The Canaris Conspiracy

July 20, 1944. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried a time bomb in a briefcase into a conference with Adolf Hitler. After wedging the briefcase directly in front of Hitler under a table, Stauffenberg took his leave. Only ill luck and divine providence could have caused what happened next; a junior staffer accidentally kicked the case, moving it further from Hitler. When the bomb exploded, four died, but none was the megalomaniacal Führer.

Men from all walks of German life—the army, Military Intelligence, civilian life—came together at great personal risk to conspire over a span of six years to save their beloved Germany from the clutches of a madman and halt a further descent into war. This is the incredible documented account of their work and collaboration with “Department Z,” the twenty-four individuals who operated under the leadership of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris to secretly engineer this intricate scheme to kill Adolf Hitler and take over the Third Reich. Only by a matter of minutes and inches did these courageous men fail in their daring plot, changing the course of history. Meet the conspirators and learn the plots behind The Canaris Conspiracy, a near-continuous web of planning and frustrated action which came nearer to achieving the longed-for coup d’état than anyone realizes.

Roger Manvell was the first director of the British Film Academy. During WWII, he worked in the Ministry of Information, creating propaganda films for the British government. With Heinrich Fraenkel, he is the author of many books on Nazi Germany, including biographies of Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Göring.
Heinrich Fraenkel was an author and Hollywood writer most notable for his biographies of Nazi war criminals published in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of his best-known books, authored with Roger Manvell, are Heinrich Himmler (New York Times bestseller), Doctor Goebbels, and Göring.