Richard Lamb, one of the few Italian-speaking officers in the Eighth Army, took part in the campaign in Italy, fighting with the royal Italian Army. He describes Italy from Mussolini's fall until the final victory, drawing on captured Mussolini documents and on British, Italian and Vatican archives. In particular, he spotlights an unbroken sequence of German infamies. He reveals how, to abort Churchill's plan to open the Dardanelles, German troops massacred in cold blood many thousands of surrendering Italians in the Aegean Islands. He details the deportation of Italian Jews to Auschwitz and the wholesale killing of Italian hostages. He discloses the fate of 600,000 Italian prisoners of war sent to labour camps within Germany.