Reviews for The Nazi Conspiracy

by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The Tehran Conference was a pivotal event of World War II, but there was danger lurking in the shadows. This is a strange—and strangely entertaining—book. Meltzer and Mensch, whose careers have included TV documentaries, nonfiction, thrillers, and comic books, acknowledge that the events they recount may not have happened, and they have obviously filled in some blank spaces with reasonable speculation. The authors focus on a possible plot by the Nazis to assassinate Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—the “Big Three,” as they were called by the media of the time—when they met for a crucial conference in Tehran in 1943 to plan strategy. Several chapters of the book deal with the problems of setting up the conference, especially Stalin’s insistence that it must be held in Tehran. The Nazis, who had a network of spies and sympathizers in the city as well as tapped communications line between Roosevelt and Churchill, were aware that the conference was going to happen and saw an opportunity to reshape the global order. There was a plan to send a squad of commandos into the Soviet Embassy, where the meetings were being held, through underground tunnels. But the NKVD, one of the Soviet intelligence agencies, discovered the plot and intercepted the group before they could do any damage. Much of this territory has already been covered, but Meltzer and Mensch dig up some new material. They admit that several researchers, pointing to contradictions in various firsthand accounts and a lack of documentation, have described the “plot” as a Soviet hoax. However, after sifting through the evidence, the authors conclude that there probably was a plot. As in the authors’ previous two co-authored books, The First Conspiracy and The Lincoln Conspiracy, the narrative sometimes wanders away from the main story, but it makes for interesting reading. A colorful trek through a labyrinth of twists and turns that could have changed history. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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