All About - History - Nero - Rome's Deadliest tyrant

HISTORY HOLLYWOOD
VS
Fact versus fiction on the silver screen
VALKYRIE
Director: Bryan Singer Starring: Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh Country: USA-Germany Released: 2008
Does this film on the failed 20 July Plot fire on all historical cylinders?
WHATTHEYGOTWRONG…
Colonel Claus von
01 Stauffenberg is portrayed
as a flawless hero, although in
reality he was an anti-Semite
and initially welcomed Nazi
oppression and Germany going
to war. Historians believe that he
only turned against Hitler when
the war effort started to go south.
The film details
02 Operation Speak, in
which conspirator Henning von
Tresckow plants a bomb on
Hitler’s plane. The aircraft was an
fw-200 Condor, but in Valkyrie,
it is a Ju-52 – a major mistake, as
the high altitude of the Condor
was why the bomb didn’t go off.
The depiction of
03 Stauffenberg as the
ultimate hero causes other
characters to be interpreted
differently. Friedrich Olbricht and
the other conspirators in Berlin
are made out as being slightly too
hesitant while the involvement of
Erich Fellgiebel is toned down.
The first assassination
04 attempt on Hitler
wasn’t in the Wolf’s Lair but at
Berchtesgaden. The change was
made to show the inside of the
Wolf’s Lair command bunker to
help explain that Hitler would
have been killed if the meeting
hadn’t been moved.
VERDICT V ry accurate to real-life events, if a
little bit too Hollywood in places
WHATTHEYGOTRIGHT…
Cruise has a huge physical likeness to the real
Stauffenberg and the supporting cast’s roles and
uniforms are mostly spot on. A concentrated
effort was made to replicate the key locations of
the plot with the central communications centre
in the film kitted out with fully operational
machines from the era.
©Alamy
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