Quick Take
- Narration: Adam Verner reads with the controlled urgency the material demands, his pacing through the opening scene with Bonhoeffer calmly waiting for the Gestapo is particularly well-executed.
- Themes: Moral courage under totalitarianism, the cost of conscience, what it means to resist evil when the cost is your life
- Mood: Tense and searching, this is narrative nonfiction that asks hard ethical questions while telling a story that genuinely holds the breath
- Verdict: An exceptionally well-constructed piece of young adult narrative nonfiction that handles Bonhoeffer’s moral complexity with more honesty than most adult biography manages.
The opening scene of The Plot to Kill Hitler is one of the most effective pieces of scene-setting in children’s nonfiction I’ve encountered in recent memory. It is April 5, 1943. The Gestapo is coming. Dietrich Bonhoeffer has arranged his papers, some deliberately left visible, some carefully concealed, and is waiting with the kind of composure that only comes from having already decided. Patricia McCormick opens there, at the threshold of the end, and then takes the reader all the way back to a privileged childhood in a house full of music and intellectual argument, building the story of how a gentle, scholarly pacifist came to plan an assassination.
McCormick is a two-time National Book Award finalist, author of Sold and Never Fall Down, and co-author of the young reader’s edition of I Am Malala. She knows how to hold moral weight in a form accessible to young readers without condescending to the subject or the audience. The Plot to Kill Hitler is in that tradition, and the comparison the publisher draws to Steve Sheinkin’s narrative nonfiction is apt, this has the pacing of Sheinkin’s best work and the ethical seriousness of a subject that deserves it.
From Pacifist to Conspirator: The Logic of an Impossible Choice
Bonhoeffer’s position defies easy categorization, and McCormick doesn’t try to simplify it. He was a pastor, a theologian, a committed pacifist who had spent years building international relationships with peace activists. He was also one of the earliest people outside of Jewish communities to understand what was happening to Jews in Germany and to attempt to inform the Allies. When he joined the plot to kill Hitler, he was making a decision that contradicted everything in his intellectual and spiritual formation, and he knew it. McCormick renders that contradiction honestly rather than resolving it tidily. Reviewer Pat Woodman described this as an excellent, concise account from someone deeply familiar with Bonhoeffer, which confirms that McCormick’s research holds up to scrutiny from readers who already know the subject.
The audiobook covers the journey from his Berlin childhood through his time in America, where he worshipped at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and first encountered Black American theology and the lived reality of racial oppression, his return to Germany, his work in the Confessing Church’s resistance to Nazi co-option, and his eventual absorption into the Abwehr intelligence operation that provided his cover for conspiracy work. That arc is compressed into two hours and forty minutes, tighter than the full adult biographies of Bonhoeffer but complete enough to feel like a genuine account rather than a summary.
What Makes Someone Stand Up Alone
The philosophical question McCormick identifies as the book’s central concern, what makes someone stand up for what’s right when no one else is standing with you, is not answered so much as examined through the details of Bonhoeffer’s choices. His decision to return to Germany from the safety of America in 1939. His decision to participate in the assassination conspiracy despite his pacifist convictions. His composure during two years of imprisonment before his execution in April 1945, just weeks before the end of the war. McCormick keeps returning to this question because it doesn’t have a simple answer, and the audiobook’s willingness to sit with that difficulty is one of its genuine strengths.
Adam Verner and the Opening Tableau
Adam Verner brings a controlled gravity to the material that suits it well. The opening scene, Bonhoeffer waiting, the papers arranged, the Bible under his arm, requires a narrator who can convey calm under extreme tension without making it feel performed, and Verner delivers that. The middle sections, tracing the intellectual and spiritual development through letters and sermons and academic theology, require a different register, and Verner handles the shift. This is not a flashy narration, but it is consistently intelligent.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
Ideal for listeners aged ten and up, and strongly suited to classroom use in units on World War II, the Holocaust, or moral philosophy. Reviewer BJ described it as very concise and interesting after being bogged down by longer Bonhoeffer biographies, which positions this well as an entry point for younger listeners and a useful synthesis for adults wanting to understand the contours of the story before going deeper. The two-hour-forty runtime is exactly right for the scope.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the audiobook cover Bonhoeffer’s theological writings or focus primarily on the assassination plot?
McCormick covers both. The theological development is treated as essential context for understanding why Bonhoeffer made the choices he made, including his participation in the assassination conspiracy. Works like The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison are referenced as expressions of the same moral seriousness that led him into conspiracy.
How is Bonhoeffer’s execution handled? Is it appropriate for middle grade listeners?
The execution at Flossenburg concentration camp on April 9, 1945, is covered without graphic detail but with appropriate weight. McCormick notes that Bonhoeffer was hanged just weeks before Germany’s defeat, and that fact carries its own moral force. Parents of sensitive younger listeners should be aware the ending is not a rescue.
Is the audiobook accurate about the details of the conspiracy to kill Hitler?
The book covers the broader conspiracy of which Bonhoeffer was a part, including his role in the Abwehr intelligence network and his connection to the operation. Reviewer Pat Woodman, who described themselves as a big fan of Bonhoeffer, found the account excellent and accurate. It is a concise treatment rather than an exhaustive military history of the plot.
Patricia McCormick also wrote the young readers edition of I Am Malala, how similar is the approach in this book?
Both books use McCormick’s signature approach to narrative nonfiction for young readers: building historical context through specific scenes, centering the moral choices of individuals under extreme pressure, and asking broad ethical questions through particular lives. The Plot to Kill Hitler is shorter and more focused on a single historical moment, while I Am Malala covers a longer arc. Both are carefully crafted.
