Summer Reading Themes: Part One

Everybody Wants to Kill Adolf

Both my wife and I happen to be reading books in which the primary focus is on Nazi Germany and the rise and fall of its infamous architect, chancellor Hitler. That got me to thinking just how many books there are out there featuring Der Fuhrer as a character, and I realized I had read quite a few of them in recent years: most of them concerning attempts on his life. Like what the gloriously misspelled Tarantino film, Inglorious Basterds has done for celluloid, so these wonderfully imaginative Hitler assassination fantasies have done for the written word. Hence, with the 2011 Summer reading season budding, I thought I would compile a short list of some great summer reads which feature would-be murderers of the malevolent mustachioed megalomaniac.

• Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household never really mentions Hitler by name but intimates that Der Fuhrer is in fact the target of this novel's protagonist. Most of the novel follows the would be assassin, post feeble attempt, as he goes on the lam in a makeshift hidey hole.
• Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson is another novel which never mentions Hitler by name. It chronicles the psychological musings of a man obsessed with the demise of the German chancellor whom he fancies his adversary.
• The Quest for Anna Klein by Thomas H.Cook is about a couple of ostensibly amateur spies who become embroiled in an attempt to take down the abhorrent Adolf early in his terrific reign. Oh, and there's also a love story in the mix.

Other related and interesting titles:

• The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer: the coming of age of young Addie
• Fatherland by Robert Harris: It's 1964 and Adolf Hitler is 75 years old.
• The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin: I got it! let's clone Hitler
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson: a US ambassador and his mid-west family are assigned to Hitler's Germany.
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth: an alternate history mostly concerning a Nazi sympathizing Charles Lindbergh, President of the United States.
• Valkyrie: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler by Hans Bernd Gisevius: documents the most famous attempt on the craven war criminal's life, too late though it may have been.