Despite mixed reviews and my disdain for Tom Cruise, my interest in World War II history requires that I see Valkyrie. I'm curious to see if they get the uniforms and accouterments right and to see if I can learn anything about the story that I don't already know.
I saw the trailer on TV this morning and was suddenly struck by a shocking (to me, anyway) thought: There will probably be people in the audience who don't know how it turns out.
The state of history education in this country is such that there will doubtless be young people who walk into the theatre thinking Col. Claus von Stauffenberg actually succeeded in killing Hitler.
I am reminded of this general lack of historical knowledge from time to time. Like a few years ago when a young reporter at the Crawfordsville Journal Review went blank at the mention of Iwo Jima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"How are we supposed to know Japanese?" she asked.
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