this was a really good read, it was really informative and I learned about something I didn't know before.

A World War II Factual Thriller of Good and Evil

It is June of 1943 and we are on the eve of the first Nazi attempt to assassinate one of The Big Three, this time, Winston Churchill. It wasn’t the first and would not be the last such effort. Howard Blum has a wonderful facility for turning history into highly readable prose, so smooth-flowing, in fact, that it seems to be fiction. But “Night of the Assassins” is not fiction, it is fact. His history of “Operation Long Jump” in October of 1943, the Nazi plot to assassinate FDR, Churchill and Stalin at their Tehran summit, takes the reader at breakneck speed into a thriller of epic proportions. Because it is based on extensive historical research (be sure to read the Epilogue when you reach the end…it stands on its own), it is not really a mystery … after all, the reader knows the conclusion. However, this does not in any way take away from the slow, but sure, suspenseful buildup as Blum takes us closer and closer to an event which could have drastically reversed what then appeared to be the beginning of the end of World War II. Just imagine what the loss of the Big Three, as they were called, would have meant to the Allies’ growing successful efforts to push Germany back inside its own borders and bring to a halt the Nazi’s aggressive, murderous and violent march across Europe.

Blum builds the story around two completely opposite protagonists, Michael Reilly, the head of FDR’s Secret Service, charged with protecting with his own life, the life of the man he calls the Boss, and Walter Schellenberg, the SS general whose remit was German intelligence. Reilly thought of himself as brawn, not brains, but at thirty-one he stepped up to the challenge of foiling a plot by Schellenberg against the President of the United States and his allies. Schellenberg’s responsibility becomes a desperate fulfillment of the plans and plots to eliminate the risk that the Big Three present to his psychotic boss’ dreams of ruling the world. Not only are the two men polar opposites, their goals are diametrically opposed and the success of one means dire consequences for the world as World War II is just beginning to wind down to a close.

Not only is the history compelling and highly readable, the broad strokes of the two main characters’ psyches are peeled back, layer by layer, in the context of the societal culture of the time. Reilly finds the evil in the world around him inconceivable and fights to overcome it; Schellenberg recognizes, even acknowledges, the Nazi evil perpetrated upon the world, knows that he very well will stand trial for crimes against humanity when Germany loses the war, but proceeds with determination to push that evil to its final result.

An avid reader of World War II books will recognize the event which is the core of this historical telling. But Blum’s style and method of its telling will resonate with a broad swath of readers, bringing them along on his breathless journey and its eventual conclusion.


Marijo McCarthy
6.2.2020

Though World War II would drag on for two more years, it was clear in 1943 that Germany would be defeated. When the Allies announced that only Germany’s unconditional surrender would be acceptable, the Nazis in power became desperate to find ways to force a negotiated peace, one that would spare them punishment for their crimes against humanity. When a cracked code revealed that the Allies’ “Big Three”—Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin--would meet in person in late 1943, SS intelligence officer Walter Schellenberg proposed a hit squad, thinking that assassinating all three would force the Allies to negotiate with Germany.

When Schellenberg learned that the Big Three meeting would be in Tehran, he was ecstatic. Iran was nominally neutral, but it had been friendly to Germany and it was full of German agents, many of whom had been in place for years. Schellenberg recruited Otto Skorzeny, the Nazis’ hero who had rescued Mussolini from house arrest in a daring glider raid on a mountaintop retreat. Skorzeny would train a team of 50 or so who would parachute in, go to ground with the help of local agents, and then, when the time was right, breach the embassy where they expected the Big Three to be meeting. A combination of bombs and automatic weapons would make short work of the protection, and then the plan was to ensure the Big Three would look their Nazi assassins in the eyes before being slaughtered.

Blum sets up his story as a sort of cat-and-mouse game between Schellenberg and Mike Reilly, Roosevelt’s top Secret Service agent. Reilly, who later wrote a memoir of his time in the Secret Service, was determined to do everything possible to protect FDR, whom he called The Boss, wherever he went. He obsessively checked out all remote locations in advance and barely slept when FDR was on the move.

Blum has done a ton of research, including in recently opened archives, especially from Russia. He details the long and painstaking preparation for the mission. In one horrifying paragraph, he also describes how Schellenberg and Skorzeny used inmates of the Sachsenhausen camp as test poisoned bullets, gas grenades and worse.

Once the mission gets underway, it’s hard to remember that this is nonfiction, not an action-packed espionage novel. There are double agents, betrayals, underground passageways, teenage street spies on bicycles, a machine-gun-armed desk straight out of a Bond movie, nick-of-time escapes and, as in so many action flicks, evil Nazis.

Here and there the writing is florid and Blum uses some odd descriptions (for example, someone “meeching through the shadows of neutral Lisbon,” and Admiral Canaris “fixed his gaze lavishly on the young SS general”), but since this book is way more like an action thriller than an academic history book, the writing didn’t put me off. This is an entertaining tale of a lesser-known World War II operation.

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a free digital review copy, via NetGalley.

The cover of this book is what attracted me to it; "Night of the Assassins: the Untold Story of Hitler's Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin." The author, Howard Blum is a well-known and respected journalist and author. So I selected it and was approved by NetGalley to read and review this book. From the title, it sounded like a World War II Nazi spy thriller; an Alan Furst or Ken Follett story full of intrigue, Nazi spies infiltrating enemy territory. Mr. Blum's book was all this and more - it was non-fiction. I have read many books about World War II and I don't ever recall coming across the story of this assassination attempt.
The book starts off, in my opinion, a bit slow and I wondered if I would ever become involved in the story. But after the foundation was laid, it got more and more interesting. Even though we all know what the outcome of this plan was, it became a page-turner after a while. There were times that I wondered, when Blum seemed to enter the minds of the players, how much of a true story this was. But following the finale of the story, the author offered pages of notes and bibliography citing formerly classified documents as well as memoirs of some of the people involved. Mr. Blum seems to have done an enormous amount of research in order to present this very interesting piece of World War II history.

As a history buff, especially military history, when I read the synopsis about this book I was intrigued. It lived up to its promise with a riveting story. I thought it was well-researched and I found myself reading well into the night. I received an Uncorrected e-proof from NetGalley in return for an unbiased review. Thank you NetGalley!

Free ARC from Net Galley

How did I not know about this event??????????

I was so surprised by the information and the writing style.

It is truly written to read like a thriller

Fantastic!!!