Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of German Resistance - Hardcover

Fest, Joachim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080504213X ISBN 13: 9780805042139

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 1996

Synopsis

The author documents more than a dozen plots to assassinate Hitler, surprisingly, from conservative and military circles within Germany

About this title

Review:

The only large-scale German resistance to Nazism came from the Communists, who received little credit for it after the war, with Europe divided on Cold War lines. Indeed many post-war Germans at first were reluctant to acknowledge that any wartime resistance had been heroic, given the contrast with their own active or passive support for the Nazis. Later, however, a loose grouping of disaffected German liberals who had plotted Hitler's assassination were adopted as saviors of Germany's soul, as proof that there was another, moral, Germany. Fest's book, published first in Germany in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of the failed attempt by von Stauffenberg to blow up the Fuhrer, is a compelling, fair-minded account of these plotters. Fest avoids canonizing them as redeemers of Germany, but acknowledges the bravery and integrity of their efforts.

About the Author:

Joachim Fest was born in Berlin in 1926 and educated in Freiburg, Frankfurt and Berlin. After the war, in which he served and was taken prisoner, he worked in radio and television before becoming a full-time writer. Following Speer's release from Spandau Prison in 1966, Fest worked closely with him as the general editor of Speer's memoirs Inside the Third Reich (1970) and Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1976). Fest's biography of Hitler is generally regarded as the finest biography of the German dictator in any language. He has been awarded numerous prizes for his historical writing.

About this edition

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 080504213X
• ISBN 13: 9780805042139
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432