CHRISTIANS V. DARWINISTS:

The noble plot: a review of Countdown to Valkyrie: the July Plot to Assassinate Hitler by Nigel Jones (Jason Webster, 15 January 2009, New Statesman)

Various attempts were made from almost as soon as Hitler became chancellor in 1933, but the best-organised and most celebrated of them was the plot spearheaded by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg and carried out on 20 July 1944.

That this, like the ones before it, ultimately failed is only too evident. But as Nigel Jones's page-turning account demonstrates, it came nail-bitingly close to ridding the world of Hitler and overthrowing the entire Nazi regime just as the Western Front was opening up in France. With just a little more resolve - and a little more luck - things could easily have gone the conspirators' way. By this point in the war, the Allies had agreed that they would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender from Germany, but even then, with Hitler gone, thousands (perhaps millions) of lives might have been saved. Instead, we have Hitler's undeserved suicide in the Berlin bunker the following year, and Stauffenberg and his colleagues as martyrs to an attempt to save their country's "soul". As one of the plotters, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, commented after his subsequent capture: "We want to kindle the torch of life; a sea of flame surrounds us."

Jones is a consummate storyteller - a basic, yet often overlooked skill among historians - and he tells us about the build-up to the plot in an easy, flowing style. Brief accounts of Hitler's rise to power and the period leading to the outbreak of war are interspersed with an overview of the opposition to the Nazis and the previous assassination attempts on Hitler. All this acts as a backdrop to the meat of the book: the July 1944 plot, code-named "Valkyrie".

Like most of the conspirators, Stauffenberg was driven to act by a combination of pride in the Wehrmacht and a deep Christian faith. The unnecessary disaster of Stalingrad offended the former, and the brutal racial policies clearly unfolding in occupied territories shocked the latter. Stauffenberg was a latecomer to the plot, but once on board he became its driving spirit and, eventually, its executioner.