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

by Richard Overy

There is no doubt that the long experience of bombing did strain Italian support for their imminent liberation. Iris Origo noted in her diary in the summer of 1944 how much British propaganda was resented, with its “bland assumption that peace at any price will be welcomed by the Italians.”145 Corrado Di Pompeo, a ministry official in Rome, recorded in his diary in February 1944 that at first his heart rejoiced “when American aircraft passed overhead,” but after regular raiding and the routine sight of blood-smeared corpses, he changed his mind: “Americans are zero; they only know how to destroy and how to kill the defenseless.”146 Nevertheless, the prospects for widespread rebellion against the authority of the Salò Republic or the German armed forces were unrealistic, and throughout the period acts of violent resistance were met by the Germans with atrocious reprisals.147 Under these circumstances rumor and superstition increased in importance as a mechanism for coping with the real dilemmas of occupation. The most remarkable was the claim, widely repeated, that Padre Pio, the Apulian monk (and now a saint), had safeguarded the region where he lived by rising in the air to the level of the bombers and staring the pilots in the eye until they turned back to base, their bomb loads still on board.148 In numerous cases, appeals were made to city saints or Madonnas to safeguard buildings and family from bomb damage. The Catholic Church also encouraged a mood of consolation an...