Valkyrie: The Plot to Kill Hitler (2008) Movie Script

1
NARRATOR: Nazis.
Germans.
In the minds of many,
one and the same.
For more than six decades,
the German people have been haunted
by the ghost of Adolf Hitler
and scarred by the horrible crimes
committed under Nazi rule.
But in the 12 years that saw
the rise and fall of the Third Reich,
there were those who struggled
to oppose oppression.
Brave men and women
who risked their lives,
suffered unspeakable torture,
and shed their blood
in the service of conscience.
The story of their sacrifice continues to
generate both curiosity and controversy.
For some it provides inspiration.
But for others it poses
a deeply disturbing question.
Why were there only a few brave enough
to stand up against an unspeakable evil?
And just what were the real motives
behind the German military plot
to kill Adolf Hitler?
Today, Germany is one of the leading
nations in a powerful European Union.
Thanks to thriving exports,
which include everything
from automobiles to beer,
it boasts the third largest economy
in the world.
In the more than six decades
since the end of World War I,
there is little evidence
of the carnage and devastation
that scarred the German people.
Berlin is a city more eager to
move forward than to look back.
And it was here, in Berlin,
that Academy Award winning
screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie
was visiting on a business trip.
CHRISTOPHER McQUARRIE:
I was in Berlin in early 2002.
And I'd hired a tour guide
to take me around the city.
And we spent most of the afternoon
looking at all the monuments
and going through the city's history.
The tour guide had lived in Berlin
all of his life
and he was 14 years old
when World War II ended
and had this remarkable sense
of the city's history
over the last 60 years.
And the last place that he took me
after having gone all over the city
was to a place called Stauffenbergstrasse.
What was inside was this building in
a courtyard called the Bendlerblock.
And if you go inside that courtyard,
there's an iron railing in the cobblestones,
and not far from the iron railing
is a plaque with five names on it,
and those five men were the conspirators
who were involved in an attempt
to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
It's actually where they were executed.
And they are the only soldiers
who served in World War II
who are commemorated here in Berlin.
When I was growing up,
they didn't say we were fighting Germany,
we were fighting the German army.
It was always phrased
as fighting the Nazis.
And so the assumption became
that anyone wearing that uniform
and anyone marching under that flag
was a Nazi.
And that had been presented to us
over and over and over again
with all the World War II movies
that we grew up on.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
Now, when German young people,
if they go to other countries,
very often they are received with
"Heil, here come the Nazis,"
which is very difficult for
a 15 or 16 or 17-year-old boy or girl
to accept because they really
had nothing to do with it.
Their parents probably
had nothing to do with it.
But it still sticks to the Germans.
EKKEHARD KLAUSA: Understandably,
the Germans have been held responsible
for the actions of their leader,
although most of them really didn't
have a chance to do much about it.
And those who did
ended up in concentration camps
or on the scaffold.
And I think one ought to understand
that what happened in Germany
was the failure of
the democratic institutions in 1933.
And this is the great failure
in German history.
NARRATOR: The great failure that brought
the Nazi regime to power
had its beginning on June 28, 1919,
when Germany signaled
its defeat in World War |
by signing the Treaty of Versailles.
As part of the terms,
the Allies demanded that Germany
surrender more than 13% of its territory
and also limit the size of its army.
Additionally, the country was burdened
with a crippling war debt
at a time when many Germans
were starving.
Within a decade, the country was thrust
into a devastating economic depression.
One that saw the rise of numerous
political parties battling for control.
Germany, until 1918, was a monarchy.
After 1918, it was a republic.
But it was not a republic loved by
the people who lived here in Germany.
NARRATOR: By the early 1930s,
competition between
the political parties was escalating
and two particularly bitter rivals
took center-stage.
The German Communist Party
and the National Socialist Party,
led by Adolf Hitler.
(CROWD CHEERING)
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
(PHILIPP BARON VON BOESELAGER
SPEAKING GERMAN)
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(CROWD CHEERING)
TUCHEL: There was political crisis
from the year 1930 to 1933.
Hitler was seen by the people as a savior,
he was seen by the people
as a man who could save Germany.
His brilliant strategy was that he
always had something for everybody.
He could, for instance,
claim that he liked the little man,
but he was also saying
to the big industrialists,
I am the only man
who will save you from communism.
You had a very astute,
very shrewd organizer
who knew what he wanted,
explained it in great detail
to the German public,
financed his party largely
by charging admission
for people to hear him speak.
(CROWD CHEERING)
And eventually, with the support
of people around the President,
was able to get into power.
NARRATOR: On January 30, 1933,
under the influence of his advisors,
NARRATOR: On January 30, 1933,
under the influence of his advisors,
a frail 85-year-old President Hindenburg
gave the oath of office to Adolf Hitler
and named him Chancellor
of the German Reich.
(PEOPLE SINGING)
(HITLER SPEAKING GERMAN)
(CROWD CHEERING)
NARRATOR: One month later,
a fire broke out at the Reichstag,
home to Germany's parliament.
Hitler pointed his finger
at the Communists.
It was the beginning of the end.
He said, "Okay, everyone
who is not for us is against us."
So, they decided that all these
people who fought against Hitler
were thrown out of
the German society.
RICHARD EVANS: And about
a hundred thousand were arrested,
put into torture centers,
makeshift concentration camps.
It's often forgotten that
the legal system,
the courts and the police,
were the main way
in which resistance was dealt with.
They were simply beaten, intimidated,
arrested into silence.
NARRATOR: After Hindenburg's death
in 1934,
the German cabinet,
now firmly under Hitler's control,
passed a law abolishing the presidency.
Hitler became the supreme commander
of the military
and gave himself the additional title
of Fhrer, or leader.
Hitler used the occasion
to have the entire armed forces,
army, navy, as well as the air force,
swear a personal oath
of obedience and loyalty
to him as a person,
not to the nation,
not to the constitution.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(ALL SPEAKING GERMAN)
OFFICER: Adolf Hitler!
-Adolf Hitler!
-Adolf Hitler!
HOFFMANN: So, if anyone
acted in any way against Hitler,
then he would be committing treason.
NARRATOR: Now the supreme leader
of the German nation,
Adolf Hitler was free
to pursue his goals of nationalism,
territorial expansion,
and cleansing the country
of anything he viewed as non-German,
most particularly the Jews.
In 1933,
he'd established the Reich Ministry
of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,
under Joseph Goebbels.
(MAN SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Using the pseudo-science
of eugenics,
an 18th-century philosophy which
advocated selective breeding
as a means of strengthening
the human species,
Goebbels and the Nazis launched
an extensive and elaborate assault
in the public media
and in medical journals,
arguing that Jews, homosexuals
and other "non-Aryans
were not only politically
and socially undesirable
but genetically and biologically dangerous.
(MAN SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Hour after hour,
day after day,
year after year,
the German public was force fed a steady
diet of lies, intolerance, and paranoia.
Now racism and even genocide
seemed scientifically justified,
and even necessary.
And if anyone dared to question or object
it would be considered an act of treason
and they were likely
never heard from again.
So great was Nazi propaganda
against the Jews
in schoolbooks, school lessons,
cinema, radio, media, newspapers,
pouring it out all the time,
that people came to believe there
was a "Jewish problem," if you like.
And to think that the influence
of the Jews,
which the Nazis vastly exaggerated,
should be curbed in some way.
(MAN SPEAKING GERMAN)
EVANS: The Jews in Germany
were concentrated
in the law, in banking and finance,
and so they were
an easily identifiable group.
But what really
brings out anti-Semitism
is the defeat of the First World War.
Hitler and people on the far right,
the nationalist right,
came to believe that the Jews
had conspired in Germany
to undermine the war effort.
That's what drives anti-Semitism.
It's the desire of Hitler
and the leading Nazis
to stop this happening again,
as they see it,
this conspiracy theory
they believe in.
At our house where I lived,
| saw these torchlight processions,
and there was a force there
that was frightening.
And they had these choruses,
"Perish, Jude.
The Jew was the scapegoat
for all evil.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(CROWD CHEERING)
NARRATOR: On September 15, 1935,
the Reichstag passed
the Nuremburg Race Laws,
which deprived German Jews
of their civil rights.
Already in the mid-1930s
when I was a kid,
you would see signs at restaurants
and movie houses and so on,
"Jews not admitted."
(ALL SPEAKING GERMAN)
And unless people are accustomed
to think of
constitutionally protected rights,
and most Germans weren't
the fact that others,
people you think of as "others,"
are persecuted,
are beaten, are killed,
have their property stolen,
doesn't alarm that many people.
NARRATOR: The Jews weren't the only
group threatened with persecution.
Hitler also targeted
the powerful Catholic Church.
HOFFMANN: The Catholic Church
agreed to a treaty
with the National Socialist
government,
but it was trampled upon
by the National Socialists.
Some priests spoke out,
but they soon disappeared.
The same is more or less true
for the Protestant churches.
The National Socialists
tried to infiltrate them
and take them over through National
Socialist bishops and ministers.
NARRATOR: Angered by the blending
of church and state,
a group of Protestant ministers
banded together
to found the Confessing Church in 1933.
Under the leadership
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
it was one of the first organized efforts
to resist Hitler's policies.
They constituted about
a third of the Protestant clergy
and they rejected the
National Socialist racial doctrines
and the National Socialist doctrines
of violence and materialism.
That led to Dietrich Bonhoeffer
being arrested,
and being forbidden to speak publicly
and to preach,
so that by 1938,
he was practically silenced.
NARRATOR: Bonhoeffer would
eventually be executed,
but not before he and
the Confessing Church
managed to help more than 2,000 Jews
escape the country.
A country that continued to go mad.
Hitler's ability to silence all voices
of opposition seemed unstoppable.
But despite this, some seeds of resistance
continued to grow
and many of them were about to be found
inside the Fuhrer's own army.
(OFFICER SPEAKING GERMAN)
Adolf Hitler!
-Adolf Hitler!
-Adolf Hitler!
NARRATOR: By 1937, Hitler and his Nazi
regime had taken full control of Germany.
(ALL CHEERING)
And now, the Fhrer was setting his sights
beyond the country's borders.
On the fifth of November, 1937,
Hitler announced his plans
for taking over
Czechoslovakia and Austria.
When it became clear
that Hitler was steering toward war,
a high level military opposition
got organized,
led by the Chief of the General Staff
of the Army, General Ludwig Beck.
EVANS: Ludwig Beck, like a lot of the
generals, he wasn't really a Nazi.
He was a conservative
Prussian military officer
who'd lived his entire life,
as most of them had,
within the confines of the military.
TUCHEL: Beck fought against Hitler.
He wrote to Hitler, he make speeches,
he said, "Okay, we want no war."
But Beck resigned in the year 1938
because of Hitler's plans to make war.
And after that he becomes, in retirement,
a figure around whom a lot
of the generals coalesce
because he's very highly respected
and somebody they look to
as almost a father figure, in a way.
HOFFMANN: And Beck was supported
by people
like the Head of Intelligence,
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.
And the tipping point
that put the opposition into being
was the threat of war.
TUCHEL.: In September, 1938,
there was the first plans
for a coup d'tat against Hitler.
Beck's group said,
"Okay, let's get him,
"let's bring Hitler into jail
and we will try him."
NARRATOR: But at the Munich Conference
in 1938, any anti-war momentum
that might have helped the military
remove Hitler from office was lost.
Because it was here that the nations
of France, Britain and Italy
allowed Germany to annex
the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
And the whole German population
was happy.
No war, and a new part, a new living
space for Germany without a war.
(CROWD CHEERING)
Hitler was the greatest for Germany
at that time.
And at that time,
the German population
was not behind a coup d'tat.
And the officers, they decided
after the Munich Conference,
no coup d'tat.
So, in the year 1939,
you have no real military opposition
against Hitler.
NARRATOR: But any further dreams
of a peaceful German expansion
were soon shattered
when Hitler invaded Poland
on September 1st, 1939.
Two days later,
France and Britain declared war.
The Allied forces proved no match
for the German war machine.
Within a year, Hitler had invaded
and conquered Denmark,
Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg and France.
Initially, the military resistance
was what you might call
pragmatic and nationalist.
They thought that Hitler was
simply driving Germany into ruin
and they wanted to stop that
because they thought
that they weren't ready for war.
And after that, then in 1939, 1940,
of course, the buildup of German arms
was so great
that it enabled the generals
to win a lot of very major successes.
So the military opposition
really died down.
NARRATOR: Unfortunately, Hitler's
military successes provided political cover
for even more restrictive laws
and ever more severe punishments.
For instance, the men in the street,
the women in the street,
the refusal to use the Hitler salute
was a form of resistance
during the war
that carried the death penalty.
Or for spreading a rumor,
or for listening
to foreign radio stations.
The Gestapo often registered
that kind of activity.
NARRATOR: Among the few
who dared risk imprisonment or death
at the hands of the Gestapo
were a series of small and
largely ineffectual dissident groups.
These were usually comprised of
intellectuals, socialists,
members of the clergy, aristocrats,
and academics.
One such group, based at the University
of Munich, was the White Rose.
Its members included young students
like Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans,
and Christoph Probst.
United by Christian beliefs of tolerance
and non-violence,
the White Rose protested the curbing
of individual freedoms
under the Nazi regime.
KLAUSA: The White Rose
distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets.
This group, of course, had to remain
as secretive as they could.
When you organize a resistance
in a police state,
in a totalitarian dictatorship,
it's not advisable to tell
too many other people about I,
because then stool pigeons,
then Gestapo spies,
are very quickly going to get you.
NARRATOR: On February 18th, 1943,
Sophie, Hans and Christoph were arrested,
tried for treason and,
within four days, beheaded.
Only after they had been murdered
by the Nazis
was their identity known
to Germany and to the world.
And British bomber planes
dropped not only bombs
but also reprints of their anti-Nazi
pamphlets, honoring their courage.
NARRATOR: Perhaps one of the most
influential figures in the civilian resistance
was Carl Friedrich Goerdeler.
The former mayor of Leipzig,
Goerdeler had resigned in protest
over the Nazi demolition
of a monument to the famed Jewish
composer, Felix Mendelssohn.
He was an active resister,
even after his resignation as mayor,
and eventually he became recognized
because he was the most dynamic
and the most resolute civil leader
among the resistance.
Goerdeler and his circle
were mostly aristocratic
and wanted to restore Germany
and the Germany that they imagined
or remembered from their youth.
So their plan said
that Germany be run
on a fairly authoritarian
and hierarchical line,
with more power to be given
to what they called
the traditional ruling elite.
NARRATOR: Another secret resistance
group comprised largely of aristocrats
was the Kreisau Circle.
They took their name from the estate
where they would meet,
home to one of its leading members,
Helmuth James von Moltke.
The Kreisau Circle were against
an assassination of Hitler,
they thought that would be immoral.
But the Kreisau Circle believed
that however good Nazism might
have been in principle early on,
it had now turned against Germany
and German interests.
And they wanted
a decentralized Germany
based on Christian values
with a very weak central state.
It has to be said, it was
a really very unrealistic policy
that they had.
They clashed with the conservative
resistance around Goerdeler,
whom they thought
were hopelessly reactionary
and Goerdeler thought
they were just dreamers.
NARRATOR: By 1943, Hitler's army
was severely strained and weakened,
having opened up a disastrous and bloody
second front against the Soviet Union
and facing an ever increasing Allied force
that now included the United States.
Hitler's generals were now beginning
to question his judgment and his sanity.
After the decision from Hitler
to invade Russia,
you have the first forming moments
of new military opposition,
of new colonels, of lieutenants,
of high military officers.
EVANS: The military resistance
becomes more and more focused
and gains more support, the more
that Germany starts to lose the war.
And as time went on,
some generals, at least,
started to have moral objections
to Nazi policies,
particularly the extermination
of the Jews.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: As Hitler's systematic
extermination of millions of Jews
became evident to more members
of the German military,
a brave few struggled
to reconcile duty with conscience.
WEINBERG: They know that
the overwhelming majority
of their fellow German citizens
support the regime.
They therefore realize that,
unless they can get
and stay in some position in either
the civil or military administration,
they won't be able to do anything.
This is not a government
that can be overthrown from below
by masses of people demonstrating
in the streets.
It's got to be the alternative.
You have to grab the wheel
from the inside.
But you can't grab the wheel
from the inside
unless you're on the inside.
And that creates a horrendous
moral dilemma for people.
Because you have to participate
in some ways
in a regime of which you disapprove,
if you want to be in a position
to destroy it.
The armed forces, the top brass,
had a very equivocal attitude
towards Hitler.
It was a mixture of, on the one hand,
"The man is losing the war,
we have to get rid of him."
There was the other attitude
that they were no longer able
to justify their oath of loyalty
to Hitler
with their own conscience
as Christians.
NARRATOR: Confronted with the mounting
atrocities against the Jews
and impending defeat
at the hands of the Allies,
leaders of the various military
and civilian resistance groups
decided it was time to put aside
all political and social differences
and unite under one common cause.
To this end, a meeting was held
on January 22, 1943,
at the home of Kreisau Circle member,
Peter Yorck von Wartenburg.
(JESSEN SPEAKING GERMAN)
(LAUGHS)
(MATTHIAS GRAF VON KIELMANSEGG
SPEAKING GERMAN)
They come to the conclusion
that the only way
to initiate a successful overthrow
of the regime
is to kill Hitler.
Because there's no doubt
in anybody's mind
that in the eyes of the overwhelming
majority of the population,
this is the center.
NARRATOR: To help form a plan
for the assassination of the Fhrer,
Ludwig Beck turned to a team of
co-conspirators inside the military
that included General Friedrich Olbricht,
Chief of the General Army Office
and Colonel Henning von Tresckow,
who was Chief of Staff
at Army Group Center in Russia.
But for all involved,
one question loomed large,
Just how do you kill the most powerful
and protected man alive?
In February, 1943, the Germans were
defeated in the Battle of Stalingrad,
which claimed
nearly two million casualties.
The Russians would soon be advancing
into German territory.
(ALL SHOUTING)
As far as the German resistance
was concerned,
the time for talk was over,
the time to act had come.
On March 13th, 1943,
Operation Flash was put into motion
under the direction of
Colonel Henning von Tresckow,
who was stationed on the Eastern Front.
Tresckow was both an officer
and an intellectual,
one who strongly believed that Hitler
needed to be assassinated by a German.
His immediate superior,
Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge,
was also supportive of the resistance,
but was inclined to be more cautious.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Frustrated by Kluge's
lack of nerve, Tresckow had a backup plan.
With the help of his cousin, First
Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff,
he managed to smuggle two bottles
of liqueur containing bombs
onto Hitler's plane
Just before the return flight.
Unfortunately, the cold temperature
inside the plane's storage area
prevented the bombs from detonating.
Eight days later, on March 21st,
intelligence officer
Colonel Rudolf von Gersdorff
was scheduled to guide Hitler through
an exhibition at the Zeughaus in Berlin.
HOFFMANN: And Gersdorff volunteered
to blow himself up with Hitler.
Unfortunately, Hitler raced through
the exhibition at breakneck speed.
He was in and out in two minutes
and that was too short for the fuse
to be detonated,
so this attempt also failed.
NARRATOR: One year later, two more
attempts were made on Hitler's life.
One involved
Captain Axel von dem Bussche.
The second was to be carried out by
Lieutenant Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist,
whose father was also
a member of the resistance.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Hitler's erratic schedule
made further assassination attempts
nearly impossible.
Increasingly paranoid, he began to
confine himself to his headquarters
for his own safety.
The security organs around him,
especially the SS,
made it very difficult
for people to get close to Hitler.
The assassination plots
that occurred over the years,
point to another element as well.
Hitler seemed to have Satan's luck.
He was able
to avoid being assassinated.
NARRATOR: With time running out
and with casualties mounting,
members of the military resistance
even sought help
from the ever-advancing Allies.
The German resistance,
from quite early on,
from the late 1930s onwards,
made strenuous and repeated
efforts to try and alert the Allies,
particularly in Britain, to the fact
that there was a resistance.
Some of them had very good contacts
to people in Britain
with quite senior positions.
Adam von Troftt for example,
had studied at Oxford,
and had a lot of British contacts.
These, on the whole,
were not successful.
I don't think the Allies
took them particularly seriously.
WEINBERG: The resistance,
at the same time as they were discussing
the possibility of overthrowing
the regime and making peace,
they were also leading, many of them,
the invasion of
five neutral countries in a row.
So, the resistance in effect
discredited itself.
And nobody thereafter,
outside Germany,
was prepared to believe them.
NARRATOR: Another blow
to the resistance
came from the Allies themselves.
When Roosevelt and Churchill called for
the unconditional surrender of Germany
in January of 1943, any hopes for
a deal with the Allies were crushed.
Any German plot to overthrow Hitler
meant that they would still
have to come
to the Allied terms of
unconditional surrender,
which were political ends
which the German resistance
were not happy with.
The Allies did not want an outcome
in which a new "stab in the back"
legend could develop,
as it had after World War I,
in which it was alleged
that Germany had really won the war
until its own domestic opposition
defeated it.
So the Allies wanted to make sure
that nobody could doubt
that Germany was defeated.
NARRATOR: With little option
but to keep fighting a hopeless war
and with civilian casualties
and atrocities mounting,
the military resistance
sought new leadership,
someone who could bring focus
and momentum to their desperate cause.
His name was Lieutenant Colonel
Claus von Stauffenberg.
Claus von Stauffenberg
was a family member
of a very old noble family
from Wirtemberg.
His father had been
the Lord Chamberlain
to the last king of Wrtemberg.
And he was a devout Catholic
and he grew up in the Royal Palace
in Stuttgart
and the family castle in Lautlingen,
and so he was really
a part of this monarchical tradition.
(AXEL SMEND SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: As students, Stauffenberg
and his brothers, Berthold and Alexander,
were fans and followers
of the acclaimed poet Stefan George.
George had advocated
a German government
based on high ideals
and intellectual excellence.
And members of his inner circle,
which included Stauffenberg,
even called themselves
the Secret Germany.
It was a very, very tight-knit group
and they believed in restoring
a morally driven Germany
in the central Europe
to be a sort of
moral and intellectual,
cultural powerhouse for Europe.
NARRATOR: Raised in military tradition,
Stauffenberg had joined the German
army's 17th cavalry regiment in 1926
when he was 18 years old.
Four years later he had risen
to the rank of lieutenant,
and also became engaged
to his future wife, Nina.
Married in 1933,
they quickly began to raise a family.
BERTHOLD GRAF VON STAUFFENBERG:
He was great fun. He was loving.
He was a very gay person,
who laughed a lot.
I mean, we were raised quite
strictly, as was common at the time.
And of course
he was part of that system.
But we never minded,
and we loved him very much.
EVANS: The moral forces
driving Stauffenberg were unusual,
and unusually powerful.
He considered that the German army
was being corrupted
by Hitler and Nazism.
They were forcing or leading the
German army to massacre civilians,
to carry out atrocities
against Jews, partisans and so on.
HOFFMANN: And he said so in 1942.
He told several people
that the killing of the Jews
made the war monstrous,
and that Hitler must be removed.
In fact, he talked to so many people,
so much about Hitler,
that things were becoming a little
uncomfortable for him in Germany.
In any case, he had been
a staff officer for a long time
and wanted a front-line posting.
NARRATOR: In 1943, Stauffenberg was
promoted to lieutenant-colonel
and sent to Africa,
where he joined the 10th Panzer division
under the command
of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
On April 7th,
while on a reconnaissance mission,
Stauffenberg became the victim
of an Allied bomber attack.
He was left permanently disfigured.
Stauffenberg had been heavily injured
and he had lost one hand, and
two fingers of the remaining hand,
and one eye.
NARRATOR: In May, while recovering
from his injuries at a Munich hospital,
Stauffenberg was visited by his uncle,
Count Nikolaus von Uxkull-Gyllenband,
a commander in the German army.
A supporter of the conspiracy
against Hitler,
he convinced his nephew
to join the resistance.
Since the generals had not achieved
anything, Stauffenberg reasoned,
it was time for the colonels
to get involved.
(CLEMENS SCHAEFFER
SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Returning to active duty
in October of 1943,
Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg
was sent to Berlin
to work at the General Army Office.
And he was ready to take action.
After 1941, German officers
sympathetic to the resistance
had been carefully recruited
by Colonel Henning von Tresckow
and General Friedrich Olbricht
and assigned to work
at the Bendlerblock in Berlin
where the General Army Office
was located.
There, at the Bendlerblock,
Stauffenberg would be put in charge
of Operation Valkyrie,
an ingenious plan that would provide for
the deployment of the Reserve Army
in the event of an invasion
or civil uprising.
Ironically, it was a plan that had been
approved by the Fhrer himself.
And that gave the conspirators
the opportunity
to use the Valkyrie orders
as an instrument
for taking over power in Germany.
Of course, the assassination attempt
was connected
with a much larger plan,
to stage in effect
a military coup d'tat
and put another government in place.
That was going to be launched
when Stauffenberg transmitted
the news that Hitler had been killed.
So, the stakes were not just killing
Hitler as an individual,
but also arresting senior members
of the government like Goebbels
and others who were in Berlin.
NARRATOR: Many of the conspirators,
including the former Mayor of Leipzig,
Carl Goerdeler,
and Ludwig Beck would have important
roles in the new administration,
should the coup succeed.
Unfortunately, Operation Valkyrie could
only be implemented
under orders from one man,
General Friedrich Fromm,
head of the reserve army.
And Fromm's support for the resistance
was questionable.
HOFFMANN: Colonel General
Friedrich Fromm was a career officer.
He saw early in the war
that the German resources
were insufficient
for successful completion
of the campaigns
especially the campaign
against Russia.
And in the course of 1942 and '43,
he moved closer to a position
of thinking about
helping to remove Hitler,
but he had
such a high level of self-confidence
that he believed that
he could manage that alone,
and that he could
control these other people
who were plotting against Hitler.
NARRATOR: June 6th, 1944. D-Day.
After a massive assault
on land, sea and air,
the western Allies gained a foothold
on the European mainland.
It was now only a matter of time
before Hitler's Third Reich would
be overwhelmingly defeated.
But for members of
the military resistance,
D-Day posed an even greater dilemma.
Why bother killing Hitler
If the war is lost anyway?
(BOESELAGER SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
HOFFMANN: The participants in the
Valkyrie plot were patriots and idealists.
People who saw
what crimes were being committed
and who became convinced
that they must act
or they couldn't live with themselves
afterwards.
NARRATOR: On July 1st, 1944,
Claus von Stauffenberg was made
chief of staff to General Friedrich Fromm.
This promotion would now give him
direct access to the Fhrer.
(BOESELAGER SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: The decision was made.
Stauffenberg would assassinate Hitler.
It would put the 36-year-old officer
on a path with destiny.
It would also place Stauffenberg's life
and the lives of his pregnant wife, Nina,
and their four children in certain jeopardy.
My father didn't want her to know
too much,
just in case it went wrong,
and then she was asked questions
and under pressure
she couldn't be able to
play the role of the housewife
who's just doing only the cooking.
I think the first reaction was,
well, Is it necessary?
But then when she found out
that it was really important to him,
she was supporting him
and was absolutely convinced
that it was right
and it was necessary.
She asked, "How are the possibilities
to achieve the thing?"
And he said, "Well, fifty-fifty."
NARRATOR: On July 20th, 1944,
Stauffenberg flew from Berlin
to East Prussia.
By 11:00 a.m.,
he had arrived at Wolf's Lair,
Hitler's secluded field headquarters.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Armed with two bombs
in his briefcase,
Stauffenberg attended a staff meeting
where he was to give a status report
on the army's reserve unit.
But shortly before the meeting,
Stauffenberg was interrupted
before he could arm the second explosive.
With only 10 minutes in which to act,
Stauffenberg placed the bomb
under the conference table
and excused himself to take a phone call.
(EXPLOSION)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Having witnessed
the explosion from a safe distance,
Stauffenberg got word to Berlin
that Adolf Hitler was dead.
When Stauffenberg arrived back
from Hitler's headquarters,
he saw that almost nothing
had been done to get the coup going.
And he marched into his superior
officer's office, General Fromm.
And told him
that Hitler had been killed.
And General Fromm didn't believe it
and called Field Marshal Keitel
in East Prussia
lo see what the situation was,
and Keitel said Hitler is alive.
EVANS: Hitler and some of his staff
managed to get messages
through to Berlin.
The conspirators had not succeeded
in cutting off
the radio and telephone links.
And once these messages got through,
then Fromm backpedaled.
HOFFMANN: And Fromm said,
"You must shoot yourself.
"The coup cannot take place.
And Stauffenberg said,
"I shall do no such thing."
And then Fromm said,
"You are under arrest,"
and Stauffenberg said,
"On the contrary,
it's you who is under arrest."
NARRATOR: After locking Fromm
in a nearby office,
Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators
initiated Operation Valkyrie.
Soon after, Major Otto Remer was sent
to the Propaganda Ministry
with orders to arrest Joseph Goebbels.
He did not get very far.
And Remer said
he had orders from Bendlerstrasse,
from the headquarters
of the home army.
And there was also information
that Hitler had been killed,
and that the army must keep order.
And Goebbels said he didn't believe
that Hitler was killed
and put Remer
on the phone with Hitler.
And then Hitler said,
Do you realize that I'm alive?
And Remer said, "Yes, my Fhrer.
So Remer was turned around by Hitler.
Major Remer was persuaded by Goebbels
to move his troops
into the army headquarters
to quash the conspiracy.
NARRATOR: Utilizing Remer's newly
arrived troops as a firing squad,
General Fromm staged a desperate show
of loyalty in order to save his own skin.
At just after 11:00 p.m., within 12 hours
of the failed assassination attempt,
the General rounded up Stauffenberg
along with his aide and two other officers
and ordered them to be executed
on the spot.
For General Beck,
the end was less than glorious.
HOFFMANN: General Beck was allowed
to use his pistol to shoot himself.
He fired one shot
that grazed his temple,
and he was not even
quite unconscious,
and he was allowed a second shot,
but again failed to kill himself.
And Fromm then ordered a corporal
to give him the coup de grace,
to shoot him.
NARRATOR: At just after midnight,
in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock,
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, his aide
First Lieutenant Werner von Haeften,
General Friedrich Olbricht and
Colonel Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim
were executed by a firing squad.
With them, went the hopes and prayers
of the German resistance.
The bomb that went off under
the conference table at Wolf's Lair
had killed three German officers
and a stenographer.
Miraculously, Hitler himself
sustained only minor injuries.
Even more convinced
of his almost divine invincibility,
he was determined
to round up the conspirators
and crush them once and for all.
Hitler spoke on the radio, himself.
Something that, during
the second half of World War | I,
I might add, he did very rarely.
(HITLER SPEAKING GERMAN
OVER RADIO)
(MORSE CODE RECEIVER BEEPING)
Allied intelligence
also intercepted a broadcast
from the head of the German
U-boat service, Admiral Doenitz,
to the various U-boats out at sea,
a long message which they decrypted
early on the morning of the 21st,
in which Doenitz described elements
of the German armed forces
who were involved in the plot.
NARRATOR: For the Allies,
news of the July 20th plot
only served to convince them
that Hitler was becoming
even more isolated
and that his inner circle was crumbling.
Nevertheless, Churchill and Roosevelt
deliberately downplayed the event
as little more than
proof of Germany's inevitable defeat.
There were simultaneously, in Berlin
and in Moscow and in London
and in Washington,
feelings of fear and mistrust
that one will traduce
and betray the other.
And therefore they played down
the 20th of July
and did not make
common cause with it.
The Allies never got into a position
to act on this because,
before the plot, they were
not aware of the extent of it.
After it, it was too late
to do something about it.
Allied propaganda put this down as
an internal quarrel within the Nazi
movement of no importance at all.
I think to admit that this was a
serious attempt to overthrow Hitler
would have put a question mark
over the policy
of unconditional surrender.
So the speeches by Churchill
and the comments by Roosevelt
after the event were guarded.
NARRATOR: If Hitler couldn't achieve
victory, he could at least seek revenge.
Using Himmler's secret police,
he issued orders to arrest all suspects
and torture them for information.
In July, 1944, Baron Philipp von Boeselager
was a 26-year-old army field lieutenant
serving under Henning von Tresckow, who
had now been promoted to Major General.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Among the conspirators who
either committed or attempted suicide,
rather than be forced to name others,
was Henning von Tresckow.
On the morning of July 21,
the man who had been both
the moral conscience and chief organizer
of the military plot against Adolf Hitler,
blew himself up with a hand grenade.
In the weeks and months that followed,
hundreds of suspects were arrested.
Many were sent to
the Gestapo incarceration center
on Prinz-Albrecht Street, where
they were subjected to brutal torture
and intense interrogation.
Some were sent to be tried in front of
the so-called "people's court.
(SMEND SPEAKING GERMAN)
(JOHANNA RAHTGENS
SPEAKING GERMAN)
EVANS: A considerable number
were brought before the courts.
They were made to look undignified
by not having belts
to keep their trousers up.
This is a properly constituted court,
but of course,
there was no real defense.
Defense counsel
didn't dare try to defend them.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(ROLAND FREISLER SPEAKING GERMAN)
EVANS: The judge, Roland Freisler,
was a fanatical Nazi.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
Freisler shouted at them,
showered them with insults.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(FREISLER SPEAKING GERMAN)
Some of them still managed
to get in a few jibes.
When Freisler shouted at one of them,
"You're such a traitor,
you belong in hell!"
And the defendant shouted back
"And I'll see you there soon!"
NARRATOR: The trials, which were filmed
for propaganda purposes,
were little more than a sham.
But what followed was an end more grisly
than anyone in the courtroom
could have imagined,
when many of the conspirators were taken
to be executed
at Pltzensee Prison in Berlin.
The conspirators
of the 20th of July, 1944,
were all hanged
on specific orders by Hitler.
They were hanged with a thin cord,
slowly, in order to prolong the agony.
NARRATOR: Even General Fromm,
who had taken it upon himself
to shoot Stauffenberg
and three of the other conspirators
on the night of July 20th,
could not escape the Gestapo.
He was himself put on trial
in March, 1945,
and he was convicted of cowardice.
He should have been
convicted of complicity.
But that was a service
that the judges did him
because then he was shot
instead of hanged.
NARRATOR: For the wives and families
of the conspirators,
there was little to do but wait and hope.
Most knew little or nothing
of the conspiracy,
but their lives hung in the balance
Just the same.
BERTHOLD: The adults had tried
to keep us away
from the radio.
And on the next day, my mother
then took my next younger brother
and me aside
and told us
that it had been my father
who had tried to kill Hitler.
I was totally confused.
And then my mother said, "He thought
he had to do this for Germany."
And that was a difficult thing
to understand,
because basically
we were little Nazis, if you like.
And of course, there wasn't much time
to talk to her
because the following night
she was arrested and taken away.
NARRATOR: Nina Stauffenberg was sent
to Ravensbrck concentration camp
while still pregnant with her fifth child.
SCHULTHESS: I was born
not very far from here.
At that time, my mother was
in a concentration camp.
It was called Ravensbrck
before that.
(CLEARING THROAT) And then,
when it came to the time of the birth,
she was brought away
from the concentration camp
to a maternity home.
She wrote to her mother,
from prison to prison.
She thought of the possibility
not to survive.
Because she wrote her last will,
In case I'm dying"
or "In case of my death."
And then it starts, "If it is a boy,
it should be named this and this.
"And if it's a girl,
she should be named this and this."
And then writing down her wish
that she hopes that the children
can stay together
so that they have, at least,
a feeling of family.
NARRATOR: The Stauffenberg children,
like the children
of most of the conspirators,
were taken from their mother
and put into orphanages
where they were given different names.
In the middle of September, we were
taken to a resort where all children,
from basically all 20th-of-July
families, were put together.
I was there
with the Stauffenberg children.
I was there
with the Tresckow children.
We were all there together.
NARRATOR: In all, approximately
700 people linked to the Valkyrie plot
were rounded up
and arrested by the SS.
More than 200 were executed.
But on April 30th, 1945,
with Berlin surrounded
and bombarded by Allied forces,
Adolf Hitler killed himself in his bunker.
One week later, on May 8th, Germany
surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
The concentration camps were liberated.
(ALL CHATTERING)
And a new nation would need to rise
from the flames and ashes.
World War II had claimed
more than 50 million lives.
For Germany, the effects of the war
were devastating.
Dozens of cities and towns had been
bombed almost out of existence.
As a further humiliation,
the country was divided into four parts,
each under the military control
of one of the Allied nations.
MAN 1: Deep in the soul of Karl Schmidt
has been planted
the love of aggression and conquest.
Unless that passion is uprooted,
10, 20 or 100 years hence
a new generation of Germans
will find a new leader
who will show them the way.
How shall that be prevented?
MAN 2: A sound beginning has been made.
This time
things are being done differently.
At the end of the last war,
German armies parading through Berlin.
This time...
The legend of German invincibility
lies, once and for all,
a shattered myth.
After the last war,
this was the government of Germany.
Today this is the government.
We have come to Germany
not as liberators,
but as conquerors.
NARRATOR: But for
the surviving members
of the resistance and their families,
conditions were even harsher.
TUCHEL: After the Second World War,
the people who fought against Hitler
were seen by the ordinary German
as traitors.
They were traitors
to the German people,
they were traitors to Hitler and
they were traitors against Germany.
It was very hard
in the German postwar society
to make a new point of view for
the people who were against Hitler.
(SMEND SPEAKING GERMAN)
(HANS-MANFRED RAHTGENS
SPEAKING GERMAN)
(JOHANNA SPEAKING GERMAN)
ULRICH WICKERT: You have to realize
that when, in '45, Germany lost the war,
the liberators were the enemies.
And so the Germans sticked together
and they sticked together,
with all the old Nazis.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(HANS-MANFRED SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SMEND SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Known as the widow
of the man who tried to kill Adolf Hitler,
Nina von Stauffenberg's life after the war
was particularly challenging.
BERTHOLD: We grew up without a father.
And my mother had to carry
the burden of bringing us up.
I think by the time my father died,
my classmates had lost their fathers,
lots of them, already.
That was nothing exceptional.
Difficult to imagine today,
but that was the way it was.
I never doubted my father,
but somehow, that still,
I couldn't understand
why he'd done it.
At the time, we didn't realize
a fraction of everything
that he'd done...
...that they had done. That took...
...took a long time.
NARRATOR: But as resentful
as many Germans were
of the families of resistance members,
a greater suspicion festered
between the communist Soviet Union
and their democratic allies.
In 1948, Russian Premier Josef Stalin cut
off all air and road routes to West Berlin.
The Cold War had begun.
The Americans and the British then
organized an airlift
which for many months kept
West Berlin going, kept it supplied,
when it's surrounded by East Germany,
but they still kept it going
and I think that that generated
a lot of sympathy for Germans.
NARRATOR: By 1949,
the situation had worsened
and Germany was ideologically divided
into two separate states.
The Federal Republic of Germany
developed
out of the U.S., British, and French zones.
And the German Democratic Republic was
created from the Soviet zone.
Ironically, it would be this division that
would contribute to a greater awareness
and greater appreciation for
the German resistance during the war.
Some senior conservative
historians of the late '40s and '50s
began to write about the plot
and to try and vindicate them
and say that these were people
who tried to rescue Germany's honor.
NARRATOR: With an eye toward building
both strategic and military alliances,
the Democratic West and
the Communist East
each began identifying former
conspirators as patriots
in an effort to rehabilitate
the German public
in the hearts and minds
of their respective countries.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: On September 14th, 1952,
Pltzensee Prison,
the place of execution for many of
the July 20th conspirators,
was dedicated as a memorial
to the millions
who suffered and died
at the hands of the Nazis.
For widows like Johanna Rathgens,
the memorial served
as a place of mourning.
(JOHANNA SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Less than one year later
on July 20th, 1953,
in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock,
Berlin's mayor, Ernst Reuter,
unveiled a bronze statue of a nude man
with his hands bound
symbolizing Germany's struggle
under the Nazis.
It would be the first time that
the West German government
officially recognized the sacrifices made
by the slain resistance members
and their families.
BERTHOLD: Well, I was very young there.
It was quite exciting to see
all these people,
some of the actual survivors
of the plot,
and then so many people
that knew my father.
It is a history that wasn't always
easy to accept for everyone
in Germany,
but I've never had any doubt
that he was a patriot
and he wanted the best for Germany.
NARRATOR: But could
the German public's opinion
of the conspirators and their families
really change?
And just how willing would the world be
lo embrace their former enemies
as true friends and allies?
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: In 1955, two films
were released in West Germany
that dramatized the July 20th plot.
The first, directed by legendary
German filmmaker, G.W. Pabst,
starred Bernhard Wicki as Stauffenberg
and offered a fairly accurate,
if somewhat austere account.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: The second production,
sparsely titled The 20th of July,
premiered within weeks of Pabst's film.
Directed by Dr. Falk Harnack,
a resistance member himself,
it offered a somewhat
more complex interpretation,
one which attempted to examine
the motives of the conspirators.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: The tide had begun to turn.
After more than a decade
of being decried as traitors,
Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators
were starting to be thought of as patriots
by the German public.
(HANS-MANFRED SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Perhaps not coincidentally,
it was also in 1955
that West Germany joined NATO.
It was a positive step in the divided
country's post-war rehabilitation.
As the cold war solidified,
there was a sense in the west
that they must reconstitute
the German armed forces to help
maintain the security
of Western Europe.
It was a very difficult process
for the Allies to follow
because there was a great deal
of animosity towards
the Germans still,
for many years after the wars.
HOFFMANN: With the outbreak
of the Korean War,
it became a matter of interest
to the Western powers,
particularly America, that Germany
contribute to the defense of Europe.
The German army could not simply
be reconstituted
as it had existed until 1945.
It needed an honorable tradition.
And where to find
an honorable tradition?
The answer was the resistance.
To the people who live in Germany,
these are somewhat more agreeable
models from the past
than military occupation officers
that were brought in by the British,
French and Americans.
To say nothing of those
brought in by the Russians.
HOFFMANN: Officers who applied for
officers' commissions
in the new army
had to appear before a commission
and had to answer questions
about how they saw the resistance,
and the coup,
and the plot against Hitler.
And if they refused to accept
that the conspirators
had honorable motives,
they were generally
ineligible for officers' commissions.
NARRATOR: Berthold von Stauffenberg,
Claus von Stauffenberg's oldest son,
was one of the first to join the new
West German army as an officer.
BERTHOLD: I knew of course that I had
to live with my father's memory,
and that I would be asked about him,
that I would be compared with him
as one of the top officers
amongst his contemporaries.
My father's contemporaries would
look at me,
"Is he the same as his father?"
You know?
That's a bit uncomfortable,
at times, and unnerving.
But I survived that, as you see.
NARRATOR: In 1961, the Soviets erected
a concrete wall through Berlin
to divide their Eastern side from the West,
to stop the border crossing.
But as one wall went up,
another came down,
as public opinion about the resisters
continued to change.
It took a very long time
for the Germans to accept
that what had been done by
the German people has been terrible.
It started only in the '60s,
when the subject was brought
to the public attention through
the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt.
This is when the question of what
had happened really started to be
debated in the public and in the media.
NARRATOR: In 1964, a set of postage
stamps featuring Claus von Stauffenberg
was released in Germany.
In 1967, the Berlin Senate established
a memorial and educational center
intended to inform the public
about resistance to National Socialism.
In the late '60s and '70s,
Social Democrats came to power,
Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt,
and there was a new atmosphere
of a much more critical view
of the German past
and particularly of the Nazi past.
(SMEND SPEAKING GERMAN)
WICKERT: Very important for
the discussion in Germany,
actually had been the projection
on television
of the series, Holocaust.
Of course, the question of Auschwitz
had been discussed
in the trials in the '60s.
But the series, Holocaust,
showed emotion,
showed real people.
After each series, there was
a big discussion afterwards.
So that was the moment when
something changed in Germany.
Until that time in Germany,
nobody used the word "holocaust."
NARRATOR: In 1980, in the courtyard
of the Bendlerblock,
the following engraved inscription
was placed in the wall near the entrance.
"Here in the former Army High Command,
"Germans organized the attempt
to overthrow
"the lawless National Socialist regime
on July 20, 1944.
For this they sacrificed their lives."
But as much as the German public
had come to embrace
the members of the German military
and civilian resistance as patriots,
there was still a reluctance
to call them heroes.
The German people, since 1945,
have justifiably been
very wary of heroes.
Nazi Germany was a state
and a culture which glorified heroes,
made heroes out of almost everybody,
of course, with the ultimate hero
being Adolf Hitler.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(HARDENBERG SPEAKING GERMAN)
BERTHOLD: I'm sure my father considered
himself pretty ordinary.
He wasn't Superman.
He wasn't the hero.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: In 1987, in what would prove
to be the waning days of the Cold War,
U.S. President Ronald Reagan made
a monumental speech at the Berlin wall.
If you seek peace,
if you seek prosperity
for the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe,
if you seek liberalization,
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
(CROWD CHEERING)
NARRATOR: Two years later,
the wall was finally torn down.
It was the first step toward
a re-unification of Germany.
It also sparked
a new kind of German national identity.
(ALL CHEERING)
There was a tremendous wave
of enthusiasm and pride in 2006
when Germany hosted the World Cup,
and everything went well.
You could see German flags
everywhere.
(SMEND SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: After his trip to Berlin in 2002,
screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie
brought the idea of a feature film
based on the July 20th plot
to his friend, director Bryan Singer.
The two had previously collaborated on
Singer's first feature film, Public Access,
and on their highly acclaimed
suspense thriller, The Usual Suspects.
BRYAN SINGER: Chris and I
are great friends.
We've known each
other since we were kids.
We made World War II films
in my backyard.
Growing up Jewish, it's interesting,
for me, it was very important
to understand
the development of the Reich
and to understand
how that came to be.
I think my fascination
with the Second World War
began with a film I did
years ago called Apt Pupil.
And I knew that not all Germans
were necessarily Nazis.
It would be devastating to imagine
that the whole of a people
could be completely involved
with mass murder and such hate.
NARRATOR: After reading McQuarrie's
script, Singer signed on to direct,
excited by the prospect
of shedding new light
on a little-known chapter
in World War II history.
In March of 2007, the filmmakers secured
financing for the project,
now titled Valkyrie, from United Artists.
They also received a commitment
from actor Tom Cruise
to play the leading role
of Claus von Stauffenberg.
There was not a conscious effort
to say we're going to make a story
about Claus von Stauffenberg.
But Stauffenberg is far and away
the central character
of the drama on July 20th.
Not only because
he delivered the bomb
but because what he was
responsible for doing
after the delivery of the bomb.
He's a character that takes you
through the entire conspiracy.
NARRATOR: As the production
fell into place,
the filmmakers decided to photograph
the period exteriors on location in Berlin.
The nice thing about Berlin
is that a lot of the buildings
that were there during
World War II actually exist
and it gives you sort of this
authentic feel, and, you know,
the key to this whole thing was
being as authentic as possible.
More than anything
else you shoot in Berlin
because this is where
the events took place.
The city is haunted
by so many ghosts,
and there's so much about Berlin
that still holds on to the war.
NARRATOR: On July 19th, 2007, cameras
rolled for the first time on Valkyrie.
(ALARM WAILING)
Pause!
Take one more.
NARRATOR: The production
was scheduled to shoot for 15 weeks
and featured an international cast
of acclaimed actors,
which included Kenneth Branagh
as General Henning von Tresckow,
Tom Wilkinson
as General Friedrich Fromm
and Terence Stamp
as General Ludwig Beck.
For the filmmakers, accuracy and integrity
were key objectives.
Entire lens on Krets,
and then behind his shoulder.
ALEXANDER: Bryan wants
everything to be as accurate as possible,
which we wanted as well.
MAN: Action!
ALEXANDER: In certain cases,
we had to combine characters,
compress time and events.
But we wouldn't make
a change like that
unless it serviced the story
and allowed us to get the spirit
of what was actually happening.
The truth is better than anything
you could ever make up.
Up!
McQUARRIE: These men tried to kill
one of the most evil people
who ever lived so that they
could save their country,
save Europe and save the world.
And so we focused on July 20th
and the events of July 20th
as the thing we wanted to tell.
The story itself is so dramatic
and so rich and so real,
why wouldn't you tell the story
as truthfully as you possibly could?
ALEXANDER: We were guests of Germany
while we were there.
MAN: Nice to meet you.
TOM CRUISE: Very nice to meet you.
ALEXANDER: We got so much support
from these people.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
One more. One more rehearsal.
One day while we were shooting
this woman walked onto set
and she broke out a photo album
and showed pictures of,
you know, Lieutenant von Haeften
and General Olbricht,
who'd been at parties at this house.
And this had been her family home.
I called a florist in Berlin,
I was sending flowers to somebody,
and the girl I spoke with told me
her name was von Tresckow.
And I said,
"Oh, like Henning von Tresckow."
And she said, "Well, yes,
actually, he's my grandfather."
It's amazing. And it really opens
your eyes to realize
they had to do what they did.
And what they did really mattered
and made a difference.
(PEOPLE CHATTERING)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: When the time came to film
the emotional climax at the Bendlerblock,
the seasoned cast and crew were
unprepared
for just how emotional
the experience would be.
SINGER: It didn't hit me until that moment
how important it was to film
in that location.
This journey had come in some
way to a full circle.
We had other authentic locations,
but this one, this is it.
After researching the subject matter
for so many years,
I didn't realize
how emotional it would be
to shoot at the Bendlerblock,
and to shoot
the conspirators' execution.
Before we started rolling
the whole cast and crew stood
around the courtyard.
Chris read a letter from one
of the conspirators to his family.
"Perhaps there will yet come a time
that will judge us not as scoundrels
"but as prophets and patriots.
"That this wondrous call
may give honor to God,
"is my fervent prayer."
It's a very personal film
for all of us involved
and it is a great honor for me
to play this character,
to represent the spirit of this man,
that they had hope for the future
and the beauty and brilliance
of this country.
It's a very sensitive scene in history
and we're shooting at a place
where it occurred.
If you could grace this place
with a minute of silence
that would be very much appreciated.
ALEXANDER: To be there in the place
where this really happened...
This moment of silence
was just incredibly moving.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
MAN: And action, people!
McQUARRIE: For Germany,
it's one of the stories
of World War II that they
can be proud of.
We were there to make a movie
that told the story
in as respectful a way as possible...
'A' marker.
...not only for the German people,
who know the story very well,
but for the rest of the world
who do not.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
NARRATOR: Each year,
on the anniversary of the July 20th plot,
crowds gather
at the Pltzensee Memorial Center
and at the German Resistance Memorial
in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock.
For some, it is out of respect.
For others, it is an act of duty,
of responsibility to history.
(MILITARY BAND
PLAYING SOLEMN MUSIC)
On July 20th, 1944,
a few hundred German citizens
risked everything
in order to prove that there were still
people of honor in their native land.
In a desperate attempt
to save their nation,
and to spare the lives of countless others,
they gave their lives.
To some, the plot may have seemed
a failure.
But perhaps, more than six decades later,
it can be considered a success.
One more profound than even
those involved could have ever imagined.
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SCHAEFFER SPEAKING GERMAN)
(SPEAKING GERMAN)