In the collective memory and historiography, the dark "blood road" that begins with the assassination of King George I (1913), continues with the executions of the interwar period and the murdered demonstrators of May '36, and becomes nightmarish as we reach the dark and inhumane years of occupation and civil war (1941-49), with the extermination of 50,000 Jews of the city, with the mass executions in the areas around Genti Koules and the Pavlos Melas camp, with the killings of intolerance and the terrorist attacks within the city, where the high-profile and unsolved political assassination of American journalist J. Polk (1948) still casts a heavy shadow.

The historical palimpsest of blood is further completed in the post-civil war period by the execution of N. Nikiforidis (1951), the assassination of S. Veldemiris (1961), the cold-blooded murders of Chalkidis (1967) and Tsarouhas (1968) by the junta's agents, while preceding them was the notorious political assassination of the deputy G. Lamprakis by the paramilitary in May 1963.

Drawing material and testimonies from an extensive bibliography, from magazine and newspaper publications, and from literary texts, professor and author Giorgos Anastasiadis proposes a multifaceted documented investigation, reading, and deciphering of this specific journey through the wild times.