In 1946, Meyer Lansky stepped off a train in Miami carrying the quiet confidence of a man who had survived the deadly corners of New York and Chicago’s criminal underworld. For Lansky, Florida was both a paradise and a blank canvas. The sun, the beaches, and the booming post-war economy offered perfect cover for something … Read more
In April 1945, in southern Germany, General George S. Patton was returning to headquarters after inspecting forward positions. It was already dark, perhaps 20 minutes after sunset. His route took him past a field hospital that had recently been set up in a former German school building. As his driver was about to pass the … Read more
On December 20, 1944, an SS officer was brought into General George S. Patton's Third Army headquarters in Luxembourg for questioning. He had been captured during the German Ardennes Offensive, and intelligence officers believed he might possess valuable information about German plans. His name was Sturmbannführer Heinrich Vogel, and he had served as an adjutant … Read more
Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorn, has rarely been the subject of anything. She appears in accounts of her daughter as a sentence, usually a warm one, and then the story moves on to the marriage, the abdication, and the crown. This is about her, and about what happened in her house between 1914 … Read more
In April 1945, in southern Germany near a small town called Landsberg, the Third Army was advancing rapidly. German resistance was collapsing, and towns were surrendering almost daily. General Patton was riding through an area that had just been liberated when his jeep passed a makeshift prisoner collection point. At first glance, it looked ordinary: … Read more
On a July afternoon in 1979, three masked men walked onto the back patio of a Brooklyn restaurant and shotgunned the boss of the Bonanno family. By the time police arrived, his cigar was still clenched in his teeth, and the photograph ran on front pages nationwide. There was a palm print inside the getaway … Read more
In April 1945, in southern Germany, a young lieutenant noticed that the ground in a field on the edge of a liberated village looked disturbed. He called two soldiers over to help him, and together they began to dig. At a depth of about 30 centimeters, they struck cloth. It was American cloth. They uncovered … Read more
For ninety years, the story has been told the same way. Wallis Simpson was the American divorcee who seduced a king, humiliated a nation, and nearly brought down the British monarchy. There is truth in that version. She could be cold and calculating. The people who served her often could not stand her. But the … Read more
On Valentine's Day in 1979, FBI agents entered a house in Kansas City and went straight to the basement. They were not looking for a body or hidden cash. They came for paperwork: stacks of handwritten notes so cryptic they looked like a child's scribbling, kept by a mob enforcer named Carl DeLuna. Those notes … Read more
In May 1945, Germany surrendered and the war in Europe was over. But for 5,000 American soldiers, the war was not over. They were prisoners who had been liberated from German camps by Soviet troops. Under the Yalta Agreement, they should have been handed over to American authorities immediately. That did not happen. They were … Read more