Červené máky na Monte Cassinu - Byl to Verdun druhé světové války?) – Jenšík Miloslav (2014)

This nonfiction book examines the Battle of Monte Cassino, asking whether it was the Verdun of the Second World War. Polish General Władysław Anders described the battlefield after his soldiers raised the victory flag over the ruins of the Benedictine monastery on Monte Cassino in May 1944: enormous piles of unused ammunition and heaps of mines lay scattered around, while the bodies of Polish and German soldiers, sometimes locked in a deadly embrace, were everywhere, and the air was filled with the smell of rotting corpses. Overturned tanks with torn tracks stood among others that appeared ready to attack, their guns still aimed at the monastery. The slopes of the mountain, especially where the shelling had been less intense, were covered with an incredible number of poppies whose red flowers formed a strange harmony with the scene. For almost half a year, the Allies unsuccessfully tried to capture the Cassino ridge, a key point in the German defensive line blocking their advance towards Rome. Even seven decades later, questions remain painfully urgent: what was the purpose of the air raid that turned one of Europe’s oldest cultural centres into a sea of rubble, what was the strategic cost of tens of thousands of lost lives, and what meaning could be found in the entire bloody conflict. This book seeks answers to these questions. The contents are in Czech.