Plotting Hitler's Death

In Joachim Fest, acclaimed biographer of Adolf Hitler, brings together the full story of those Germans who, from 1933 almost until the moment the Third Reich collapsed, plotted to kill the Führer.

Fest recounts in vivid detail Count von Stauffenberg’s famous planting of a time-bomb at Hitler’s feet on 20 July 1944. But he also describes lesser-known plan by leading Wehrmacht generals who, reluctant to go to war, plotted in 1938 to have Hitler arrested, tried and shot—a plot they called off when Neville Chamberlain opted for appeasement at Munich. Included, too, are heroic attempts by isolated individuals and numerous conspiracies even among Germany’s highest-ranking officers.

Time and again, small numbers of Germans, civilian and military, noble and ignoble, schemed to topple the Führer, and on several occasions they came within minutes – or inches—of succeeding. In this compelling, definitive work Fest explores why they tried, why they found so little support either in Germany or outside it, and why they failed. As he places the resistance in the larger political and social context, we come to understand the difficulties of opposition in an age of totalitarianism.