Anyone interested in the Italian opera "WWII" should read Peter Fleming's "A Spy in Rome." He was Ian Fleming's funnier younger brother and an MI-6 spy with many Italian royalist friends.

When the Gestapo and OVRA FINALLY got onto him, he escaped by joining the Fascist African Military Police (the Fascists were STILL "dreaming of Africa"). They praised his Fascist zeal, issued him a Beretta M1938 burp gun, and he went right on spyin'....