The Conquerors
Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945
Chapter One
Chapter One: The Plot to Murder Hitler
Had the plotters been more deft, Thursday, July 20, 1944, would have been Adolf
Hitler's last day on earth.
Six weeks after D-Day, the United States, Great Britain and their allies had
landed a million men in France. The Red Army was marching westward. When
Hitler's generals proposed retreat behind more defensible lines, the Führer
had shaken his head, crying, "Victory or death!"
Now Hitler was burrowed in at the Wolf's Lair, his field headquarters near
Rastenburg, in a melancholy, dank East Prussian forest. At noon, in a log
barracks, he listened to a gloomy report from one of his army chiefs about
Germany's retreat on the Eastern front. In the steamy room, Hitler took off the
eyeglasses he vainly refused to use in public and mopped his forehead with a
handkerchief. SS men and stenographers stood around the massive, long oak table
like nervous cats. Maps were unfurled. Hitler leaned over them and squinted
through a magnifying glass, g ... read full excerpt from The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945 ebook
