What was the significance of the Battle of Monte Cassino?

Answer 1

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After driving Axis armies out of North Africa in May of 1943, Allied commanders turned their attention to an invasion of Italy. They believed that by advancing up the Italian peninsula they could knock Italy out of the war and bring about the downfall of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The capture of an Axis capital, Rome, would be of enormous symbolic importance. Hitler would be obliged to send large numbers of German troops to Italy-soldiers he might otherwise have used at the Russian front, or in France, which the Allies were preparing to invade.

Answer 2

The Battle of Monte Cassino was a long campaign that stopped the advvance of the Allies up the "boot" of Italy. The only place where the Allies were fighting the Germans was in Italy(excluding the campaigns in Russia by the Russians). Monte Cassino was a mountain that over-looked the LIri Valley and along with the other mountains it formed a formidal natural defense of Rome from attack from the South. {Only once in its 1000 years history had Rome been successfully attacked from the South.} The campaign began with the Allied offense on Jan 22, 1944, that tried to cross the Gargaliano River into the Liri Valley and into the towns at the base of Monte Cassino. There would be two other Allied assaults before the German finally pulled out of the town of Monte Cassino and the mountain & Abbey of Monte Cassino on May 18, 1944. This opened up the path for the Allies to advance into Rome. Only a few weeks later, the Allies launched the invasion of Normandy.