Historical Accuracy
The character of General Max Helm was based entirely on the real life of SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, who served in 1944 as the Supreme SS and Police Leader of Italy. The film was unable to use Wolff's real name, since the SS General was still living when the film was in production; he died in 1984.
Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty was a real Irish priest and Vatican official, credited with saving 6,500 Jews and Allied war prisoners.
Herbert Kappler was sentenced to life imprisonment, and did convert to Catholicism after several years, partly under the influence of his war-time opponent Hugh O'Flaherty, who often visited Kappler in prison, discussing religion and literature with him. He was eventually transferred to a prison hospital on account of poor health. It was there that he escaped imprisonment by being smuggled out in a suitcase by his wife (Kappler weighed less than 105 pounds at the time). He escaped to West Germany, where he eventually died at age 70 in 1978.
Read more about this topic: The Scarlet And The Black
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