The Top Secret Trial of the Third Reich

Plot Summary

In August of 1944, the trial of the men who conspired to assassinate the Fuhrer - the event that forms the basis of the film "Valkyrie" - began. Under orders from Joseph Goebbels, cameras were hidden in the courtroom, and the resulting footage was transformed into a propaganda film. Goebbels released his film to the public, but only succeeded in generating sympathy for the conspirators, who were sentenced to death by the visibly deranged Nazi tribunal judge Roland Freisler. Having miscalculated the impact of these images, Goebbels ordered the film banned and destroyed - but one print has been found. Through authentic footage of the trial, the film details the various attempts to assassinate Hitler - from the bomb in Munich's Burgerbraukeller, to Claus von Stauffenberg's explosive attack on the Wolfsshanze - and sheds light on the anti-Nazi resistance. Featuring previously unseen film and sound documentation of the National Committee for a Free Germany, a German resistance group, this astonishing film also unearths new information about members of the Kreisau Circle and the White Rose, of which Sophie Scholl was a member.