It's September the 12th, 1943. Just after 3 p.m.

Two hours north of Rome lies a hotel, the Campo Imperatori. It sits atop the Grand Sasso Mountain Range, a mile above sea level,

accessed only by a funicular railway. Before the war it was a ski resort for the Italian

capitals well healed. Today, out of season and out of use, it's rather forlorn, tattered, empty, save for a solitary resident.

Quite a famous one. His name is Benito Mussolini.

Turfed out of power by a new constitutional government, the once strident dictator has had a spectacular fall from grace.

Up here in this remote spot, he's being held by armed police until Italy's new rulers

decide what to do with him.

Till then his presence remains a closely guarded secret.

Mussolini fears that he will be handed over to the Americans

to be exhibited like King Kong in a cage at Madison Square Garden.

And so on this bright afternoon he sits at his window contemplating his

it happens so fast he barely has time to clock it out of the blue a large aircraft swoops down its its wing tip skimming past mere feet away.

It's silent, a glider, just a rush and the clank of cables as the pilot brings it in.

Up high you can hear it now, the engines of the plane that towed it here.

Mussolini cranes his neck.

There are more gliders, circling like vultures,

taking turns to descend.

He watches as the first one zooms in low to bounce across the grassy slope, coming to an abrupt but safe stop.

On its wings of black crosses, on its tail tail a swastika.

And out of its hold a pouring German paratroopers.

They clamber up the scree towards the hotel, machine guns at the ready. Their lead man is waving

...