# The national hero dividing Germans (Claus von Stauffenberg,Valkyrie) - BBC News



## Yrys (25 Jan 2009)

Threads on the movie  Valkyrie :

Tom Cruise Nazi Movie (about Claus von Stauffenberg) Going Forward (Fox News)

 German war film challenges taboo - BBC


The national hero dividing Germans

*The film Valkyrie tells the story of an attempt on Hitler's life by an army colonel, 
Claus von Stauffenberg, played by Tom Cruise. In Germany the question whether 
it does justice to the German Resistance is being fiercely debated, as Dan Payne 
discovered.*






_Stauffenberg planted a briefcase 
bomb in a staff meeting to kill Hitler_

If you are getting off a train while on your way to meet a contact in an historic part 
of Stuttgart, it is a good idea not to graze your right hand against a door hinge so 
hard that you lose most of the skin from your middle knuckle. I know, because this
is just what happened as I was struggling to reach an appointment with Christopher 
Dowe.

Luckily, he was very understanding when we met, and even helped to dress the 
wound, though I can't help wondering what went through his mind as he saw a 
flustered and cold British reporter wading through the snow with a suitcase in 
one hand and blood dripping from the other.

Dr Dowe works with the Baden-Württemberg Stauffenberg Association, a group 
aiming to maintain the memory of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. The 36-year-old 
soldier, portrayed in Valkyrie by Tom Cruise, planted the bomb that so nearly killed 
Hitler on 20 July 1944, and perhaps could have brought World War II to an early end.

In the event, the coup attempt failed. Stauffenberg and his co-plotters were still 
seen as traitors by most Germans even after the war and the collapse of the Nazi 
state. In an opinion poll in 1956, only 20% of people agreed with the idea of 
naming a school after Stauffenberg.

Speaking to me at an exhibition on the Colonel's life in Stuttgart's Altes Schloss, 
Dr Dowe said it was an uncomfortable time for many Germans. "From the 1950s 
onwards," he explained, "people who lived through 1933 to 1945 were tackling 
the question, 'Were you part of the Resistance?'"

*Honouring the plotter*s

Eventually, the perception in German minds of the conspirators changed from 
that of traitors to heroes. In the exhibition room Dr Dowe even showed me 
special Stauffenberg Medals from the 1960s, which were given to the winners 
of a hill-walking tournament.

The publicity surrounding Valkyrie has brought up the topic of the anti-Nazi 
resistance as a whole, not just the soldiers and officers who had access to 
Hitler. Not far from Berlin's Tiergarten is the German Resistance Memorial 
Centre, in an imposing light-grey building called the Bendlerblock, formerly 
the headquarters of the German High Command.

It tells the stories of numerous people who dared to make their own stand 
against Hitler and his government. "We get 100,000 visitors every year," 
the Memorial Centre's director, Dr Johannes Tuechel, explained to me. 
"The Centre aims to show there are limitations to order and obedience."

Around 16,000 people were executed by order of the so-called People's Courts 
for resistance activity during the war, and a further 30,000 were put to death 
by military tribunals. In one example, the Munich students Hans and Sophie 
Scholl were tried, convicted, and guillotined for high treason on the same 
day in February 1943.

Their crime? Distributing leaflets that told of how huge numbers of Jews 
were being murdered in concentration camps. In another, an Austrian 
farmer called Franz Jaegerstaetter was beheaded in August 1943 for 
saying publicly the war was wrong and for refusing to serve in the 
German army.

*Inside the Resistance*

One German who won't be seeing Valkyrie is 65-year-old Peter Thunsdorff 
from Weinheim near Frankfurt. "It is a Hollywood action movie," he said, 
"not a serious historical picture."

A former insurance rep, Peter has an understandable interest in the German 
Resistance - his mother distributed Communist Party pamphlets in the 1930s, 
criticising the government.

Elfriede Thunsdorff-Mollenhauer made up her mind about the Nazis right 
from the start. "She joined the Communists because no other anti-
government group was so organised," her son explained.





_As a Communist, Elfriede risked being 
sent to a concentration camp_

Elfriede was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937, but managed somehow 
to bluff her way to freedom. Peter told me of a heart-stopping moment 
on the day of the Stauffenberg bomb.

"I was a year old," he said, "and my mother took me to meet my father 
at the railway station, when he yelled 'Damn that bomb - why didn't 
it work?' Amazingly, neither of them was reported or arrested." 

*Unworthy hero*

Peter Thunsdorff is critical not just of the Valkyrie movie, but also generally 
of how the German Resistance is remembered. He feels that maybe too 
much attention is given to Stauffenberg and the officers.

"Stauffenberg was a royalist and a nationalist," he said. "The parties he 
supported originally backed Hitler and helped him form his first government. 
If my mother could see in 1933 how bad the Nazis were for Germany, why 
couldn't others?"

But however many Germans choose to watch Tom Cruise portray one of 
their national heroes, they'll be giving a thought also to those not so 
famous but equally brave compatriots who risked all in the fight against 
Nazism.

Dr Johannes Tuechel at the Memorial Centre puts it like this: "People are 
very interested in the resistance movement, because it helps them to ask 
themselves, 'If a murderous dictator took over your country, what would 
you do?' We can never stop asking that question."


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## AirCanuck (26 Jan 2009)

Very interesting.  I saw the film myself and thought it was quite good - I never realized they actually had control of most of Berlin for a while.  

Also certainly never realized that people were beheaded/guillotined by the Germans!  Seems a little archaic.


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## geo (26 Jan 2009)

Archaic - yes

Effective show stopper.... most assuredly


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## George Wallace (26 Jan 2009)

AirCanuck said:
			
		

> Also certainly never realized that people were beheaded/guillotined by the Germans!  Seems a little archaic.



And what did you think of the Machete Masacres in the Congo in the 1960's and the Machete Masacres in Rwanda (formerly the Belgian Congo) in the 1990's?  Seems a little archaic don't they?  There is no time limits or expiry dates to the degree that one can find "man's inhumanity to man."


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## AirCanuck (26 Jan 2009)

I never said they were worse, only that I wasn't aware of them.


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## George Wallace (26 Jan 2009)

I think you missed my point.  The atrocities that were commit ed and are being commit ed in various regions today are sometimes quite barbaric.  Look at the Taliban beheadings as such an example.  Even some of the punishments being delved out in the SE Asian regions are still quite primitive.  Have we really advanced much beyond those cruel times of the guillotine?


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## AirCanuck (26 Jan 2009)

no, no, I see your point.  And I'm not saying that we have advanced beyond it or anything, just that I didn't really realize that that sort of punishment was occurring so recently in the western world.


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## geo (26 Jan 2009)

1st world countries have become waay too "civilized" for such things.... while those 2nd & 3rd world countries probably feel that the psychological impact of using such barbarity works in their favour.


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## AirCanuck (26 Jan 2009)

was that a sarcastic remark in reference to my own?


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## geo (26 Jan 2009)

Who'se being sarcastic ?


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## mariomike (26 Jan 2009)

AirCanuck said:
			
		

> Also certainly never realized that people were beheaded/guillotined by the Germans!  Seems a little archaic.



The guillotine remained in service in France until they abolished the death penalty in 1981. Germany used it for the last time in 1949.
An interesting read on the subject is "The 20th of July" by Hans Hellmut Kirst.


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## starseed (29 Jan 2009)

I didn't go see Valkyrie (most decidedly not a Tom Cruise fan) but I am glad someone made a film about the July 20 plot. The perception that the whole german military either blindly or willfully supported Nazi policy is very unfair to a lot of good men. A large portion of the German general staff and many of Hitler's field commanders either passively resisted some of Hitler's more colourful orders, like his Commando directive (Hoth and Manstein simply "forgot" to pass it on to their subordinates on the eastern front) or actively flouted his authority. 
Paradoxically, some of the latter were among his favourite generals...Rommel being the most obvious example. He was fighting mixed allied armies (8th army had troops from India and Africa in addition to the white european and commonwealth troops) and yet displayed a level of chivalry that earned him a great deal of respect from both his own army and his oppos. Numerous times he refused to execute non-white prisoners, something that got plenty of his colleagues dismissed and even executed...yet until his complicity in the July 20th plot was conclusively proven to Hitler he was arguably his favourite Field commander.

 /endrant


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## AirCanuck (30 Jan 2009)

starseed said:
			
		

> I didn't go see Valkyrie (most decidedly not a Tom Cruise fan) but I am glad someone made a film about the July 20 plot. The perception that the whole german military either blindly or willfully supported Nazi policy is very unfair to a lot of good men. A large portion of the German general staff and many of Hitler's field commanders either passively resisted some of Hitler's more colourful orders, like his Commando directive (Hoth and Manstein simply "forgot" to pass it on to their subordinates on the eastern front) or actively flouted his authority.
> Paradoxically, some of the latter were among his favourite generals...Rommel being the most obvious example. He was fighting mixed allied armies (8th army had troops from India and Africa in addition to the white european and commonwealth troops) and yet displayed a level of chivalry that earned him a great deal of respect from both his own army and his oppos. Numerous times he refused to execute non-white prisoners, something that got plenty of his colleagues dismissed and even executed...yet until his complicity in the July 20th plot was conclusively proven to Hitler he was arguably his favourite Field commander.
> 
> /endrant



he was so well thought of that the Allies had to refer to him simply as 'the enemy' rather than Rommel to try to thwart the troops' admiration for him.


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