In Germany, its ideology is proscribed. Mere mention of the organisation can induce street protests. Once hailed as an all-conquering demigod, its most strident exponent has been denounced as a ranter and raver. But enough, for the moment, about the Church of Scientology. When it was announced that Tom Cruise was to play Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, ringleader of the “July 20 plot” of 1944 — the attempt to assassinate Hitler — in a new film called Valkyrie, it prompted inevitable groans across the Rhine. In a country still twitchy about messianic movements (it has branded Scientology a “cult”, rather than a religion), there followed a fusillade of added vitriol. Cruise was Scientology’s Goebbels, railed the Protestant church; allowing him to portray a national icon, in the words of one journalist, was “like casting Judas as Jesus”.

The US Department of State has long been critical of Germany’s attitude (the conservative Christian Democratic Union marched against Cruise’s 1996 film Mission: Impossible). And, you might argue, is the code of L Ron Hubbard any more fantastic, or venal, than any number of creeds? As filming of Valkyrie began, however, schadenfreude was wallowed in. The Berlin authorities had denied access to key locations, it was reported; vital footage had been sabotaged; extras had been injured; the Stauffenberg family had shunned the project. And wasn’t there a fundamental problem in crafting the film as a thriller (“Ocean’s SS”, as one American newspaper called it)? Unless the makers were going to ape The Producers and rework the war’s ending, the outcome of the plot was already known.

“It was weird. I almost couldn’t believe it,” muses Valkyrie’s director, Bryan Singer, a man, we were reminded, with no track record in historical drama, who has spent the past decade making superhero movies (X-Men, Superman Returns). “I thought, ‘At least they’re talking about it.’ But the vindictiveness?” Even today, at the safe remove of a Beverly Hills sofa, he is clearly irked by the Goebbels stuff. “I, as a Jewish person, did not appreciate that,” he bristles. “These were monstrous people in the Third Reich.”

The $75m movie has endured several deferrals of release date, delays that have handicapped it as an awards contender. Its first trailer, featuring General Eddie Izzard counselling an eyepatch-wearing Cruise that the SS would “pull him apart like warm bread”, elicited media mockery. Throw in the fact that the film was financed by Cruise’s own studio, the reconstituted United Artists — whose debut, Lions for Lambs, was a box-office calamity — and there appeared more than a well-tailored shirt at stake. After the actor’s couch-jumping and sundry eccentricities had seen his apple pie sour (in 2006, Paramount severed its 14-year relationship with the once spotless idol), Valkyrie was to be his last stand, the pundits proclaimed: a tall order, given that the film was being swamped by the biggest wave of ill will since Kevin Costner’s Waterworld.

What vindication for all concerned, now people have actually seen the film. A Christmas Day release in America, it arrives in the UK with a headwind of good reviews and healthy box office. Amid an ensemble of British stalwarts — Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp and, yes, Izzard — Cruise struts his stuff admirably as the story’s hero, though even to use that word underlines the complexities of tackling the question of German resistance. “The word is so associated with fascist propaganda,” explains Chris McQuarrie, the film’s writer. “Saying one man was a hero for resisting implies that everyone who didn’t resist was not.”

While the July 20 plot is pored over in a slew of books, the main facts need rehashing. By mid-1944, with the allies converging on Berlin, and Hitler having taken erratic charge of military strategy, a section of the top brass conspired to knock off their commander-in-chief. By brokering an armistice with the Anglo-Americans, they hoped to relieve the population of the aerial bombing and to redeploy forces against the Russians, whom, they assumed, the West did not want overrunning Europe either.

Stauffenberg, 36, a blue-blood count and devout Catholic, had, according to the official line, been shocked at atrocities he had witnessed on the eastern front. Later, commanding Panzers in North Africa, he was badly injured, losing his right arm, an eye and fingers on his left hand. Inadvertently, this was to make him the designated assassin. Reassigned to a desk job in Berlin, Stauffenberg had regular access to the Führer. His mission was to carry a briefcase loaded with explosives into a military conference and make a snappy exit — no small feat, given his disability and the high security. The slaying was to segue into Operation Valkyrie, in which Stauffenberg’s confederates would seize the capital, with Ludwig Beck, a disaffected general who had resigned his commission, as head of a provisional government. The use of Valkyrie was a masterstroke. Devised as an official plan to quash insurrection, it would be activated to mobilise the reserve army, which would be unaware it was doing the bidding of revolutionaries.

Things did not go according to plan. When Stauffenberg planted his bomb at the Wolf’s Lair compound, in East Prussia, an adjutant moved the briefcase to the wrong side of an oak trestle, sparing Hitler the worst of the blast.

Unaware of his failure, Stauffenberg hared to Berlin. To his dismay, the coup had stalled, fizzling out into a shootout at the Bendlerblock, army HQ. Stauffenberg and his immediate cohorts were shot. Others were paraded before the Nazi inquisitor Judge Freisler, then hanged by piano wire from meathooks. There followed 7,000 arrests and 5,000 executions; many of those killed had nothing to do with Valkyrie.

“I was exposed to the subject in the 1980s when my mum, who was an environmental activist, was hosted by the family of Helmuth von Moltke,” Singer recalls. (Moltke had been liquidated for founding an intellectual, nonviolent opposition circle.) “I had an awareness that there were Germans who were involved in a plot to kill Hitler, and that they were executed. But that’s all I knew.”

Inspired by the Berlin memorial to the July 20 activists, McQuarrie instigated the project as a small film, patterned after Conspiracy, HBO’s re-creation of the Wannsee conference, at which Nazis planned the Final Solution. His long-term collaborator, Singer, had bigger ambitions. “I said, ‘This can’t just be old men in rooms, talking.’ The true story had all the makings of a classic assassination thriller.” That people would know the outcome was never an issue, Singer argues. (As Cruise has noted, such things didn’t harm Apollo 13.) “I knew if I could keep the audience with Stauffenberg, with his mission, they would go with the flow and be less inclined to start hypothesising on things from history.”

Aged 43, but looking as if he probably still gets his ID checked, Singer has an interesting résumé. There’s Apt Pupil, his film about a high-schooler’s friendship with a refugee war criminal. The ace up his sleeve, though, is The Usual Suspects, the cult psychological thriller that marked his Hollywood entrance (and for which McQuarrie won an Oscar). “It was a similar situation. You have all these characters and a lot of exposition, and it’s a case of ‘How do you make an audience not feel like they’re confused?’. The first half of the movie is establishing the world and the characters; the second half is about the day, the mission.”

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of 2009
• The 100 Worst Movies of 2009
• The 100 Best Films of the Decade