Personally, I don't like Tom Cruise. What I'm even more offended by is the notion that seeing him as a Nazi in an eyepatch could ever possibly stir me to positive emotion of any kind. The harder they try to push this movie, the more people want to push back. Had they left it as a simple intrigue/thriller, it probably would have done all right.

But the actual story of the July 20 plot is another thing. I just watched a tie-in docu on the Hitler er History Channel the other day, and it honestly almost left my roommates in stitches, even though it was meant to promote the film. Granted, anyone wanting to kill Hitler at anytime is a GOOD thing. However, these guys started talking about the possibility of doing something in 1943 -- after all the atrocities had happened, for the most part. Then they waited until mid 1944, after D-Day and a string of other huge defeats before they actually tried to kill him.

The reason it took this long seems to be because none of the men involved in the plot was actually willing to die for the cause. Case and point -- Stauffenberg had monthly meetings where he was alone with Hitler. At any point he could have pulled out a revolver and gotten the job done. In actuality though, he planted a bomb under Hitler's conference table, and excused himself for a phone call. Then, without checking to make sure Hitler was dead after the bomb went off, he hopped a plane back to Berlin, and reported to his superior (Beck, I believe) that Hitler had been killed. This short interchange followed:

Beck: No, he's not dead. You're under arrest.
Stauffenberg: NO ... YOU'RE under arrest.
Beck: No, really, you are.

Stauffenberg was then arrested, and he along with Beck and other close members of the conspiracy were killed outright. It took months for a trial to occur, and almost 200 other "conspirators" were killed. However during the trail each of these men said they had wanted to kill Hitler because of "all the murders" happening. Really? Then why wait until after D-Day? Why wait until a plan had been drawn up for a coup d'etat where Stauffenberg and Beck would be placed in charge of the government when the Allies walked in? If these conspirators had really been in contact with the Allies, why not simply report Hitler's whereabouts so bombs could be dropped?

Unfortunately for Germany and Bryan Singer, it's fairly obvious that the July 20th plot had little to do with heroism and all to do with a few high ranking Nazis trying to save their own skin after the inevitable fall of the Reich. DOZENS of these men had close personal access to Hitler, yet none of them ever tried to take him out for fear of their own deaths. Hell, even Stauffenberg would probably not have been found out had he not RUN TO BERLIN the moment the bomb went off and try to seize control of the military.