Churchill's Deception: The Dark Secret That Destroyed Nazi Germany - Hardcover

Kilzer, Louis C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671767224 ISBN 13: 9780671767228

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1994

Synopsis

Argues that Churchill tricked Hitler into invading Russia by setting up a phony peace between Germany and Britain

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Reviews

An audacious rereading of the diplomatic history of WW II by a Pulitzer Prize-winning Minneapolis Star-Tribune investigative reporter. Kilzer argues that Winston Churchill deliberately nurtured Hitler's illusion that powerful British factions sought an end to the war on terms favorable to Nazi Germany, and thus outwitted Hitler into starting a war against the Soviets that Germany could not win. According to this theory, the May 1941 flight of Rudolf Hess to Scotland was the culmination of a British intelligence operation. The author argues that Hitler, out of admiration for the British Empire, a conviction that the English and the Germans were racial allies, and a desire to free his hand in the West before invading the Soviet Union, sincerely sought peace with Britain, and that Churchill exploited appeasement-minded Britons (like the Duke of Hamilton, whose messages through intermediaries persuaded Hess to make his flight, and the former king Edward VIII) to foster in Hitler the idea that Britain would agree to peace on Hitler's terms. Kilzer builds a reasonably convincing circumstantial case out of numerous well-documented facts: Churchill's desire to involve Germany in a wider war; Hitler's wish to settle with Britain before initiating war with the Soviet Union; and various clandestine contacts between British and German agents. Finally, Kilzer explains some aspects of the mysterious Hess flight--the failure of the British to use Hess's capture for propaganda purposes; the fact that the last day of Hitler's bombing of London coincided with the Hess flight; and the medical evidence indicating that the man who died in Spandau prison in 1987 was not Hess (Kilzer speculates that British agents may have killed Hess to prevent the story of Churchill's deception from emerging). Certain to be controversial, Kilzer's is an absorbing and cogently argued original contribution to WW II literature. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A traipse through the bizarre Hess affair of May_ 1941, in which the sly British allegedly enticed the beetle-browed, sunken-eyed Deputy F{�}uhrer to fly to Scotland, Kilzer's narrative banks on sleuths still stalking this still-open mystery. Yet historians will give it short shrift, as it derives largely from extant publications. (And might be contrasted to the work of John Costello, who delved into spy accounts for his Ten Days to Destiny [1991].) Kilzer accepts Hess' trip as a genuine peace feeler from Hitler, that when rebuffed emboldened the dictator to recoil in the other direction, against Russia. Though this is what happened in the strategic sense (given Churchill's refusal to parley with Hitler), championing the Hess mission--and particularly British intelligence's role in it--as the means is presently too thin a reed to support Kilzer's theory. Yet his episodic style will play well with general readers, combining as it does disparate subjects (a life-sketch of Hitler here; there, the frantic "peace" missions before the Poland invasion) with conspiracy-building notions about still-sealed records in Britain. Light fare for the WWII diet. Gilbert Taylor

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Kilzer argues that Churchill maneuvered Hitler into attacking the USSR by using the Secret Intelligence Service to lure Rudolf Hess to England. A dramatic preface revives the generally discredited claim that the man in Spandau Prison was not Hess; yet Kilzer returns to this point only obliquely in the final chapter. Like John Charmley (Churchill: The End of Glory, LJ 9/1/93), Kilzer argues that Churchill should have made peace with Hitler in 1940. Not a necessary purchase if one's collection already contains the recent books on the Hess affair: John Costello's Ten Days to Destiny (LJ 7/1/91) and Peter Padfield's Hess: Flight for the Fuhrer (Macmillan, 1991).
--Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671767224
• ISBN 13: 9780671767228
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320