FORTIFICATIONS: GOTHIC LINE   [Fortification Missions with German Alpine Hostiles]

The Gothic Line was a major German strategic defensive line along northern Italy, and its final line of defense used by the retreating German forces in the late stages of the war, with over a million soldiers combined in the British 8th Army and American 5th Army facing the German 10th and 14th Armies. The Gothic Line itself was a series of multi-layered defensive emplacements, built using captured and slave labour, including machine gun nests, casemates, bunkers, observation posts and artillery emplacements. The campaign to decisively break the Gothic Line took over ten months of Allied efforts, although it was briefly breached during the Battle of Rimini (featured as a separate battle pack.)