The incredible World War II saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit—but whose story has gone untold until now
June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich has fallen across the European continent. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain. The resulting volunteers are a motley group of intellectuals, artists, and athletes, most from Germany and Austria. Many have been interned as enemy aliens, and have lost their families, their homes—their whole worlds. They will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Some simply call them a suicide squad.
Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp—the scene of one of the most dramatic, untold rescues of the war. For the first time, X Troop tells the astonishing story of these secret shock troops and their devastating blows against the Nazis.
“Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies
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"Leah Garrett's X Troop is brilliantly researched, utterly gripping history: the first full account of a remarkable group of Jewish refugees—a top-secret band of brothers—who waged war on Hitler."—Alex Kershaw, New York Times best-selling author of The Longest Winter, The Bedford Boys, and The Liberator
“Drawing from recently declassified British intelligence records and personal archives of former X Troopers, Garrett’s detective work is stunning, and her storytelling is masterful. This is an original account of Jewish rescue, resistance, and revenge from within the Reich and at its edges, starting with the boys’ flight to England and ending with their brave return.”—Wendy Lower, author of The Ravine and National Book Award finalist Hitler’s Furies
"This is the best kind of history: highly original, deeply researched, beautifully written, with more than a touch of personal pathos. The men of X Troop went from stateless refugees of Nazi oppression to highly trained British special operations soldiers whose courageous actions did much to hasten Hitler's demise. Kudos to Leah Garrett for telling their amazing story with the authority of a scholar and the immediacy of a novelist."—John C. McManus, Ph.D., author of Fire and Fortitude: The U.S. Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943
“Part history and part mystery, X Troop tells a compelling and little-known story about an improbable group of ‘British’ soldiers who made an important contribution to the war effort.”—Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of the National Jewish Book Award–winning Antisemitism Here and Now
“A masterful work. Combining the skill of a superb storyteller and the precision of a first-rate scholar, X Troop tells a tale—truly stranger than fiction—of Jewish youth dispatched to the safety of England who volunteered for some of the most perilous of all anti-Nazi missions. An extraordinary portrait of heroism, of human decency amid horror.”—Steven J. Zipperstein, author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
"Impeccable research gives the bravest of the brave the limelight they deserve.”—Ian Dear, author of Ten Commando
“X Troop reads like a page-turning thriller. In Garrett’s brilliant, cinematic telling, based on original interviews and deep-dive archival research, these young European Jewish emigres’ return to the continent as elite Allied super-commandos is both heart-stopping and heart-breaking.”—James Young, author of The Stages of Memory
