Movie Valkyrie Trailer

[Gasometer]

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809913399/video/4928963

What no false accents? "I saw nuziing" or "Schulllltzzzz"?

Anyway, Singer set such a pace with the 'Usual Sus' that he must dread every new movie he makes.

The interesting thing about the movie is how far it goes with what happens after the failure. I have read various accounts over the years that the family of the key character paid a heavy price and also somewhere that the Nazis filmed the torture of those involved, and the film was played at SS Parties.

Gaso

 

[Red Black and Blue]

apparently Tom Cruize looks identical to the real life Nazi (dont know his name) from photo comparisions

 

[GAS PANIC]

i saw a german version of this last year was pretty good, not so sure about his one thought . Not really a fan of Cruise.

 

[Gasometer]

Liked him, thoroughly enjoyed Jerry Mac and then it has just gone down hill slowly since Vanilla Sky...cringeworthy...but who knows, this could be the Oscar performance.

Gaso

 

[deeman12]

I watched the trailer on youtube


I cannot wait for this.

 

[Kerrby]

Surprised at the very little talk about this movie.

Saw this last night. Great film, Cruise was great. Got confused towards the end though and it was depressing.

How much of this was true?

 

[Omar Jones]

Surprised at the very little talk about this movie.

Saw this last night. Great film, Cruise was great. Got confused towards the end though and it was depressing.

How much of this was true?

Does Hitler survive? .. Hang on - No - Don't tell me - i don't want the ending ruined.

 

[Kerrby]

Does Hitler survive? .. Hang on - No - Don't tell me - i don't want the ending ruined.

.......wat??

 

[Strike Swiftly]

Based on true story. If you enjoyed the movie, read the passage below.

20 July plot
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The conference room soon after the explosion.The 20 July plot of 1944 was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, inside his "Wolf's Lair" field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi regime. The failure of both the assassination and the military coup d'état which was planned to follow it led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo.[1] According to records of the F*hrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 people were executed,[2] resulting in the destruction of the resistance movement in Germany.

Contents [hide]
1 Background
2 Planning a coup
2.1 Stauffenberg joins the conspirators
2.2 A new plan
2.3 Attempts and failures
2.4 Now or never, "whatever the cost"
3 Count down to Stauffenberg's attempt
3.1 1 - 6 July
3.2 7 - 14 July
3.3 15 July: Aborted attempt
4 20 July
4.1 Operation Valkyrie initiated
4.2 Escape from the Wolf's Lair
4.3 Flight to Berlin
4.4 A plan gone wrong
5 Alternative possibilities
6 Participants at the meeting
6.1 Killed
7 Aftermath
8 Planned government
9 Films
10 See also
11 References
11.1 Sources
11.2 Bibliography
11.3 Notes
12 External links



[edit] Background

Oster
Witzleben
BeckSince 1938, conspiratorial groups planning an overthrow of some kind had existed in the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) and in the German Military Intelligence Organization (Abwehr). Early leaders of these plots included Brigadier-General Hans Oster, General Ludwig Beck, and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. Oster was the deputy head of the Military Intelligence Office. Beck was a former Chief-of-Staff of the German Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH). Von Witzleben was the former commander of the German 1st Army and the former Commander-in-Chief of the German Army Command in the West (Oberbefehlshaber West, or OB West).

Military conspiratorial groups exchanged thoughts with civilian, political and intellectual resistance groups in the famous Kreisauer Kreis (which met at the von Moltke estate in Kreisau) and in other secret circles. Moltke was against killing Hitler. Instead he wanted him placed on trial. Moltke said, "we are all amateurs and would only bungle it". Moltke also believed killing Hitler would be hypocritical. Hitler and National Socialism had turned "wrong-doing" into a system, something which the resistance should avoid.[3]

Plans to stage an overthrow and prevent Hitler from launching a new world war were developed in 1938 and 1939, but were aborted because of the indecision of Army Generals Franz Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch, and the failure of the western powers to oppose Hitler's aggressions until 1939. This first military resistance group delayed their plans after Hitler's extreme popularity following the unexpectedly fast success in the battle for France.[citation needed]


TresckowIn 1941 a new conspiratorial group formed. It was led by Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a member of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's staff, who commanded Army Group Centre in Operation Barbarossa. Tresckow systematically recruited oppositionists to the Group’s staff, making it the nerve center of the Army resistance. Little could be done against Hitler as he was heavily guarded, and none of the plotters could get near enough to him.[4]


OlbrichtDuring 1942 Oster and Tresckow nevertheless succeeded in rebuilding an effective resistance network. Their most important recruit was General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office headquarters at the Bendlerblock in central Berlin, who controlled an independent system of communications to reserve units all over Germany. Linking this asset to Tresckow's resistance group in Army Group Centre created a viable coup apparatus.[5]

In late 1942 Tresckow and Olbricht formulated a plan to assassinate Hitler and stage an overthrow during Hitler's visit to the headquarters of Army Group Centre at Smolensk in March 1943, by placing a bomb on his plane. The bomb did not go off, and a second attempt a week later with Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet weaponry in Berlin also failed. These failures demoralized the conspirators. During 1943 Tresckow tried without success to recruit senior Army field commanders such as Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, to support a seizure of power. Tresckow in particular worked on his Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Centre, Field Marshall Hans Gunther von Kluge to persuade him to move against Hitler and at times succeeded to win his consent only to find him indecisive at the last minute. [6]


[edit] Planning a coup
Main article: Operation Valkyrie

[edit] Stauffenberg joins the conspirators

von Stauffenberg
von HaeftenBy mid-1943 the tide of war was turning decisively against Germany. The Army plotters and their civilian allies became convinced that Hitler must be assassinated so that a government acceptable to the western Allies could be formed and a separate peace negotiated in time to prevent a Soviet invasion of Germany. In August 1943 Tresckow met a young staff officer, Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, for the first time. Badly wounded in North Africa, Stauffenberg was a political conservative, a zealous German nationalist, and a Roman Catholic with a taste for philosophy. Since the beginning of 1942 he shared the widespread conviction among Army officers that Germany was being led to disaster and that Hitler must be removed from power. For some time his religious scruples had prevented him from coming to the conclusion that assassination was the correct way to achieve this. After the Battle of Stalingrad in December 1942, however, he came to the conclusion that not assassinating Hitler would be a greater moral evil. He brought a new tone of decisiveness to the ranks of the resistance movement. When Tresckow was assigned to the Eastern Front, Stauffenberg took the responsibility for planning and executing Hitler's assassination.


[edit] A new plan

FrommOlbricht now put forward a new strategy for staging a coup against Hitler. The Reserve Army had an operational plan called Operation Walk*re (Valkyrie), which was to be used in the event that the disruption caused by the Allied bombing of German cities caused a breakdown in law and order, or a rising by the millions of slave laborers from occupied countries now being used in German factories. Olbricht suggested that this plan could be used to mobilize the Reserve Army for the purpose of coup. In August and September 1943, Colonel Henning von Tresckow drafted the "revised" Valkyrie plan and new supplementary orders. A secret declaration began with words: "The F*hrer Adolf Hitler is dead! A treacherous group of party leaders has attempted to exploit the situation by attacking our embattled soldiers from the rear in order to seize power for themselves." Detailed instructions were written for occupation of government ministries in Berlin, Himmler's headquarters in East Prussia, radio stations and telephone offices, and other Nazi apparatus through military districts, and concentration camps.[7] Previously, it was believed that Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was mainly responsible for the Valkyrie plan, but documents recovered by the Soviet Union after the war and released in 2007 suggest the detailed plan was developed by Tresckow by autumn of 1943.[8] All written information was handled by Tresckow's wife, Erika, and by Margarete von Oven, his secretary. Both women wore gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints.[9] Operation Valkyrie could only be put into effect by General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, so he must either be won over to the conspiracy or in some way neutralized if the plan was to succeed. Fromm, like many senior officers, knew in general about the military conspiracies against Hitler but neither supported them nor reported them to the Gestapo.


[edit] Attempts and failures
During 1943 and early 1944 there were at least four failed attempts organized by Henning von Tresckow and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg to get one of the military conspirators near enough to Hitler for long enough to kill him with hand grenades, bombs or a revolver (in March 1943 by Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, in late November 1943 by Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst, in February 1944 by Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, and on 11 March 1944 by Eberhard Freiherr von Breitenbuch). But this task was becoming increasingly difficult. As the war situation deteriorated, Hitler no longer appeared in public and rarely visited Berlin. He spent most of his time at his headquarters at the Wolfschanze (Wolf's Lair) near Rastenburg in East Prussia, with occasional breaks at his Bavarian mountain retreat Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden. In both places he was heavily guarded and rarely saw people he did not know and/or trust. Himmler and the Gestapo were increasingly suspicious of plots against Hitler, and specifically suspected the officers of the General Staff, which was indeed the source of many active conspirators against Hitler's life.


[edit] Now or never, "whatever the cost"

von QuirnheimBy the summer of 1944 the Gestapo was closing in on the conspirators. There was a sense that time was running out, both on the battlefield, where the Eastern front was in full retreat and where the Allies had landed in France on 6 June, and in Germany, where the resistance’s room for maneuver was rapidly contracting. The belief that this was the last chance for action seized the conspirators. By this time the core of the conspirators had begun to think of themselves as doomed men, whose actions were more symbolic than real. The purpose of the conspiracy came to be seen by some of them as saving the honor of themselves, their families, the Army and Germany through a grand, if futile gesture, rather than actually altering the course of history.

When Stauffenberg sent Tresckow a message through Lieutenant Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort asking whether there was any reason to try to assassinate Hitler given that there was no political purpose be served, Tresckow's response was: “The assassination must be attempted, coûte que coûte [whatever the cost]. Even if it fails, we must take action in Berlin. For the practical purpose no longer matters; what matters now is that the German resistance movement must take the plunge before the eyes of the world and of history. Compared to that, nothing else matters.”[10]


GoerdelerHimmler had at least one conversation with a known oppositionist when, in August 1943, the Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz, who was involved in Goerdeler's network, came to see him and offered him the support of the opposition if he would make a move to displace Hitler and secure a negotiated end to the war.[11] Nothing came of this meeting, but Popitz was not arrested and Himmler apparently did nothing to track down the resistance network which he knew was operating within the state bureaucracy. It is possible that Himmler, who by late 1943 knew that the war was unwinnable, allowed the 20 July plot to go ahead in the knowledge that if it succeeded he would be Hitler's successor, and could then bring about a peace settlement. Popitz was not alone in seeing in Himmler a potential ally. General von Bock advised Tresckow to seek his support, but there is no evidence that he did so. Goerdeler was apparently also in indirect contact with Himmler via a mutual acquaintance Carl Langbehn. Wilhelm Canaris biographer Heinz Höhne suggests that Canaris and Himmler were working together to bring about a change of regime, but all of this remains speculation.[12]


[edit] Count down to Stauffenberg's attempt

At Rastenburg on 15 July 1944. Stauffenberg at left, Hitler center, Keitel on right
[edit] 1 - 6 July
On July 1, 1944 Stauffenberg was appointed chief-of-staff to General Fromm at the Reserve Army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse in central Berlin. This position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler's military conferences, either at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia or at Berchtesgaden, and would thus give him an opportunity, perhaps the last that would present itself, to kill Hitler with a bomb or a pistol. Conspirators who had long resisted the idea of killing Hitler on moral grounds now changed their minds—partly because they were hearing reports of the mass murder at Auschwitz of up to 250,000 Hungarian Jews, the culmination of the Nazi Holocaust. Meanwhile new key allies had been gained. These included General Carl-Heinrich von St*lpnagel, the German military commander in France, who would take control in Paris when Hitler was killed and, it was hoped, negotiate an immediate armistice with the invading Allied armies.


[edit] 7 - 14 July
The plot was now fully prepared. On July 7, 1944 General Stieff was to kill Hitler at a display of new uniforms at Klessheim castle near Salzburg. However, Stieff felt unable to kill Hitler. Stauffenberg now decided to do both: to assassinate Hitler, wherever he was, and to manage the plot in Berlin. On 11 July Stauffenberg attended Hitler's conferences carrying a bomb in his briefcase, but because the conspirators had decided that Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring should be killed simultaneously if the planned mobilization of Operation Valkyrie was to have a chance to succeed, he held back at the last minute because Himmler was not present. In fact, it was unusual for Himmler to attend military conferences.[13]


[edit] 15 July: Aborted attempt
By July 15, when Stauffenberg again flew to the Wolfsschanze, this condition had been dropped. The plan was for Stauffenberg to plant the briefcase with the bomb in Hitler's conference room with a timer running, excuse himself from the meeting, wait for the explosion, then fly back to Berlin and join the other plotters at the Bendlerblock. Operation Valkyrie would be mobilized, the Reserve Army would take control of Germany and the other Nazi leaders would be arrested. Beck would be appointed head of state while Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, a conservative politician and Nazi opponent, would be Chancellor, and Witzleben would be commander-in-chief.

Again on 15 July the attempt was called off at the last minute. Himmler and Göring were present, but Hitler was called out of the room at the last moment. Stauffenberg was able to intercept the bomb and prevent its discovery.[14]


[edit] 20 July

[edit] Operation Valkyrie initiated

The conference room after the bombOn 18 July rumors reached Stauffenberg that the Gestapo had wind of the conspiracy and that he might be arrested at any time — this was apparently not true, but there was a sense that the net was closing in and that the next opportunity to kill Hitler must be taken because there might not be another. At 10:00 hours on 20 July Stauffenberg flew back to the Wolfsschanze for another Hitler military conference, once again with a bomb in his briefcase. It is remarkable in retrospect that despite Hitler's mania for security, officers attending his conferences were not searched.

Around 12:30 hours as the conference began, Stauffenberg made an excuse to use a washroom in Wilhelm Keitel's office where he used pliers to crush the end of a pencil detonator inserted into a 1 kg block of plastic explosive wrapped in brown paper, that was prepared by Wessel von Freytag-Loringhoven. The detonator consisted of a thin copper tube containing acid that would take ten minutes to silently eat through wire holding back the firing pin from the percussion cap. He then placed the primed bomb quickly inside his briefcase having been told his presence was required. He entered the conference room and with the unwitting assistance of Major Ernst John von Freyend he placed his briefcase under the table around which Hitler and more than 20 officers had gathered.[15][16] After a few minutes, Stauffenberg made an excuse and left the room. At 12:40 the bomb detonated, demolishing the conference room. Three officers and the stenographer were seriously injured and died soon after, but Hitler survived. His trousers were blown off and he suffered only minor injuries. It was discovered later that he was saved because Colonel Heinz Brandt had moved the briefcase to the opposite side of a heavy table leg when it bumped against his foot, thus deflecting the blast.


[edit] Escape from the Wolf's Lair
Stauffenberg, hearing the explosion and seeing the smoke issuing from the broken windows of the concrete dispatch barracks, assumed that Hitler was dead, climbed into his staff car with his aide Werner von Haeften and managed to bluff his way past three checkpoints to exit the Wolfsschanze complex. Werner von Haeften then tossed a second unprimed bomb into the forest as they made a dash for Rastenburg airfield before it was realized that Stauffenberg could be responsible for the explosion. By 13:00 hours he was airborne in a He 111 arranged by General Eduard Wagner.


A soldier holding the trousers a survivor wore during the failed assassination attempt.
[edit] Flight to Berlin
By the time Stauffenberg's aircraft reached Berlin about 15:00, General Erich Fellgiebel, an officer at the Wolfsschanze who was in on the plot, had phoned the Bendlerblock and told the plotters that Hitler had survived the explosion. This was a fatal step (literally so for Fellgiebel and many others), because the Berlin plotters immediately lost their nerve, and judged, probably correctly, that the plan to mobilize Operation Valkyrie would have no chance of succeeding once the officers of the Reserve Army knew that Hitler was alive. There was more confusion when Stauffenberg’s aircraft landed and he phoned from the airport to say that Hitler was in fact dead.[17] The Bendlerblock plotters did not know who to believe. Finally at 16:00 Olbricht issued the orders for Operation Valkyrie to be mobilized. The vacillating General Fromm, however, phoned Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel at the Wolf's Lair and was assured that Hitler was alive. Keitel demanded to know Stauffenberg's whereabouts. This told Fromm that the plot had been traced to his headquarters, and that he was in mortal danger. Fromm replied that he thought Stauffenberg was with Hitler.


The approximate positions of participants at the meeting in relation to the briefcase bomb when it explodedMeanwhile, Carl-Heinrich von St*lpnagel, military governor of occupied France, managed to disarm the SD and SS, and captured most of their leadership. He travelled to G*nther von Kluge's Headquarters and asked him to contact the Allies, only to be informed that Hitler was alive.[18] At 16:40 Stauffenberg and Haeften arrived at the Bendlerblock. Fromm, presumably to protect himself, changed sides and attempted to have Stauffenberg arrested. Olbricht and Stauffenberg restrained him at gunpoint and Olbricht then appointed General Erich Hoepner to take over his duties. By this time Himmler had taken charge of the situation and had issued orders countermanding Olbricht's mobilization of Operation Valkyrie. In many places the coup was going ahead, led by officers who believed that Hitler was dead. City Commandant, and conspirator, General Paul von Hase ordered the Wachbattalion Großdeutschland, under the command of Major Otto Ernst Remer, to secure the Wilhelmstraße and arrest Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.[19] In Paris St*lpnagel issued orders for the arrest of the SS and SD commanders (such as Knochen and HSSPF Oberg). In Vienna, Prague, and many other places troops occupied Nazi Party offices and arrested Gauleiters and SS officers.


[edit] A plan gone wrong
At around 18:00 the commander of defense group III (Berlin) General Joachim von Kortzfleisch was summoned to the Bendlerblock but he angrily refused to obey Olbricht's orders and kept shouting "the F*hrer is alive"[20] so he was arrested and held under guard. General Karl Freiherr von Th*ngen was appointed in his place, but he also proved to be of little help. General Fritz Lindemann who it was intended would make a proclamation to the German people over the radio failed to appear and as he held the only copy, Beck had to work on a new one. [21]

The decisive moment came at 19:00, when Hitler was sufficiently recovered to make phone calls. He was able to phone Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry. Goebbels arranged for Hitler to speak to the Major Remer, commander of the troops surrounding the Ministry, after assuring him that he was still alive, Hitler ordered Remer to regain control of the situation in Berlin. Major Remer ordered his troops to surround and seal off the Bendlerblock, but not to enter the buildings.[19] At 20:00 a furious Witzleben arrived at the Bendlerblock and had a bitter argument with Stauffenberg, who was still insisting that the coup could go ahead. Witzleben left shortly afterwards. At around this time the planned seizure of power in Paris was aborted when Field Marshal G*nther von Kluge, who had recently been appointed commander-in-chief in the west, learned that Hitler was alive.

As Remer regained control of the city and word spread that Hitler was still alive the less resolute members of the conspiracy in Berlin also now began to change sides. Fighting broke out in the Bendlerblock between officers supporting and opposing the coup, and Stauffenberg was wounded. By 23:00 Fromm had regained control, hoping by a show of zealous loyalty to save himself. Beck, realizing the game was up, shot himself — the first of many suicides in the coming days. Fromm convened an impromptu court martial consisting of himself, and sentenced Olbricht, Stauffenberg, Haeften and another officer, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim, to death. At 00:10 on 21 July they were executed in the courtyard outside, possibly to prevent them from revealing Fromm's involvement.[22] Others would have been executed as well, but at 00:30 the SS, led by Otto Skorzeny, arrived and further executions were forbidden. Fromm went off to see Goebbels to claim credit for suppressing the coup. He was immediately arrested and later was executed in March 1945 on charges he had failed to report and prevent the coup on 20 July.[23]

 

[fairdinkum]

IIRC I saw the trailer to this film some time back and if memory serves I remember thinking to myself that a few scenes reminded me of one of the greatest songs of all time...

[YOUTUBE]TYhBRPGjU5A[/YOUTUBE]

 

[AndyLesPaul]

I would have to say, this film had a great plot, and could have been an ocsar winning film, had it been made properly.

The lack of accents was rather amusing, though it would have also been amusing to a German Accent speaking Tom Cruise.

It was a little too long, and it is the first movie i've ever considered sleeping through.

 

[Kerrby]

I think that if Cruise had a german accent, it would've been corny and wouldn't have suited.

I can't get over how awesome this film was.