Over the past decade, author and U.S. Marine veteran Andrew Biggio interviewed more than 30 U.S. Army soldiers who fought on the Gothic Line as part of his research for his best-selling books The Rifle and The Rifle 2. Many were in their late 90s or older. But they had vivid, emotionally distraught recall of what happened from Sept. 1944 to April 1945 in the northern ItaIian Apennine mountains. As he describes in the podcast many of the soldiers had been on the front lines for almost two years - far longer than most other Allied Force troops fighting in other parts of Europe or in the Pacific theater. And as Allied Forces marched across northwest Europe towards Berlin, the Gothic Line U.S. army troops attacking up heavily fortified mountain-top bunkers knew they were ``bait'' to keep German troops pinned down in Italy as the end neared in the six-year war. Morale was low and the death toll was high. Having survived north Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Cassino, the mental and physical exhaustion drove many to either desert or even commit suicide. Upon the war's end and American veterans returned to the U.S. the country feted the heroes of the Normandy beaches, the Battle of the Budge, Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal heroes. But Gothic Line survivors were belittled by fellow veterans as few knew of the brutality and often futile task of combat on the Italian ``Forgotten Front.''

When the U.S. Fifth Army launched its part of the Allied Force Gothic Line one-two punch pincer movement to capture Bologna it began with a one of WW II's most daunting tasks: conquer the imposing heights of Monte Altuzzo 50 kilometers north of Florence. After initial success the offensive bogged down and turned into a WW I type of trench warfare because of a snowy, frigid winter in the mountainous terrain. Eighty years on, the Gotica Toscana Museum, located just below Monte Altuzzo in Tuscany, holds annual day-long re-enactments to not only honor the bravery of the American soldiers but also as a way to engage younger generations who know little or nothing about this dark chapter of Italian history. As Andrea Gatti, a former chairman of the Gotica Toscana museum, said: Italian students learn in school about Roman Empire history or the history of the founding of Italy in the 1800s but the WW II story is still taboo for some because of the bloody civil war that raged in Italy when the Gothic Line offensive began. Tens of thousands of civilians were murdered in cold blood by retreating Nazis and Italian Fascists. And because there was never an Italian version of the Nuremberg trials where Nazi war criminals were tried and convicted, suspicion and vengeance still fester within families, communities and politics in Italy.

Gatti also explains why knowing the history of what happened on the Gothic Line in Italy as well as the rest of Europe in WW II is vital to understand and appreciate the value of the European Union, which grew from the ashes of the conflict.

More than 60,000 Indian troops served in the Allied Force armies that fought and died to free Italy from German and Italian Fascist tyranny even though the soldiers from India did not have democracy in their homeland. Serving as volunteers under British command in the Adriatic sector of the Gothic Line offensive, Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Gurkhas and others fought side by side - primarily as fierce mountain fighters. They covered the flank of British soldiers on their right coming up the hills over looking the Adriatic Sea and American Fifth Army on their left, who began a campaign a few weeks after the British Eighth Army attack, up the center of Italy as part of a one-two punch, pincer movement to capture Bologna.

There are more than 5000 Hindu, Moslem, Gurkhas, Sikhs and other ethnic Indian soldiers buried or cremated in three Commonwealth grave cemeteries in and around the Gothic Line. Fifteen years ago Dhruv Ratti moved to Italy to work as a chemical engineer for an Italian company. He, like almost all other Indians of his generation, were never taught in school about the approximately 2.5 million Indian soldiers who volunteered to fight in WW II under British command, including the 60,000 who faced combat in Italy. Living near the Adriatic Sea, Ratti was told about a war cemetery near his house. He visited only to discover Indian soldier tombstones, some of whom came from villages near his home town and who had fought and died on the Gothic Line offensive - a battle that claimed more lives of his countrymen than any other in WW II. The emotion triggered by that visit launched Ratti on a two-fold mission that continues to this day: gain recognition in Italy for those Indian soldiers in the same way that American, Canadian, British, Australian and other Western nation troops are honored - a quest that he has yet to fulfill. That mission parallels an effort to counter anti-immigrant scapegoating by Italian and other European politicians as well as the general public who do not appreciate the fact that the "freedom they enjoy has been nourished by Indian blood.'''

The second goal of his mission is to bring awareness to more than 1 billion people on the Indian subcontinent whose forebears fought in Italy and in other parts of WW II.

In 2021 Ratti made important headway on the latter goal when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Italy. Ratti presented him with a display, including cemetery photographs, detailing Indian soldier sacrifice in Italy - a story that has been ignored in Indian history because it happened before the country gained independence from Britain in 1947. With Modi's encouragement, Ratti continues to work on various film and documentary projects in order to inform younger Indian generations of their ancestors WW II history.

Ratti has also worked tirelessly to get the British Commonwealth Grave Cemetery Commission to rectify Indian tombstone language errors in Italy as well as sacrilegious flaws listing Muslim soldiers at cremation sites.

In addition in this podcast episode, Ratti also tells the story of how there were also Indians, some motivated by their quest for independence from Britain, who fought on the Axis side in WW II. And how both the Indians who fought with the British in WW II and those that were part of Indian Nationalist Army that formed during WW II, helped accelerate India's successful drive for independence from Britain.

After U.S. Fifth Army General Mark Clark deviated from an Allied Force plan in early June 1944 to trap retreating Germans in central Italy and instead moved his troops to liberate Rome, the controversial decision outraged British commanders, especially Lt. General Oliver Leese. As a result, Leese rejected the original Gothic Line offensive plan for a joint American-British attack up the center of Italy in the Apennine mountains to liberate Bologna from Nazi and Italian Fascist occupation.

Instead, Leese launched one of the most complex and dangerous logistical exercises in WW II by moving at night in August 1944 approximately 100,000 British Eighth Army troops - an amount equal to those in the D-Day landing in Normandy. The convoy traveled from central Italy across a primitive, hilly road network to the Adriatic coastal plain. The coalition of soldiers under Leese's command included troops from India, Scotland, Poland, Greece, Palestine, New Zealand and Canada.

On Aug. 28, 1944, they launched the first wave of the Gothic Line offensive, which was part of a one-two punch, pincer movement instead of the original full-frontal, central Italy thrust. The U.S.-led Fifth Army, commanded by Clark, would launch two weeks later the second part of the one-two punch plan up the Giogo Pass north of Florence.

Author Mike Sommerville's father was part of the Sherwood Foresters infantry regiment of the British Eighth Army. Sommerville, a military historian, described how ``The Sherwood Boys'' - as his book is titled - had been transferred out of Italy to Palestine in February 1944 to rest and retrain before returning to Italy for the Gothic Line offensive.

However, like much of the Allied Force campaign in Italy that started in 1943 with a landing in Sicily, little went to plan. The British-led army suffered significant casualties from the start of the offensive and was often bogged down because of rain-swollen rivers and mud. In September, fierce fighting claimed the lives of more than 80,000 German and Allied soldiers. Low morale problems soon became an issue, especially after the British troops learned politicians and the tabloid press in the U.K. had labeled them as ``D-Day dodgers '' vacationing on the Adriatic Sea. The desertion rate multiplied as soldiers went AWOL to avoid being killed or injured when it had become clear the war was nearing an end. Ultimately, the British-led offensive ground to a halt in December 1944 on the Senio River because of limited and exhausted troops, low ammunition, poor weather as well as relentless German resistance made it impossible to achieve the planned Christmas-time victory celebration. As a result, they would spend nearly three months hunkered down on the fringe of a no-man's land by the Senio amidst constant artillery exchanges with German troops on other side of the river bank. Three and a half months later, the British Eighth Army under Leese's command would renew the offensive in April. The American-led Fifth Army, which also stalled for months, broke through from the west. After three weeks the German forces agreed to surrender at the end of April despite Hitler's order to fight to the death.

When U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January of 2025 one of the first things his newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did was ban books in the Pentagon and Armed Forces academies and other libraries and schools that tell the story of institutional racism faced by segregated African American soldiers during WW II and when they returned to the United States. When American art teacher Solace Wales and her husband bought in the early 1970s a small house in the mountain-top village of Sommocolonia in Italy, she had no idea about the U.S. military institutional racism faced by U.S. black soldiers that fought on the Gothic Line in and around that part of Tuscany. But after a decade of spending summers in the small village the stories of what happened in 1944-45 set her off on a journey with notebook, tape recorder and pen in hand. She thus began a 30-year research journey including extensive interviews with many U.S. black veterans that served on the Gothic Line in Tuscany. Her story tells of black soldier bravery and as well as the treatment by white racist military commanders from the segregated U.S. south determined to prove their supremacist views that black soldiers were inferior. In 2020 Wales, now based in northern California outside San Francisco, published Braided in Fire: Black GIs, Tuscan Villagers and Italian Partisans on the Gothic Line 1944. Besides detailing the story of how Lieutenant John Fox gave his own life in Sommocolonia to save his fellow soldiers, the story also gives a compelling account of how local villagers - many whom were her neighbors - navigated the treachery of the Nazi and Italian Fascist occupation, roving bands of local bandits, Italian Partisan freedom fighters and their relationship with undercover American secret agents as well as the Allied Force Gothic Line armies. The latter included the U.S. 92nd Infantry Division Buffalo Soldiers, who were the first African American infantry soldiers to face combat in WW II, and an elite African American artillery battalion. Both were deployed in the second half of 1944 when the U.S. Army, desperate for replacement soldiers, finally allowed the African American infantry to enter the battlefield. Among the latter was Fox, who called in artillery fire he knew would end his life but would allow his fellow soldiers to escape a surprise Christmas-time German counter-offensive. In the podcast interview Wales tells how the white commander of Fox's battalion knew about the German counter offensive but did not inform the under-manned black troops stationed over Christmas in Sommocolonia. It took more than 50 years for Fox to posthumously receive the U.S. Medal of Honor when former U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded it to his widowed wife at the White House. Present that day were other African American veteran Medal of Honor recipients who also had been denied bravery recognition because of a racist narrative that lingered for decades in the U.S. military after WW II. Also present was Solace Wales and she recounts that emotional day in Washington, D.C.

Eighty five years ago Italy was on the wrong side of history after joining Adolf Hitler in declaring war against Allied countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. It took the most multinational and multiracial army ever assembled to finally end Nazi and Italy Fascist tyranny in Italy in April of 1945 when the nine-month Gothic Line offensive concluded and WW II ended in Europe with Germany's unconditional surrender.

Often referred to as the Forgotten Front, the Allied Force Gothic Line offensive took place after the liberation of Rome on June 4, 1944 and the D-Day invasion in Normandy. It was the final phase of a bloody battle up the Italian boot. Built by slave laborers, mercenaries, prisoners of war in the northern Apennine Mountains, Hitler ordered the construction of the Gothic Line as a last defense barrier against the capture of the Po River valley, which is the breadbasket of Italy. The Gothic Line consisted of 300 kilometers of bunkers, trenches and tunnels- many still in existence. Soldiers from more than 17 countries took part in the Allied Force Offensive. It marked the first infantry combat for segregated U.S. Army African American soldiers, who fought two enemies: the Nazis and racist American white commanders. Other Allied soldiers included Japanese-Americans, whose families were locked up in prison camps in the United States, Indian soldiers from all sects and religions, black South Africans and Maorians from New Zealand. All of them fought and died for democracy in Italy and Europe even though they did not have it in their home country. The first Jewish Brigade since Roman times joined the Allied Forces on the Gothic Line in January of 1945 and would go onto to play a controversial role in rescuing survivors of the Holocaust.

In addition more than 200 civilian massacres in villages across the Gothic Line were carried out by Nazi and Italian Fascist soldiers. Few were held accountable for those war crimes and they area festering political wound 80 years later. And as Italian President Sergio Mattarella stated in early 2025 these massacres are no different than what Russian President Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine in the past three years.

Meanwhile most Italians are unaware or have collective amnesia about this ugly chapter in their recent history. With Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's political party Brothers of Italy tracing its roots back to Hitler's ally Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini the Fascist past regularly erupts today more than it has for decades. At the same time U.S. President Donald Trump threatens the post-WW II transatlantic economic and defense alliance that has fostered relative peace and prosperity for the last 80 years and Putin makes no secret of his ambition to rebuild the Iron Curtain. As a result Italy, a founding European Union member state, faces crucial security and defense questions. Considering so many foreign soldiers sacrificed their lives for Italy 80 years ago, solidarity with countries facing the same death and destruction today from Russian aggression would seem like an easy choice. However across the Italian political spectrum and among a majority of the population there is opposition not only to helping Ukraine with military arms but also plans to rebuild a European military defense capacity required due to Trump's pro-Putin appeasement policies.

The complacency against the threat of Russia is similar in Italy and other parts of Europe to what happened in the 1930s when Hitler threatened. Along with scapegoating immigrants their is denial about their vital role in keeping the Italian and European economy going in the face of an aging population, stagnant economic growth and a massive national debt. All of these issues and others are the subject of more than 15 episodes of this podcast that details the story of the Gothic Line ghosts that haunt Italy and Europe and where the past is present.

Russian emigre and Prague-based history professor Sergei Medvedev explains how the past is present in Europe as Russian President Vladimir Putin makes no secret of his plans to rebuild the Iron Curtain. In addition just as Hitler had European and Asian allies so does Putin. Today in Europe a growing list of far-right, far-left and centrist politicians either support Putin or are apologists. Whereas Japan was on Hitler's side Putin receives assistance from North Korea, China and Iran providing assistance in his war against Ukraine along with a growing cadre of far-right, far-left and centrists politicians in Europe.

Medvedev also explains today's political and economic similarities with the 1930s when a far-right, intolerant, anti-science political movement swept Germany. He also dissects how U.S. President Donald Trump's MAGA movement is simply bent on chaos and has attracted the anti-science climate change deniers and anti-vaccine movement - just as happened in the 1930s when brilliant minds such Albert Einstein were forced to leave Europe. As Trump makes a mockery of the blood and treasure countries such as the United States and others gave to save democracy in Europe in WW II, Medvedev also concurs that Trump and his territorial ambitions in Greenland, Canada and Panama have undermined the moral imperative to stop Putin's aggression in Ukraine. This Trump imperialism also helps explain his obvious appeasement approach toward the Russian leader. ``The post WW II international institutions are being battered from all sides,'' Medvedev says. ``It is a very dangerous time we are living in.''

Nazi and Italian Fascist troops committed more than 200 civilian massacres in WW II in Italy between July of 1944 and April of 1945. Few were held accountable for the cold-blooded murders, especially in Italy. Eighty years later the issue festers as Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni's political party Brothers of Italy has neo-fascist roots linked to Hitler's ally Benito Mussolini. He ruled Italy for two decades before he was killed by Italian freedom fighters at the end of WW II.

Carlo Gentile, an Italian native and history professor at the University of Cologne in Germany, explains his ongoing work to give closure to the thousands of massacre victims and their families as well as help Italians confront their WW II past. He also explains the complex Italian Fascist resistance movement that evolved during WW II including when Allied Forces fought a bloody battle to drive the Nazis and Italian Fascists from power in Italy.

In addition, Udo Surer, the son of a Nazi soldier, who participated in one of the civilian massacres in an Italian village, explains the peach and reconciliation campaign he began after he discovered his father's past.