On January 22, 1941, a group of young people went out into a cabin in the woods of Maryland and tried to kill Adolf Hitler.
Their weapons were a dressmaker’s dummy, a Nazi uniform, a few axes, a box of nails, plenty of rum, and a strong faith in the dark powers of voodoo magic.
Today, it’s one of the stranger stories in American history, centered around some of American history’s stranger characters. But to the people present at the time, it was no joke.
They really believed that the powers of their dark voodoo magic would be able to hex Hitler and send him to hell – and they brought a LIFE magazine photographer along to document the whole thing.