Vox Nova at the Movies: Valkyrie
Valkyrie tells the story of the 20 July plot to kill Hitler carried out by German officers in the summer of 1944. Tom Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the central figure in both the organization and execution of the plot.
I thought the film was executed well. It manages to maintain suspense despite the fact that for most of the movie not that much is actually happening, and while I can’t call the film especially insightful or moving, the compelling nature of the subject matter does a lot to carry the film forward.
Watching the film did raise two issues , neither of which (for understandable reasons) were explored in the film, but which may warrant further reflection.
The first has to do with the nature of oaths. After Hitler came to power in 1933, he required all German officers to swear an oath of loyalty to him personally. In many cases, it appears that one of the things holding a given officer back from joining one of the many anti-Hitler plots was the knowledge that this would require violating their oath. The oath is alluded to several times in the film, but the moral issues involved are never really explored, presumably because having characters agonize over whether it was right to kill Hitler would not have worked dramatically. Still, the matter does raise some interesting questions. St. Thomas More, for example, was canonized largely based on his firm position on the moral sacredness of oath taking, and while I have little doubt that one can reconcile treating both More and Stauffenberg as heroes, exactly how one goes about doing so could have profound moral implications.
The other issue has to do with speculation on what would have happened had the coup gone off successfully (I trust I won’t be spoiling the ending for anyone if I reveal that the plot is unsuccessful). After seeing the movie, a friend opined that perhaps it was a good thing the 20 July plotters were not able to kill Hitler. His reasoning was that if the plotters had succeed and ended the war just after the Normandy invasion, this would have left them vulnerable to the charge that Germany had once again been “stabbed in the back” and the whole cycle would have repeated itself again.
Maybe. I’m inclined to think, though, that a phenomenon like Hitler was not likely to recur again. Ending the war in 1944 would have saved Europe from a great deal of death and destruction, and would likely have prevented Eastern Europe from falling under Soviet domination for the next 40 years. Avoiding these certain evils seems worth the uncertain risk of other evils down the road.
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Does Tom Cruise succeed in being not just Tom Cruise?
The movie sounds so good, but I usually find him virtually unbearable in his roles.
This whole oath nonsense goes back to feudalism, fealty and such. The largely Prussian-run Wehrmacht had this following-orders business drilled into people like few other countries, more so than even the militaristic USA. For the longest time, personal morality had to take second place to this imaginary obedience owed to the country etc. For the thus brainwashed, it was very hard to overcome. Rommel, Canaris, Stauffenberg…
“Fahneneid” – Oath to the flag (sound familiar ?)
“Treueschwur” – Swearing one’s fidelity (Semper Fi)
“Fuehereid” In addition to this German tradition of “Obrigkeitsdenken” (submission to authority not just in deed but thought) and oaths, the Wehrmacht had the oath to the lunatic himself. Not just country, but Mr. Hitler – L’etat: c’est moi.
This Hitler-oath was not confined to the Wehrmacht. Here the oath Lutheran pastors had to swear:
Ich swear an oath to God the All-knowing and holy, that I, as a servant called to preach, and in any other spiritual faculty, as befits a servant of the Gospel in the German Lutheran church, swear to be faithful and obedient to the leader of the German people, Adolf Hitler and that I will sacrifice anything and perform any service for the German people that behooves a German Lutheran man, furthermore that I will execute the duties entrusted to me according to the statutes of the German Lutheran Church and the orders based on them that are given me; lastly, that I will serve my appointed parish as proper preacher and caretaker-of-souls. with all my force in love and faithfulness. (Yes that actually is one sentence)
So help me God!
This was an excellent movie.
Fools. von Stauffenberg and the rest. If they’d really wanted to get rid of Hitler why didn’t they do it earlier? No, they waited until they were losing the war. They were perfectly happy to have him whie they were winning. I don’t buy the current portrayal of them as conscience-driven and noble.
But a good, enjoyable movie nevertheless.
Fools. von Stauffenberg and the rest. If they’d really wanted to get rid of Hitler why didn’t they do it earlier? No, they waited until they were losing the war.
Actually the military plots to get rid of Hitler go back as far as 1938.
A brave man tried to take out Hitler all by himself, and almost succeeded. Georg Elser:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,586094,00.html
Actually the military plots to get rid of Hitler go back as far as 1938.
Maybe. But they didn’t try hard enough, did they?
I remember having this conversation with my dad, a retired professor of history, some years ago. Trying to be provocative, I asked him, “If I gave you a time machine and a rifle, would you go back in time and kill Hitler?”
My dad, a real dyed-in-the-wool New Deal Democrat and campus liberal, immediately answered yes.
I asked him, again provocatively, “Well, Dad, who are you to take that life?”
And he said, “History has made its judgment.”
And that was that.
I remember having this conversation with my dad, a retired professor of history, some years ago. Trying to be provocative, I asked him, “If I gave you a time machine and a rifle, would you go back in time and kill Hitler?”
My dad, a real dyed-in-the-wool New Deal Democrat and campus liberal, immediately answered yes.
Well, of course. Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.
:-)
I recently heard that there were 23 failed attempts at assasination. Hitler, in character, took all their failures as a sign of his unique “destiny”.