The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

The bombing of Rome continued despite the persistent efforts by the papacy, the Badoglio government (now based in southern Italy in the Allied zone), and even Mussolini’s new Salò regime to get the Allies to accept the status of open city for the capital. Roosevelt, with a large Catholic minority in the United States, was more inclined to discuss the possibility, but Churchill worried that if Rome were made an open city, it would hamper Allied military efforts to pursue the Germans up the western side of the peninsula. The Combined Chiefs discussed the issue in late September but remained deadlocked.115 Then on November 5 four bombs were dropped on the Vatican, causing serious damage to the Governatorato Palace, the seat of Vatican government. The first reaction from the British ambassador to the Vatican, Sir Francis D’Arcy Osborne, was to blame the Germans for the raid as a propaganda stunt, but a few days later investigations showed that one American aircraft, bombing at night, had lost contact with the rest of the force and dropped bombs in error.116 Roosevelt once again tried to revive British interest in the demilitarization of Rome, but the British remained adamant that it would place too many restrictions on the Allied ground campaign, and on December 7, Roosevelt finally conceded that it was “inadvisable” to pursue the matter any further.117 Rome continued to be bombed and over 7,000 Romans died in the course of the year from the first bombing in July 1943 to the A...