Pino meets Anna outside a Milan bakery on the day of the first Allied bombing and convinces her to agree to a date.

Allied bombers strike Milan for the first time; Pino and Mimo flee through burning streets as the city erupts in chaos.

Allied bombing destroys the Lella family apartment; a heartbroken Michele decides Pino must leave immediately for Casa Alpina.

Father Re reveals that Nazis are hunting and executing Jews nearby and enlists Pino to guide refugees over the Alps.

Pino successfully guides his first group of Jewish refugees across the treacherous Alpine passes to safety in Switzerland.

Michele recalls Pino to Milan and insists he enlist with the German army to avoid being drafted to the Russian front.

Pino is severely injured when a bomb blast hurls him off a train platform during an Allied air raid.

Pino fixes the engine of Leyers' stalled staff car at Uncle Albert's shop; Leyers immediately recruits him as his personal driver.

Pino arrives at Dolly Stottlemeyer's apartment to pick up Leyers and discovers that Anna works there as a maid.

Pino watches helplessly as Tullio and a group of prisoners are publicly executed by Fascist soldiers in front of the Duomo.

Pino watches a boxcar of Jewish prisoners depart from Platform 21 and notices a child's fingers waving through a crack in the wall.

Pino and Anna smuggle a shortwave radio past Nazi guards into his parents' apartment on Christmas Eve; they make love.

The Milan insurrection begins; Pino draws his pistol on Leyers and delivers him into the hands of partisan fighters.

Partisan soldiers execute Anna and Dolly in a courtyard on charges of being Nazi collaborators before Pino can intervene.

Pino drives Leyers to the Austrian border, where Leyers whispers a revelation proving he always knew Pino was a spy.

This pool covers the headline arc of Pino Lella's coming-of-age story in Nazi-occupied Italy, beginning the very day Allied bombs first fall on Milan and Pino falls for a woman named Anna outside a bakery. After his family's apartment is destroyed, Pino is sent to Casa Alpina, where Father Re transforms him from a restless teenager into a fearless guide smuggling Jewish refugees across the Alps. Recalled to Milan as he nears draft age, Pino is forced to enlist with the Germans, but a chance encounter at his uncle's shop places him as the personal driver and secret spy for General Hans Leyers, one of the most powerful Nazis in Italy. His role as driver reunites him with Anna and deepens both his personal stakes and his covert mission, even as he witnesses atrocities — slave labor, public executions, and boxcars of prisoners — that test his faith in humanity. As Milan erupts in insurrection, Pino arrests Leyers and celebrates liberation, only to suffer his greatest loss when Anna is executed as a collaborator. The pool closes on the Austrian border, where Leyers delivers a whispered revelation that forces Pino to question everything he believed about justice, loyalty, and the war he thought he understood.

Pino Lella's war — from Milan's first bombing to his final mission.

Anna stands Pino up at the movie theater; an Allied air raid siren sends the panicking crowd fleeing into the street mid-film.

Pino arrives at Casa Alpina and befriends Alberto Ascari, who agrees to teach him to drive in exchange for skiing lessons.

Father Re sends Pino on a series of increasingly dangerous solo hikes to memorize every mountain route to the Swiss border.

Nicco, the innkeeper's son at Madesimo, picks up a discarded partisan grenade and is mortally wounded by the explosion; he dies in his mother's arms.

Tito's partisan band robs Pino at a New Year's Eve party, stealing his boots and Uncle Albert's handmade leather money clip.

An avalanche buries the shepherd's hut where Pino and a group of refugees shelter during a blizzard; Pino digs them out through the chimney.

Pino straps the pregnant Mrs. Napolitano onto his back and skis her down the mountain to deliver the group safely to Switzerland.

Tito returns to Casa Alpina and holds Father Re at gunpoint demanding payment; Pino attacks Tito and breaks his nose.

Colonel Rauff leads a Nazi patrol to search Casa Alpina for refugees; Pino hides them using an improvised ox-herding ruse in the woods.

Uncle Albert and Aunt Greta decide to use Pino's new access to Leyers to secretly pass intelligence to the Allies in London.

Pino speaks with slave laborer Antonio inside a munitions storage tunnel, who tells him that Leyers commands an army of Nazi slaves.

A partisan bombs a German lorry near Beltramini's shop; the dying Mr. Beltramini calls Pino a Nazi traitor with his last words.

Pino maneuvers the car to survive a British Spitfire ambush; the grateful Leyers shares a bottle of scotch and confides in Pino.

Pino and Uncle Albert crack open Leyers' valise and find documents including an incomplete note admitting the German war effort is collapsing.

Mussolini and Claretta Petacci's bodies are strung up for public display at Piazzale Loreto as the crowd surges around them.

This pool traces the secondary events and supporting cast that define the texture of Pino's wartime experience, beginning with Anna standing him up and the chaos of Milan's first air raid swallowing the city. Pino's time at Casa Alpina unfolds through a series of vivid episodes — learning to drive with the future racing champion Ascari, navigating deadly mountain routes for Father Re, and confronting the violence of the partisan criminal Tito. The Alpine chapters capture both the heroism and the cost of the refugee operation, from a young boy killed by a grenade to Pino skiing down a blizzard-swept mountain with a pregnant woman on his back. Back in Milan as Leyers' driver, Pino witnesses the machinery of Nazi slave labor up close and loses trusted friends to the brutal crossfire between occupiers and resistance fighters. The pool closes with the grim spectacle of Mussolini's public death, a symbolic end to the Fascist era that arrives just as Pino's deepest personal wounds are still raw.

The missions, friendships, and losses that shaped Pino's war.

Pino spots a group of prisoners guarded by German soldiers at Milan's central train station as his train departs for Casa Alpina.

Father Re reveals in the Casa Alpina chapel that the three mysterious visitors are Jews and asks Pino to guide them to safety in Switzerland.

Pino completes the treacherous Groppera climb alone for the first time, reaching the summit and calling it the greatest physical challenge of his life.

Pino serves as Leyers' translator during a tense first meeting with Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta at a Lake Garda villa.

Anna catches Pino searching Dolly's bedroom; Pino confesses he is an Allied spy, and Anna kisses him after choosing to believe him.

Mimo returns to Milan intending to join the partisans, accuses Pino of cowardice for wearing a German uniform, and the brothers come to blows.

Pino maps the positions of Gothic Line artillery, ammunition dumps, and machine gun nests to report to Uncle Albert for the Allies.

Leyers argues down Rauff at Platform 21 and personally orders four Jewish prisoners removed from a boxcar and brought to Cardinal Schuster.

Pino confesses to his father Michele that he has been spying for the Allies; Michele embraces him and calls him braver than he ever imagined.

Leyers secretly meets American OSS agent Max Corvo inside the Como stadium and agrees that his forces will offer zero resistance.

Cardinal Schuster hosts a surrender negotiation at the chancellery; Mussolini is led out after refusing to accept that Italy has lost the war.

After Anna's execution, Pino is chased through Milan's streets by a mob that accuses him of being a Nazi collaborator.

Cardinal Schuster climbs to the Duomo balcony to stop Pino from jumping and grants him sanctuary inside the cathedral.

Pino pulls his gun on Leyers at a roadside stop and demands answers about his role, but loses his nerve and cannot pull the trigger.

Germany surrenders; Pino tells Carletto that he does not believe the war will ever truly be over for him.

This pool focuses on the key turning points and discoveries that reveal the deeper layers of Pino's wartime story, tracing how a boy who barely noticed the war was transformed into a spy operating at the heart of Nazi power. It begins with Pino's first glimpse of Nazi prisoners before he even reaches the Alps, and builds through Father Re's chapel request that commits Pino to risking his life for others — the moment he believes he crosses from boyhood into manhood. As Leyers' driver, Pino gains access to the highest corridors of Nazi command while secretly deepening his bond with Anna, a romance forged on trust and mutual danger. The pool captures intimate private revelations — his father's tearful pride upon learning about Pino's spy work, Anna's quiet acceptance of his marriage proposal — that sustain Pino through the war's escalating horrors. By the story's final movements, Pino's clear-cut sense of right and wrong is shattered by Leyers' moral ambiguity: his inability to pull the trigger on the road to Austria, followed by Leyers' final whispered revelation, leaves Pino carrying questions that will haunt him for the rest of his life.