Plotting Hitler's death

On 7/20/44, with WWII reaching climax, a group of German anti-Nazi conspirators, led by a dashing, highly decorated young count, Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, detonated a bomb at the E. Prussia military headquarters of Hitler. Altho the bomb failed to maim or kill Hitler, the explosion dramatically announced to the world the existence of a secret, indigenous opposition to the Nazi regime. In this definitive new book, Joachim Fest, an acclaimed biographer of Adolf Hitler, details the events leading up to 7/20, the tense, confused moments before the explosion, & the roundup & executions that followed. Fest recounts the heroic & unsuccessful efforts of senior military officials to persuade the Allies to help them oust the Nazis. He recreates the ill-fated schemes to blow up Hitler's private plane & to kill the Fuhrer at the opening of a museum exhibition. Cataloged here are no fewer than 15 separate assassination attempts during Hitler's reign, attempts that on several occasions came within minutes-or inches-of succeeding, but always failed: in some instances because of bad timing or poor planning; in others, because of the omnipresent scrutiny of the Gestapo or Hitler's own instinct for danger. In the end, however, Fest's singular accomplishment is to portray the human side of the German resistance-the conviction & resolve that gave them the courage to defy almost impossible odds, & the fatal indecisiveness that caused them to fail time & again. Plotting Hitler's Death will stands as one of the definitive accounts of a tortured, misunderstood era. Preface The resistance that never was The army succumbs The September plot From Munich to Zossen The new generation The army groups Stauffenberg The eleventh hour July 20, 1944 Persecution & judgment The wages of failure Notes Note on the Texts Chronology Short Biographies Index