On Via Rasella, in the heart of Rome, stands a bullet-riddled building. The machine gun fire left so many holes that you can see them with a quick Google Maps search. It was there, on the afternoon of March 23, 1944, in the German-occupied city, that a company of the SS Bozen Regiment was marching when the GAP partisan group detonated two bombs. Thirty-three soldiers died, while their surviving comrades fired in all directions. The walls still bear witness. And so does all of Italy: the Nazi vengeance the following day in the Ardeatine Caves claimed the lives of 335 people — 10 for every German killed. Both episodes have since filled history books and collective memory. But three years ago, they were rewritten.

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I’ve spent a few intense days hunting down an old Nazi. In a prime example of new-new journalism, I enlisted the help of AI, but I have to say things didn’t go as planned: AI can really mess things up. It all stemmed from reading Revenge of Odessa, the posthumous sequel to Frederick Forsyth’s celebrated novel, and also from stumbling upon an old 2001 film on Netflix in which a rather clumsy fellow reinvents himself as a journalist.

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