August 29, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we tackle Valkyrie (2008), the Tom Cruise-led film about the real-life July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. We dig into the movie's balance between Hollywood drama and historical accuracy, the cast full of familiar faces, and whether Cruise managed to not be too Cruise-y.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm Marja.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer.
This week we are talking about the movie Valkyrie, which came
out in 2008. It was directed by Bryan Singer
(00:25):
and written by Christopher Mcquarrie and Nathan Alexander.
It's based on real events and ittells the story of a failed
assassination plot against Hitler in July of 1944.
You can watch this movie on Amazon Prime or possibly on
Ethics, depending on where you live.
What did you think of this movie?
I liked it more than I thought Iwas going to for a Tom Cruise
(00:48):
movie. My previous knowledge of this
movie was that it was the Tom Cruise eye patch movie and or
the Tom Cruise butt pad movie. Because I don't know if you
remember there was some controversy about him perhaps
wearing butt pads in this movie to look like he had more cake
than he actually does. And I will I will say watching
(01:09):
the movie I did not notice one way or the other.
So I guess I can't speak to thatcontroversy and put it to bed
based on my knowledge. But yeah, it's a movie about a
really interesting part of history, the internal German
resistance to Adolf Hitler. And we had previously talked a
little bit about von Stauffenberg because his
(01:32):
sister-in-law was, of course, Melita von Stauffenberg, one of
the women who flew for Hitler that we talked about in our
Claire Molly episode. And yeah, I found the movie
maintain the tension pretty well.
It's an action movie, but it's not.
I know you're thinking Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible.
It's not really like that. I found they did a decent job
overall. It is kind of Hollywood, so I
(01:52):
won't say that it's perfect or that it's my favorite movie ever
made, but I thought it was all right.
I enjoyed my watching experience.
How about you? I also really enjoyed this
movie. Like you, I was expecting an
action movie, a kind of sensationalized movie for sure,
but I like the way they did it. Barely any of the actors are
German. It's mostly famous Hollywood
(02:14):
actors that they did it in kind of a smart way where we'll get
to it when we get into the movietoo.
But I liked it, and I thought Tom Cruise was not there.
Tom Cruise, which for me is a good thing.
Yeah, I didn't think his performance was show stopping,
but I also didn't think he was bad.
I didn't have the feeling as I was watching the entire time to
(02:37):
be like, hey, that's Tom Cruise over there.
And it's got some Dutch actresses in it that we've seen
in other movies already. So that's fun for me and some
other people that were all in the same movie.
They were all in Black Book. So if you want to go and listen
to the that episode, that's alsofun.
Yeah, I thought the basing was good.
It looked pretty good too. And I kept hoping for an ending
(03:02):
that I knew wasn't coming because obviously we know what
happens because it's history, but they do a good job of making
you feel for the characters involved and hoping that they're
kind of different ending. So yeah, I liked it.
Yeah, I always like that in a history movie where you do kind
of manage to hope that the ending will be different this
time. I will say that some of the
(03:23):
things in this movie, for example, von Stauffenberg and
the other collaborators, some oftheir motivations for trying to
assassinate Hitler were really oversimplified and dumbed down.
I don't know if this was becauseit was not meant to be a quote
UN quote history documentary andit was just meant to be a fun
movie, but I'm sure we'll talk about that more as we go on.
(03:43):
But there's definitely bits and pieces that I know people took
issue with when it came out, particularly in Germany, but.
I think it's quite interesting, and that's the last thing I'll
say about that. Hollywood chose to make a movie
about this part of history that's so far removed from
actual Hollywood. Anyway, let's get into the plot.
(04:10):
So there's an opening card that says the following is based on a
true story, and then the loyaltyoath to Hitler appears on the
screen. So this would have been an oath.
I think it came about in 1934. It was early on in Hitler's
tenure anyways, where members ofthe Vermont and the s s and
other organizations that would have reported to Hitler had to
swear this oath. And it's I swear by God this
(04:33):
sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf
Hitler, Fuhrer of the German Reich and people, Supreme
Commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be
ready as a brave soldier to givemy life for this oath.
What I liked about this scene and in general how they set up
the beginning of the movie is the fact that they start in
(04:53):
German and then they very slowlysacrament into English.
And that way you don't get the awkward let's do English with a
German accent or let's do bad Speaking of German or anything
like that. It's right smart.
Yeah, I like that too. And I like how they set up that
Klaus von Stoltenberg was in themilitary.
(05:14):
And I think that for the most part, people would assume that
when you are in the military, your loyalty is to your country.
So I like that they set up this thing where they were like, no,
everyone who is in the military was actually required to say
that they were not fighting, quote UN quote, for their
country, but they were fighting specifically for one man.
And So what does it mean that von Stoffenberg and these other
(05:35):
collaborators deliberately went against that?
And it kind of ties into what their motivations are.
And I just thought it was a goodway to frame the movie.
I feel like you've given me a good suck.
Well into the next scene, Rochester scene, where we see
the German 10th Dancer Division in Tunisia and North Africa.
And we meet our quote, UN quote,main character Colonel Klaus von
(05:59):
Stauffenberg, Blue by Tom Cruise.
And he's writing a letter outlined in his opposition to
Hitler and his regime. And he's basically saying that
in order to save Germany, they need to power Hitler.
After he writes the letter, he goes and speaks to a superior
officer played by Bernard Hill. Who?
(06:19):
Who? I keep forgetting his dad, the
actor, He's great. And he's most likely portraying
Lieutenant General Wolfgang Fisher.
And he suggests that they disobey orders to do an attack
and that they should retreat instead because he's afraid that
all the men are going to die. Yeah.
And Fisher agrees with him. So we're starting to get a sense
(06:39):
that perhaps von Stauffenberg isn't the only one in the army
who has reservations about some of the things they're being
asked to do. But before they can actually do
anything one way or the other, they get attacked by Allied
aircraft, and von Stauffenberg is severely wounded.
This happened on April 7th, 1943.
And he's a mess. He loses an eye.
(07:01):
He loses one of his hands and several fingers.
On the other hand, he's quite badly injured and he has to be
evacuated to Germany. And while he's there he gets
visited by his wife, one of our very few female characters, Nina
Shank Graffen von Steffenberg, played by Clarice van Houten,
who was one of the Dutch actors that you had mentioned earlier.
She's. Great.
(07:21):
I love that she gets to be in Hollywood movies.
Yeah, she does a really good job, I think, with very few
lines in this movie to display alot of inner emotion, even
though, like externally she's very still.
She does a lot of I actor. She's got beautiful eyes in this
too. No, she's gorgeous.
I don't know what they did to the film in terms of editing,
(07:43):
but she just looks really beautiful in this.
Yeah, she's kind of representative of what von
Stauffenberg has to lose becausenot only does he have this
beautiful wife that he cares about very much, but he also has
four children and she's pregnantwith their. 5th, I forgot she
was pregnant. That kind of slipped my mind.
But yeah, we get to see their relationship a little bit.
I kind of wish we got Melita as well, as you said to me before
(08:07):
we started recording. But I do understand why they
took a little bit of a tighter approach to the focus here.
But still, we need more women, more great women.
For sure, and they also excludedhis brother or one of his
brothers because he had a couple.
One of his brothers was also involved in the plot, but they
left that out of the movie for streamlining purposes.
(08:30):
Right. Yeah, All right.
So it's March 13th in 1943. There is a failed plot by
General Henning from Trescroft, played by Kenneth Brenner, and
he tries to assassinate Hitler by smuggling a control box onto
his plan when he visits the Eastward Front.
And they, it kind of made me laugh just a little bit because
(08:51):
it seems so simple and then it fails.
I'm like, Jesus, why does it fail?
Such a brilliant move. Yeah, it won't be the only time
they try to assassinate Hitler either, this particular group of
guys. But yeah, this one not
successful, but it's nice to seeKenneth Branagh in another
history movie. Another one, So we've seen him
in Dunkirk, I think that we've reviewed.
(09:14):
So you want to go listen to Dunkirk?
Go on and listen to another episode, Yes.
Where we also talked about how great Kenneth Branagh always is.
Yeah, he's great. So General Hans Oster, we don't
see much of him, but what happens to him is sort of the
catalyst for a lot of the stuff that happens in the movie.
So he's a resistance member, He's the deputy head of the Ad
(09:34):
Bear, which was the German intelligence, and he is arrested
on suspicion of helping adware officers that were caught
helping Jews to escape Germany. He eventually was executed in a
concentration camp in April of 1945.
So not a good ending for him. He is mentioned in our Munich
the Edge of War episode, so definitely go check that out if
you're interested and learning alittle more about the German
(09:55):
resistance. And so because Hans Oser is out
of the picture, General Friedrich Ulbricht, played by
Bill Nahi, he recruits von Stauffenberg to take Oyster's
place in a resistance plot. And now this plot involves lots
of sort of big movers and shakers in Germany and military
and civilian life. So we have Treskov, who we
mentioned already. They also include General Ludwig
(10:16):
Beck, played by Terence Stamp, who actually unfortunately
passed away a couple of days before we recorded this.
So safe travel, Sir. Godspeed.
Dr. Carl Girdler, played by Kevin McNally, and Field
Marshall Irwin von Vitzelben, played by David.
Schofield I love this cast. They are like pillars of acting.
I feel they're all very good. The nice thing is that number
(10:39):
one, they all have fairly recognizable faces.
Even if you don't recognize the names, if you saw them, you'd be
like, Oh yeah, I've seen that guy in something before.
So it's a combination of that and the fact that they're all
stellar actors that you can tellall of these guys apart and you
remember who they are, which canbe difficult sometimes in a
movie with a bunch of foreign sounding names and historical
(11:00):
figures you perhaps never heard of.
So I did enjoy that aspect. Yeah, There's also something
funny that I haven't figured out.
In the movie, they call from Stafenberg, Stafenberg, so they
never include the von for some reason.
If anybody in German is listening to this podcast, can
you tell us if that's a common thing to do, to just not include
(11:23):
the von to the last name, or if that's a very American thing to
do? We just don't know the answer to
this. Well, the von was excluded on
Wikipedia as well when I was just having a quick look.
So I was like, I don't know if This is why correct or not.
But yeah, Von Stoffenberg, once he joined this group of guys,
(11:45):
some of them maybe regretted recruiting him because he's a
real go getter. And he quickly became a driving
force behind the several attempts on Hitler's life to
follow. And he's quoted as saying the
aim is to preserve the right. It is necessary to save Germany
from unconditional surrender andfrom total occupation.
And so you can hear from that that his first motive is not to
(12:07):
end the Holocaust, which is not to say that it wasn't a motive.
And then it didn't factor into his decisions, but it wasn't his
primary motive. And there were some members of
the group of collaborators that that was their primary motive,
but certainly not for everybody.And he kind of comes from this
long line of German nobility where they really believe in
honor and behaving well and the sanctity of Germany, the
(12:29):
motherland, that sort of thing. And so these are guys who are
like, well, what Hitler's doing is not very honorable and it's
not going to lead to an honorable end for Germany.
And that's kind of where their thought process is AT.
And so he hadn't necessarily been an ardent opponent of
Hitler initially, like a lot of people in Germany, I suppose.
But his views on the Nazi Party really soured after 2 events.
(12:50):
So the Night of the Long Knives,which was a political purge
where Hitler got rid of a lot ofhis political opponents, and
Kristallnacht, which as most people probably know, was an
evening early on in the Holocaust where a lot of Jewish
businesses were destroyed and some Jewish people were rounded
up and taken away. The Niger for long nights.
I had forgotten the name actually, before doing any
(13:13):
research. I did know about this event, but
it's very early on in Hitler's tenure as well.
It's in 1934. So Kostana I think is in 1938.
So quite some time passes between those two.
So they have plenty of time to know that.
That was kind of a Dick, but I guess it took some of them quite
a long time to really start believing that.
(13:35):
And some of the biggest names, like 983 and Hitler, were behind
the attacks on the Nights of theLong Lives, or at least there
were driving forces in it. So they stuck around for a long
time after. So they were really loyal to
Hitler. Yeah.
So anyway, those were the coupleof events that really von
(13:56):
Stauffenberg, perhaps not initially an ardent opponent of
Hitler, but those really turned him off.
To get kind of to the name of the movie, it's called Valkyrie.
It's called that because Operation Valkyrie is part of
this movie, and this was a German contingency plan for
activating the reserve army in the event of a breakdown of
(14:16):
social order. And in the movie, Stauffenberg
suggests and in real life suggests, assassinating Hitler
and using Valkyrie to take over the country.
In the immediate aftermath of that, there is some debate at
first about whether or not they should kill Hitler.
What happens if you kill Hitler?What happens then?
Who gets to be in power? It's one of those discussions,
(14:39):
but they do end up deciding thatit can't be done in another way.
Yeah, there is a sense from someof the members of the conspiracy
plot that Hitler should be put on trial for the things that
he's done, and Germany should beseen to take accountability, or
at least Hitler should be seen to take accountability for what
he's done to Germany and to the rest of the world.
But von Stauffenberg is pretty sure that they should kill
(15:01):
Hitler, and it's his point of view that wins the day.
I remember. In the Munich the war episode
and in the movie, they're being a scene where they talk about
shooting Hitler and someone, I don't know who it is anymore.
So we're not going to shoot him,Marie.
We're just going to talk to him and put him on trial.
(15:22):
So it's like, I mean, some of them still believe in fairness
and injustice maybe, even thoughwhat Hitler's doing is anything
but that. Yeah, and at this point, too,
it's pretty late in the war. The Normandy landings have
happened. This is the summer of 1944.
And so anyone with sense can seethe writing on the wall in
Germany. They know that the war is
(15:43):
probably not going to end in their favor.
And so they kind of perceive this as their last opportunity
to act and to act in such a way where Germany won't be brought
to its knees again at the end ofthe war by another Treaty of
Versailles, for example. And to get rid of Hitler and
retake control and maybe come tosome kind of terms with the
Allies. That's not just simply
(16:03):
unconditional surrender. They're thinking if we don't
kill Hitler, then there's just going to be this whole like song
and dance where he has to be on trial and blah, blah, blah, and
he still has all these supporters, etcetera.
So von Stauffenberg and Co edit the Valkyrie plan to exclude the
s s, and this is pretty ballsy. So they take the Valkyrie plan,
(16:27):
they edit it because what they're planning to do is use
the s s as a Patsy, right? They're going to, as soon as
they assassinate Hitler, they'regoing to tell everyone that the
S S did it and they're going to use Operation Brockery to sort
of take back the country from this quote UN quote, s s coup.
And so they make these edits andthen von Stauffenberg goes to
(16:48):
Hitler himself, played by David Bamber, and he's like, I have
this new plan. You should take a look at it.
And Hitler is so creepy in the scene, Y'all, I mean, I'm sure
Hitler is always creepy, but he's just the whole time you're
so sure that he knows what's going on and he's just playing
with von Stauffenberg. But it appears that he doesn't,
and he has a quick leaf through the plans and then he's like,
(17:09):
well, if you say it's good, I'm sure it's good.
And then he signs off on it. Doesn't he also make some remark
about Valkyrie? Or in German it's Valkyrie which
is a piece of classical music. I think he makes a quip about
the musical piece or something. It's like really innocent but
also menacing at the same time. Yes, and there is also a scene
(17:31):
where von Stoltenberg is listening to Wagner in his
house. All right, it's back there, yes.
It's just this whole scene thereisn't like his Bavarian absolute
treat got the back house and it's just really scary place.
I mean, I think it's scary. I don't know why I think it's
scary, but everybody in the roomis so tough.
Yeah, I mean, partially it's scary because we know Hitler
(17:55):
made a lot of weapons grade terrible decisions in there.
I don't know if we would think it was quite as terrible if we
didn't know that. He apparently spent more time in
the back half retreat than he did in any of his other quote UN
quote headquarters. So you spend a lot of time in
there and you can still visit the place.
The actual building is gone, butyou can still find some
(18:17):
foundations of the building in the forest.
So you can see the view from thebig we know that we also see in
the movie. But if you want to go there, I
mean, I think I would find it pretty terrifying to be there,
but that might just be me. Von Staffenberg is promoted as
chief of staff to the commander and chief of the reserve army,
(18:37):
which gains on better access to his large timetable and to the
man himself. At first, I think he doesn't
really want this position. That is it.
Bill Nighy, who insisted he needs to take the position in
order to get close, I think. Yeah, I think von Stovenberg is
kind of like, I'm kind of busy planning an assassination.
(18:57):
And the Bill Nighy character is like, well, do you not see how
this will be helpful in the assassination, though?
Because you'll know where Hitler's going to be.
You're forgotten his name, but Ithink it's oblique.
It's in the name of the character.
Von Stovenberg gets assigned an accident called Lieutenant
Werner von Hudson, played by Jamie Parker.
(19:19):
And I feel like this is my favorite character in the entire
movie. He doesn't really like, von
Soffenberg tells him. Look, we have this plan to
assassinate Hitler and von Heften.
It's like, OK, that's fine, I can do that, no hesitation.
Yeah, he's pretty immediately into it, which is good for him.
Yeah. So Ulbricht and von Stauffenberg
(19:39):
approached General Friedrich Fromm, played by Tom Wilkinson,
and he's the head of the reservearmy.
So he's von Stauffenberg's boss,effectively.
And and the reason why they approach him is because they're
going to need him to mobilize the reserve army during the
coup. So that's kind of what happens,
right? They assassinate Hitler, they
tell everyone it was the s s trying to do a coup, and then
they mobilize the reserve army. And then the reserve army would
(20:01):
go around and they would arrest all the members of the s s and
like, quickly neutralize all theopposition.
And so without him, they're going to really struggle to make
this important component of their plan work.
And he declines to participate. But he crucially does not rat
them out. And he points out to them that
his office is bugged and so he'snot going to help them, but he
(20:24):
also is not going to stop. Them I must have missed the fact
that his office was bugged. I did not notice, but that
that's just me obviously. But also I feel like this man
kind of wants to be on whatever side is running.
He's like, I'll see what I'll dowhen it happens.
Yeah, I think that in real life he was a little bit more
(20:46):
involved than they depict him being in the movie because his
actions later, he takes them probably to save his own skin.
But in the movie they are very much like, no, he doesn't want
to be involved. He's not involved whatsoever.
It's July 15, 1944. The assassination attempt at the
Wolf's Lair doesn't go off because Hendrick, him, there's
(21:08):
no present. They've kind of said, look, he
can only do it if everybody thatneeds to be there is there.
And Aubrey mobilizes the reservefor army, which they pass off as
a drill. So they've got a lucky escape
there. Yeah, the Wolf's Lair was
Hitler's Eastern Front military headquarters at that point, just
(21:28):
50 miles from the Russian lines.It's in modern day northeastern
Poland. But this attack, attempted
attack that we see in the film actually took place at
Berktisghan, which we have seen in Band of Brothers.
And you can go listen to our episodes about that.
But it was changed for the plot,I think, to set the stage of the
actual attack for the audience, which did take place at the
Wolf's Lair. There were at least two other
occasions on July 6th and July 11th, when von Stauffenberg
(21:51):
attended a meeting with Hitler carrying a bomb, but did not
prime it on either occasion because no other senior
leadership were in attendance. And it was kind of thought that
there's no point in killing Hitler if you don't also take
out at least Himmler, that you need to get rid of the chain of
command as well. From threatens them if they try
to control the reserve army again.
He's like, yo, the way you mobilize the reserve army and
(22:13):
told everyone it was a drill, I know what you're up to.
Don't do that shit again. And von Stauffenberg, meanwhile,
he's attacking Girdler behind the scenes for his
indecisiveness because Girdler'sthe one who keeps being like,
no, don't kill Hitler if Himmler's not there.
And von Stauffenberg is like, how many more times do you think
I'm going to be able to smuggle a bomb into Hitler's presence,
my guy? So they sort of have a little
(22:35):
bit of a row about this. Girdler tries to oust von
Stauffenberg from the group, butBeck supports him and they come
get rid of Girdler for a bit because he's the one that they
want to be chancellor when Hitler is gone.
But they tell him that the S S has his number and they're going
to be looking for him and he hasto get out of the country.
So he fucks off for a bit. July 20th of the same year,
(22:58):
Stauffenberg gets another chance.
He returns to the Wolf's lair. Conditions there are not
optimal, because the meeting is held in the summer barrack
rather than in the bunker where it was originally supposed to
be, and he does not have time toprime the second bomb.
They have two, but he only primed one.
But he manages to leave the bombclose to Hitler and then excuses
(23:20):
himself to take a phone call. And the phone call actually does
happen. It's set up, obviously, but it's
his way to escape. And he gets out of the building.
And as he does, he sees the explosion.
So he assumes that Hitler is dead and he returns to Berlin
with Front Hudson. And it's pretty close, though
they have to get out of the Roselire and they have to black
(23:43):
the way out of one of the patrols there at the date.
And I thought this was a really clever scene and I wonder if
that happened in real life or not.
But. I think they had to play their
way through three checkpoints inreal life to get back to where
their plane was waiting. But yeah, I think another reason
why we see the earlier attack for attempted attack take place
(24:05):
at the Wolf's lair is because earlier on in the movie, they're
kind of talking about how if youplant a bomb in this underground
bunker, it sort of holds the explosion in.
So all of the force of the explosion, it has nowhere to go
because they can't get out through these walls.
And so it really has is going tohave a very deadly significant
impact. And so when we see that bunker
(24:27):
in the first attempted attack, we're like, oh, yeah, like
they're going to be fucked because they set off a bomb in
there. But in the second actual attack
when we see them having this meeting in the summer barrack,
it's quite a bit different. Like this building is not a
bunker in the way that the otherone was a bunker.
And so that really hurts the bombs ability to do what they
want it to do. And additionally, I just laugh
(24:48):
at the idea of like at this point Von Stauffenberg has like
3 fingers because of this explosion that he was in when he
was hurt in the army. And so I'm like of course he
only managed to prime one bomb and not 2.
Like this seems like a very difficult task for someone with
only three fingers. As someone who can only use one
hand, that can only concur. And also another thing about
(25:10):
this assassination attempt is that Himmler's not there.
So there's like a little bit of a back and forth on the phone
about whether or not it should happen.
I think he's talking to, I forgot his name, but I really
like this actor. He's like, I want to say
Albrecht's assistant who handlesthe phone for him, but he's like
higher up. I think Albrecht's like, now
(25:33):
we're not going to do it. And he says no way do it anyway.
So this is so tense. Unfortunately for them, Hitler's
life was saved by a last minute,inadvertent moving of the
briefcase behind a heavy table leg.
So they're sitting at this huge conference table and someone is
sitting there and he's like, oh,this briefcase is in my way.
(25:53):
So he, like, moves it behind this table leg.
And that's probably what prevented Hitler and a lot of
other people from being killed because it shielded them at
least partially from the explosion.
So four people were killed in the blast, but Hitler suffered
only minor injuries. I mean, he still got pretty
fucked up, but it fed into his belief that he was invincible.
Unfortunately, he actually sent his tattered trousers to his
(26:17):
mistress, Eva Brown, for preservation, for posterity.
He was like, you're going to want to keep these fucked up
pants because they proved to everyone that I can't be killed.
And we also talked about the July 20th plot.
As we said earlier in our ClaireMolly episode, female test pilot
Melita von Stauffenberg, who wasclosest sister-in-law.
She was actually originally intended to fly the plane that
(26:38):
would get von Stauffenberg to safety after the assassination,
but the plan ended up getting changed.
We don't specifically know why, but we think probably because
the only plane that she had access to that wouldn't be
registered or tracked anywhere was her own plane, and it just
simply did not have the possiblemileage to be able to make it
(26:59):
all the way to Berlin and back. So he ended up going with the
backup plan instead. I wonder if that also in part
saved her life. We know that it's not the only
thing that saved her life, but Iwonder if she'd flown that
plane, I think she would have just.
There would have been no talkingher out of that, basically.
Yeah, probably if she'd been caught.
Yeah. General Eric Felgewell, played
(27:22):
by Eddie Izzard, Who? Honestly, at first I was like,
wait a minute, I recognize that face.
Oh my God, it's Eddie Izzard. I feel like I haven't seen them
in anything in forever. But anyway, he passes along a
garbled message to old Richt before cutting off all
communication. So he was in on it.
And basically his job was once the explosion happens, he cuts
(27:44):
off all communication. And that way no messaging can
get to the outside world. And only von Steffenberg and his
collaborators, only their messaging can get out to
everybody. And unfortunately, when he's on
the phone, he's trying to tell them that like, Hitler isn't
dead, but the message which doesn't get through.
And without confirmation that Hitler is dead, Ulbricht
vacillates. And this is a disastrous couple
(28:07):
of hours where they waste time. And unfortunately, that's
probably one of the reasons why this wasn't successful.
So Hitler wasn't dead? They thought he was there.
At least Ron Stauffenberg was absolutely convinced that he was
dead. Colonel Outbreak from but by
Christian Berkov, purchased oversignatures, and he proceeds
(28:29):
anyway. So he does mobilize the reserve
army. Bits of our precious armors have
already gone by, as he said. And across Germany, confusion
reigns as the Marymox begins arresting s s officers and Nazi
Party leaders. You think for a moment again
that things are going to be OK, even though you know the
history. You're like, yes, go on, do it.
(28:51):
Arrest them Heidi Kaufman Heldorf, played by Maldon
Markobis, who was also in Blackbrook, he said chief of the
Berlin police, and he pledges his allegiance to the
conspirators almost immediately.Meanwhile, Firm has been told
that Hitler is alive and he refuses to help the conspiracy,
so they arrest him and he's not very pleased about it.
(29:14):
Yeah, there's this scene where they're all kind of in a room
together, and they're calling various regions around Germany,
and they're trying to get in touch with who's in charge to
get their messaging out first, Trying to get in touch with
generals and whoever they can, politicians and being like, hey,
by the way, the s s did a coup. Are you on our side?
(29:34):
Are you with us? And they're trying to get
confirmation from people that they're going to be able to
carry this off, that they're going to have the requisite
support in the various parts of the country.
Major Otto Ernst Framer, played by Thomas Krautchman, is all set
to arrest Joseph Goebbels, played by Harvey Friedman.
And he literally, they roll up. You're like, OK, this is going
to be great. They're going to get Goebbels.
(29:54):
He's one of the main guys, like,let's get rid of him.
But unfortunately, Goebbels is like, wait, before you arrest
me, there's someone on the phonefor you.
And it turns out that Hitler himself, who has survived the
explosion, is on the phone. And Raymer recognizes his voice.
Of course, he knows that it's actually Hitler.
And unfortunately, this is sort of the beginning of the tide
(30:16):
starting to turn against our collaborators.
So Margarita von Oven, played byHelena Rain, she's the secretary
to the plotters at great personal risk.
She was the one who, before the assassination attempt had even
happened, she had typed out all of these announcements of like,
Hitler is dead, here's what we're doing now, blah, blah,
blah, which of course, would have gotten her shot if they had
(30:38):
caught her with them. At this point, she's been
helping them out to get people on the phone, etcetera.
But von Stauffenberg and the others start to realize that
this is not going to go well. So von Stauffenberg tells her
that she can flee. A little bit about Helena Ryan,
who's also in Black Book with Clergus Van Houten.
The two of them kind of took Hollywood by storm.
(30:58):
And even though Clergus is a bigger actress, I feel like they
kind of had a pact at the time where whenever Clary's would get
into a big Hollywood role, she would introduce Helena.
They were like a package deal, and I kind of love that.
Just women supporting each otherin a pretty brutal industry.
So I thought that was quite nice.
(31:20):
The movie shows her magnetic vonArvin desperately trying to call
von Stauffenberg's family for him.
They fled. They've gone to a different city
because he knew they wouldn't besafe if anything went wrong.
And he keeps trying to reach them that they're not able to
get through. So you're really tense.
You're like, you don't know if they're dead or if they've been
(31:42):
arrested or you get to feel a little bit for von Stauffenberg
as well. And destiny they try to make
Taken really human. Yeah, now von Oven is not only
one of our few heroic female characters, but in real life she
was sent away on the day of the coup by Treskov because he
thought she'd be sort of a handyperson to have in the back
(32:02):
pocket. So he advised her that they
might need her and if they did, they would send a plane.
And this might have been why Melita von Stauffenberg remained
on standby even though her role as a skate pilot for her
brother-in-law Klaus had been replaced.
So she wasn't actually there on the the day of the coup in real
life. But I do like that she's in the
movie for a bit longer, so there's that.
(32:23):
For sure, I'm not mad that they changed it.
So as things start to collapse in on them, the building are in
is being stormed and von Soffenberg is wounded in the
following confrontation and despite various protests, he's
in order to take Stauffenberg and company alive from
immediately. Court marshals done and
(32:45):
sentences from Crohan and from 1000 back to death.
And Beck is the only one who's allowed to kill himself, and he
even chooses the pistol that he uses to do it.
Yeah, there's sort of a sad historical footnote in that he
failed when he shot himself and someone else had to shoot him
again in the back of the neck. No, Jesus, that's rough.
(33:08):
Yeah. And this is sort of circling
back to what we had said earlierwhere some historians believe
that Fromm was more involved than, you know, this movie
necessarily clearly depicted. And the reason why he court
martialed and quickly had these main conspirators killed was
because he didn't want them to be able to give away his
involvement potentially. I wondered because Hitler's the
(33:28):
runner says he runs them alive, so he's effectively also
defiling the furor. Yeah, which will come back to
bite him in the ass for sure. And this is the part of the
movie where they get them all lined up one by one in front of
the firing squad. And when von Stauffenberg is in
front of the firing squad, von Haften jumps in front of him.
Well, he kind of stands in frontof the bullets.
(33:50):
And it's just like a moment of he obviously knows they're going
to kill von Stauffenberg anyway.But it's like a moment of
expressing this, like, loyalty and being like, you know, I
stand with you even right now atthe end, You know, I would do
anything to protect you kind of thing.
And but that scene really got me.
I immediately looked it up because I wanted to know if it
was true and it was. Yes.
And there's something brutal about the fact that after this
(34:14):
happened, like he starts into the way of the bullets and he's
killed. And they could have just shot
from Stauffenberg right in that moment, but now they pause to
take away his body 1st and then they shoot him.
It's so brutal. You can see it coming a mile
away, but it's still I wanted somuch for there to be a different
(34:34):
ending to this movie. I know it was only 12 hours from
the time von Stauffenberg planted the bomb to his death by
firing squad, and it's true thathis final words were Long live,
sacred Germany. And before they filmed this
scene, the cast and crew, led byTom Cruise, held a moment of
silence because they actually filmed it in the area where the
(34:54):
shooting had taken place in reallife.
I want to quickly mention we getto see some of the
correspondence room as well. I don't know what it's called,
but the thing where all the messages come in and that pushed
through to other people. And I really like the discussion
we see there between two of the people that work there as they
are getting messages from both the wolf there and basically fun
(35:19):
stuff and work. They're like which of the to
just do it, put through and at first to do both and then
eventually they decide to only do the messages from the Ross
layer and that's when it's officially over.
But I really like to see that discussion in there.
Yeah, for sure. And some more female characters
there, too. Women working in the the
(35:39):
switchboard. Yes.
Yeah. So Treskov, our Kenneth Branagh
character, who is one of our bigmasterminds, he kills himself in
the woods. And this is based on real
events. He went into the no man's land
between German and Russian lines, and he held a grenade to
his own throat. Vitzelman and Girdler are
executed later and from despite his attempts to get rid of the
(36:03):
other conspirators so he wouldn't get in trouble.
Or perhaps because of those attempts, he ends up being
hanged as well. And yeah, I think a little bit
later in 1945. South our main conspirators are
executed immediately and the other ones are getting a trial
and they are hanged or executed later.
So the Nazi judge that we see hollering away during these
(36:26):
trials is Roland Friesler, and he's the judge that we we talked
about in our Sophie Skoll episode.
He handed out over 5000 death sentences during his tenure, and
he died in an American bombing raid in 1945.
He narrowly avoided getting himself Nuremberg.
There's a quote I found from Tres Goff before his death.
This would have been a couple ofhours before he died, or so I
(36:49):
gather. And he said the whole world will
vilify us now, but I'm still totally convinced we did the
right thing. Hitler is the arc enemy not only
of Germany but of the world. When in a few hours time I go
before God to account for what Ihave done and left undone, I
know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle
against Hitler. A human being's moral integrity
(37:10):
begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his
convictions. That is a good letter, but still
how sad they were so close. Yeah, bummer.
We get an end card that tells usthe July 20 plot was the last of
15 known attempts by Germans to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Nine months later, with Berlin surrounded, Hitler committed
(37:33):
suicide. Nina von Stauffenberg and her
children survived the war. She died April 2nd, 2006.
Yeah. So when this happened, Hitler
invoked the law of Siphon Hoff, which is kin detention.
And so he arrested Klaus's wife,children, mother, uncle and
brothers, as well as some more distant family.
(37:54):
Melita von Stauffenberg, who wasalso arrested and detained for a
few months. But ultimately she was released
on the merits of her work for the Luftwaffe.
She was such a gifted aeronautical engineer that
Goering himself stepped in and was like, well, we kind of need
her for the war effort, so you should let her out.
And there was really no evidencethat she had directly
participated in the plot. So like you said, that probably
(38:14):
saved her ass. But some family members
unfortunately were less lucky and were executed.
Our secretary Von Oven was arrested and detained for two
weeks, but later released. And effectively the regime used
the attack as an excuse to cleanhouse, getting rid of anyone it
wanted to get rid of, any undesirable people, any
political enemies that remained.And so 7000 people were arrested
(38:36):
in the aftermath, and nearly 5000 of those were executed.
5000 Jesus Christ, the night took the long knives all over
again. It's like, let's go everybody
who doesn't agree with me. Yeah, pretty much even Irwin
Rommel was implicated, as we mentioned in our grand theodic
episode. If you recall, he was badly
wounded when he was strafed by aplane.
(38:57):
And while he was recovering, there was some murmurs or rumors
that if not directly involved inthis plot, he potentially knew
about it. And so it was strongly advised
to him that he kill himself, which he did.
I didn't. Realize it was this plot.
And poor Nina, close, his wife, she gave birth to their fifth
child in prison effectively, andhe was separated from her other
(39:21):
children for quite a long time. And Melita would operate as sort
of a go between. So she would go and visit the
children and bring them gifts and tell them about their
parents. And she would also go and visit
Nina. And she would go and visit
Klaus's mother and all these other people in prison.
Once she was out, obviously theywere in prison for quite a
while, but ultimately they did outlive Hitler.
So that's a good ending a littlebit I guess at least.
(39:44):
Fuck yes. Yeah, there's a quote on a final
end card from the German resistance memorial in Berlin
that says you did not bear the shame.
You resisted sacrificing your life for freedom, justice and
honor. And this memorial is that the
Bender block, which was where the coup was largely carried out
and also where the plotters wereexecuted.
And the street now bears von Stauffenberg's name.
(40:06):
And it was of course, as we mentioned, used as a location
for the filming. And that's the end of the movie.
I feel like we did most of our notes in the actual plot, but
you have a couple more, so go ahead.
(40:28):
Yeah, Henning von Trescov. That's our Kenneth Branagh
character. His aide was played by Philip
von Skoltis, who was the real von Stolfenberg's grandson.
I. Think it's so cool when family
members get involved in the filming of ATV show or a movie
like in Masters of the Era. We got a Rosenthal in the TV
(40:48):
show. I like that.
And honestly, there's something powerful, but the fact that
there is a von Stolfenberg grandson that these people said
to Hitler, you will not be ultimately victorious.
We will outlast you. And then they did, yes.
That's some kind of indication for sure.
Yeah, and Anne Frank wrote aboutthe assassination attempt in her
(41:10):
diary, and I will read you the passage, she said.
Now, at last, things are going well.
An assassination attempt has been made on Hitler, and for
once not by Jewish communists orBritish capitalists, but by a
German general who's not only account but young as well.
It's the best proof we've had sofar that many officers and
generals are fed up with the warand would like to see Hitler
(41:31):
sink into a bottomless pit. Which I think is very 14 year
old girl of her and I love it. Me too, I like the fact that he
remarks on him being young. I'm sure the dashing young count
was an appealing figure for sure, but apparently when
Churchill heard about this he dismissed the attack as part of
a murderous Internocene power struggle, so it doesn't sound
(41:54):
like the Allies took it particularly seriously.
I mean, what a contrast to and Frank being happy and supportive
and then Churchill being like, no, it's not a big deal.
Yeah, I guess if you're Anne Frank, you're going to take all
the hope that you can get. Yeah, of course you will.
I think that's for notes, we should rate it.
(42:15):
I had a thought for a second, but it's kind of rude so you'll
not finish the thought on air. You don't want to do Tom Cruise
possible butt pads out of tents.Or we can definitely do that.
OK, I will rate this movie. That's a tough one. 6.8 Tom
Cruise, possible butt pads out of 10.
Because, yeah, I think that it'senjoyable to watch a history
(42:39):
movie where you don't need a tonof work to remember who all the
different characters are. It wasn't dry.
Like, it wasn't just a bunch of people talking to each other in
offices. There was enough action.
Everything was tense, even in scenes where on the surface
you're like, oh, von Stauffenberg is just getting
some paperwork approved. Well, he's getting it approved
by a very ominous Adolf Hitler. And so this whole movie, I think
(43:02):
that it was nice to see some female characters having a role.
It was nice to see the German resistance a little bit more.
I do feel like they oversimplified it a little bit.
You know, von Stauffenberg, thishero who's going to rescue the
Jews, and it's a little more nuanced than that.
That wasn't necessarily his exact motive, which is not to
say that killing Hitler wouldn'thave solved that problem.
(43:24):
It totally would have, incidentally.
But also, there's really no guarantee that von Stauffenberg
wasn't necessarily a supporter of a democracy.
If he had managed to assassinateHitler, they probably would have
had another authoritarian government run by the military,
which, you know. But So all to say that I think
the movie simplified that a lot for audiences, which not
(43:44):
necessarily a bad thing if you're just going into this
without much knowledge of history and you just want to
watch a pretty tense historical thriller, which is pretty
effectively done. Like we said at the beginning, I
don't think Tom Cruise smashed it by any means, but I also
don't think he was terrible. And there were some other pretty
good performances in this movie.So overall, pretty decent.
I would say if you haven't seen it and you're looking for
(44:05):
something to watch, definitely throw it on.
You're not going to be disappointed, OK?
I will rated it possible Tom Cruise butt pads or whatever it
is out of town. It's quite a high rating, but I
just, I think my expectations were so low and I ended up
enjoying it so much and I'd already done my research on the
(44:26):
history of it that I didn't necessarily mind the
oversimplification because I agree with you.
But it doesn't irk me in the slightest and I just really
enjoyed it. So that's why I got an egg.
I might even watch it again. It's one of those it's just
really kind of tense and exciting for me.
So you get an egg. I'm sure I've never given any
(44:48):
action movie night, so there yougo.
Yeah, yeah. I really did not have high hopes
for this is a Tom Cruise movie. And you know what he said at, I
think it was the premiere of Valkyrie when it came out, he
said to a journalist, you know, I always wanted to kill Hitler,
which to me, I just when I read that, I was like, oh, this is
going to be one of those movies.But no, it'll be better than you
(45:09):
think it will be. Yeah.
I really liked it. I'm so surprised that I really
liked it, but I guess it's a surprise that it gets at a
higher rate. And like, if I had been
expecting to like it, I think itwould have been like a 7, but it
just gets an 8 for being surprisingly decent.
Definitely. Are you reading anything?
(45:38):
I'm reading Tony Rush first bookabout red shaking.
So we're trying to, and I'm alsoreading a couple of bits and
pieces here and there about Martha Gellhorn.
I know we've mentioned her probably about three times
already in other episodes, but the episode about her is coming
up soon guys. So I'm trying to do some more
(45:58):
bits and pieces here and there and I'm also thinking about
reading their finest. Is the book called Their Finest?
As well, it was originally called their Finest Hour and a
Half, but I think they changed it to match the movie.
All right, because we are covering that as well, and we
are doing that with the Donut Dollies, so that'll be fun.
(46:20):
What are you reading? I'm reading Bury My Heart at
Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, whichis, I would say, quite a famous
book about the history of indigenous people and how they
were treated and sort of the late 19th century in the US.
Took a crack at it a few years ago and I only made it maybe 1/3
of the way through. So I'm circling back.
(46:42):
I'm trying again. I think that's really brave.
Whenever I get into a book and Ican't finish, that's it for that
book and I go on to the power and never read well.
It's not that it's bad. I just went through an era where
I had a hard time finishing nonfiction.
But I've gotten so go into the habit of reading nonfiction now
that I just think it'll be easier for me to finish.
(47:03):
What percentage of your reading is nonfiction?
And I would you say is it like 80%?
Yeah, probably. Yeah, it's mild.
I find it really difficult stillreading nonfiction, especially
if they are over 200 pages, which all of them are.
Yeah, although you know what I was reading about the hang on
the Norman Mailer. Who is Norman Mailer and I
(47:25):
noticed that. He's an American writer.
Yeah, it's called The Naked and The Dead.
That's his World War 2 novel. And apparently it's phenomenal
and everyone recommends it. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll
pick up a copy. Well, it's over 700 pages, so
I'm like, I will pick up a copy because I do want to read it,
but it's not making its way to the top of my to read pile.
(47:45):
This is not a light thing. I'm going to, like dash through
in a weekend. I'm going to need some time.
You will read this book in 2027.Yes, that's.
Fine, Yeah, that's it for this episode, guys.
Thank you so much for listening.You can find us wherever you get
your podcasts. You can follow us on Instagram
at Rosidor of your podcast. You can send this officer to a
(48:09):
friend who is maybe a little bitskeptical about Tom Cruise being
in a World War 2 movie, but thiswill prove them wrong.
What else can you do? You can visit our website
www.rosie.review.com and we willsee you next week.
Bye bye.
Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer. We're your host.
I'm Sam. And I'm Marja.
And we like World War 2 media and we want to talk about it.
Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer.
This week we are talking about the movie Valkyrie, which came
out in 2008. It was directed by Bryan Singer
(00:25):
and written by Christopher Mcquarrie and Nathan Alexander.
It's based on real events and ittells the story of a failed
assassination plot against Hitler in July of 1944.
You can watch this movie on Amazon Prime or possibly on
Ethics, depending on where you live.
What did you think of this movie?
I liked it more than I thought Iwas going to for a Tom Cruise
(00:48):
movie. My previous knowledge of this
movie was that it was the Tom Cruise eye patch movie and or
the Tom Cruise butt pad movie. Because I don't know if you
remember there was some controversy about him perhaps
wearing butt pads in this movie to look like he had more cake
than he actually does. And I will I will say watching
(01:09):
the movie I did not notice one way or the other.
So I guess I can't speak to thatcontroversy and put it to bed
based on my knowledge. But yeah, it's a movie about a
really interesting part of history, the internal German
resistance to Adolf Hitler. And we had previously talked a
little bit about von Stauffenberg because his
(01:32):
sister-in-law was, of course, Melita von Stauffenberg, one of
the women who flew for Hitler that we talked about in our
Claire Molly episode. And yeah, I found the movie
maintain the tension pretty well.
It's an action movie, but it's not.
I know you're thinking Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible.
It's not really like that. I found they did a decent job
overall. It is kind of Hollywood, so I
(01:52):
won't say that it's perfect or that it's my favorite movie ever
made, but I thought it was all right.
I enjoyed my watching experience.
How about you? I also really enjoyed this
movie. Like you, I was expecting an
action movie, a kind of sensationalized movie for sure,
but I like the way they did it. Barely any of the actors are
German. It's mostly famous Hollywood
(02:14):
actors that they did it in kind of a smart way where we'll get
to it when we get into the movietoo.
But I liked it, and I thought Tom Cruise was not there.
Tom Cruise, which for me is a good thing.
Yeah, I didn't think his performance was show stopping,
but I also didn't think he was bad.
I didn't have the feeling as I was watching the entire time to
(02:37):
be like, hey, that's Tom Cruise over there.
And it's got some Dutch actresses in it that we've seen
in other movies already. So that's fun for me and some
other people that were all in the same movie.
They were all in Black Book. So if you want to go and listen
to the that episode, that's alsofun.
Yeah, I thought the basing was good.
It looked pretty good too. And I kept hoping for an ending
(03:02):
that I knew wasn't coming because obviously we know what
happens because it's history, but they do a good job of making
you feel for the characters involved and hoping that they're
kind of different ending. So yeah, I liked it.
Yeah, I always like that in a history movie where you do kind
of manage to hope that the ending will be different this
time. I will say that some of the
(03:23):
things in this movie, for example, von Stauffenberg and
the other collaborators, some oftheir motivations for trying to
assassinate Hitler were really oversimplified and dumbed down.
I don't know if this was becauseit was not meant to be a quote
UN quote history documentary andit was just meant to be a fun
movie, but I'm sure we'll talk about that more as we go on.
(03:43):
But there's definitely bits and pieces that I know people took
issue with when it came out, particularly in Germany, but.
I think it's quite interesting, and that's the last thing I'll
say about that. Hollywood chose to make a movie
about this part of history that's so far removed from
actual Hollywood. Anyway, let's get into the plot.
(04:10):
So there's an opening card that says the following is based on a
true story, and then the loyaltyoath to Hitler appears on the
screen. So this would have been an oath.
I think it came about in 1934. It was early on in Hitler's
tenure anyways, where members ofthe Vermont and the s s and
other organizations that would have reported to Hitler had to
swear this oath. And it's I swear by God this
(04:33):
sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf
Hitler, Fuhrer of the German Reich and people, Supreme
Commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be
ready as a brave soldier to givemy life for this oath.
What I liked about this scene and in general how they set up
the beginning of the movie is the fact that they start in
(04:53):
German and then they very slowlysacrament into English.
And that way you don't get the awkward let's do English with a
German accent or let's do bad Speaking of German or anything
like that. It's right smart.
Yeah, I like that too. And I like how they set up that
Klaus von Stoltenberg was in themilitary.
(05:14):
And I think that for the most part, people would assume that
when you are in the military, your loyalty is to your country.
So I like that they set up this thing where they were like, no,
everyone who is in the military was actually required to say
that they were not fighting, quote UN quote, for their
country, but they were fighting specifically for one man.
And So what does it mean that von Stoffenberg and these other
(05:35):
collaborators deliberately went against that?
And it kind of ties into what their motivations are.
And I just thought it was a goodway to frame the movie.
I feel like you've given me a good suck.
Well into the next scene, Rochester scene, where we see
the German 10th Dancer Division in Tunisia and North Africa.
And we meet our quote, UN quote,main character Colonel Klaus von
(05:59):
Stauffenberg, Blue by Tom Cruise.
And he's writing a letter outlined in his opposition to
Hitler and his regime. And he's basically saying that
in order to save Germany, they need to power Hitler.
After he writes the letter, he goes and speaks to a superior
officer played by Bernard Hill. Who?
(06:19):
Who? I keep forgetting his dad, the
actor, He's great. And he's most likely portraying
Lieutenant General Wolfgang Fisher.
And he suggests that they disobey orders to do an attack
and that they should retreat instead because he's afraid that
all the men are going to die. Yeah.
And Fisher agrees with him. So we're starting to get a sense
(06:39):
that perhaps von Stauffenberg isn't the only one in the army
who has reservations about some of the things they're being
asked to do. But before they can actually do
anything one way or the other, they get attacked by Allied
aircraft, and von Stauffenberg is severely wounded.
This happened on April 7th, 1943.
And he's a mess. He loses an eye.
(07:01):
He loses one of his hands and several fingers.
On the other hand, he's quite badly injured and he has to be
evacuated to Germany. And while he's there he gets
visited by his wife, one of our very few female characters, Nina
Shank Graffen von Steffenberg, played by Clarice van Houten,
who was one of the Dutch actors that you had mentioned earlier.
She's. Great.
(07:21):
I love that she gets to be in Hollywood movies.
Yeah, she does a really good job, I think, with very few
lines in this movie to display alot of inner emotion, even
though, like externally she's very still.
She does a lot of I actor. She's got beautiful eyes in this
too. No, she's gorgeous.
I don't know what they did to the film in terms of editing,
(07:43):
but she just looks really beautiful in this.
Yeah, she's kind of representative of what von
Stauffenberg has to lose becausenot only does he have this
beautiful wife that he cares about very much, but he also has
four children and she's pregnantwith their. 5th, I forgot she
was pregnant. That kind of slipped my mind.
But yeah, we get to see their relationship a little bit.
I kind of wish we got Melita as well, as you said to me before
(08:07):
we started recording. But I do understand why they
took a little bit of a tighter approach to the focus here.
But still, we need more women, more great women.
For sure, and they also excludedhis brother or one of his
brothers because he had a couple.
One of his brothers was also involved in the plot, but they
left that out of the movie for streamlining purposes.
(08:30):
Right. Yeah, All right.
So it's March 13th in 1943. There is a failed plot by
General Henning from Trescroft, played by Kenneth Brenner, and
he tries to assassinate Hitler by smuggling a control box onto
his plan when he visits the Eastward Front.
And they, it kind of made me laugh just a little bit because
(08:51):
it seems so simple and then it fails.
I'm like, Jesus, why does it fail?
Such a brilliant move. Yeah, it won't be the only time
they try to assassinate Hitler either, this particular group of
guys. But yeah, this one not
successful, but it's nice to seeKenneth Branagh in another
history movie. Another one, So we've seen him
in Dunkirk, I think that we've reviewed.
(09:14):
So you want to go listen to Dunkirk?
Go on and listen to another episode, Yes.
Where we also talked about how great Kenneth Branagh always is.
Yeah, he's great. So General Hans Oster, we don't
see much of him, but what happens to him is sort of the
catalyst for a lot of the stuff that happens in the movie.
So he's a resistance member, He's the deputy head of the Ad
(09:34):
Bear, which was the German intelligence, and he is arrested
on suspicion of helping adware officers that were caught
helping Jews to escape Germany. He eventually was executed in a
concentration camp in April of 1945.
So not a good ending for him. He is mentioned in our Munich
the Edge of War episode, so definitely go check that out if
you're interested and learning alittle more about the German
(09:55):
resistance. And so because Hans Oser is out
of the picture, General Friedrich Ulbricht, played by
Bill Nahi, he recruits von Stauffenberg to take Oyster's
place in a resistance plot. And now this plot involves lots
of sort of big movers and shakers in Germany and military
and civilian life. So we have Treskov, who we
mentioned already. They also include General Ludwig
(10:16):
Beck, played by Terence Stamp, who actually unfortunately
passed away a couple of days before we recorded this.
So safe travel, Sir. Godspeed.
Dr. Carl Girdler, played by Kevin McNally, and Field
Marshall Irwin von Vitzelben, played by David.
Schofield I love this cast. They are like pillars of acting.
I feel they're all very good. The nice thing is that number
(10:39):
one, they all have fairly recognizable faces.
Even if you don't recognize the names, if you saw them, you'd be
like, Oh yeah, I've seen that guy in something before.
So it's a combination of that and the fact that they're all
stellar actors that you can tellall of these guys apart and you
remember who they are, which canbe difficult sometimes in a
movie with a bunch of foreign sounding names and historical
(11:00):
figures you perhaps never heard of.
So I did enjoy that aspect. Yeah, There's also something
funny that I haven't figured out.
In the movie, they call from Stafenberg, Stafenberg, so they
never include the von for some reason.
If anybody in German is listening to this podcast, can
you tell us if that's a common thing to do, to just not include
(11:23):
the von to the last name, or if that's a very American thing to
do? We just don't know the answer to
this. Well, the von was excluded on
Wikipedia as well when I was just having a quick look.
So I was like, I don't know if This is why correct or not.
But yeah, Von Stoffenberg, once he joined this group of guys,
(11:45):
some of them maybe regretted recruiting him because he's a
real go getter. And he quickly became a driving
force behind the several attempts on Hitler's life to
follow. And he's quoted as saying the
aim is to preserve the right. It is necessary to save Germany
from unconditional surrender andfrom total occupation.
And so you can hear from that that his first motive is not to
(12:07):
end the Holocaust, which is not to say that it wasn't a motive.
And then it didn't factor into his decisions, but it wasn't his
primary motive. And there were some members of
the group of collaborators that that was their primary motive,
but certainly not for everybody.And he kind of comes from this
long line of German nobility where they really believe in
honor and behaving well and the sanctity of Germany, the
(12:29):
motherland, that sort of thing. And so these are guys who are
like, well, what Hitler's doing is not very honorable and it's
not going to lead to an honorable end for Germany.
And that's kind of where their thought process is AT.
And so he hadn't necessarily been an ardent opponent of
Hitler initially, like a lot of people in Germany, I suppose.
But his views on the Nazi Party really soured after 2 events.
(12:50):
So the Night of the Long Knives,which was a political purge
where Hitler got rid of a lot ofhis political opponents, and
Kristallnacht, which as most people probably know, was an
evening early on in the Holocaust where a lot of Jewish
businesses were destroyed and some Jewish people were rounded
up and taken away. The Niger for long nights.
I had forgotten the name actually, before doing any
(13:13):
research. I did know about this event, but
it's very early on in Hitler's tenure as well.
It's in 1934. So Kostana I think is in 1938.
So quite some time passes between those two.
So they have plenty of time to know that.
That was kind of a Dick, but I guess it took some of them quite
a long time to really start believing that.
(13:35):
And some of the biggest names, like 983 and Hitler, were behind
the attacks on the Nights of theLong Lives, or at least there
were driving forces in it. So they stuck around for a long
time after. So they were really loyal to
Hitler. Yeah.
So anyway, those were the coupleof events that really von
(13:56):
Stauffenberg, perhaps not initially an ardent opponent of
Hitler, but those really turned him off.
To get kind of to the name of the movie, it's called Valkyrie.
It's called that because Operation Valkyrie is part of
this movie, and this was a German contingency plan for
activating the reserve army in the event of a breakdown of
(14:16):
social order. And in the movie, Stauffenberg
suggests and in real life suggests, assassinating Hitler
and using Valkyrie to take over the country.
In the immediate aftermath of that, there is some debate at
first about whether or not they should kill Hitler.
What happens if you kill Hitler?What happens then?
Who gets to be in power? It's one of those discussions,
(14:39):
but they do end up deciding thatit can't be done in another way.
Yeah, there is a sense from someof the members of the conspiracy
plot that Hitler should be put on trial for the things that
he's done, and Germany should beseen to take accountability, or
at least Hitler should be seen to take accountability for what
he's done to Germany and to the rest of the world.
But von Stauffenberg is pretty sure that they should kill
(15:01):
Hitler, and it's his point of view that wins the day.
I remember. In the Munich the war episode
and in the movie, they're being a scene where they talk about
shooting Hitler and someone, I don't know who it is anymore.
So we're not going to shoot him,Marie.
We're just going to talk to him and put him on trial.
(15:22):
So it's like, I mean, some of them still believe in fairness
and injustice maybe, even thoughwhat Hitler's doing is anything
but that. Yeah, and at this point, too,
it's pretty late in the war. The Normandy landings have
happened. This is the summer of 1944.
And so anyone with sense can seethe writing on the wall in
Germany. They know that the war is
(15:43):
probably not going to end in their favor.
And so they kind of perceive this as their last opportunity
to act and to act in such a way where Germany won't be brought
to its knees again at the end ofthe war by another Treaty of
Versailles, for example. And to get rid of Hitler and
retake control and maybe come tosome kind of terms with the
Allies. That's not just simply
(16:03):
unconditional surrender. They're thinking if we don't
kill Hitler, then there's just going to be this whole like song
and dance where he has to be on trial and blah, blah, blah, and
he still has all these supporters, etcetera.
So von Stauffenberg and Co edit the Valkyrie plan to exclude the
s s, and this is pretty ballsy. So they take the Valkyrie plan,
(16:27):
they edit it because what they're planning to do is use
the s s as a Patsy, right? They're going to, as soon as
they assassinate Hitler, they'regoing to tell everyone that the
S S did it and they're going to use Operation Brockery to sort
of take back the country from this quote UN quote, s s coup.
And so they make these edits andthen von Stauffenberg goes to
(16:48):
Hitler himself, played by David Bamber, and he's like, I have
this new plan. You should take a look at it.
And Hitler is so creepy in the scene, Y'all, I mean, I'm sure
Hitler is always creepy, but he's just the whole time you're
so sure that he knows what's going on and he's just playing
with von Stauffenberg. But it appears that he doesn't,
and he has a quick leaf through the plans and then he's like,
(17:09):
well, if you say it's good, I'm sure it's good.
And then he signs off on it. Doesn't he also make some remark
about Valkyrie? Or in German it's Valkyrie which
is a piece of classical music. I think he makes a quip about
the musical piece or something. It's like really innocent but
also menacing at the same time. Yes, and there is also a scene
(17:31):
where von Stoltenberg is listening to Wagner in his
house. All right, it's back there, yes.
It's just this whole scene thereisn't like his Bavarian absolute
treat got the back house and it's just really scary place.
I mean, I think it's scary. I don't know why I think it's
scary, but everybody in the roomis so tough.
Yeah, I mean, partially it's scary because we know Hitler
(17:55):
made a lot of weapons grade terrible decisions in there.
I don't know if we would think it was quite as terrible if we
didn't know that. He apparently spent more time in
the back half retreat than he did in any of his other quote UN
quote headquarters. So you spend a lot of time in
there and you can still visit the place.
The actual building is gone, butyou can still find some
(18:17):
foundations of the building in the forest.
So you can see the view from thebig we know that we also see in
the movie. But if you want to go there, I
mean, I think I would find it pretty terrifying to be there,
but that might just be me. Von Staffenberg is promoted as
chief of staff to the commander and chief of the reserve army,
(18:37):
which gains on better access to his large timetable and to the
man himself. At first, I think he doesn't
really want this position. That is it.
Bill Nighy, who insisted he needs to take the position in
order to get close, I think. Yeah, I think von Stovenberg is
kind of like, I'm kind of busy planning an assassination.
(18:57):
And the Bill Nighy character is like, well, do you not see how
this will be helpful in the assassination, though?
Because you'll know where Hitler's going to be.
You're forgotten his name, but Ithink it's oblique.
It's in the name of the character.
Von Stovenberg gets assigned an accident called Lieutenant
Werner von Hudson, played by Jamie Parker.
(19:19):
And I feel like this is my favorite character in the entire
movie. He doesn't really like, von
Soffenberg tells him. Look, we have this plan to
assassinate Hitler and von Heften.
It's like, OK, that's fine, I can do that, no hesitation.
Yeah, he's pretty immediately into it, which is good for him.
Yeah. So Ulbricht and von Stauffenberg
(19:39):
approached General Friedrich Fromm, played by Tom Wilkinson,
and he's the head of the reservearmy.
So he's von Stauffenberg's boss,effectively.
And and the reason why they approach him is because they're
going to need him to mobilize the reserve army during the
coup. So that's kind of what happens,
right? They assassinate Hitler, they
tell everyone it was the s s trying to do a coup, and then
they mobilize the reserve army. And then the reserve army would
(20:01):
go around and they would arrest all the members of the s s and
like, quickly neutralize all theopposition.
And so without him, they're going to really struggle to make
this important component of their plan work.
And he declines to participate. But he crucially does not rat
them out. And he points out to them that
his office is bugged and so he'snot going to help them, but he
(20:24):
also is not going to stop. Them I must have missed the fact
that his office was bugged. I did not notice, but that
that's just me obviously. But also I feel like this man
kind of wants to be on whatever side is running.
He's like, I'll see what I'll dowhen it happens.
Yeah, I think that in real life he was a little bit more
(20:46):
involved than they depict him being in the movie because his
actions later, he takes them probably to save his own skin.
But in the movie they are very much like, no, he doesn't want
to be involved. He's not involved whatsoever.
It's July 15, 1944. The assassination attempt at the
Wolf's Lair doesn't go off because Hendrick, him, there's
(21:08):
no present. They've kind of said, look, he
can only do it if everybody thatneeds to be there is there.
And Aubrey mobilizes the reservefor army, which they pass off as
a drill. So they've got a lucky escape
there. Yeah, the Wolf's Lair was
Hitler's Eastern Front military headquarters at that point, just
(21:28):
50 miles from the Russian lines.It's in modern day northeastern
Poland. But this attack, attempted
attack that we see in the film actually took place at
Berktisghan, which we have seen in Band of Brothers.
And you can go listen to our episodes about that.
But it was changed for the plot,I think, to set the stage of the
actual attack for the audience, which did take place at the
Wolf's Lair. There were at least two other
occasions on July 6th and July 11th, when von Stauffenberg
(21:51):
attended a meeting with Hitler carrying a bomb, but did not
prime it on either occasion because no other senior
leadership were in attendance. And it was kind of thought that
there's no point in killing Hitler if you don't also take
out at least Himmler, that you need to get rid of the chain of
command as well. From threatens them if they try
to control the reserve army again.
He's like, yo, the way you mobilize the reserve army and
(22:13):
told everyone it was a drill, I know what you're up to.
Don't do that shit again. And von Stauffenberg, meanwhile,
he's attacking Girdler behind the scenes for his
indecisiveness because Girdler'sthe one who keeps being like,
no, don't kill Hitler if Himmler's not there.
And von Stauffenberg is like, how many more times do you think
I'm going to be able to smuggle a bomb into Hitler's presence,
my guy? So they sort of have a little
(22:35):
bit of a row about this. Girdler tries to oust von
Stauffenberg from the group, butBeck supports him and they come
get rid of Girdler for a bit because he's the one that they
want to be chancellor when Hitler is gone.
But they tell him that the S S has his number and they're going
to be looking for him and he hasto get out of the country.
So he fucks off for a bit. July 20th of the same year,
(22:58):
Stauffenberg gets another chance.
He returns to the Wolf's lair. Conditions there are not
optimal, because the meeting is held in the summer barrack
rather than in the bunker where it was originally supposed to
be, and he does not have time toprime the second bomb.
They have two, but he only primed one.
But he manages to leave the bombclose to Hitler and then excuses
(23:20):
himself to take a phone call. And the phone call actually does
happen. It's set up, obviously, but it's
his way to escape. And he gets out of the building.
And as he does, he sees the explosion.
So he assumes that Hitler is dead and he returns to Berlin
with Front Hudson. And it's pretty close, though
they have to get out of the Roselire and they have to black
(23:43):
the way out of one of the patrols there at the date.
And I thought this was a really clever scene and I wonder if
that happened in real life or not.
But. I think they had to play their
way through three checkpoints inreal life to get back to where
their plane was waiting. But yeah, I think another reason
why we see the earlier attack for attempted attack take place
(24:05):
at the Wolf's lair is because earlier on in the movie, they're
kind of talking about how if youplant a bomb in this underground
bunker, it sort of holds the explosion in.
So all of the force of the explosion, it has nowhere to go
because they can't get out through these walls.
And so it really has is going tohave a very deadly significant
impact. And so when we see that bunker
(24:27):
in the first attempted attack, we're like, oh, yeah, like
they're going to be fucked because they set off a bomb in
there. But in the second actual attack
when we see them having this meeting in the summer barrack,
it's quite a bit different. Like this building is not a
bunker in the way that the otherone was a bunker.
And so that really hurts the bombs ability to do what they
want it to do. And additionally, I just laugh
(24:48):
at the idea of like at this point Von Stauffenberg has like
3 fingers because of this explosion that he was in when he
was hurt in the army. And so I'm like of course he
only managed to prime one bomb and not 2.
Like this seems like a very difficult task for someone with
only three fingers. As someone who can only use one
hand, that can only concur. And also another thing about
(25:10):
this assassination attempt is that Himmler's not there.
So there's like a little bit of a back and forth on the phone
about whether or not it should happen.
I think he's talking to, I forgot his name, but I really
like this actor. He's like, I want to say
Albrecht's assistant who handlesthe phone for him, but he's like
higher up. I think Albrecht's like, now
(25:33):
we're not going to do it. And he says no way do it anyway.
So this is so tense. Unfortunately for them, Hitler's
life was saved by a last minute,inadvertent moving of the
briefcase behind a heavy table leg.
So they're sitting at this huge conference table and someone is
sitting there and he's like, oh,this briefcase is in my way.
(25:53):
So he, like, moves it behind this table leg.
And that's probably what prevented Hitler and a lot of
other people from being killed because it shielded them at
least partially from the explosion.
So four people were killed in the blast, but Hitler suffered
only minor injuries. I mean, he still got pretty
fucked up, but it fed into his belief that he was invincible.
Unfortunately, he actually sent his tattered trousers to his
(26:17):
mistress, Eva Brown, for preservation, for posterity.
He was like, you're going to want to keep these fucked up
pants because they proved to everyone that I can't be killed.
And we also talked about the July 20th plot.
As we said earlier in our ClaireMolly episode, female test pilot
Melita von Stauffenberg, who wasclosest sister-in-law.
She was actually originally intended to fly the plane that
(26:38):
would get von Stauffenberg to safety after the assassination,
but the plan ended up getting changed.
We don't specifically know why, but we think probably because
the only plane that she had access to that wouldn't be
registered or tracked anywhere was her own plane, and it just
simply did not have the possiblemileage to be able to make it
(26:59):
all the way to Berlin and back. So he ended up going with the
backup plan instead. I wonder if that also in part
saved her life. We know that it's not the only
thing that saved her life, but Iwonder if she'd flown that
plane, I think she would have just.
There would have been no talkingher out of that, basically.
Yeah, probably if she'd been caught.
Yeah. General Eric Felgewell, played
(27:22):
by Eddie Izzard, Who? Honestly, at first I was like,
wait a minute, I recognize that face.
Oh my God, it's Eddie Izzard. I feel like I haven't seen them
in anything in forever. But anyway, he passes along a
garbled message to old Richt before cutting off all
communication. So he was in on it.
And basically his job was once the explosion happens, he cuts
(27:44):
off all communication. And that way no messaging can
get to the outside world. And only von Steffenberg and his
collaborators, only their messaging can get out to
everybody. And unfortunately, when he's on
the phone, he's trying to tell them that like, Hitler isn't
dead, but the message which doesn't get through.
And without confirmation that Hitler is dead, Ulbricht
vacillates. And this is a disastrous couple
(28:07):
of hours where they waste time. And unfortunately, that's
probably one of the reasons why this wasn't successful.
So Hitler wasn't dead? They thought he was there.
At least Ron Stauffenberg was absolutely convinced that he was
dead. Colonel Outbreak from but by
Christian Berkov, purchased oversignatures, and he proceeds
(28:29):
anyway. So he does mobilize the reserve
army. Bits of our precious armors have
already gone by, as he said. And across Germany, confusion
reigns as the Marymox begins arresting s s officers and Nazi
Party leaders. You think for a moment again
that things are going to be OK, even though you know the
history. You're like, yes, go on, do it.
(28:51):
Arrest them Heidi Kaufman Heldorf, played by Maldon
Markobis, who was also in Blackbrook, he said chief of the
Berlin police, and he pledges his allegiance to the
conspirators almost immediately.Meanwhile, Firm has been told
that Hitler is alive and he refuses to help the conspiracy,
so they arrest him and he's not very pleased about it.
(29:14):
Yeah, there's this scene where they're all kind of in a room
together, and they're calling various regions around Germany,
and they're trying to get in touch with who's in charge to
get their messaging out first, Trying to get in touch with
generals and whoever they can, politicians and being like, hey,
by the way, the s s did a coup. Are you on our side?
(29:34):
Are you with us? And they're trying to get
confirmation from people that they're going to be able to
carry this off, that they're going to have the requisite
support in the various parts of the country.
Major Otto Ernst Framer, played by Thomas Krautchman, is all set
to arrest Joseph Goebbels, played by Harvey Friedman.
And he literally, they roll up. You're like, OK, this is going
to be great. They're going to get Goebbels.
(29:54):
He's one of the main guys, like,let's get rid of him.
But unfortunately, Goebbels is like, wait, before you arrest
me, there's someone on the phonefor you.
And it turns out that Hitler himself, who has survived the
explosion, is on the phone. And Raymer recognizes his voice.
Of course, he knows that it's actually Hitler.
And unfortunately, this is sort of the beginning of the tide
(30:16):
starting to turn against our collaborators.
So Margarita von Oven, played byHelena Rain, she's the secretary
to the plotters at great personal risk.
She was the one who, before the assassination attempt had even
happened, she had typed out all of these announcements of like,
Hitler is dead, here's what we're doing now, blah, blah,
blah, which of course, would have gotten her shot if they had
(30:38):
caught her with them. At this point, she's been
helping them out to get people on the phone, etcetera.
But von Stauffenberg and the others start to realize that
this is not going to go well. So von Stauffenberg tells her
that she can flee. A little bit about Helena Ryan,
who's also in Black Book with Clergus Van Houten.
The two of them kind of took Hollywood by storm.
(30:58):
And even though Clergus is a bigger actress, I feel like they
kind of had a pact at the time where whenever Clary's would get
into a big Hollywood role, she would introduce Helena.
They were like a package deal, and I kind of love that.
Just women supporting each otherin a pretty brutal industry.
So I thought that was quite nice.
(31:20):
The movie shows her magnetic vonArvin desperately trying to call
von Stauffenberg's family for him.
They fled. They've gone to a different city
because he knew they wouldn't besafe if anything went wrong.
And he keeps trying to reach them that they're not able to
get through. So you're really tense.
You're like, you don't know if they're dead or if they've been
(31:42):
arrested or you get to feel a little bit for von Stauffenberg
as well. And destiny they try to make
Taken really human. Yeah, now von Oven is not only
one of our few heroic female characters, but in real life she
was sent away on the day of the coup by Treskov because he
thought she'd be sort of a handyperson to have in the back
(32:02):
pocket. So he advised her that they
might need her and if they did, they would send a plane.
And this might have been why Melita von Stauffenberg remained
on standby even though her role as a skate pilot for her
brother-in-law Klaus had been replaced.
So she wasn't actually there on the the day of the coup in real
life. But I do like that she's in the
movie for a bit longer, so there's that.
(32:23):
For sure, I'm not mad that they changed it.
So as things start to collapse in on them, the building are in
is being stormed and von Soffenberg is wounded in the
following confrontation and despite various protests, he's
in order to take Stauffenberg and company alive from
immediately. Court marshals done and
(32:45):
sentences from Crohan and from 1000 back to death.
And Beck is the only one who's allowed to kill himself, and he
even chooses the pistol that he uses to do it.
Yeah, there's sort of a sad historical footnote in that he
failed when he shot himself and someone else had to shoot him
again in the back of the neck. No, Jesus, that's rough.
(33:08):
Yeah. And this is sort of circling
back to what we had said earlierwhere some historians believe
that Fromm was more involved than, you know, this movie
necessarily clearly depicted. And the reason why he court
martialed and quickly had these main conspirators killed was
because he didn't want them to be able to give away his
involvement potentially. I wondered because Hitler's the
(33:28):
runner says he runs them alive, so he's effectively also
defiling the furor. Yeah, which will come back to
bite him in the ass for sure. And this is the part of the
movie where they get them all lined up one by one in front of
the firing squad. And when von Stauffenberg is in
front of the firing squad, von Haften jumps in front of him.
Well, he kind of stands in frontof the bullets.
(33:50):
And it's just like a moment of he obviously knows they're going
to kill von Stauffenberg anyway.But it's like a moment of
expressing this, like, loyalty and being like, you know, I
stand with you even right now atthe end, You know, I would do
anything to protect you kind of thing.
And but that scene really got me.
I immediately looked it up because I wanted to know if it
was true and it was. Yes.
And there's something brutal about the fact that after this
(34:14):
happened, like he starts into the way of the bullets and he's
killed. And they could have just shot
from Stauffenberg right in that moment, but now they pause to
take away his body 1st and then they shoot him.
It's so brutal. You can see it coming a mile
away, but it's still I wanted somuch for there to be a different
(34:34):
ending to this movie. I know it was only 12 hours from
the time von Stauffenberg planted the bomb to his death by
firing squad, and it's true thathis final words were Long live,
sacred Germany. And before they filmed this
scene, the cast and crew, led byTom Cruise, held a moment of
silence because they actually filmed it in the area where the
(34:54):
shooting had taken place in reallife.
I want to quickly mention we getto see some of the
correspondence room as well. I don't know what it's called,
but the thing where all the messages come in and that pushed
through to other people. And I really like the discussion
we see there between two of the people that work there as they
are getting messages from both the wolf there and basically fun
(35:19):
stuff and work. They're like which of the to
just do it, put through and at first to do both and then
eventually they decide to only do the messages from the Ross
layer and that's when it's officially over.
But I really like to see that discussion in there.
Yeah, for sure. And some more female characters
there, too. Women working in the the
(35:39):
switchboard. Yes.
Yeah. So Treskov, our Kenneth Branagh
character, who is one of our bigmasterminds, he kills himself in
the woods. And this is based on real
events. He went into the no man's land
between German and Russian lines, and he held a grenade to
his own throat. Vitzelman and Girdler are
executed later and from despite his attempts to get rid of the
(36:03):
other conspirators so he wouldn't get in trouble.
Or perhaps because of those attempts, he ends up being
hanged as well. And yeah, I think a little bit
later in 1945. South our main conspirators are
executed immediately and the other ones are getting a trial
and they are hanged or executed later.
So the Nazi judge that we see hollering away during these
(36:26):
trials is Roland Friesler, and he's the judge that we we talked
about in our Sophie Skoll episode.
He handed out over 5000 death sentences during his tenure, and
he died in an American bombing raid in 1945.
He narrowly avoided getting himself Nuremberg.
There's a quote I found from Tres Goff before his death.
This would have been a couple ofhours before he died, or so I
(36:49):
gather. And he said the whole world will
vilify us now, but I'm still totally convinced we did the
right thing. Hitler is the arc enemy not only
of Germany but of the world. When in a few hours time I go
before God to account for what Ihave done and left undone, I
know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle
against Hitler. A human being's moral integrity
(37:10):
begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his
convictions. That is a good letter, but still
how sad they were so close. Yeah, bummer.
We get an end card that tells usthe July 20 plot was the last of
15 known attempts by Germans to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Nine months later, with Berlin surrounded, Hitler committed
(37:33):
suicide. Nina von Stauffenberg and her
children survived the war. She died April 2nd, 2006.
Yeah. So when this happened, Hitler
invoked the law of Siphon Hoff, which is kin detention.
And so he arrested Klaus's wife,children, mother, uncle and
brothers, as well as some more distant family.
(37:54):
Melita von Stauffenberg, who wasalso arrested and detained for a
few months. But ultimately she was released
on the merits of her work for the Luftwaffe.
She was such a gifted aeronautical engineer that
Goering himself stepped in and was like, well, we kind of need
her for the war effort, so you should let her out.
And there was really no evidencethat she had directly
participated in the plot. So like you said, that probably
(38:14):
saved her ass. But some family members
unfortunately were less lucky and were executed.
Our secretary Von Oven was arrested and detained for two
weeks, but later released. And effectively the regime used
the attack as an excuse to cleanhouse, getting rid of anyone it
wanted to get rid of, any undesirable people, any
political enemies that remained.And so 7000 people were arrested
(38:36):
in the aftermath, and nearly 5000 of those were executed.
5000 Jesus Christ, the night took the long knives all over
again. It's like, let's go everybody
who doesn't agree with me. Yeah, pretty much even Irwin
Rommel was implicated, as we mentioned in our grand theodic
episode. If you recall, he was badly
wounded when he was strafed by aplane.
(38:57):
And while he was recovering, there was some murmurs or rumors
that if not directly involved inthis plot, he potentially knew
about it. And so it was strongly advised
to him that he kill himself, which he did.
I didn't. Realize it was this plot.
And poor Nina, close, his wife, she gave birth to their fifth
child in prison effectively, andhe was separated from her other
(39:21):
children for quite a long time. And Melita would operate as sort
of a go between. So she would go and visit the
children and bring them gifts and tell them about their
parents. And she would also go and visit
Nina. And she would go and visit
Klaus's mother and all these other people in prison.
Once she was out, obviously theywere in prison for quite a
while, but ultimately they did outlive Hitler.
So that's a good ending a littlebit I guess at least.
(39:44):
Fuck yes. Yeah, there's a quote on a final
end card from the German resistance memorial in Berlin
that says you did not bear the shame.
You resisted sacrificing your life for freedom, justice and
honor. And this memorial is that the
Bender block, which was where the coup was largely carried out
and also where the plotters wereexecuted.
And the street now bears von Stauffenberg's name.
(40:06):
And it was of course, as we mentioned, used as a location
for the filming. And that's the end of the movie.
I feel like we did most of our notes in the actual plot, but
you have a couple more, so go ahead.
(40:28):
Yeah, Henning von Trescov. That's our Kenneth Branagh
character. His aide was played by Philip
von Skoltis, who was the real von Stolfenberg's grandson.
I. Think it's so cool when family
members get involved in the filming of ATV show or a movie
like in Masters of the Era. We got a Rosenthal in the TV
(40:48):
show. I like that.
And honestly, there's something powerful, but the fact that
there is a von Stolfenberg grandson that these people said
to Hitler, you will not be ultimately victorious.
We will outlast you. And then they did, yes.
That's some kind of indication for sure.
Yeah, and Anne Frank wrote aboutthe assassination attempt in her
(41:10):
diary, and I will read you the passage, she said.
Now, at last, things are going well.
An assassination attempt has been made on Hitler, and for
once not by Jewish communists orBritish capitalists, but by a
German general who's not only account but young as well.
It's the best proof we've had sofar that many officers and
generals are fed up with the warand would like to see Hitler
(41:31):
sink into a bottomless pit. Which I think is very 14 year
old girl of her and I love it. Me too, I like the fact that he
remarks on him being young. I'm sure the dashing young count
was an appealing figure for sure, but apparently when
Churchill heard about this he dismissed the attack as part of
a murderous Internocene power struggle, so it doesn't sound
(41:54):
like the Allies took it particularly seriously.
I mean, what a contrast to and Frank being happy and supportive
and then Churchill being like, no, it's not a big deal.
Yeah, I guess if you're Anne Frank, you're going to take all
the hope that you can get. Yeah, of course you will.
I think that's for notes, we should rate it.
(42:15):
I had a thought for a second, but it's kind of rude so you'll
not finish the thought on air. You don't want to do Tom Cruise
possible butt pads out of tents.Or we can definitely do that.
OK, I will rate this movie. That's a tough one. 6.8 Tom
Cruise, possible butt pads out of 10.
Because, yeah, I think that it'senjoyable to watch a history
(42:39):
movie where you don't need a tonof work to remember who all the
different characters are. It wasn't dry.
Like, it wasn't just a bunch of people talking to each other in
offices. There was enough action.
Everything was tense, even in scenes where on the surface
you're like, oh, von Stauffenberg is just getting
some paperwork approved. Well, he's getting it approved
by a very ominous Adolf Hitler. And so this whole movie, I think
(43:02):
that it was nice to see some female characters having a role.
It was nice to see the German resistance a little bit more.
I do feel like they oversimplified it a little bit.
You know, von Stauffenberg, thishero who's going to rescue the
Jews, and it's a little more nuanced than that.
That wasn't necessarily his exact motive, which is not to
say that killing Hitler wouldn'thave solved that problem.
(43:24):
It totally would have, incidentally.
But also, there's really no guarantee that von Stauffenberg
wasn't necessarily a supporter of a democracy.
If he had managed to assassinateHitler, they probably would have
had another authoritarian government run by the military,
which, you know. But So all to say that I think
the movie simplified that a lot for audiences, which not
(43:44):
necessarily a bad thing if you're just going into this
without much knowledge of history and you just want to
watch a pretty tense historical thriller, which is pretty
effectively done. Like we said at the beginning, I
don't think Tom Cruise smashed it by any means, but I also
don't think he was terrible. And there were some other pretty
good performances in this movie.So overall, pretty decent.
I would say if you haven't seen it and you're looking for
(44:05):
something to watch, definitely throw it on.
You're not going to be disappointed, OK?
I will rated it possible Tom Cruise butt pads or whatever it
is out of town. It's quite a high rating, but I
just, I think my expectations were so low and I ended up
enjoying it so much and I'd already done my research on the
(44:26):
history of it that I didn't necessarily mind the
oversimplification because I agree with you.
But it doesn't irk me in the slightest and I just really
enjoyed it. So that's why I got an egg.
I might even watch it again. It's one of those it's just
really kind of tense and exciting for me.
So you get an egg. I'm sure I've never given any
(44:48):
action movie night, so there yougo.
Yeah, yeah. I really did not have high hopes
for this is a Tom Cruise movie. And you know what he said at, I
think it was the premiere of Valkyrie when it came out, he
said to a journalist, you know, I always wanted to kill Hitler,
which to me, I just when I read that, I was like, oh, this is
going to be one of those movies.But no, it'll be better than you
(45:09):
think it will be. Yeah.
I really liked it. I'm so surprised that I really
liked it, but I guess it's a surprise that it gets at a
higher rate. And like, if I had been
expecting to like it, I think itwould have been like a 7, but it
just gets an 8 for being surprisingly decent.
Definitely. Are you reading anything?
(45:38):
I'm reading Tony Rush first bookabout red shaking.
So we're trying to, and I'm alsoreading a couple of bits and
pieces here and there about Martha Gellhorn.
I know we've mentioned her probably about three times
already in other episodes, but the episode about her is coming
up soon guys. So I'm trying to do some more
(45:58):
bits and pieces here and there and I'm also thinking about
reading their finest. Is the book called Their Finest?
As well, it was originally called their Finest Hour and a
Half, but I think they changed it to match the movie.
All right, because we are covering that as well, and we
are doing that with the Donut Dollies, so that'll be fun.
(46:20):
What are you reading? I'm reading Bury My Heart at
Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, whichis, I would say, quite a famous
book about the history of indigenous people and how they
were treated and sort of the late 19th century in the US.
Took a crack at it a few years ago and I only made it maybe 1/3
of the way through. So I'm circling back.
(46:42):
I'm trying again. I think that's really brave.
Whenever I get into a book and Ican't finish, that's it for that
book and I go on to the power and never read well.
It's not that it's bad. I just went through an era where
I had a hard time finishing nonfiction.
But I've gotten so go into the habit of reading nonfiction now
that I just think it'll be easier for me to finish.
(47:03):
What percentage of your reading is nonfiction?
And I would you say is it like 80%?
Yeah, probably. Yeah, it's mild.
I find it really difficult stillreading nonfiction, especially
if they are over 200 pages, which all of them are.
Yeah, although you know what I was reading about the hang on
the Norman Mailer. Who is Norman Mailer and I
(47:25):
noticed that. He's an American writer.
Yeah, it's called The Naked and The Dead.
That's his World War 2 novel. And apparently it's phenomenal
and everyone recommends it. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll
pick up a copy. Well, it's over 700 pages, so
I'm like, I will pick up a copy because I do want to read it,
but it's not making its way to the top of my to read pile.
(47:45):
This is not a light thing. I'm going to, like dash through
in a weekend. I'm going to need some time.
You will read this book in 2027.Yes, that's.
Fine, Yeah, that's it for this episode, guys.
Thank you so much for listening.You can find us wherever you get
your podcasts. You can follow us on Instagram
at Rosidor of your podcast. You can send this officer to a
(48:09):
friend who is maybe a little bitskeptical about Tom Cruise being
in a World War 2 movie, but thiswill prove them wrong.
What else can you do? You can visit our website
www.rosie.review.com and we willsee you next week.
Bye bye.
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