Alliance of Enemies: The Untold Story of the Secret American and German Collaboration to End World War II

This eye-opening account details the German opposition that long predated the well-known July 1944 putsch that attempted to assassinate Hitler. The coarseness, rhetoric and brutality of the lower-echelon Nazis offended the elite who ran the military and civil service, and when Hitler threatened war in 1938 if his demand to annex the Sudetenland was rejected, military leaders began planning his ouster. But their plan depended on Hitler starting a war that had little popular support, which Britain short-circuited by yielding at Munich. Once war did begin, German victories in 1939–1940 discouraged the opposition, which revived when Russia and America entered the war in 1941. Readers may be amazed at the number of top officials who not only opposed Hitler but also actively aided the Allies. Sadly, the resistance was reluctant to plan a coup without assurance that Britain and America would deal gently with Germany once Hitler was gone. When they finally acted in 1944, they failed, and Hitler took terrible vengeance. Like Roger Moorhouse in his recent Killing Hitler , Von Hassell (grandson of a bomb plotter) and MacRae, an editor and translator, have done an impressive job of demolishing the myth of a German monolith, united behind their fanatical leader. (Nov. 23)