And despite the months and years of preparation, the arguments and discussions—What justifies a murder? Can right be achieved through wrong?—and despite the endless how and when and where and, most endlessly of all, What comes next?—it seemed incredible, impossible even, that their plot would unfold at last.

Albrecht had not approved at first. Assassination. Murder. It was not the culmination he wanted for the resistance movement. In his estimation, injustice could be fought only with justice—he was a lawyer to the core. Murder was evil. This was an absolute. But if it would end the war and prevent the murder of thousands? Even millions? They had debated this often, deep into the night with him probing his own convictions and Marianne playing devil’s advocate. Although, in fact, she was not the devil’s advocate. She believed Connie and von Stauffenberg and the others were right. Hitler must be killed.

For her, the case was sealed three years before, when Freddy Lederer returned from the east. He had stopped at Weisslau on his journey from the General Government zone of occupied Poland. And Freddy, an openhearted boy Marianne had known since childhood, always the first to jump off the dock at the lake and the last to come in for dinner at the Grand Hotel on the Ostsee, had been a gaunt shell of himself. He had recently returned from an intelligence trip for the Abwehr, and they had assigned him an SS escort, who had taken him to see an “action”—a “miracle of efficiency and dedication,” as this SS man described it. The “action” was being carried out by a unit of ordinary German reservists, older men for the most part, civilians with little or no training or military background. They had been instructed to “cleanse” the area south of Lublin. Lublin—Freddy had shuddered pronouncing the name—a kind of hell on earth. They were rounding up Jewish women, children, and old men and marching them into the forest to be shot.

To be shot? Marianne repeated. Are you certain? She had heard rumors, of course, but had still believed (though not supported) the Nazis’ Madagascar plan. All Polish Jews would be shipped to that island to form their own homeland. Other, darker stories trickled back from the front, but she had dismissed them as rumor or exaggeration. This was different, though. This was straight from the mouth of Freddy Lederer.

And he had seen it with his own eyes. German soldiers paired one-to-one: victims and their killers marched into the woods as partners. Children had been assigned their own executioners. He had watched one woman with three children—a little one, unable to walk yet, an older boy and a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old. The girl had refused to let go of her mother’s hand, so she had been allowed to walk together with her and the baby, a tiny thing wrapped carefully in blankets, looking around with wide eyes.

“That one will make trouble,” Freddy’s escort had said with indifference. “Three shots for one soldier. It will slow the process down.”