In the spring of 1944, Nazi troops massacred hundreds of Italian civilians in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome. After World War II came to an end, however, the German government did little to track down the perpetrators. At the time, both Rome and Bonn were more interested in politics than justice.

Prior to World War II, the Ardeatine Caves were mined for the volcanic material known as tuff for use in cement production. But by March 24, 1944, production had long since ceased. On that day, torches inside the cave's corridors and hollows provided makeshift lighting. Outside, in the afternoon sun, trucks were hauling prisoners to the site -- a total of 335 men, the youngest of whom was only 15. They were all Italian.

The German occupiers wanted to avenge an attack that communist partisans had carried out a day earlier on a German police unit in Rome's Via Rasella. The victims of this retaliatory act were chosen at random. Most of them had been imprisoned in a Gestapo jail in the Italian capital or were being detained by the Wehrmacht, Germany's Nazi-era military. None of them had been involved in the attack.

At 3:30 p.m., an initial group of five men was herded into the caves. An SS officer was there to ask their names and cross them off a list. The men were forced to kneel in the dim cavern, where SS members shot them dead. Then the next group of five was brought in. As more and more corpses littered the paths, the Germans stacked the bodies up in piles that the next group had to climb before being executed themselves. The process lasted until early evening.

Even more horrific, many of the executioners drank heavily during the operation, which made their shooting increasingly erratic. Several victims survived the initial shots. Some suffocated under the weight of the dead lying on top of them. Then, the SS detonated explosives in the caves.