When on July 20, 1944, a bombboldly placed inside Hitler's headquarters by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg exploded without killing the Führer, the subsequent coup d'état 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 theAbwehr(military intelligence) to further the anti-Nazi plot.Valkyrie, an abridgment of Gisevius's classic insider's accountTo the Bitter End, is an intimate memoir as riveting as it is exceptional.
Hans Bernd Gisevius(19041974) was one of the most active conspirators in the July 20, 1944, plot to kill Hitler, and later a prosecution witness at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.