Jeremy Dronfield - Ian Sayer - Hitler last dobása

"An American soldier spied the valley of the Brenta River from behind a bush on the front line of the Allies - a picturesque view of farms scattered at the foot of the mountains covered with trees was revealed to him. The hilly area was full of German paratroopers. Several of them were heading straight for the American private from the enemy lines: fear a dozen partisans with guns in hand, a better-dressed civilian who appeared to be unarmed, and a gaunt figure in a shabby gray-blue uniform.Everyone awake on the American front lines watched with prying eyes as these men emerged from the German lines and descended the lanka into the valley. They couldn't even imagine what all this could mean."

For the first time, we can read the shocking story in its entirety of how the Nazis' most valuable prisoners were collected from the German camps and transported to the Italian Alps in April 1945, so that Hitler could use them as bargaining chips during the risky endgame in the last days of the world war.

The SS was given the order: as soon as the military situation worsened, execute all 139 hostages - European heads of state and generals, anti-Nazi conspirators and their family members, British secret agents, British officers famous for the "Great Escape", pilots, the elderly and children.

A tense drama began. The guards became more and more unpredictable, and the fate of the prisoners was overshadowed by the serious conflict between the SS and the Wehrmacht, until finally the American army launched a desperate rescue operation to free them.

Hitler's last throw draws on hitherto unpublished sources and tells about this astonishing event in a novel form, from the prisoners' terrible vomiting to their lucky rescue.