On January 14, 1979, Tommy DeSimone walked into what he thought was his induction ceremony. The room at John Gotti’s crew headquarters in Queens was empty. In the split second before the bullet entered his skull, he understood he had been given up by someone he trusted. That someone was Paul Vario. His boss. His … Read more
Deep in the Bavarian Alps, Adolf Hitler maintained a private residence called the Berghof, perched above Obersalzberg. Around it, his top ministers built their own homes, including Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, and Albert Speer. The compound also included guest houses for VIPs, massive SS barracks, a kindergarten, and a post office. Hitler preferred spending as … Read more
John “Sonny” Franzese, the aging Colombo crime family power, was caught on a wiretap in his later years complaining to an associate about how drastically the rules of mob murder had changed. He admitted to killing far more people than the four, five, six, or ten that investigators typically attributed to him, but insisted that … Read more
In the spring of 1945, the war in Europe was effectively over. General George S. Patton was commanding the most powerful American army ever put in the field, driving through Germany so fast that his own supply lines could not keep up. By every measure, the good guys had won. But something was happening on … Read more
On June 22, 1962, inside the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Joseph Valachi walked the prison yard convinced that one of the men around him had been sent to kill him. He had no weapon, no trusted crew, and no street corner where he could disappear. The walls belonged to the government, but inside those walls, … Read more
On June 3, 1944, just days before the Allied landings in Normandy, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun attended a wedding that became the last major social gathering for the Nazi elite. The bride was Gretl Braun, Eva’s sister, and the groom was SS officer Hermann Fegelein. The celebration lasted three days at Hitler’s mountain residence, … Read more
George Armstrong Custer stood on that ridge with the entire valley stretching out before him. For a long moment, he could hear that thing which had always kept him alive—his own instinct telling him to turn back. But that is not the moment history remembers. History remembers the guns. The moment that truly mattered never … Read more
Robert E. Lee’s decision to invade Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 was not driven by a collapse in Confederate morale but by a grim mathematical reality. The South could not replace its dead, its industrial base was a fraction of the North’s, its railroads were deteriorating, and the Union blockade was tightening. Every battle, … Read more
In the spring of 1944, the social highlight of Hitler’s inner circle was not a military victory or a political rally, but a wedding. The marriage of SS General Hermann Fegelein to Gretl Braun, the sister of Eva Braun, was a lavish affair set against the backdrop of the Nazi alpine retreat at Obersalzberg. It … Read more
TRAVES, France — The charred and shrunken remains pulled from the smoldering ruins of a stone farmhouse in this quiet corner of eastern France have been identified as Joachim Peiper, the former Waffen-SS colonel whose name became synonymous with the cold-blooded slaughter of American prisoners of war during the Battle of the Bulge. The 61-year-old … Read more