Stauffenberg - conspiracy against Hitler
Stauffenberg - Kill Hitler (AKA The Plot To Kill Hitler ) is a historical - drama from director Lawrence Schiller from the year 1990 . The plot of the television film is about the preparations and consequences of the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 .
action
It is the evening of July 20, 1944. The Greater Germany Guard Battalion, led by Major Otto Remer, storms the Bendler Block , the headquarters of the putschists. Soldiers who do not take the oath of allegiance to the Führer are shot on the spot. Stauffenberg tries to escape, but is shot by a soldier. He remembers shortly before his arrest.
In Tunisia , where he was stationed in 1943, he had an interview with Erwin Rommel. Both men agree that the war is lost and that Hitler's plans are insane. Shortly after the two of them said goodbye, a bomb strikes in front of Stauffenberg. He is seriously injured and therefore flown to a hospital in Munich in Germany. Stauffenberg loses his left eye and right hand. With the help of his wife Nina and their children, he can recover quickly. But his disgust for Hitler is greater than before. He made contacts with, among others, Ludwig Beck, a Chief of Staff who had left the army, and Friedrich Olbricht. Everyone agrees that Hitler must be eliminated and they are planning a coup under the code name Valkyrie . First, Stauffenberg recruited the young officer Axel von dem Bussche, who was supposed to kill Hitler on Obersalzberg in the form of a suicide bombing. But after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the date is canceled.
Now Stauffenberg makes the decision. It is he who flies to East Prussia on July 20, 1944 to assassinate Hitler in Wolfsschanze . But the assassination attempt fails; Hitler survived the detonation. He swears bitter vengeance and has the coup in Berlin ruthlessly put down. Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim and Werner von Haeften are executed.
background
- Already 18 years before Tom Cruise in Operation Walküre - The Stauffenberg Assassination , Brad Davis, an American, took on the title role of Claus von Stauffenberg .
- The film was shot in and around Zagreb . The film premiered on January 30, 1990 on US television and on January 17, 1999 on German television. Since January 2009 it has also been available on DVD in German-speaking countries.
Historical differences
There are the following differences between historical facts and cinematic representation:
- At the time of his death, Stauffenberg was the father of four children and not only three, as shown in the film. Heimeran von Stauffenberg does not appear.
- Henning von Tresckow does not appear in the film at all; Even Werner von Haeften , according to the script, played an extra role in the coup and is only briefly mentioned by name once.
- In the film, Stauffenberg only activates one bomb, as it is shown that he only carries one bomb with him. In reality there was at least an attempt to activate a second bomb, but Stauffenberg was interrupted by Major von Freyend.
- The actual Operation Valkyrie is not shown at all; It is suggested that the assassination alone is enough to bring about a change of power in Germany.
- Ludwig Beck's attempted suicide is not shown. Although he is given the opportunity to kill himself in the film, Friedrich Fromm does not wait and orders a soldier to shoot Beck.
- In the film, the execution of Stauffenberg takes place in daylight, in fact it was shortly after midnight.
- Wilhelm Keitel was in the barracks at the time of the detonation and not, as shown in the film, in front of it.
- In the debriefing of the attack, Keitel mentioned to Hitler that Adjutant Rudolf Schmundt was among the victims. However, he only died of the wounds three months after July 20, early October 1944.
literature
- Drehli Robnik: Aesthetics of History and Affect Politics . Stauffenberg and July 20 in the film 1948–2008. Vienna 2009.