dropped.
With massive artillery support and 10 infantry divisions, the Germans on February 16 launch a second major counterattack at Anzio, threatening the Allied beachhead. In Ukraine, German forces trapped in the Korsun Pocket attempt another breakout.
U.S. Marines land on Eniwetok Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, on February 17. Elsewhere in the Pacific, American forces attack the Japanese naval base at Truk Lagoon in the Caroline Islands. In Italy, at Anzio, the Germans drive a 1.6-mile-deep wedge into the Allied lines. In response, Allied command orders all aircraft on the Italian Front to Anzio to bomb and strafe the German positions. In Ukraine, the Battle of the Korsun Pocket ends as the bulk of surviving German troops (35,000 of 56,000 originally) manage to break out and reach their own lines but without their heavy equipment, which is abandoned.
