ABSTRACT
The bombing of Rome is the focus of this chapter. Winston Churchill’s threats early in the war to attack Italy’s capital alarmed the Vatican. Diplomats from the Holy See pursued a campaign to persuade the British to spare the Eternal City, but it made no headway. President Franklin Roosevelt dispatched Myron Taylor, his personal envoy to Pope Pius XII. Taylor’s assigned tasks included persuading the Pope to speak out against Germany’s anti-Semitic atrocities and to obtain the Vatican’s blessing for supplying US lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union. The task to which Taylor committed himself with particular energy was one that most concerned the Pope: to convince the Allies not to bomb Rome. The chapter traces Taylor’s many efforts to influence the US government and to intercede directly with Churchill to convince him to spare Rome from bombardment or at least publicly commit to avoiding civilian harm. He failed utterly. In a sense Rome should have been an easy case for successful diplomacy. If the ancient center of religion, culture, history, and art could not be spared—by, for example, declaring it an “open city”—how could the rest of Italy escape aerial destruction?
