Cruising to Valkyrie

I told myself when I first discovered Tom Cruise was starring in the upcoming film about the 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler that I wasn’t going to go off the deep end. After all, Cruise might be able to capture the complex character of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg; even if he is a foot too short…

But from what I’ve seen of the trailers for Valkyrie, with Cruise shouting & scowling—basically hamming it up, because you couldn’t possibly have an anti-Nazi hero without histrionics—I can’t decide whether to cringe or pound something.

I’m not all that fussed about him being a Scientologist; he’s an actor, after all, & one presumes an actor can manage a Roman Catholic.

It’s the parading about, being the freaking hero that’s such an abomination. Stauffenberg’s road to 20 July was long & difficult. For a deeply religious Catholic, a German officer imbued in the idea that duty means obedience to laws & leaders—concluding that the only action that would save Germany was a coup to assassinate Hitler (& Goering & Himmler, which was the plan) & replace them with a new government was wrenching.

It wasn't just an assassination; it was a coup. Assassination would have accomplished nothing but chaos; they wanted a constructive outcome that would save Germany from the destruction it was clearly headed for.

(& it's notable that it was the military, the group most closely bound by oath & sense of duty, to Hitler that made multiple attempts to remove him from power. Not civilians, not businessmen, not clergy; the military.)

Piecing together like-minded officers was a painstaking process & fraught with peril. Keeping a conspiracy secret in a police state is not easy, & the plotters needed enough high-powered leaders to form a post-Nazi government, as well as a plan for that government’s policies. One had to carefully sound out colleagues, because an officer's duty is to the state, & it would be the responsibility of any not a supporter to rat out the rest of them. (In the event, there were those who declined to participate; but they kept the secret.)

It wasn’t action-heroics, it was excruciatingly slow & intense.

The events of 20 July & its aftermath were tragic. Stauffenberg had time only to arm one of the two bombs in his briefcase. After he left the map room at Rastenberg, someone moved the briefcase behind a thick table leg, so that when the bomb went off, Hitler suffered only minor injuries. There was confusion in Berlin over how to carry out the coup, & in the end it was crushed before it really started.

Stauffenberg was shot late that night, his last words “Long live Germany!” He was lucky in his form of execution; hundreds were given show trials & hanged by piano wire from meat hooks. Others were thrown into prison, many executed just before Germany’s surrender in 1945. (Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, not at the heart, but implicated in the plot, was forced to commit suicide to spare his family being imprisoned.)

I suppose it’s the “Long live Germany!” that got Cruise. How could he resist such an exit line?

He’s told reporters that he was “amazed” to discover it was a true story. That just makes my teeth hurt.

Well, what’s done is done. They’re releasing the film on Christmas Day, & the studio hopes Cruise will be a big box office draw.

It’s just a pity that millions of people will learn about Stauffenberg & his comrades through this film, & that they’ll think Cruise is an accurate representation.

If they even care.