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Dan Kurzman, Military Historian, Is Dead at 88

Dan Kurzman, who wrote military histories that illuminated little-known incidents in World War II and an exhaustively reported account of the first Arab-Israeli war, died Dec. 12 in Manhattan. He was 88 and lived in North Bergen, N.J....

His books include “Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire,” a biography of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister; “A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII,” about an episode in which Nazi officials in Italy undermined a direct order from Hitler in 1943 to abduct the pope and loot the Vatican; and “Blood and Water: Sabotaging Hitler’s Bomb,” about Allied efforts to destroy Norsk Hydro, a plant in Norway that could create deuterium oxide, or heavy water, a substance that could have helped the Nazis build a nuclear bomb....
Read entire article at NYT