Goofs

Prior to meeting Hitler, Stauffenberg is shown with brown eyes, yet the glass eye shown is blue.

(at around 52 mins) When Stauffenberg and Haeften arrive at the Wolf's Lair on July 15th, Haeften can be seen descending from the car twice.

When Hitler is flying into Smolensk, his plane has D-2600 and a black stripe painted on the wing. However, in the shot of the final approach to the runway (view from behind), the plane is devoid of these markings. They return once the plane is on the ground.

(at around 40 mins) When Stauffenberg hands Hitler the revised version of Operation Valkyrie, Hitler grabs the folder with his right hand and in the next shot he is holding it in his left hand.

When Stauffenberg flies back to Berlin the tailsign of the Ju52 is BT-A? when he enters it. During the flight it is DI-AY and after touchdown in Berlin it is BT-A? again.

On the day of the attempt at Rastenburg, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg managed to get through Security Zone II with his briefcase containing the explosives without problems. He knew however that on entering the inner Security Zone I, all personnel except Adolf Hitler's inner circle were thoroughly searched, as a precaution against assassination attempts. In order to avoid it, von Stauffenberg arranged so that he entered the Zone with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel - an officer in Keitel's company would not be searched.

The pencil detonators are improperly armed throughout the movie. While the arming procedure does call for crushing the cap to release the acid, the detonator is equipped with a safety device that must be removed after the device is armed for it to function. The safety device is not shown at any time. It can be argued that the conspirators opted to remove this device beforehand, however this is unlikely, given the risk. The pencil detonators, while state of the art at the time, were commonly known to release the striker immediately after arming, which would instantly detonate the explosive if the safety device was not present. The conspirators would have known this.

(at around 1h 8 mins) The table leg where Stauffenberg places the bomb was a "stout" (block) leg not a peg leg as shown. This was the critical difference in saving Adolf Hitler's life, because Colonel Brandt, trying to get a better view of the map, moved the briefcase to the other side of the stout block, away from Hitler. The blast thus blew away from Hitler, and ironically toward Brandt, who died from it.

In the film, Otto Remer arrives to arrest Goebbels unannounced. Goebbels places a cyanide capsule in his mouth and hands Remer the phone hoping he will speak to Hitler to confirm Hitler is still alive. One assumes that Goebbels intends to bite the capsule should Remer decide to arrest Goebbels. This is not what occurred. Remer issued the orders to secure Berlin as per the implementation of Operation Valkyrie but realized that something was wrong. Remer immediately telephoned Joseph Goebbels and discussed the matter with him. He was then invited to visit Goebbels whereupon Goebbels arranged telephone contact with the Wolf's Lair and Remer was allowed to confirm that Adolf Hitler was still alive.

(at around 17 minutes) When Stauffenberg is recruited in the church, the camera pans up to show the bombed-out ceiling. Nuns and priests removed the stained glass windows from churches and buried them outside cities before the Allied forces began bombing Germany. If the ceiling was bombed out, the stained glass windows shouldn't be there.

(at around 4 mins) The P-40's that attack the Germans in the beginning of the movie have the Flying Tiger teeth painted on them. The Flying Tigers were based in China during WWII. However, shark mouth was often used on the P-40 by other units, such as 112 squadron RAF - not just by the Flying Tigers; P-40's in the movie in fact clearly have the correct British camouflage for North Africa.

(at around 41 minutes) In one shot, when Stauffenberg is showing Hitler the updated Valkyrie plan, he looks down with both eyes. His left eye is glass, but prosthetic eyes are fitted against the muscles, so they can move.

In a number of scenes, Colonel Stauffenberg is seen wearing crimson stripes on his trouser legs, which are mistakenly believed to be red stripes worn only by German Generals; however, crimson stripes were worn by all German General Staff officers below the rank of General.

Himmler is shown wearing a gray uniform, which has led people to assume that he is incorrectly shown wearing a Wehrmacht uniform. While similar to the regular Army jacket, he is wearing the wartime uniform of the Waffen-SS, which was field-gray like that of the Wehrmacht, but had entirely different collar patches.

When the reserve army are rounding up and arresting Nazis, we clearly see - on the back of a truck - several men dressed In brown uniforms. These are uniforms of the S.A. (Sturmabteilung) sometimes called 'Brownshirts'. While its leader, Ernst Röhm, and his senior staff were indeed arrested and liquidated in 1934 ("the so-called "Röhmputsch"), the organization itself was merely removed from any political power, and not disbanded as has been previously suggested. Like all Nazi party organizations, it met its end with Hitler's Reich.

During the executions no bullet impacts are seen in the sand bank behind the victims having passed easily through the bodies at such short range.

(at around 52 minutes) Colonel Stauffenberg travels to and from secret meetings with Hitler in a Mercedes-Benz convertible. If you look closely at the front chrome grill, you can clearly see shiny outlines of various emblems that were removed prior to filming. The emblems are placed on Mercedes-Benz cars by their owners to indicate milestones in mileage, etc. They would never have been on a Nazi car.

Shortly after the bombing attempt against Hitler, Colonel Stauffenberg is standing in an office at the Ministry and the camera pulls out to reveal both hands intact, including all his fingers. He is supposed to have lost one of his hands and 2 fingers off his other hand.

In a long shot of Tom Cruise and Kenneth Branagh it is clear Cruise is wearing a pair of big shoes to boost his height.

(at around 1h 40 mins) During the shootout in the building corridors, prior to the arrests, no ejected cartridge cases can be heard tinkling on the hard stone floors.

(at around 1h 18 mins) On the banner with the inscription "Führer befiehl, wir folgen dir", the font used is a Gothic type. Adolf Hitler banned all Gothic types in 1941, stating that they were of Jewish origin.

Colonel Stauffenberg is wearing a WWI campaign ribbon on his dress uniform seen in one or two scenes. He is too young to have been in WWI, and Germany did not use campaign ribbons in WWII.

Henning von Tresckow was not promoted to a General rank until June 1st, 1944 - until then, he held the rank of colonel. However, Kenneth Branagh is shown wearing a General's uniform throughout the movie.

Mertz von Quirnheim's spectacles are British NHS brown mottle code 614 post introduction of the NHS in 1947. Olbricht's are code 524 in Flesh/skin tone. They went out of production in 1983. The numbers refer to eye shape-bridge type-side type.

(at around 37 minutes) Stauffenberg and his adjunct are shown being driven on their way to have the new version of Walküre signed by Hitler. There is a panoramic view of the exterior of the Berghof (Hitler's private residence). It is shown situated on the extreme top of a hill with large mountains (the Alps) a kilometer away in the distance, but nothing directly behind it. In reality, the Berghof was built onto the side of a hill and not on the top. In any period photograph of the Berghof you will clearly see the hill continues to ascend behind the building and there was a thick forest of trees behind it as well (covering the hill well above the height of the Berghof's roof). In the film no trees are shown behind the main building and it is shown to basically stand on its own, on the top of a hill.

(at around 6 minutes) As Hitler and party arrive by air to Smolensk in Russia, in March 1943, the camera pans upon a vast green forest with not a trace of snow. March in this part of Russia is a quagmire of melting snow, ice and mud.

(at around 1h 28 mins) The building the German army barricades in Berlin is identified as the Ministry of Interior. It was actually the Reich Air Ministry. Today, it is the German Finance Ministry.

No SS soldiers are present in the film, which was impossible given the official buildings and high rank personalities depicted in this story. The wolf's lair was actually guarded by a Wehrmacht armored unit in zones 2 and 3 and by the RSD, a branch of the SS in zone 1.

(at around 35 mins) When Stauffenberg is speaking with his fellows, he looks at the portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging on the wall and says "At the end of this the portrait will be unhung, and a man will be hung." The grammatically correct past tense of "hang" (as a method of execution) is "hanged".

Joseph Goebbels had a club foot which caused him to walk with a noticeable limp. In the film however, he walks without a limp.

Stauffenberg was promoted to full colonel when becoming Chief of Staff of the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer) on 01. July 1944. In the movie his rank shows colonel before he gets that post.

Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carries a Walther PPK as his sidearm. In reality, von Stauffenberg used a Belgian Browning Hi-Power, called "P-35" by the German Wehrmacht. It is also known that von Stauffenberg used a fixed hand prosthesis to chamber the pistol rather than depicted in the film.