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The best books on assassinations

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11–20 of 37 posts

Re: The best books on assassinations

#11

> "Hitler, uncharacteristically, cut short the speech he was making to go and plan the invasion of France. Had he continued speaking, he would have been blown to pieces in November 1939. That would have surely have been a very good thing because, in the period between that event and the June 1944 bomb plot, two-and-a-half million German soldiers died." Ah yes, the group of people who were famously killed en masse bec…

Everybody kills Hitler on their first (time) trip.

https://archive.briankoberlein.com/2015/11/09/everybody-kill...

Re: The best books on assassinations

#12

> "Hitler, uncharacteristically, cut short the speech he was making to go and plan the invasion of France. Had he continued speaking, he would have been blown to pieces in November 1939. That would have surely have been a very good thing because, in the period between that event and the June 1944 bomb plot, two-and-a-half million German soldiers died." Ah yes, the group of people who were famously killed en masse bec…

WTF. I agree with sister comment from GordonS.

But also need to say, that the numbers are off. WW II cost significantly less than 6 million German soldiers' lifes. The author states that 7 million German soldiers died.

But yeah. Stating the death of German soldiers as the most important outcome from WW II is imho at least problematic. It shows a lack of empathy and historic sensitivity.

Re: The best books on assassinations

#14

> "Hitler, uncharacteristically, cut short the speech he was making to go and plan the invasion of France. Had he continued speaking, he would have been blown to pieces in November 1939. That would have surely have been a very good thing because, in the period between that event and the June 1944 bomb plot, two-and-a-half million German soldiers died." Ah yes, the group of people who were famously killed en masse bec…

That's a very troubling quote, so I went to the article, hoping it wasn't as bad as it sounded. But it seemed bad in the article, too.

The lead-up alludes to what I suspect was the author's intent, in that way of putting it (i.e., saying the effect relative to some goals of the assassin), but that's really not communicated as clearly as it must be.

I can understand that a writer might miss this communication failure, when in tunnel vision on some narrow point they were trying to make. But I'd hope a professional editor would've caught it. Perhaps there's an understated standard proofreading markup notation like "WTF?!" with a firmly-pressed circle around it. Then the writer would realize their communication mistake, and feel awful about it, but also relived it was caught before publication.

Ideally, that never would've made it to publication without editing. But a small consolation is that at least we readers can learn from the mistake, and be less likely to make that mistake ourselves.

Re: The best books on assassinations

#18
We went to where North Korea tricked their agents for Kim Jong-nam's assignation.

I expected some sort of back alley brothel, but it was just the number one spot on Tripadvisor.

I think like all these things don't get stuck into a rut thinking the people doing this stuff are amazing or smart. You just need belief in yourself, and probably not even that. I bet Kim Jong-un top assassins had imposer syndrome too. (The on-ground recruits thought they were on a game show)

The Day of the Jackal movie (1973) was good for the work ethic part I thought, I haven't read the book - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069947/

Re: The best books on assassinations

#19
post #11

> "Hitler, uncharacteristically, cut short the speech he was making to go and plan the invasion of France. Had he continued speaking, he would have been blown to pieces in November 1939. That would have surely have been a very good thing because, in the period between that event and the June 1944 bomb plot, two-and-a-half million German soldiers died." Ah yes, the group of people who were famously killed en masse bec…

Everybody kills Hitler on their first (time) trip. https://archive.briankoberlein.com/2015/11/09/everybody-kill...

And then you're left with and even bigger jerk that rose in the ranks in his absence! MechaHitler

Re: The best books on assassinations

#20

This is a bit off-topic, but Navalny calling his killer and pranking him into telling all kinds of nasty details of Navalny's own killing attempt is mind-bogging [1]. I am sure this is now part of all secrets services of the world 101 trainings. Full audio with English transcript: [2]. There is also a bit of background told by Navalny later on, e.g. the name Maxim Sergeevich Ustinov was not really random. [1] https:/…

Best to take a look at the submitting usernames before making that assertion. There’s a lot of variety for this domain, mostly from established accounts. It’s a fairly popular website.
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