This one-hour special revisits a thrilling, tragic time and looks unflinchingly at old and still unresolved controversies surrounding the German occupation of Rome.

Ironically, Rome was declared an open city after Benito Mussolini’s removal, before the Italian campaign began. It was the Allied aim to preserve the Holy City’s sacred institutions and treasures. In consequence, the staggering human cost of the following nine months of murder, intrigue and ecclesiastical and political betrayal before the city’s military conquest is nearly incomprehensible as well as fascinating.

The conquest of Rome by the Allies, after nine bloody and blunder-filled months, produced nothing of strategic value to remotely justify the cost. The battle for the city was centred on its psychological and symbolic value as the first of the three Axis capitals to fall. For Hitler, the main drive to hold the city involved draconian retribution for the Italian 'betrayal'.

As the Allies suffered tens of thousands of casualties, first in attempts to batter through an endless series of German defence lines built behind daunting mountains and rivers, and then in an ill-fated flanking attempt in an amphibious landing at Anzio, life in the city deteriorated hellishly.

In October 1943 the Germans shipped more than 1,000 members of Rome’s Jewish community to Auschwitz, where more than 800 perished. When Italian partisans began guerrilla operation against the Germans on the streets of Rome, the once distant war exploded on one of civilisations oldest and most beautiful cities.

The research draws on a wealth of interviews with participants inside the city as well as on the recent release of previously secret documents from Italian, German, Vatican, OSS and CIA archives. We hear from ordinary Roman citizens, informants, craven opportunists, spies, double agents and some Germans who risked death in efforts to save Jews. We see Rome as the hotbed of assassination, intrigue, treason and bravery that it really was.