An excerpt from a longer documentary film about Adolf Hitler, this 7.5 minute segment follows the Fuhrer from the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 through his suicide on August 30, 1945. The film begins with some of the last footage of Hitler shot before the assassination attempt, and shows him visiting injured staff in the hospital after the incident. At :51, Hitler is seen visiting with Mussolini. At 1:19, the public trial of the plotters is seen. At 3:00, footage of the concentration camps are seen, with the mass murder of Jews and other political and social undesirables. An incinerator full of bodies is seen at 3:28. At 3:43, Hitler’s 55th birthday celebration is seen, while Russian, British, American and Allied forces are closing in on Germany. At 4:18 Hitler’s last gambit, the Battle of the Bulge, is shown. At 4:55, footage is seen of Hitler with Eva Braun in the bunker. At 5:17, the Red Army is seen pushing into Berlin. At 6:21, the shattered Chancellery building is seen along with a re-enactment of the discovery of the pit where Hitler and Braun’s bodies were burned.
On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf’s Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The name Operation Valkyrie, originally referring to part of the conspiracy, has become associated with the entire event. The apparent purpose of the assassination attempt was to seize political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the SS) and to make peace with the western Allies as soon as possible. The underlying desire of many of the involved high-ranking Wehrmacht officers was apparently to show to the world that not all Germans were like Hitler and the Nazi Party. The details of the conspirators’ peace initiatives remain unknown, but they likely would have included demands to accept wide-reaching territorial annexations by Germany in Europe.
The plot was the culmination of the efforts by several groups in the German resistance to overthrow the Nazi German government. The failure of the assassination and the military coup d’état which was planned to follow led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo, of whom 4,980 were executed.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
