Operation Long Jump

the long version

Had it succeeded, it would have been the most shocking and audacious assassination in history, killing the three most powerful leaders in the world: Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill. The complex conspiracy was approved by Adolf Hitler himself--and yet, until now, the story was hidden behind fading memories, walls of secrecy, and shadowy archives. Veteran military historian Bill Yenne has dug deeper than anyone else into the mystery of Operation Long Jump and presents here the extraordinary story of an assassination plot that combined elements of the Nazi regime's elite commando and intelligence units, including the SS, with amateurish bungling that could have come straight out of the Keystone Cops. In Operation Long Jump you'll discover: Why Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, approved the plan; the role of Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny, "the most dangerous man in Europe," in the plot; the unsuspected spy in the British embassy who became immortalized in the film 5 Fingers, though without any mention of his role in Operation Long Jump; the American agent who almost failed to stop the plot because of his desire to make the arrest himself and impress a girl; the mysterious Swiss double agent who accidentally became the man who knew everything--and foiled the plot; what might have happened had the Nazi attempt succeeded. One of the last mysterious, nearly untold stories of World War II, Operation Long Jump makes for compelling reading. -- Inside jacket flaps.