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An officer in the Wehrmacht -- Germany's World War II military -- von Boeselager was part of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He had realized in 1942 that Hitler was a maniac who was systematically murdering Jews, Roma and others for their ethnic backgrounds. The assassination became "no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes" against humanity that Hitler was committing. In 1943, von Boeselager was given a pistol so he could shoot Hitler and SS head Heinrich Himmler at a dinner, but the idea was scrapped when Himmler couldn't make the dinner von Boeselager was attending. The order to abort the mission was von Boeselager's greatest regret: he recalled he was only about two feet from Hitler, and always wondered to himself, "What would have happened if you had shot him?" Another attempt came in 1944: von Boeselager's role then was to bring troops to Berlin to take control of the city after Hitler's death. But the July 20 plot failed: someone moved the briefcase with the bomb inside, and Hitler survived the blast with minor injuries. A furious fuhrer ordered the Gestapo to round up anyone who could have been involved. About 5,000 people were arrested, and about 200 were executed as conspirators. Von Boeselager was not implicated, but he kept a cyanide capsule on his person until the end of the war, just in case that happened. After the war, he studied economics and forestry, and was considered a hero by the Germans and French both. He urged youth to become involved in politics to avoid a repeat of Hitler's mania for power. Believed to have been the last of the coup planners alive, von Boeselager died on May 1 at 90. One of his prized possessions to the end: the pistol he was given to shoot Hitler with. From This is True for 27 April 2008 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Jonah Goldberg List Price: $27.95 Amazon Price: $18.45 Editorial Review: “Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?  By: Patrick J. Buchanan List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $19.77 Editorial Review: Were World Wars I and II—which can now be seen as a thirty-year paroxysm of slaughter and destruction—inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Were the bloodiest and most devastating conflicts ever suffered by mankind fated by forces beyond men’s control? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen—Winston Churchill first among them—the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian blunders were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that muti- lated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo- Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The 1935 sanctions that drove Italy straight into the Axis with Hitler • The greatest blunder in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939—that guaranteed the Second World War • Churchill’s astonishing blindness to Stalin’s true ambitions. Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.  By: David G. DalinJohn F. Rothmann List Price: $26.00 Amazon Price: $17.16 Editorial Review: A chilling, fascinating, and nearly forgotten historical figure is resurrected in a riveting work that links the fascism of the last century with the terrorism of our own. Written with verve and extraordinary access to primary sources in several languages, Icon of Evil is the definitive account of the man who during World War II was called “the führer of the Arab world” and whose ugly legacy lives on today. In 1921, the beneficiary of an appointment the British would live to regret, Haj Amin al-Husseini became the mufti of Jerusalem, the most eminent and influential Islamic leader in the Middle East. For years, al-Husseini fomented violence in the region against the Jews he loathed and wished to destroy. Forced out in 1937, he eventually found his way to the country whose legions he desperately wished to join: Nazi Germany. Here, with new and disturbing details, David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann show how al-Husseini ingratiated himself with his hero, Adolf Hitler, becoming, with his blonde hair and blue eyes, an “honorary Aryan,” while dreaming of being installed Nazi leader of the Middle East. Al-Husseini would later recruit more than 100,000 Muslims in Europe to fight in divisions of the Waffen-SS, and obstruct negotiations with the Allies that might have allowed four thousand Jewish children to escape to Palestine. Some believe that al-Husseini even inspired Hitler to implement the Final Solution. At war’s end, al-Husseini escaped indictment at Nuremberg and was harbored in France before being given a hero’s welcome in Egypt. Icon of Evil chronicles al-Husseini’s postwar relationships with such influential Islamic figures as the radical theoretician Sayyid Qutb and Saddam Hussein’s powerful uncle, General Khairallah Talfah, and his crucial mentoring of the young Yasser Arafat. Finally, it provides compelling evidence that al-Husseini’s actions and writings serve as inspirations today to the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations pledged to destroy Israel and the United States. Revelatory and unsettling, Icon of Evil reveals an essential character in the worst crimes of the modern era. It is an important addition to our understanding of the past, present, and future of radical Islam.  By: Stephen E. Ambrose List Price: $17.00 Amazon Price: $11.56 Editorial Review: As grippingly as any novelist, preeminent World War II historian Stephen Ambrose tells the horrifying, hallucinatory saga of Easy Company, whose 147 members he calls the nonpareil combat paratroopers on earth circa 1941-45. Ambrose takes us along on Easy Company's trip from grueling basic training to Utah Beach on D-day, where a dozen of them turned German cannons into dynamited ruins resembling "half-peeled bananas," on to the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of part of the Dachau concentration camp, and a large party at Hitler's "Eagle's Nest," where they drank the madman's (surprisingly inferior) champagne. Of Ambrose's main sources, three soldiers became rich civilians; at least eight became teachers; one became Albert Speer's jailer; one prosecuted Bobby Kennedy's assassin; another became a mountain recluse; the despised, sadistic C.O. who first trained Easy Company (and to whose strictness many soldiers attributed their survival of the war) wound up a suicidal loner whose own sons skipped his funeral. The Easy Company survivors describe the hell and confusion of any war: the senseless death of the nicest kid in the company when a souvenir Luger goes off in his pocket; the execution of a G.I. by his C.O. for disobeying an order not to get drunk. Despite the gratuitous horrors it relates, Band of Brothers illustrates what one of Ambrose's sources calls "the secret attractions of war ... the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction ... war as spectacle." --Tim AppeloThe men of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, volunteered for this elite fighting force because they wanted to be the best in the army--and avoid fighting alongside unmotivated, out-of-shape draftees. The price they paid for that desire was long, arduous, and sometimes sadistic training, followed by some of the most horrific battles of World War II. Actor Cotter Smith--a veteran of numerous TV movies and Broadway plays--spins Stephen Ambrose's tale with almost laconic ease. Anecdote by anecdote, he lets the power of the story build. By the time the company has gotten through D-day and seized Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Bavaria, we feel we know as much about the men and their missions as we do about our own brothers. (Running time: 5 hours, 4 cassettes) --Lou SchulerAs good a rifle company as any in the world, Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, kept getting the tough assignments -- responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. In Band of Brothers, Ambrose tells of the men in this brave unit who fought, went hungry, froze, and died, a company that took 150 percent casualties and considered the Purple Heart a badge of office. Drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers' journals and letters, Stephen Ambrose recounts the stories, often in the men's own words, of these American heroes.Band of Brothers is the account of the men of the remarkable Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army. Responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden, these men fought, went hungry, froze, and died, taking 150 percent casualties and considering the Purple Heart a badge of office. Stephen Ambrose tells the stories, often in the men's own words, of these American heroes, drawing on hours of interviews with survivors as well as the soldiers' journals and letters.  By: Adolf Hitler List Price: $15.97 Amazon Price: $15.97 Editorial Review: The angry ranting of an obscure, small-party politician, the first volume of Mein Kampf was virtually ignored when it was originally published in 1925. Likewise the second volume, which appeared in 1926. The book details Hitler's childhood, the "betrayal" of Germany in World War I, the desire for revenge against France, the need for lebensraum for the German people, and the means by which the National Socialist party can gain power. It also includes Hitler's racist agenda and his glorification of the "Aryan" race. The few outside the Nazi party who read it dismissed it as nonsense, not believing that anyone could--or would--carry out its radical, terrorist programs. As Hitler and the Nazis gained power, first party members and then the general public were pressured to buy the book. By the time Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, the book stood atop the German bestseller lists. Had the book been taken seriously when it was first published, perhaps the 20th century would have been very different. Beyond the anger, hatred, bigotry, and self-aggrandizing, Mein Kampf is saddled with tortured prose, meandering narrative, and tangled metaphors (one person was described as "a thorn in the eyes of venal officials"). That said, it is an incredibly important book. It is foolish to think that the Holocaust could not happen again, especially if World War II and its horrors are forgotten. As an Amazon.com reader has pointed out, "If you want to learn about why the Holocaust happened, you can't avoid reading the words of the man who was most responsible for it happening." Mein Kampf, therefore, must be read as a reminder that evil can all too easily grow. --Sunny Delaney In 1922, just four years after the war to end all wars, an unknown Austrian then living in Bavaria planned a pamphlet to be called Settling Accounts. In it he intended to attack the ineffectiveness of the dominant political parties in Germany which were opposed to the new National Socialists (Nazis). In November 1923, Adolf Hitler was jailed for the abortive Munich Beer Hall putsch along with men willing and able to assist him with his writing. With the help of these collaborators, chief among them Rudolf Hess, the pamphlet became a book. Settling Accounts became Mein Kampf, an unparalleled example of muddled economics and history, appalling bigotry, and an intense self-glorification of Adolf Hitler as the true founder and builder of the National Socialist movement. It was written in hate and it contained a blueprint for violent bloodshed. |
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