Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) eighteen months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris would turn against the Fu¨hrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler had started a war Germany could not win. In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England.For years Canaris played a dangerous double game, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. SS chief Heinrich Himmler became suspicious of Canaris in 1944,when Abwehr personnel were involved in the botched Operation Valkyrie. The SS had the evidence they needed to arrest Canaris himself; he was executed a few weeks before the end of the war.In this riveting true story, Richard Bassett reveals how Admiral Canaris’s secret work against the German leadership helped change the course of World War II.