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Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles and the occasional radio broadcast delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Course description, prerequisites and tuition information is available at the bottom of Homer’s profile. Also visit our general discussion thread.

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
Eastern Europe, 1941: Russian Leningrad and Ukraine Offensives – Operations, 2 December 1943-30 April 1944
Allied Advance to Volturno River, Reorganization, and Attack on Gustav Line (17 January-11 May 1944)
Anzio-Cassino Area, 1943: Attempts to Cross Rapido and Garigliano Rivers, 17-20 January 1944. Anzio Landing, 22 January 1944. German Counterattack at Anzio, 16-19 February 1944
New Guinea and Alamo Force Operations: Clearing the Huon Peninsula and Securing the Straits, 19 September 1943-26 April 1944
Cartwheel, the Seizure of the Gilberts and Marshalls, and Concurrent Air and Naval Operations, 30 June 1943-26 April 1944
The Far East and the Pacific, 1941: Original Allied Strategic Concept, May 1943; Situation in Pacific, 1 November 1943

Coincidence. My dad was in Italy during WWII. His DD214 (or as I remember it) had Major Battles fought and listed Battle of Rome and some other campaigns. However, I remember him always talking about Monte Cassino (he used to say Monte Cassini) and how tough it was to clear out the Germans there.

And again, in the early 50s right after I was born he got stationed in a place called Eniwetok. Two things I remember about when he came home. He got me a whole slew of island crafts (boats and stuff mostly all of which were broken by the mail service in transit) and a dozen or so black disks about the size of a half dollar and maybe 1/2 to 3/4” thick, each on a bead-chain. Radiation exposure disks.

For years afterward he had problems -ended up getting medically discharged in 1964 on 100% service connected disability. [His orders jacket from military didn’t contain any records of the time there, but my mom finally found some other soldiers’ (through snail mail networking) orders that were ‘group’ deployments that had my dad’s name on them. Those particular copies were what got him the disability rating. He died in 1971 while I was overseas myself.

February 20, 1943:

February 14: "Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring wires Minister of Armaments and Munitions Albert Speer.
He asks for as many concentration-camp inmates as possible for use as slave laborers in air-armament factories.
February 20-25: "In the Big Week (Operation Argument), American air units successfully engage German flyers in order to draw the Luftwaffe into a battle of attrition it cannot win.
The Allies establish air superiority over Western Europe before D-Day."

"Nahum Goldmann helped create the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in 1936.
\ The organization, headquartered in the United States, sought 'to assure the survival and to foster the unity of the Jewish people.'
The Holocaust only deepened Goldmann's conviction that a Jewish state must be established in Palestine."

Last page, advertisement for a $575 cocktail watch.

$575.00 in 1944 had the same buying power as $7,701.33 in 2014.

I recall some ads for mink coats in prior issues, $3000.

$3,000.00 in 1944 had the same buying power as $40,180.86 in 2014.

Per: http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

Annual inflation over this period was 3.78%.

The destruction of the abbey at Cassino is one of those hot button topics that get mulled over from time to time.

From everything I have seen, there is no hard evidence that the Germans had occupied the monastery in any real force prior to the February 15th bombing. But that said, I have not done any serious research into this either. They certainly were not entrenched in the abbey to the degree that is described in today’s article though.

However, the 300 yard “neutral zone” that is mentioned in this article was based on a German order that had been withdrawn on January 5th, and it is known that some of the tunnels, not directly on the abbey grounds, but within that 300 yard zone were being used as munition stores.

One interesting slip up in all this though centered around an intercepted German message right before the bombing. British Intelligence translated the intercept and mistook the word Abt to be an abbreviation of Abteil (literally translates to “compartment” but also can be slang for “unit” as in a military unit) instead of “abbot” which is what Abt is the German word for. They also left out some detail in one of the responses which completely changed what the message appeared to say. So what was received was:

Ist Abt in Kloster?

Ja in Kloster mit Mönchen.

What the GSO translated this to was:

Is the unit in the monastery?

Yes. (The rest of this translation off)

This message came under the scrutiny of Colonel David Hunt who found the errors and realized that the actual translation should have been this:

Is the abbot in the monastery?

Yes, in the monastery with the monks.

By the time this was discovered, the monastery had already been bombed.