Front Cover; Half-Title Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Acknowledgments; The Principals; Service Abbreviations and Ranks; Introduction; Was it Resistance?; Patriots or Traitors: Morality of a Coup d'État; The Opposition Leaders and the Gestapo; Special Problems of Resistance in Nazi Germany; Part One; I. Focal Point for Conspiracy; The First Alliance: Canaris and Oster; Hans Oster; Canaris's Relations with the S.S.; Beck and his Resistance Associates; 1938: the Fritsch Affair; The Widening Circle; II. Fiasco in 1938; Beck acts against Hitler; Hans von Dohnanyi;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 FUhrer. 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'Etat than anyone realizes.