The Plot To Kill Hitler

Based on the real-life scheme to take down one of history's greatest monsters, this heart-pounding trilogy puts two courageous kids at the center of the plot to kill Adolf Hitler. Berlin, November 1943. With bombing raids commencing, the city is blanketed by explosions. Siblings Gerta and Max Hoffmann live a surprisingly carefree childhood amid the raids. Berlin is a city going about its business, even as it's attacked almost nightly. But one night, the air raid sirens wail, and the Hoffmanns' neighborhood is hit. A mortally wounded man comes to their door, begging to be let in. He asks for Karl Hoffmann, their father. Gerta and Max watch as Karl tries in vain to save the man's life. Before he dies, the stranger gives their father a bloodstained packet of documents, along with a message: "For the sake of humanity, the Führer must die. Finish it, Karl!" Based on real events, this is the story of two children swept up in a fight for the soul of Germany -- and the world.

Perfect for fans of suspenseful nonfiction such as books by Steve Sheinkin, this is a page-turning narrative about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and pacifist who became an unlikely hero during World War II and took part in a plot to kill Hitler. Written by two-time National Book Award finalist Patricia McCormick, author of Sold and Never Fall Down and coauthor of the young reader’s edition of I Am Malala. It was April 5, 1943, and the Gestapo would arrive any minute. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been expecting this day for a long time. He had put his papers in order—and left a few notes specifically for Hitler’s men to see. Two SS agents climbed the stairs and told the boyish-looking Bonhoeffer to come with them. He calmly said good-bye to his parents, put his Bible under his arm, and left. Upstairs there was proof, in his own handwriting, that this quiet young minister was part of a conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler. This compelling, brilliantly researched account includes the remarkable discovery that Bonhoeffer was one of the first people to provide evidence to the Allies that Jews were being deported to death camps. It takes readers from his privileged early childhood to the studies and travel that would introduce him to peace activists around the world—eventually putting this gentle, scholarly pacifist on a deadly course to assassinate one of the most ruthless dictators in history. The Plot to Kill Hitler provides fascinating insights into what makes someone stand up for what’s right when no one else is standing with you. It is a question that every generation must answer again and again. With black-and-white photographs, fascinating sidebars, and thoroughly researched details, this book should be essential reading.

Based on the real-life scheme to take down one of history's greatest monsters, this heart-pounding trilogy puts two courageous kids at the center of the plot to kill Adolf Hitler. July 1945.The Nazis are out for blood.After the attempt on Hitler's life, the Hoffmanns must flee Berlin. Max and Gerta, along with their mother and Kat Vogel, are forced to leave their father behind-at the mercy of the Gestapo. Following the same path that the Becker Circle used to smuggle Jewish escapees to safety, the Hoffmanns begin a desperate journey across Germany, through occupied France, and into Spain.But going on the run is incredibly dangerous, and the Nazis have invoked the blood guilt laws. Anyone thought to be connected to the assassination plot, along with their families, will be killed or sent to the camps. The Hoffmanns have friends who are willing to help them escape, but their family is still incomplete.Max can only hope that he'll see his father again.

There were over forty plots to assassinate Hitler— This is the “compelling, fast-paced account” of the one that came closest to succeeding (Publishers Weekly). The July Plot of 1944 was masterminded by Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a member of the German General Staff, who had been rushed back from Africa after losing his left eye and right hand. For his injuries, he had been decorated as a war hero. However, he’d never been a supporter of Nazi ideology—and he was increasingly attracted by the approaches of the German resistance movement. After an attempt to assassinate Hitler in November 1943 failed, Stauffenberg developed a new plot to kill him at the Wolf’s Lair, fortified underground bunkers, on July 20, 1944. Besides the führer’s assassination, Stauffenberg organized plans to take over command of the German forces and sue for peace with the Allies. With the help of photographs, explanatory maps, and diagrams, author Nigel Jones dissects the events leading up to the attempt, the events of the day in minute-by-minute detail, and the aftermath in which the conspirators were hunted down. No other work on the July Plot contains such a full explanation of this attempt on Hitler’s life—in addition to a forensic analysis of the day, the book includes short biographies of the key characters involved, the first-person recollections of witnesses, and a “what if” section explaining the likely outcome of a successful assassination. “An engaging history by a talented and accomplished writer.” —Roger Moorhouse, author of Killing Hitler

When on July 20, 1944, a bomb—boldly placed inside Hitler's headquarters by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg— exploded without killing the Führer, the subsequent coup d'état against the Third Reich collapsed. The conspirators were summarily shot or condemned in show trials and sadistically hanged. One of the few survivors of the conspiracy was Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had used his positions in the Gestapo and the Abwehr (military intelligence) to further the anti-Nazi plot. Valkyrie, an abridgment of Gisevius's classic insider's account To the Bitter End, is an intimate memoir as riveting as it is exceptional.

"A truly thrilling expose of the previously unknown Nazi assassination plot that could have changed history." — Edward Jay Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassination Chronicles The New York Times bestselling author returns with a tale as riveting and suspenseful as any thriller: the true story of the Nazi plot to kill the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the U.S.S.R. during World War II. The mission: to kill the three most important and heavily guarded men in the world. The assassins: a specially trained team headed by the killer known as The Most Dangerous Man in Europe. The stakes: nothing less than the future of the Western world. The year is 1943 and the three Allied leaders—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin—are meeting for the first time at a top-secret conference in Tehran. But the Nazis have learned about the meeting and Hitler sees it as his last chance to turn the tide. Although the war is undoubtedly lost, the Germans believe that perhaps a new set of Allied leaders might be willing to make a more reasonable peace in its aftermath. And so a plan is devised—code name Operation Long Jump—to assassinate FDR, Churchill, and Stalin. Immediately, a highly trained, hand-picked team of Nazi commandos is assembled, trained, armed with special weapons, and parachuted into Iran. They have six days to complete the daring assignment before the statesmen will return home. With no margin for error and little time to spare, Mike Reilly, the head of FDR’s Secret Service detail—a man from a Montana silver mining town who describes himself as “an Irish cop with more muscle than brains”—must overcome his suspicions and instincts to work with a Soviet agent from the NKVD (the precursor to the KGB) to save the three most powerful men in the world. Filled with eight pages of black-and-white photographs, Night of the Assassins is a suspenseful true-life tale about an impossible mission, a ticking clock, and one man who stepped up to the challenge and prevented a world catastrophe.

In September 1938, Hitler had been in power for more than five years, and had abrogated most of the constraints placed on German militarism by the Treaty of Versailles. Earlier that year he had forced Austria into his Third Reich without a single shot fired, and his sights were set on Czechoslovakia. It was in this climate that a coup was born, led by Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster of German military leaders, members of the Berlin police, local troop commanders, civil authorities, religious leaders, and a courageous group of resisters who assembled in a mission to unseat, and even kill, Hitler. The Oster Conspiracy of 1938 mines the cultural and political milieu of post-WWI Europe, the forces and personal histories that motivated the group to such decisive and dangerous action, and the catalyst of their ultimate failure. This is narrative history at its best: revelatory, well documented with archival material, people with a rich cast of characters, fast-paced, and highly provocative.

September 1938 Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace. The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterwards be notorious for what takes place there. Munich. As Chamberlain’s plane judders across the Channel and the Fürher’s train steams relentlessly south from Berlin, two young men travel with secrets of their own. Hugh Legat is one of Chamberlain’s private secretaries, Paul Hartmann a German diplomat and member of the anti-Hitler resistance. Great friends at Oxford before Hitler came to power, they haven’t seen one another since they were last in Munich together six years earlier. Now, as the future of Europe hangs in the balance, their paths are destined to cross again. When the stakes are this high, who are you willing to betray? Your friends, your family, your country or your conscience?