Rome was an outlier in World War II. In the years after 1939, civilians became a military target across Europe as air forces struck the great industrial centers. The blitz on London, the destruction of Coventry, and similar assaults on Hamburg, Berlin, and cities around Italy sought to hurt munitions production as well as popular morale. Yet in the opening stages of the conflict, the Italian capital was spared such attacks.
The Roman population was not simply unscathed by the war. War rations soon began to shrink at the same time as news mounted of sons, brothers, and fathers killed in Russia or North Africa. Yet the Allies refrained from attacking Rome, given both their fear of upsetting Catholic opinion and the city’s relatively weak military significance. Refugees from around Italy thus converged on the supposedly untouchable “Eternal City.”
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