When on July 20, 1944, a bombboldly placed inside Hitlers headquarters by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg exploded without killing the Fhrer, the subsequent coup dtat against the Third Reich collapsed. The conspirators were summarily shot or condemned in show trials and sadistically hanged. One of the few survivors of the conspiracy was Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had used his positions in the Gestapo and the Abwehr (military intelligence) to further the anti-Nazi plot. Valkyrie, an abridgment of Giseviuss classic insiders account To the Bitter End, is an intimate memoir as riveting as it is exceptional.