Retelling of Hitler plot reads like thriller novel
If there is one thing you can say about Hitler, the Nazis or WWII, there will always be another tale to tell, another story to relate or another history to write.
Such is the case with “Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler’s Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill and Stalin” by Howard Blum, bestselling author of “Dark Invasion” and “The Last Goodnight.” Here is a story largely unknown about a plot by Adolf Hitler to murder Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. His plot, called Operation Long Jump (“Weitsprung” in German): figure out the super-secret location of one of their big “how’re-we-gonna-divide-up-the-spoils-when-Germany-is-defeated?” meetings somewhere in the world, go there with commandos and kill the Big Three. This would create what he believed might be a better chance to reconcile with the world regarding his dirty deeds all over
Europe. It didn’t have to make sense. This is
Hitler we’re talking about.
Mr. Blum’s tale takes us, in an almost historical fiction fashion, into the minds and rooms of its principal players on both sides of the war. We’re hearing every pertinent thought laid out by the likes of Mike Reilly, FDR’s Montanaborn, no-nonsense Secret Service bodyguard, and Walter Schellenberg, Hitler’s realistic, lawyer-trained head of foreign intelligence, along with Stalin, Churchill, Hitler, their foreign ministers, secretaries of war, intelligence officers, commando leaders — pretty much everyone with a dog in this fight.
With pacing like a novel, Mr. Blum will leave you waiting for the big Nazi reveal of the place (Trinidad? Cairo? Marrakech?) and date with destiny. As the buildup crescendoed, I imagined the villains accenting their plans with fingertips drumming against each other and an evil laugh to boot.
Mike Reilly, clearly painted by Mr. Blum as the All-American boy, is the moral center of this story, working feverishly to protect his wheelchair-bound boss (whom he affectionately calls “Boss”) in a world where there truly are lots of guys who want to shoot him.
He is reluctantly required to work with Josef Stalin’s security and intelligence people, along with all of Churchill’s brandy and whisky retrievers. It is loaded with a lot of personalities interspersed around many given tables.
Unfortunately, Reilly’s fears tended toward machine-gun-toting soldiers crashing into the room and opening fire on his watch, something he was dutybound to prevent, even with his life, as we’re told many different ways throughout.
Across the water, Walter Schellenberg, whose memoirs are a major source of Mr. Blum’s work, thinks his way through everything happening in his world, from his private thoughts about Foreign Minister Ribbentrop (“stupid”) to his take on Nazism (“a non-true believer”). Schellenberg’s selfproclaimed pragmatism dictated his silence in the presence of his “mass murderer” SS brethren while helping to plot out the killing of President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Marshal Stalin, while preventing his own if he failed.
All of this triangulates to late November 1943 where, following previous fits and starts, the plot attempts to unfold on the unsuspecting Allied leaders, gathered for their summit. By his own admission, Mr. Blum, in his “A Note on Sources” was inspired to write this book following the publication in Moscow of a book on this very subject back in 2003. Based on memoirs (particularly Reilly’s and Schellenberg’s) and long-inaccessible Soviet archives, among many other works, Mr. Blum’s version of this tale carries us, somewhat pedantically, into everyone’s thought processes as they unfold, as if it’s all been laid out for an actor as he or she prepares to portray a character.
While this work is generally well paced, if a bit like a movie script, its outlay of its primary players’ thoughts and feelings tends toward the wordy. I found myself stumbling through far more stylistic presentation of thought processes than what makes for a comfortable read. With virtually every principal player in this history brought out in such a convoluted way, it was somewhat distracting when stretched over an entire book that maybe should have been a chapter in a larger history.
“NIGHT OF THE ASSASSINS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF HITLER’S PLOT TO KILL FDR, CHURCHILL AND STALIN”
By Howard Blum Harper ($29.99)