June 11th, 1937. Moscow. Eight of the Red Army’s most senior commanders are on trial. The charges: treason, espionage for Nazi Germany, conspiracy to overthrow the Soviet government. Every charge is fabricated. One of them is a man named Iona Yakir. He has been in Soviet custody for 2 weeks. He has been tortured. He…
September 12th, 1942. The Kremlin, Moscow. The German Sixth Army was inside Stalenrad. Soviet forces were fighting street by street, building by building, floor by floor. The city was being destroyed. The question was whether the army defending it would be destroyed with it. Two officers stood before Stalin with a different idea. One of…
February 1919, Budapest. The government of Hungary is falling apart. The war is lost. The allies are carving up the country. The army is gone. The streets are full of workers who want someone to blame and something to believe in. And the most powerful man in Hungary is sitting in a prison cell….
On April 28th, 1945, Hannah Reich flew out of Hitler’s bunker, one of the last people to see the Furer alive. She’d landed in the middle of a collapsing Berlin, dodging Soviet artillery to deliver [music] a message that no longer mattered. Now she was leaving, carrying Hitler’s final letters and the knowledge that…
The executioner places a white hood over a 22year-old woman’s head. Her only word spoken languidly is Schnel quickly. 8 months earlier, she’d been overseeing 30,000 prisoners at Ashvitz Beer Canal. She designed a custom whip covered in cellophane so the blood would wash off more easily. And she forced a surgeon to operate…
April 29th, 1945, Bavaria, Germany. Lieutenant Colonel Felix Sparks climbs over a brick wall and drops into the Dhau concentration camp. He has fought from Sicily to southern France to the heart of Germany. Six campaigns, three years of combat. He has seen friends blown apart in Italy, has lost men on the beaches, has…
November 1935. Stalin had just created the highest military rank in the Soviet Union. Five men received it on the same day. The commanders who had fought the Civil War, built the Red Army, and risen to the top of Soviet military power. Alexander Yagorov was one of them. He had served in two armies…
The 29th of August 1981, Manhattan, Benjamin Lefty Rugierro steps out into the morning carrying a problem. No mobster survives for long. Donnie Brasow is not Donnie Brasow. He is FBI agent Joseph Pisone. The man Lefty vouched for, taught, protected, and nearly helped push into the inner circle of the Banano family. Has been…
Picture this. It’s June 16th, 2024. 40,000 people are packed into a Chicago festival ground. Phones raised, waiting. They’re about to witness something that hasn’t happened in 12 years. Chief Keef Keith Ko steps onto the Summer Smash stage. His first real Chicago performance since 2012. The crowd erupts. But here’s what they don’t…
September 13th, 2016, Brentwood, Long Island. 7:43 p.m. A jogger notices something off Staly Street. At first, she thinks it’s discarded clothing. Then she sees the blood. Nissa Mickens, 15 years old, lies in the grass. The evidence of machete and baseball bat attacks was unmistakable. The violence so extreme, so personal that even Hard…
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