Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler's Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin by Howard Blum

Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler's Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin Reviews

• 
  David

  Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler's Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin by Howard Blum is a perfect example, at least in my case, that no matter how much you read on a narrowly focused area like World War II, there's always something that you've never heard about.
  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 of the war. 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. Why has this not been more widely known!
  
  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. Things could have been so different!
  
  I have to wonder what else of significance have I not yet "discovered"!
• 
  Maine Colonial

  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.
• 
  Jaksen

  Intriguing, well-documented, surprising ...
  
  (This was a Goodreads giveaway win!! HURRAY)
  
  The account of how the Third Reich plotted/planned to assassinate Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill - all at the same time! - when they met shortly before the end of the war. I had no idea this had ever happened, and so it seems, few did. After various documents were unclassified by Russia, the author delved into this fascinating subject and what a book he wrote! A requirement for every reader of WW2 nonfiction. For me, it ranks right up there with 'Berlin Diary,' by William Shirer.
  
  One thing to mention: this couldn't have been an easy book to write. First off, it deals with intelligence, spies, spy networks, and persons with pseudonyms or alternate names and many, many sources who are apt to give false or incomplete information. This is mentioned by the author at the end of the book. (Well of course - who trusts a spy? Not even another spy? Or a spy's best friend. Or spouse. Or the woman he shares a bed with...)
  
  Though 'pillow talk' often has its place, as it does in the book. At the center of this story is Mike Reilly, a man with a rural background who becomes, almost unwittingly, Roosevelt's chief bodyguard in charge of all the other security rolling around the president. Mike spends endless sleepless nights, constantly worrying over and safeguarding FDR - and that's just on a daily basis. Now throw in a trip overseas to meet the other two world leaders - and at first Mike has NO idea where they are going. Malta? Cairo? Somewhere else? And the fact that FDR, sort of like Churchill who I recently read a book about, was absolutely fearless (or reckless?) when it came to personal safety. There are times the book reads like a sort of ordinary, historical account: FDR went here; I (Mike) did this and that. And then suddenly it sort of 'kabooms!' as the President says he's gonna do this and damn the safety measures - and Mike knows best; he'll protect me.
  
  This is written in OMNI, but you do see Mike's thoughts all over the place. He's a chronic worrier yet a meticulous planner and in the ending scenes when things look...
  
  THEY NEED TO MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT THIS.
  
  But it would have to be a three-parter, or series on HBO or Netflix, as there are so many parts to this, so many 'characters.' Russian agents. German spies. Iranian agents. Spies who are turncoats. Spies you can trust? Spies you can't! And Mike and FDR. The American/British/Russian military who can be stubborn, helpful, arrogant - and all three at the same time. There's also Stalin and his cohorts and cronies. Churchill and the Brits. And a woman who sleeps around a bit ...
  
  (How could spies ever exist without her?)
  
  It's a great read, highly-detailed. A nonfiction book that reads like an adventure thriller.
  
  One of my current favorites.
  
  Five spy-entrenched stars.
• 
  Valerie

  Goodreads giveaway. I gave this book to my dad, the history buff in our family. He finished this book in a day, and asked me to give it a 5-star rating because he really enjoyed it.
  
  My dad had no knowledge of Hitler's plot to kill FDR, Churchill and Stalin, it was never in the history books or in the required teachings at any of our schools. This is the kind of history we live for; the untold truths that can only come from first-hand accounts of the action.
  The first thing I noticed about the book was the intricate, and creative cover of the book. It isn't your typical history book, just by judging the cover, you can assume it is going to be an interesting read. The book didn't disappoint because every morning before I had my coffee, my dad would be right there trying to tell me all about this book.
  Me, without caffeine wasn't capable of listening to him ramble on about the facts and figures in the book. Therefore, I am unable to give you a completely insightful review of this book because I didn't personally read it. However, after listening to my dad rave on for three days now, I might pick it up and give it a whirl.
• 
  J

  Interesting. The overall idea of the book is good but… a lot of it was filler. It is about 50% Blum riffing as though he is the inner thoughts of the two or more main characters; Secret Service agent Reilly or one of the various Nazi scum.
  I do not think this approach works to the large degree he did it. It is a good idea but, I think it is best used at pivotal moments when, a character (well, a real person) is at a crossroads in the history and the decision they have to make.
  If he had cut it to maybe 20% of the book, that would be OK. The internal thought dramatization became kind of boring to read. Not this again, skim, skim… Back to the facts…
  I also just started Reilly's autobiography after finishing this and, well, a lot was just lifted strait from that!
  OK, sure, has to be done but, maybe in a different voice or method?
  I do give 4-5 stars for bringing the various stories together into one sequence. That alone was enough and would have made a good book. The dramatic internal voice was just boring after a few chapters and not needed to the degree it was employed.
• 
  Mal Warwick

  Novelists including Ken Follett, Jack Higgins, Alan Furst, and Philip Kerr have indulged us with thrilling accounts of spies and saboteurs in World War II. Rarely, though, have they managed to equal in their fiction the sheer audacity of the real-world Nazi plot to kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin which unfolded in Tehran late in November 1943. This is a story that no novelist could possibly invent and expect to be believed. And Howard Blum tells it with all the skills of a thriller writer in his deeply-researched book, Night of the Assassins.
  
  Two engaging central characters
  
  Blum’s story revolves around Mike Reilly (1910-73) and Walter Schellenberg (1910-52). Reilly was the head of the United States Secret Service during World War II and served as President Franklin Roosevelt’s personal bodyguard. Schellenberg was the equivalent of a brigadier general in the Nazi SS, for which he headed foreign intelligence. He was the counterpart of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the military intelligence unit, the Abwehr, which Schellenberg’s organization absorbed later in the war. These two characters dominate the action. However, a third person, SS Captain (later Colonel) Otto Skorzeny (1908-75), plays an important role as well. Skorzeny, “Hitler’s favorite soldier,” was the commando who rescued Mussolini.
  
  An immensely complex story made simple
  
  Blum does a masterful job of simplifying an immensely complex story using techniques familiar to any thriller reader. An academic attempting to relate the same events would struggle to make it readable. After all, the assassination plot at the center of this tale involved not just Reilly, Schellenberg, and Skorzeny but also Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, and Wilhelm Canaris. Others who enter the story include Adolf Hitler, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and a long list of Nazi commandos as well as both Allied and Nazi diplomats, spies, and double agents. The story involved Iranian wrestlers and a powerful Iranian tribal leader, too. In Hollywood, this might have been called a “cast of thousands.”
  
  It’s not as though Blum was unaware of all these players. His six-page list of sources makes clear how intensively he researched this long-neglected story. Night of the Assassins is a marvel of popular history. Blum conveys as a comprehensible Nazi plot to kill FDR what might in other hands have degenerated into a confusing survey of dueling Nazi and Allied intelligence services.
  
  The amazing story in a nutshell
  
  Forcing a livable settlement
  
  Walter Schellenberg had long dreamed of an espionage coup that could change the course of the war. When spies brought him word that the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) would meet late in November 1943, he fantasized that his chance had come. He teamed up with his rival, Wilhelm Canaris, to design a joint operation to assassinate all three. Both Schellenberg and Canaris were realists. Neither was a Nazi zealot. They realized Germany had lost the war. What they hoped to achieve by killing the Big Three was to force the Allies to negotiate a livable settlement that would prevent their facing a war crimes tribunal.
  
  A Nazi plot to kill FDR with hundreds of moving parts
  
  When the pair learned the conference would be held in Tehran, they counted themselves lucky. Both the SS and the Abwehr had placed agents there who could help hide paratroops dropped nearby and guide them through the city. Elaborate preparations then began to train and equip two commando teams to carry out an extremely clever attack plan one of the Nazi agents in Tehran devised.
  
  From the first, the plan went awry in its execution. Soviet agents rounded up most of the commandos (and executed them without delay). However, a small, third team meant to spy on the two larger groups survived. Hiding out in the Iranian capital, they prepared to carry out with six men what had been planned for fifty. And they just might have pulled it off.
  
  The monumental challenge to protect a wheelchair-bound leader
  
  Meanwhile, as the Nazi plot graduated from fantasy to reality and finally went into operation, Mike Reilly faced a constant struggle to protect FDR. The Boss, as he called him, was confined to a wheelchair and limited to brief, excruciating times on his feet in heavy braces. Reilly faced endless challenges to move the President on and off ships and airplanes and through city streets in the open automobiles FDR favored.
  
  Those challenges multiplied in Cairo, where FDR met Churchill and Chiang Kai-Shek in advance of the Big Three conference, and then proliferated in the teeming streets of Tehran. Reilly seems to have gotten little sleep for months as the event drew near. As word of the Nazi scheme trickled out to him from Soviet intelligence, he grew increasingly agitated. Blum adroitly conveys the terror that kept him awake at nights until the President left Tehran at long last.
  
  About the author
  
  Howard Blum is the author of more than a dozen nonfiction books, several of which were bestsellers. Previously he worked as a reporter for the Village Voice and the New York Times. Night of the Assassins is the third of his books about World War II. He is based in New York.
• 
  Gonçalo Bacellar

  Interesting take on how Hitler plotted to kill the three major players of the Allies. It puts us on both sides of the story, so you can see how this was a "all or nothing" plan, but carefully thought.
  I also liked how the author imagined the story taking place, it makes the book easier to read, it's not just a documentary.
  For those who like to learn more about history, and the history of WW II in particular, this an interesting take, more even because it approaches, even if only on the surface, the (negative) impact that the Allies also had in countries like Iran to keep this war going.
• 
  Jeff Francis

  Books about history, and especially World War II, frequently bear the promotional blurb “reads like a thriller,” or some variation thereof. Usually it’s not true, suggesting whatever reviewer or ad man bestowed the label is either being generous or isn’t familiar with thrillers.
  
  “Reads like a thriller” is applied to Howard Blum’s new “Night of the Assassins: The Untold Story of Hitler’s Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin.” However, in this case, the label is accurate.
  
  “Night of the Assassins”—a good size and relatively short for a World War II book—focuses on a very specific event, and apart from some necessary exposition, never really loses focus of the story it’s telling (the substance of the Tehran summit is near-unmentioned, for instance).
  
  It’s almost one of those situations where the less you know about the particulars the more you’ll enjoy it, but suffice it to say you’ll probably race through the last fourth of the book, at least. The only drawback is the one inherent to combining a WWII and spy narrative, e.g. there are agents of America, Britain, Russia, Germany and Iran; factor in shifting loyalties and agents being turned and you need a flow chart to keep track of who’s on which side…
  
  But again, as the book goes on, the confusing allegiances are pared down, leading to a conclusion (not altogether unfunny) more entertaining than you’d think.
• 
  Jean Blackwood

  The facts of this very interesting historical tale should have made a good book, but it is written and read in an annoying fashion that spoiled it for me. The author places himself inside the heads of the major players and purports to tell us in great detail every thought and feeling they had about the unfolding action. And the performer for the audio book version reads it all with a John Wayne swagger that only makes it worse.
  
  It actually comes close to being historical fiction rather than history.
• 
  Lee Candilin

  As long as you don't question the validity of the so-called facts presented and read it as a novel, it is an interesting read about how one American protected his president. I'm pretty sure the security of the president was the work of a whole lot of people than just one man though. On the other hand, if everything written was true, than that was fantastic sleuthing work.
• 
  Lovely Loveday

  Night of the Assassins is a book that history buffs will not want to put down. A book that lives up to its promise with an intriguing story. Night of the Assassins is a well researched and well-written book that is full of captivating information. 
  
• 
  Amber

  There's a lot of background to get through in the early going. I found myself not in the mood to slog through all the setup, but maybe some other time.
• 
  Amber Leigh

  A very interesting piece of history to learn
• 
  John McDonald

  This little-heralded tale is fairly straightforward.
  
  Adolph Hitler, mostly as spite and a strategy for reversing Nazi losses, and Walter Stallenberg, the Nazi spy chief, believing that decapitating the Allied leadership would improve German chances for a moderate, settled peace treaty, decided to murder FDR, Churchill, and Stalin when the three determined to meet. US and British intelligence routinely feared the possibility that an attempt would be made on their leaders' lives, but they had no specific information about specific and imminent Nazi strategies to do so.
  
  The Nazis, at the same time, had no specific information regarding when or where the Allied leaders were to meet, but they knew something was intended and at least being planned. A valet in the American embassy made himself known to German intelligence, he got paid off in counterfeit British pounds (the Nazis always paid off and paid their bills in counterfeit British pounds since no one accepted the Reichsmark), and Nazi planning became specific and terrifying.
  
  Thanks to Russian intelligence (and Russian brutality), the assassination plot, which included 3 teams of commandos--all killers by history and instinct--were captured and the assassination plot collapsed.
  
  The story and the writing are electrifying (and I have read a lot of spy and intelligence stories) and as well documented as classified wartime information permit us to know. Blum has accomplished what I think is a brilliant effort of storytelling and he does it by telling this story around the work of Mike Reilly, Chief of FDR's Secret Service prtoective detail, and the activities of Nazis Stallenberg, William Canaris, and 2 little known Iranian Nazis who set up the Nazi kill team for the assassination in Tehran.
  
  Reading about the collapse of the plot toward the book's end is a joy and truly remarkable piece of writing. Even if a reader has no interest in intelligence activities, the story is worth every moment of the reader's time.
• 
  Brett Van Gaasbeek

  Blum is a great narrative historian who brings to light little known or little read about historical events and presents them fairly and comprehensively. This title brings to light a plan to take out "The Big Three" at the Tehran Conference during WWII. The German commandos and high command were seeking to avoid the "unconditional surrender" that was mandated by FDR, Churchill and Stalin by putting their faith in a plan to assassinate the world leaders in an effort to negotiate a peace plan with their successors, as the path of the war was likely going to end with the German surrender and countless war criminals brought to justice (which is what happened). Blum brings up the possibility of what would have occurred had this covert operation been successful in Iran. It is intriguing and there are page-turning sections that are riveting, but Blum also has a tendency to get bogged down in too much detail which can cause the book to drag for 30-40 pages. Overall, it is a solid historical read and one that will bring up interesting pieces of espionage and historical circumstances for even the most dedicated WWII history enthusiast.
• 
  Grouchy Historian

  A genuine espionage/covert ops thriller.
  
  Well written, deeply researched, and excellently sourced, it shows there are still incredible tales of WW2 even 75 years later.
• 
  Lorraine Wilke

  As a fan of Erik Larson’s, whose taut nonfiction reads like the very best of novels, I was thrilled to receive a review copy of Howard Blum’s latest book, Night of the Assassins, anticipating a great read. I was not disappointed.
  
  Doggedly researched, richly detailed, and told with propulsive, cinematic urgency, we approach the political intrigue of “Operation Long Jump,” the plot to simultaneously assassinate Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at the 1943 Tehran Conference during World War II, by meeting the main players whose roles drive the story forward:
  
  Mike Reilly is the head of FDR’s Secret Service detail, a man dedicated to his boss’s safety, but burdened by the ever-present and unpredictable dangers that lurk. Walter Schellenberg, a high-ranking member of the SS foreign intelligence branch, who faces with dread the Nazi’s seemingly inescapable defeat, and, in a moment of “inspiration” (in collaboration with veteran spymaster, Wilhelm Canaris), births an audacious idea, one that would obliterate the “total surrender” threatened by the Allies: an assassination triumvirate. With Hitler’s blessing, and every intelligence department searching for the time and place of the three Allies’ planned meeting, all systems are put into motion. Enter SS officer Otto Skorzeny, who earned the title, “most dangerous man in Europe,” for his daring rescue of Mussolini during a 1943 Italian coup, who becomes the point-person chosen to facilitate this even more daring escapade.
  
  From the moment he sets the stage, Blum expertly swings the narrative back and forth from Reilly’s herculean efforts to assist FDR in his duties while protecting him from the heightened dangers of wartime, Schellenberg’s urgent scramble to gather essential intelligence while assembling the various and eclectic parties around the world to advance the operation, Skorzeny’s painstaking preparation for what is surely a “mission impossible,” and, as we feel the critical mass of events build, our own anxiety ratchets up with the escalating suspense.
  
  As one who’s read much both fiction and nonfiction on the topic of World War II, it is always a fascinating learning experience to dive into a story that, told with the mastery and dedication to detail as Blum’s, educates me to a powerful historical chapter I knew little about. While we know, because history has already informed us, that the mission was unsuccessful, the electrifying journey toward that ultimate denouement is, to use a cliched term, nail-biting. And given the filmic style of Blum’s narrative, it is easy to picture every character, every place, even the smells and sounds of the streets where events play out, as you race down the timeline of unfolding events.
  
  A brilliant telling of a shocking, daring mission that would have changed the course of history.
• 
  Miguel

  Interesting chapter in the 2nd World War of an incident that almost ended in disaster. Towards the beginning of the book we are told that the Germans didn’t exactly have the best personnel in their spy service during the war due to their ideologically driven recruitment efforts – as a result of knowing this the stakes never feel very high as they might have otherwise as they come across as the gang that couldn't shoot straight. On the US side, the main secret service agent is well fleshed out and this creates an almost cinematic feel to the story. But again the magnitude of this episode just didn't feel overly important as part of the overall war.
• 
  Amy

  Interesting book about an incident I have never heard of during the Tehran conference during World War Two. He skips back and forth between the perspective of the Germans involved and FDR's lead Secret Service agent, which took a bit of getting used to. There is very little detail about the conference itself; the author did an excellent job of confining the book primarily to the plot to assassinate FDR, Churchill and Stalin.
• 
  Jackie

  Infotainment
  
  I had not expected to be so riveted while learning about something I knew nothing about. And I really learned a lot from this book. This book truly reads like a thriller. There were times I wish there had been dates at the beginning of chapters so I could keep track of what's going on.
• 
  Musab

  I never really read Howard Blum before, so I decided to give him a chance, and he more than lived up to my expectations. This book is not your traditional book, it is a very informative academic review mixed with highly suspenseful thrillers. Alot of writers and directors have a unique plot such as this and they absolutely bottle it— which is why I usually stick to cliches— but this was perfect.