The Analysis of The Movie "Valkyrie"

In the movie “Valkyrie”, a hollywood produced motion picture portraying the failed 1920 German coup to assassinate Hitler and surrender to the Allies, the producers and writers made several false dramaticized scenes and several historically correct scenes. Movie writers tend to write scenes that add either drama, tension or violence to draw the audience in.

The costumes were all true to the time and detail was spot on. Props and resources used for props were especially well done. Some messages in the movie were copied exactly from originals that were taken from WWII archives. Vehicles were in the correct time period including tanks and planes. The location called “The Wolf Den” was built to be an identical replica which took months to construct. For most of the movie, it stuck to the actual plot line. In the beginning of the movie, it shows a german army general making a bomb and delivering it to a plan which hitler was on in attempt to kill him. The bomb did not detonate though and left a fake bottle of liquor with a bomb in it sitting on an army generals desk in need to be collected.

The movie portrays all of this accurately up until it shows the General himself retrieving the bottle when in fact he sent an intern to collect it. The main character of the movie, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, was portrayed as good hearted man who seemed to always disagree with Hitler’s ideals, when he was actually originally a big supporter of the Nazi party. He participated in several massacres and did believe in removal of Jewish culture but was against genocide like most German leaders.

Stauffenberg, like many others started to oppose Hitler when it was apparent that he was on the losing side. In the movie, it shows Stauffenberg as a main leader and creator of the final coup. This was not the case. It was in fact Colonel Henning Von Tresckow that actually came up with the plan. It also showed the resisting army generals in need of guidance which was not accurate. When the coup failed, most of the members were taken to be judged and executed. One man that was not originally identified as a coup member was Werner Von Haeften (Stauffenberg’s assistant and personal aid).

In the movie it showed him watching the execution of several of his friends and when Stauffenberg was standing in front of the firing squad, Haeften walked in between Stauffenberg and the nazis and exposing himself as a traitor. He was killed on the spot. This did not happen. Haeften was later discovered and executed. While the movie mainly stuck to the actual events that occured, the movie was at times made to be over dramatized to draw the audience in but ended up being both a good movie and accurate to a point.