cover image The Oster Conspiracy of 1938: The Unknown Story of the Military Plot to Kill Hitler and Avert World War II

The Oster Conspiracy of 1938: The Unknown Story of the Military Plot to Kill Hitler and Avert World War II

Terry M. Parssinen. HarperCollins Publishers, $27.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-06-019587-8

As Hitler planned to invade Czechoslovakia, disenchanted German military men believed that the campaign would be a disastrous failure. Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster had watched during the early 1930s as Hitler brutally deposed and executed men under whom Oster had served, in order to consolidate his hold on the military. A military intelligence officer, Oster (1887-1945) played a crucial role in a plan, never executed, to capture or kill Hitler. A professor of History at the University of Tampa, Parssinen opens each chapter with cursory background material, then describes events as they unfolded day by day. The action jumps from the members of the German military who hatched the coup plan, to Hitler's inner circle and the SS as it moved toward war, to the British government as it prevaricated and then sent British Prime Minister Chamberlain to Germany to meet Hitler and defuse the Czech crisis. The pact in Munich that September left the conspirators in a quandary, as they had planned to begin their revolt after the order for the invasion of Czechoslovakia had been given, and they destroyed their assassination plans. Oster was involved in an actual failed attempt against Hitler in 1943. He was arrested and executed not for that, but for his part in helping Jews escape to Switzerland. (Several other conspirators were caught and killed for their actions.) There is not really any new, startling information about the first plot, a historical footnote since it never happened, but Parssinen offers a clearly written, well-researched and accurate history of""what might have been"" during the immediate period before World War II--and of a clear-sighted figure who followed his conscience.