In 2016 the idea was born and began to take shape from the reading of historical publications, found in Italy and especially in the United States of America, regarding facts and events that occurred in the years of the Second World War in the territories of the northern Apennines between the provinces of Bologna, Modena and Pistoia.
Among the first documents found was the story of Private John Magrath, the only soldier of the 10th Mountain Division to receive, during World War II, the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military honor of the United States Army of America. Magrath belonged to Company G of the 85th Regiment and subsequent insights and research were directed towards that unit, its men and their vicissitudes. In 2019, writing began on the script for the miniseries with the first provisional title of MOUNTAINMEN

In 2020, Rosario Salemi, son of the late veteran Salvatore Salemi, was the connection to contact in 2021 veteran Edward Nickerson, who narrates the history of the Company in the miniseries, and Harriet, the widow of Thomas Brooks. The current president of the 10th Mountain Division Descendants, Denise Taylor, daughter of veteran Marvin Taylor, in addition to arranging several contacts with veteran descendants, was the architect behind the contact with Speed Murphy's son, who died in 2008, and Raymond Johnson through his son Tim. Both veterans are still alive. They are 98 and 99 years old.
Through their memoirs and letters, Luciano La Valle, a promising director of the miniseries, was able to shape the idea and later the script based on real events and real characters.

Denise Taylor also organized the meeting that took place in Iola di Montese between Luciano La Valle and the Gandolfi brothers, Andrea and Giuliano, who were later joined by Guglielmo Mattiello. The brothers are the authors of two books based on the history of the 10th Mountain Division and the original memoirs and photographs of its soldiers and officers, written and taken during their time in Italy in 1945.

The management of the Museo Memorie d'Italia in Iola di Montese, recognized by the Association of Descendants of the10th Mountain Division Descendants, has also enabled the brothers to learn from the elders, who at that time were little more than boys, anecdotes and testimonies of daily life as seen and experienced by the population that lived then in the fear and hardship of war.
The Gandolfi brothers immediately saw the meeting as synergic with the Gothic Line 1944-1945 project. History, Memory and Territory which, as a museum, they have been carrying forward since 2018.
By their will in 2021 the 1945.Mountainmen Project was born which will develop for the following 3 years, from 2022 to 2024. Luciano la Valle is the author and director of the miniseries, Andrea and Giuliano Gandolfi together with Guglielmo Mattiello are executive producers, that is, they took care for finding the financial sources and the organisational, bureaucratic and logistical aspects of filming and post-production. In March 2022 the production team indicated the definitive title that will be taken by the miniseries: MOUNTAIMEN. Gothic Line 1945. Supported by the Il Trebbo Cultural Group, filming began in March 2022 with the first sets found, reconstructed and prepared in the same territory and in the same places where the events and battles took place in 1945, the backbone of the miniseries also dubbed in English-US, and structured into three episodes of an average of 40 minutes each.

Among the soldiers, not just Americans, but also Brazilians and British, deep feelings often arose, until they blossomed into true love, which, at the end of the war, led the women to follow their husbands to their homeland, or vice versa, but more rarely, the soldiers settled with the family of the fiancée who would later become their wife.
The production's contribution to the screenplay begins in the entire prologue of the miniseries when one of those women relives her memories of wartime during a visit to the museum, in a letter written by a soldier. This figure, who actually existed and by the name of Mariarosa, runs through the entire miniseries, from the first to the last episode and, together with other windows opened on the relationships between soldiers and villagers, is the first of the two driving motif of the Linea Gotica 1944 museum project -1945. History, Memory and Territory and therefore of the 1945.Mountainmen Project.
A window of footage in the back sees some sets in the village of Prunetta, where soldiers, residents and children socialize, and Campo Tizzoro, where part of the third episode is dedicated to the soldier Speed Murphy, who lost a hand trying to prevent a hand grenade triggered by an accidental fall to the ground from being thrown out the window of the SMI scuola, where children in the courtyard were playing during recess. The company had been staying there for a few days to rest.

The second driving motif is the reconstruction of the everyday life of the soldiers, both behind and on the front, from the arrival of the men of Company G in Italy near the front of the Green Line II, better known as the Gothic Line, in the village of Gavinana in the high Apennines of Pistoia and in the area of Monte Belvedere, between Vidiciatico and Querciola. Monte Spigolino, Ronchidoso are the places where the bloody battles of the soldiers of Company G, who faced the fierce defenses of the German army, have been reconstructed. Finally, there is the reconstruction of the heroic attack of April 14, 1945 on the German positions onHill 909, above the village of Castel d'Aiano, by John Magrath, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor because he was killed on the same day, but in a different context, by the explosion of a German mortar shell.

Just as there are two driving motifs behind the project, there are also two goals for the project. The first, of a historical and cultural nature, is aimed primarily at passing the story on to young people of the new generations so that it remains alive, preserving it in images brought to life through the personal recollections of veterans. Soldiers, then young men, mostly between the ages of 18 and 24, who came to Italy to fight for our freedom, far from home and the affection of their families, in contact with people of a completely different culture and customs, in damp holes dug in the ground, cold as only the winters of that time knew how to be, surrounded by rain and snow. The risk of dying at any moment from enemy artillery fire or in combat, the excruciating experience of losing a comrade, changed and marked their lives forever. The memories and nightmares reported by many veterans stayed with them for years, long after they returned home.
The second goal is to raise awareness and respect for the area where the battles depicted in the miniseries took place, and to provide viewers with an informed incentive to visit such places.

The project includes two video contributions, completed in 2024.

The first documentary introduces the viewer to the history of the 10th Mountain Division from the establishment of the first nucleus of the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, to its training, up until the division's arrival in Italy. It's the prologue to the miniseries.

The second documentary is a Then and Now of people, countries and battlefields. Photographs and films compared between 1944/45 and the present day as well as memories of soldiers and civilians. The documentary is completed by photographs of the main monuments to the 10th Mountain Division in the Apennines, all including geotags

For the production of the miniseries, 14 sets were built, including a set of kitchen and bedroom rooms, as they appeared at the time of the war, from the Raccolta di Cose Montesine of the Iola di Montese. Many of the props used in the sets of the miniseries come from the Memorie d'Italia collections of the museum, which is dedicated to the armies that faced each other on the battlefields in this area of the Apennines.
There were 85 actors and extras on the sets, including 55 in period military gear, most belonging to historical reenactment groups such as Fubar, La Croce di Ferro, Overlord 44 FHG, Ultimo Fronte and 30 in civilian clothing from the period. Technicians, camera operators, special effects, gunsmiths, vintage car drivers, backstage photographers, and hair and makeup artists worked behind the scenes.