‘Nothing was done’: Vatican note sheds new light on bombing of Monte Cassino

Eighty years on, document confirms Hitler’s role and reveals allied raid might have been avoided had action been taken to enforce neutral zone

The mountaintop abbey of Monte Cassino ought to have been a place of safety as one of the longest and deadliest battles of the second world war was fought around it.

But on 15 February 1944, 80 years ago this week, about 250 of an estimated 1,000 civilians who had fled to it from the town of Cassino and neighbouring villages were killed when the allied forces bombed the monastery, believing – wrongly – that German troops were inside or using it as an observation post.