After the Balkans Campaign in 1941, in 1942 Gnocchi left for the Russian front as chaplain of the 2nd Alpine Division Tridentina, where he participated in the Battle of Nikolayevka. During the dire retreat in the Russian steppe, he nearly fell victim to the freezing cold: dazed by frostbite, he would certainly have met the fate of thousands of other Italian servicemen, had not medical officer Rolando Prada (an offspring of the famous leather-working family) recognized him and put him on a passing military sled. Surviving the conflict, he gathered last wishes of the wounded, that he would bring back to Italy, in a journey all over the country, as a messenger for the families of the deceased. He went into the Alpine Valleys to find the relatives of fallen comrades. After becoming part of the O.S.C.A.R., Catholic association for aid to refugees, he helped Jews and escaped Allied POWs flee to Switzerland. He wrote articles in the illegal magazine "Il Ribelle" ("Rebel") and in the diocesan newspaper "L'Italia" ("Italy"). He was imprisoned more than once in the San Vittore prison, but obtained the liberation by the intervention of the archbishop of Milan, Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster. In those years the idea arose to create a charitable center that would take care of the victims of this war, which in the future developed as the origin of the "Pro Juventute". After the war, Gnocchi felt as his duty to aid that part of childhood that had been affected by the war the most. First, he directed his charitable work to the orphans of Alpini, housing them in Istituto Arosio (Institute Arosio) and subsequently devoted himself to the "mutilated" and to children invalids of war and civilians, establishing for them a vast network of colleges in many cities of Italy (Inverigo, Parma, Pessano con Bornago, Torino, Rome, Salerno, Milan, Firenze, Genova, ...); and, in the end, opened the doors of modern "Centri di rieducazione" ("Re-educations centers") for children affected by polio. For this forsaken and handicapped children, to whom he had devoted all of his young life, Gnocchi dedicated one of his most significant writings: "Pedagogia del dolore innocente" ("Pedagogy of Innocent Suffering").