"Valkyrie"--Self-serving Twaddle

“Valkyrie” is probably a good movie; I don’t think I’ll bother to go out to see it. I’ve known the story for over fifty years—and it doesn’t do a thing to prove the nobility of Germany’s resistance to me. Sorry, guys, the circumstances and facts of the actual situation do no such thing.
I understand that the film director, an American Jew named Bryan Singer, was eager to find proof that at least a few Germans were better than Auschwitz. I, born of German parentage (and occasionally called “Nazi” during World War II as a result), am equally eager. But this story doesn’t do it.
The plotters who tried to blow Hitler up at his Prussian Headquarters were far more self-serving than they were either heroic or humanitarian. They took terrible risks and many (including Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox) paid a ghastly price, no doubt.
Hitler had battled the German nobility (upper class) throughout his twelve years in power. Look at the list of conspirators: “Von” here, “von” there—that means basically “ruler of”—or “Baron” this or “Count” that. They despised him as an uncouth agitator from the slums of Vienna.
This was the historic class from which Field Marshalls were chosen. These were the Junkers who had waged German wars for over a thousand years. They had used Hitler to counter the Communists back in the 1920s (sort of a German Joe McCarthy)—but they had no respect for him.
Their reasons weren’t moral; they were social and class based. Hitler was delighted to finally have an excuse to wipe this class out. His Gestapo arrested, tortured and executed thousands of them after July 20, 1944. One could almost say that Hitler did not cement his power in Germany until nine months before the Reich was finished.
They could have gotten rid of Hitler in 1938 when they realized his bluff at Munich might destroy Germany and their precious army. (The Czech border defense would have stopped the badly equipped Wehrmacht cold, leaving only eight half-trained German divisions to face the entire 600,000 man French Army in the west.)
As Chamberlain and Daladier flew to Munich, two panzer divisions were dispatched by German Generals to take Hitler into custody. Only when they learned that the British and French would do their job for them—and force the Czechs to give up their forts without a fight, were the divisions recalled.
When Hitler won spectacularly in Scandinavia and France in 1940, the German resistance went quietly to sleep. (We’re winning; don’t rock the boat.) They were lockstep with Hitler during the bombing of London, the reinforcing of Italy in North Africa.
It was here, in North Africa, battling to expand the German Reich, that Claus VON Stauffenberg (the bomber who tried to kill Hitler) was wounded and disfigured. But Hitler was still winning. Next Spring he took Yugoslavia and Greece. Not a peep. That summer there were worried mumbles as Hitler took on Russia.
But he drove to the gates of Moscow, surrounded Leningrad, and the following year drove deep into the Ukraine taking the Crimea. The murmurs grew louder as Hitler stalled out in 1943. For the first time since the dangerous days of 1938, there were serious thoughts of removing a failing CEO—after all, a corporate CEO is often forgiven anything as long as he’s paying good dividends. It’s when they stop … .
The year 1943 brought a string of disasters worthy of the recent Wall Street meltdown. Three hundred thousand Germans were taken prisoner in Russia, an equal number in North Africa. Mussolini fell; Sicily and then Italy were invaded. The Russians went over onto the offensive.
Next year was worse. Bombs rained on every city in Germany. The Allies established a secure base on the shores of France. They took Rome and were racing north to the Alps. The Wehrmacht was driven out of Russia and the Soviets were in turn driving on Warsaw, just east of Germany.
To save Germany from the fate it had meted out to nearly every other country in Europe, the German resistance decided to get serious the summer of ‘44. The object was to protect Germany, not save lives. They tried, failed, and those that lived watched Germany reduced to rubble. There was no moral high ground here. Their motives were no different than those of any other criminal who finally turns on his confederates in hopes of a lighter sentence.
Oh—“but they also wanted to save Jewish lives from the ovens”. Don’t tell me they didn’t know something nasty was going on. They couldn’t get munitions shipped to the front because Himmler was reserving the trains to ship Jews to the gas ovens.
The time for the resistance to worry about Jewish wellbeing was after Krystallnacht in November, 1938. Or even before, when Jews got yanked out of better schools and were made to sell their businesses for a pittance and wear yellow stars. That’s when the real heroes of World War II stepped up. The year when vengeful Russian and Allied Armies were at the door was a little late.
I understand the great desire to pluck some nobility of spirit out of the murk and muck that became the Germany of World War II. I wish this sometimes moving story did just that—for my own sake, if no one else’s.
But it doesn’t.