The infamous 'Valkyrie' assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944 failed to kill the German Fuhrer. It did not succeed simply because von Stauffenberg's briefcase containing the explosives was moved behind one of the stout wooden legs of the conference table, resulting in the blast being deflected away from Hitler. It was a very close call, and has led to endless speculation about what might have happened if that briefcase had been placed just a few inches to one side.   Equally intriguing is the possible failed assassination attempt on General de Gaulle on British soil. Who, one wonders, was behind that scheme, and how would Anglo-French relations have developed if he had been killed?   In Assassinations Anthology a number of well-known authors and historians have looked at past events where key individuals were involved in either attempts on their lives, or strange incidents occurred which, had they led to their deaths, might have radically affected the outcome of the war.   Grounded in actual events, the various scenarios portrayed in this collection examine the likely chain of events that would have followed if the assassination attempts had succeeded. A few inches, a few minutes - that was all the difference between life and death, and between the past that we know and one that we can only imagine.