title: To The Bitter End
author: Hans Gisevius
description: This chronicle of German resistance begins in 1933 with the torching of the Reichstag and ends with a bang--literally--in 1944 with a failed bomb plot to knock off the Fuehrer. Hans B. Gisevius was an observer and participant in these events, working to undermine the Nazi regime from within (he served in German counter- intelligence). All along, he considered himself a patriot, even though this book contains a ringing condemnation of the German people for their complicity in Hitler's wicked regime. <i>To the Bitter End</i> was written practically as events unfolded, smuggled out of Germany in portions because Gisevius wasn't sure he would live to complete it, and first published in 1946. It offers a firsthand account of Nazi Germany and the various underground efforts to prevent Hitler from doing what he ultimately did. Gisevius may not have earned credit for halting the tragedy, but he does offer today's readers important lessons about the nature of dictatorship and the seductive powers of evil. Allen Dulles, who played a small role in helping Gisevius escape from Germany after the failed assassination, wrote the foreword. <i>--John J. Miller</i>
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  GISMONDI'S WAGE
  
  
  This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  # GISMONDI'S WAGE
  
  
  ### Rafael Sabatini
  
  
  This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  (from Cosmopolitan Magazine—January, 1910)
  
  
  
  
  
  Benvenuto Gismondi, thief and scoundrel, sat his horse, breathing
  
  
  hard and grinning. Supine and cruciform, with arms flung wide, lay
  
  
  Messer Crespi in the snow, grinning, too, but breathing not at all.
  
  
  Midway between Forli and Rimini, on the long road that, coming from
  
  
  beyond Bologna, runs southeastward to the sea in a line of rare
  
  
  directness, had this murder been committed in the full glare of a
  
  
  brilliant January noontide. And no witness was in sight as far as eye
  
  
  could reach, onward toward the hazy spires of distant Rimini, or
  
  
  backward in the direction of Forli.
  
  
  So, well content, Ser Benvenuto, grinning under the shadow of his
  
  
  morion, got him down from his horse to reap the profit of his morning's
  
  
  work. Wh