The Berghof Betrayal, a Winston Churchill 1930s Thriller

“Weiland Herzfelde has absolutely reliable information that the Nazis plan a fake attempt on Hitler’s life which is to be the signal for a general massacre. The sources of his information are the SA in Dortmund and a tapped telephone conversation between Hitler and Röhm.”

The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler,

February 1933

Winston Churchill receives startling news from a German aristocrat in early 1933 after Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany. The aristocrat has learned of a plot to stage a fake assassination attempt on the new German leader that the Nazis will use as a pretext to declare martial law and liquidate their political opponents. Unknown to Hitler, however, his enemies within the Nazi party—the Black Front—are conspiring with renegade elements of his own SS to turn the fake assassination attempt into a real one.

Churchill tells the American newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst of the fake plot and, together, they persuade Mattie McGary, Hearst’s top photojournalist and Churchill’s adventure-seeking Scottish god- daughter, to investigate. Mattie readily agrees in large part because exposing the fake plot may help her finally shed the unfortunate reputation she has in Germany as “Hitler’s favorite foreign journalist”.

Soon after she leaves for Germany, Mattie’s fiancé, the American lawyer and former MID agent Bourke Cockran, Jr., also travels to Germany to help his publisher client, Freedom House, acquire the rights to Rear Area Pig, an expose of Hitler’s less-than-heroic wartime service. Once in Germany, both Mattie and Cockran find themselves in peril at the hands of the SS loyal to Hitler who will stop at nothing to keep Cockran from acquiring the book and Mattie fromlearning the truth about the fake plot.

Threats to Mattie multiply when SS agents working for the Black Front attempt to coerce her into joining the real plot to kill Hitler. When Cockran learns the Black Front intends to kill Mattie along with Hitler at his alpine retreat, the Berghof, he reluctantly seeks the help of Reichspresident Herman Göring and Kurt von Sturm, a top Göring aide who is also one of Mattie’s former lovers. The one-time rivals for Mattie’s affection quickly conclude that there is only one way to protect Mattie. They must take out the Black Front snipers before they can assassinate Hitler. And time is running out…

author_bio: Michael McMenamin is the author of the critically acclaimed Becoming Winston Churchill, The Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor [Hardcover, Greenwood 2007; Paperback, Enigma 2009]. He is an editorial board member of Finest Hour, the quarterly journal of the Churchill Centre and Museum in London and a contributing editor for the libertarian magazine Reason. His work also has appeared in two Reason anthologies and The Churchills in Ireland, 1660-1965, Corrections and Controversies [Irish Academic Press, 2012]

Patrick McMenamin, the other half of the father-son writing team, is an award-winning journalist who has produced stories for John Stossel at ABC News 20/20 and Fox News Channel and for Judge Andrew Napolitano at Freedom Watch on Fox Business Channel. He is now a senior producer at HuffPost Live. He is a Phi Beta Kappa cum laude graduate of the University of Rochester with departmental honors in 20th Century European History and Film Studies.

Michael and Patrick are the co-authors of the award-winning 1930s era "Winston Churchill Thriller" series. The first three books in the series--The DeValera Deception ,The Parsifal Pursuit and The Gemini Agenda --all were named Grand Prize Winners for Fiction by the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and Book of the Year for Thriller/Suspense and Historical Fiction by ForeWord Reviews.