A trusted member of Hitler's inner circle, Artur Axmann, the head of the Hitler Youth, witnessed the Führer commit suicide in Berlin-but he would not let the Reich die with its leader. Evading capture, and with access to remnants of the regime's wealth, Axmann had enough followers to reestablish the Nazi party in the very heart of Allied-occupied Germany-and position himself to become dictator of the Fourth Reich.
U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps Officer Jack Hunter was the perfect undercover operative. Fluent in German, he posed as a black marketeer to root out Nazi sympathizers and saboteurs after the war, and along with other CIC agents uncovered the extent of Axmann's conspiracy. It threatened to bring the Nazis back into power-and the task fell to Hunter and his team to stop it.
The Axmann Conspiracy is the previously untold true story of the Nazi threat that continued in the wake of World War II, the espionage that defeated it, and two fascinating men whose lives forever altered the course of history.
On February 15, 2003, a group of thieves broke into an allegedly airtight vault in the international diamond capital of Antwerp, Belgium and made off with over $108 million dollars worth of diamonds and other valuables. They did so without tripping an alarm or injuring a single guard in the process. Although the crime was perfect, the getaway was not. The police zeroed in on a band of professional thieves fronted by Leonardo Notarbartolo, a dapper Italian who had rented an office in the Diamond Center and clandestinely cased its vault for over two years. The "who" of the crime had been answered, but the "how" remained largely a mystery. Enter Scott Andrew Selby, a Harvard Law grad and diamond expert, and Greg Campbell, author of Blood Diamonds, who undertook a global goose chase to uncover the true story behind the daring heist. Tracking the threads of the story throughout Europe-from Belgium to Italy, in seedy cafés and sleek diamond offices-the authors sorted through an array of conflicting details, divergent opinions and incongruous theories to put together the puzzle of what actually happened that Valentine's Day weekend. This real-life Ocean's Eleven-a combination of diamond history, journalistic reportage, and riveting true-crime story-provides a thrilling in-depth study detailing the better-than-fiction heist of the century.
As the Nazi war machine caused death and destruction throughout Europe, one man in the Fatherland began his own reign of terror.
This is the true story of the pursuit and capture of a serial killer in the heart of the Third Reich.
For all appearances, Paul Ogorzow was a model German. An employed family man, party member, and sergeant in the infamous Brownshirts, he had worked his way up in the Berlin railroad from a manual laborer laying track to assistant signalman. But he also had a secret need to harass and frighten women. Then he was given a gift from the Nazi high command.
Due to Allied bombing raids, a total blackout was instituted throughout Berlin, including on the commuter trains-trains often used by women riding home alone from the factories.
Under cover of darkness and with a helpless flock of victims to choose from, Ogorzow's depredations grew more and more horrific. He escalated from simply frightening women to physically attacking them, eventually raping and murdering them. Beginning in September 1940, he started casually tossing their bodies off the moving train. Though the Nazi party tried to censor news of the attacks, the women of Berlin soon lived in a state of constant fear.
It was up to Wilhelm Lüdtke, head of the Berlin police's serious crimes division, to hunt down the madman in their midst. For the first time, the gripping full story of Ogorzow's killing spree and Lüdtke's relentless pursuit is told in dramatic detail.
