Book Review: ‘The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill’

The Big Three meet November 28, 1943. (L–R) Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill on the portico of the Soviet Embassy during the Tehran Conference. Library of Congress. Public Domain

Dec. 7, 1941, marks the date in history when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, ushering the United States into World War II.

Earlier, in May 1940, Hitler had invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen. France would soon follow.

England’s newly elected prime minister, Winston Churchill, knew that in order to keep Germany at bay, he would need the United States to enter the war. England stood alone.

For more than a year prior to 1941, Churchill beseeched U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to send more than well wishes. Roosevelt, while sympathetic, governed a country weary of war with no desire to get involved in another. That sentiment changed on that fateful Sunday morning in Hawaii when the undetected Japanese carriers launched their bombers on the American fleet.

Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), had signed a Nazi–Soviet pact in 1939. In 1941, Germany broke that pact and invaded the USSR, heading toward Moscow. The Soviet Union wasn’t prepared for war.

Major Players Prepare to Partner

The “Big Three”—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—were now allies against Hitler.

As much as Dec. 7, 1941, is cemented into the World War II history of the United States and, hopefully, in the minds and hearts of most Americans, bestselling authors Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch take readers on a compelling and riveting inside look at the political drama leading up to November 1943.

At the height of World War II, Roosevelt (now fully into the war), Churchill (possibly hedging at the prospect of crossing the English Channel to face Germany on French soil), and Stalin (suffering the loss of thousands of troops and weary of fighting Germany alone on the Eastern front) met for the first time to discuss crucial strategies to ensure that victory would be theirs.

Do these three world leaders trust each other? Do they share like-minded political strategies? And what about their personalities? Do they like each other?

Meltzer and Mensch, both prolific authors and both affiliated with the History Channel and television programming, do a masterful job collaborating on this narrative, which reads like a taunt thriller. But it’s all true, making it even more mesmerizing.

Roosevelt is keen on the three leaders meeting face-to-face, not only to gauge one another’s political and military prowess but perhaps, more importantly, to show the world a united front against Nazism and that victory will be achieved through the collaborative efforts of the Allied forces.

Leveraging the Logistics

Getting these three together is comparable to aligning the stars. All come with their own agendas, and all are surrounded by their own military advisers, staff, and security teams.

And then there are the spies and saboteurs seeming to lurk behind every closed door. There’s lots of political intrigue.

For the Nazis, having all three of them together in one place was too good to be true. Threats of a triple assassination were all too real as the date of their meeting in Tehran, Iran, in November 1943 drew closer.

While the “Big Three” are the main focus of this read, there are a host of satellite figures who revolve in their worlds, and readers will find them equally captivating: Mike Reilly, Roosevelt’s head of the White House Secret Service; Franz Mayr, a German operative living in Tehran; Otto Skorzeny, a gutsy German officer who masterminds the rescue of Benito Mussolini (not only a political ally but a good friend of Hitler’s) from a hotel on the Apennine Mountains; Averell Harriman, then-U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union; and Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s Reich Security chief.

The "Big Three" meet in Tehran, Iran, in December 1943. Front row (L–R): Soviet Union Marshal Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill (wearing his air commodore's uniform) on the portico of the Russian Embassy. Back row (L–R of those visible): Gen. H.H. Arnold, chief of the U.S. Army Air Force; Gen. Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff; Adm. Cunningham; Adm. William Leahy, chief of staff to Roosevelt, during the Teheran Conference. Library of Congress. Public Domain

It’s an exhilarating behind-the-scenes look at history through the lens of time and in the hands of authors who bring this pivotal period of history to life in fine fashion. The authors weave these characters brilliantly on land, sea, and air from one crisply written chapter to another. Although I didn’t read this book in one sitting, it’s tempting to binge read, as it’s challenging not to keep turning the pages to see what happens next.

It’s also a very poignant perspective on the horrors of war, with details of brutal massacres, sadistic killings, treason, and cruel twists of fate. The toll on human life is staggering, and those facts aren’t spared the reader.

The course of history would have no doubt been changed, perhaps with cataclysmic consequences, if this conspiracy to take out the three heads of state of the three major Allied powers (the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union) had borne fruit in 1943. We know that didn’t happen.

Clearly using cloak-and-dagger elements, Meltzer and Mensch do a masterful job of storytelling with this edge-of-your-seat history read. Readers know it ends well, but getting there is a tale worth knowing.

“The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill” by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch tells the story of a Nazi plot to kill the "Big Three." Flatiron Books

‘The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill’ By Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch Flatiron Books, Jan. 10, 2023 Hardcover: 400 pages