Author(s): Paula Astridge

Military/War

This is a story of supreme courage and stark terror, and of two men's bid to commit the perfect murder: that of Adolf Hitler. Count Claus von Stauffenberg (Military Officer and War Hero, recently played by Tom Cruise in the movie Valkyrie) and Rear Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (Head of WWII German Intelligence) were two of the leading lights of the German `Valkyrie' conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, though Canaris involvement was necessarily more indirect as he was already under suspicion and house arrest. Theirs was the last of seventeen failed attempts to kill The Fuhrer and to rid the world of his evil. But fate was to work against them. Hitler was saved from certain death (by the chance repositioning of the briefcase carrying the explosive), surviving to reward his would-be assassins with public humiliation, torture and execution. Stauffenberg and Canaris, the most patriotic of Germans, made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up their lives and reputations for the sake of their Country, knowing that they'd go down in History as having betrayed it.