Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 147

BOOK REVIEWS

The author devoted a chapter to each phase of Allied
attacks around Monte Cassino, along with the weather
and the eventual pursuit of the German forces beyond
Rome. Caddick-Adams also dedicates a chapter to the
controversial destruction of the eleventh century abbey
of Monte Cassino during the second phase of the battle
in February 1944 and the consequence of its destruction. Previously unoccupied by German forces, although
Allied officials believed otherwise, the abbey was immediately occupied by German troops, who turned its ruins
into a fortified position.
The subsequent assaults by Indian and New Zealand
divisions failed to break through due to the fortified
positions in the abbey and the town. On a lighter note,
the author reveals the German concern for the countless books, manuscripts, and artwork in the abbey; they
shipped those treasures, prior to the battle, to the Vatican
and other safe locations in Italy and Germany.
The author brings the role allied forces played in Italy
to light—a role often overshadowed by the build-up and
liberation of France and the eventual defeat of the Third
Reich. Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell is a great read
and is a must for the World War II enthusiast.
R. Scott Martin, Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

CORPS COMMANDERS IN BLUE: Union Major
Generals in the Civil War
Ethan S. Rafuse, Ed., Louisiana State University Press,
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2014, 320 pages

U

ntil recently, the corps level of command in
the American Civil War has been somewhat
neglected in scholarly writing on the war.
This anthology—edited by Ethan Rafuse, a noted
Civil War author and professor at the U.S. Army
Command and General Staff College, and supported
by a team of distinguished academic and public Civil
War historians—remedies this deficiency with a work
providing case studies of the actions of eight Union
Army major generals while in corps command.
The choices of personalities are diverse: Meade, a
future successful army commander; Hooker, a failed
army commander; Gilbert, an accidental and relatively obscure corps commander with only an acting
rank; Porter, a cashiered general; McPherson, who
MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2015

was killed as an army commander; Fran