Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English writer, best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. He is the author of 30 books on the subject, including The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Uprising! (1981), Churchill's War (1987), and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996).
His work on Nazi Germany became controversial because of his sympathy for the Third Reich, antisemitism and racism. He has associated with far right and neo-Nazi causes, famously during his student days seconding British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley in a University College London debate on immigration. He has been described as "the most skillful preacher of Holocaust denial in the world today".
Irving's reputation as an historian was widely discredited after he brought an unsuccessful libel case against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. The court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who "associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism," and that he had "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."
Plot
In Nazi Germany during World War II, as the tide turned in favor of The Allies, a cadre of senior German officers and politicians desperately plot to topple the Nazi regime before the nation is crushed in a near-inevitable defeat. To this end, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, an Army officer convinced he must save Germany from Hitler, is recruited to mastermind a real plan. To do so, he arranges for the internal emergency measure, Operation: Valkyrie, to be changed to enable his fellows to seize control of Berlin after the assassination of the Fuhrer. However, even as the plan is put into action, a combination of bad luck and human failings conspire on their own to create a tragedy that would prolong the greater one gripping Europe.
Keywords: 1940s, adjutant, afrika-corps, air-raid, air-raid-shelter, air-raid-siren, airplane, amputee, armored-vehicle, arrest
Many saw evil. They dared to stop it.
[from trailer]::Henning von Tresckow: We have to show the world that not all of us are like him. Otherwise, this will always be Hitler's Germany.
[from trailer]::Henning von Tresckow: You scared me half to death.::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: You'll be closer than that before we're finished.
[from trailer]::Erich Fellgiebel: [to Stauffenberg] When the S.S. catch you, they will pull you apart like warm bread.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: I am involved in high treason with all means available to me. Can I count you in?::Werner von Haeften: For anything, sir. Anything at all.::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: "Anything" is a *very* dangerous word, Lieutenant.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: Only God can judge us now.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: If I fail, they'll come for you. They'll come for all of you.::Nina Von Stauffenberg: I know.
[from trailer]::Henning von Tresckow: God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men... I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one.
[from trailer]::Col. Claus von Stauffenberg: We have to kill Hitler.
Erich Fellgiebel: What makes you think you're stronger than the very momentum of history?
Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim: Every second we stand here is a second lost!
Salomon: I am Jewish where I like and when I like.
Plot
This biopic follows Rommel's career after the Afrika Korps, including his work on the defenses of Fortress Europe as well as his part in the assassination attempt on Hitler, and his subsequent suicide.
Keywords: 1940s, abdication, accusation, afrika-corps, airplane, allies, animal-in-title, archive-footage, armor, artillery
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: [It's] too late for me. I'm seventy now - too old to fight, too old to challenge authority, however evil... but not too old, however, to wish you and your friends the best of luck in their extremely interesting enterprise.
Field Marshal Keitel: Have you any better suggestions?::Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: Yes, one very much better. Make peace, you idiot!
Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: I don't know how the men on the line feel about it, but so far as the staff is concerned, I'd just as soon have a commander-in-chief with a little touch of cowardice about him. Just enough to get him back to his headquarters every now and then.
Commando colonel: [after the failed attack on Rommel's HQ at the beginning, Aldinger finds the wounded commando officer] Did we, did we get him?::Capt. Hermann Aldinger: [smirking] Are you serious, Englishman?
Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: [Hitler just sent an order not to retreat from El Alamein] It's an order, Bayerlein, a military order from General Headquarters. A clear, straight, stupid, criminal military order, from General Headquarters.::Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: And what are you going to do, double the insanity by obeying it? We've got the best soldiers in the German Army here. They may be just hanging on now, but they're still a force, they're still fighting. If we take them out now, they can fight again tomorrow. But this! This is sheer madness! It's out of the Middle Ages. Nobody had said "Victory or Death" since people fought with bows and arrows. Why, this is an order to throw away an entire army!::Gen. Schultz: If I may remind you, sir, here in the field, these men are yours, not his.::Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: I just can't understand it.::Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: I can. He's insane.::Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: He's not insane! He's - but neither am I.::[tears up the message and throws it away]::Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: Pull them out, Bayerlein! I'll argue with him about it later.
Adolf Hitler: Where's Goering?::Staff Member: He's on his way.::Adolf Hitler: Well, when you are fat you don't move so fast. [laughter]
[a British officer steps from the back of his tralier to address the officers before him]::British officer: Gentlemen, the following order from General Auchinleck, is to all commanders and chiefs-of-staff of the Middle East Forces. [reads] "There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel is becoming a kind of magician or bogeyman to our troops, who are talking far too much about him. He is by no means a superman, although he is undoubtedly very energetic and able. Even if he were a superman, it would still be highly undesirable that our men should credit him with supernatural powers. I wish you to dispel by all possible means the idea that Rommel represents something more than an ordinary German general. Please ensure that this order is put into immediate effect, and impress upon all commanders, that from the psychological point of view, it is a matter of the highest importance. Signed, C.J. Auchinleck, General, Commander-In-Chief, M.E.F."
Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: Nothing yet, though?::Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Rommel: No, but he [Hitler] knows the situation. I sent him the whole story last night. If there's anything he can do, he will.::Gen. Fritz Bayerlein: No matter what you say, to Berlin we're only a sideshow - and you know it.
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: From the moment the Bohemian corporal promoted himself to the supreme command of our forces, the German Army has been the victim of a unique situation: not only too many of the enemy, but one too many Germans.
Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt: His astrologers have informed him that this is only a feint, that the real invasion is yet to come, north of Calais. The Fifteenth Army is sitting on those cold beaches up there, waiting for an invasion that is already taking place, is an excellent example of war by horoscope.