Berlin - A forthcoming movie about a true-life attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and stop World War II in 1944 has stirred up many uncomfortable issues for Germans.
Most Germans today agree that the plot to stop the Nazis was morally right.
But some Germans were outraged when Tom Cruise, 45, the star of a several Hollywood blockbusters, was chosen to play the would-be assassin, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg.
It was not just that Cruise is considerably shorter and has a different face than the German nobleman.
Cruise has been under public fire in Germany for a decade over his advocacy of Scientology, the creed of US science-fiction author L Ron Hubbard.
US authorities recognize Scientology as a church, whereas German authorities have placed it under investigation on suspicion that it is anti-democratic.
Commentators have explained the distinction by the differing histories of the two nations: one founded on freedom of religion, the other striving to root out anything reminiscent of Naziism.
In June, a back-bench Christian Democrat politician, Antje Blumenthal, said she had persuaded the Defence Ministry to deny the the film's producers the use of facilities because of Cruise's involvement.
The government confirmed the ban, but denied Blumenthal and Scientology had anything to do with it.
Officials said a courtyard in the Bendler Block, a Berlin office building where Stauffenberg was shot by firing squad as his July 1944 coup collapsed, was too sacred for filming.
German and US film-industry figures were not convinced, and accused Germany of intolerance.
The subsequent debate raised another uncomfortable issue for Germans: whether the real-life Stauffenberg was a role model, and whether the adventure movie, now in the making, would not cover up his many flaws.
Frank Schirrmacher, a publisher of the respected Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, pointed out that Colonel Stauffenberg was an adherent of a secretive sect led by poet and quasi-religious leader Stefan George.
'Stefan George and Ron Hubbard are light years apart. The George Group wasn't a machine to make money ... but it would also be under surveillance if it existed today,' he said.
The colonel and the others in the only known plot to overthrow Hitler were no friends of democracy.
Stauffenberg's memory also raises uncomfortable issues for the modern German armed forces, which were initially reluctant to tell disciplined troops that a mutineer could be a hero.
Stauffenberg is nowadays praised as an example of how an officer must use his conscience as an inner guide.
'We only made our peace with Stauffenberg after most of the older generation died,' said Schirrmacher.
The Defence Ministry has relented on its initial ban after negotiations with the producers of Valkyrie on how to respect the modern German armed forces' perception of the past.
In a connection of past and present, Stauffenberg had his army office in the Bendler Block, a government office building that survived the Second World War and now houses the German defence minister in Berlin.
Stauffenberg flew back there after leaving a time bomb under a table at Hitler's Wolf's Lair headquarters in modern-day Poland. The blast only injured the dictator.
The courtyard site at the building where Stauffenberg and four plotters were summarily shot as the Nazis raced to put down the coup is nowadays a memorial.
Schirrmacher said in July that the key dispute was between the filmmakers and the memorial about the script.
Although a private venture, the Hollywood-led production has obtained generous government film grants.
Many Germans remain uncomfortable about recreating Nazi Germany for films, complete with swastika flags draped over downtown Berlin and hundreds of Nazi-uniformed extras outstretching their arms in Heil-Hitler salutes.
The first major German feature film about Hitler, Downfall in 2004, portrayed Hitler's last days in his Berlin bunker. A far- fetched comedy, Mein Fuehrer, premiered this year but was mauled by critics.
Audiences flocked to both films out of curiosity. Valkyrie is expected to be the first Hitler-themed movie where a German audience can come out feeling proud.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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