The facts? The Schio massacre and the retreat from Russia are accurately described, but some names have been changed, certain situations devised for effect, and characters invented.

Events surrounding the Schio massacre remain highly contentious to this day, and no claims to the “truth” of what and who was behind what happened on that hot July night in 1945 is implied. Was the massacre orchestrated? It depends on who you ask. The Italian Communist Party spent many decades blaming what they referred to as “agent provocateurs”. And newspapers from the time described those who had been held in the jail as “fascists”. In the intervening 75 years, the whispers remain, as do the scars. Ultimately, telling stories requires taking a position but it doesn’t require belief in that position.

My father grew up less than 100 meters from the jail that is now Schio’s public library, a teenager who saw the blood flow down the gutters and past his front door. As was common for many of that generation, he spoke little of what he lived through during the war years. His sister filled in some of the blanks.

The Russian retreat has been subject of countless books in Italy, many privately published or published in tiny batches by small presses. It remains Italy’s Vietnam War. I’ve used only testimony by those who were there in the chapters on the retreat, assembling their published memories and thoughts into this narrative. Arguably the last human wave attack in modern warfare occurred at the Battle of Nikolayevka, and Signorini’s heart attack and Reverberi’s epic moment of insane bravery are also accurately described.

Italy never had a great reconciliation in 1945, and the lines remain blurred, and even more indistinct in a nation forever consumed by the “communist versus fascist derby”. A reason is because, after the war, the fascists just returned to their jobs without even a stain, and the workers to theirs, and on they went until the Years of Lead exposed the fault lines yet again, before the “mani pulite” and “tangentopoli” investigations killed what was left of the post-war First Republic—a republic that was bought and sold by corrupt politicians, foreign powers, and the invisible hand of the mafia.

As Wikipedia helpfully notes, “…more than half of the members of the Italian Parliament were under indictment, while more than 400 city and town councils were dissolved because of corruption charges…” during the “mani pulite” investigations.

The US and the USSR pumped untold millions into the 1948 elections in Italy. Both sides saw Italy as central to the brewing Cold War, and there was nothing too subtle in the way they tried to influence the outcome: propaganda in the form of over ten million letters, along with books and articles—some suggesting that the Italian Communist Party was aiding the Soviet Union in imprisoning thousands of POWs lost in the Russian retreat—were printed, and cash was delivered openly to centrist parties by the CIA. At least $20 million was poured into anti-Communist activities by the CIA, with even more being routed out of the Marshall Plan and into the hands of pro-US candidates. All of it was legitimate under the new National Security Act of 1947 that made foreign covert operations legal.

The Soviets responded by shoring up the Italian Communist Party and pro-labor parties with around $10 million a month in the year 1948.

The massacre in Schio, and the post-war massacres in the “triangle of death”, were used to intimidate the electorate about the consequences of a Communist victory in the election. The election fell comfortably to the US-backed parties, and the US had bought its first Cold War client state into which it would keep pumping millions for decades after. Only in 1995 would Italy—with the US and USSR no longer engaged—see a leftist coalition triumph in a general election.

Even in the 2010, the mayor of Schio refused the laying of stumbling stones for the boys who were sent to the death camp at Mauthausen, and the plaque at the scene of the massacre took decades to install. And even then it was contentious. Once a year, it remains a place of pilgrimage for far right parties.