A Guest of the Reich The Story of American Heiress Gertrude Legendre's Dramatic Captivity and Escape from Nazi Germany

A Guest of the Reich is the incredible true story of Gertrude “Gertie” Legendre, an American heiress taken prisoner by the Nazis. Born into a wealthy family, Legendre lived a charmed life in Jazz Age America. But when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, she joined the OSS—the wartime spy organization that preceded the CIA—and headed to Europe. In 1944, while on leave, Legendre accidentally crossed the front lines along the Luxembourg–Germany border and was captured. The Nazis treated her as a “special prisoner” of the SS and moved her from city to city throughout Germany, where she witnessed the collapse of Hitler’s Reich as no other American did, before escaping into Switzerland. A gripping portrait of a multifaceted and deeply fascinating woman, A Guest of the Reich is a propulsive account of a little-known chapter in the history of World War II.

Peter Finn is the national security editor at The Washington Post and the co-author of The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.