Goofs

Major Grau's car headlights are covered during night in Warshaw, but are uncovered the day later. That's a continuity mistake and that's a historical mistake because car lights must be covered due to air strike risk and curfew policies, specially when they are military cars.

The apparent fullness of Von Stauffenberg's briefcase changes from when he arrives to when he is inside; it is much thicker, fuller, and obviously heavier.

Major Grau is handed a German soldier's identity disc from the crime scene in Paris shortly before Operation Valkyrie commences. He reveals the name of the suspect by apparently reading the name on the disc. German identity discs, however, never contained the soldier's name on them - only their roll number, unit designation and occasionally their blood group.

Christopher Plummer as Rommel lights a cigarette just before a Spitfire strafes his car. Rommel didn't smoke.

Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (Christopher Plummer) is wearing a collar tab with only two prongs denoting a German General when in fact Rommel should be wearing the three prong collar tab of a Field Marshall.

In the middle of the film, General Tanz's entire Panzer Division transfers from the Regular Army to the Waffen-SS. This would never have happened in the real German military, since SS units were independently formed, trained, and never augmented with units from the Regular Army.

General Tanz is portrayed as having commanded the Nibelungen division of the Waffen SS and later attends a reunion with banners/shields saying it was founded in 1940. However, the Nibelungen was formed barely one month before the end of the war in 1945.

Some of the background images in the car tour through Paris are in black & white.

When General Tanz (depicted as an SS General) arrives in Paris, he immediately asks Generals Gabler and Kahlenberge (who are Regular Army) to re-enforce his division with four thousand troops and new equipment. Within the Waffen-SS, all supply, manpower, and procurement requests were handled by the SS Operations Head Office in Berlin and not through channels of the Regular German Army. Thus, Tanz's request in Paris makes little sense.

At the scene of the first murder, the doctor estimated that the victim sustained 100 knife wounds. The killer had opened the door and departed only five seconds after the victim screamed. It would have been utterly impossible to inflict 100 wounds and walk to the door in five seconds.

The German Army is shown destroying large quarters of Warsaw in 1942. Such destruction on a large scale did not happen until at least the Spring of 1943 (destruction of the Ghetto).

It is extremely unlikely that a French Police Inspector would have been able to travel to Communist Poland in the 1960s and interview a former law enforcement official. This period of time was during heightened tension between the east and the west and it is doubtful the Polish government and immigration authorities would ever have allowed this meeting to take place.

At about 15 minutes into the movie, when General Tanz arrives at the Old Town quarter of Warsaw, there is a poster for the French film "Tintin et le mystere de la toison d'or", designed by Roslaw Szaybo in 1964.

The Soviet armored vehicle ZIL-152 on the Warsaw streets in 1942. The production of ZIL-152 began in 1950.

Modern Polish street name plates are clearly visible in the film's 1942 Warsaw (eg. "Nowomiejska" street).

When Tanz says "naturally, I'm General" while holding the gun on Corporal Hartmann, his mouth movements are significantly out of sync.

Resistance fighters are on a roof shooting the Germans one throws a molotov cocktail at a vehicle which bursts into flames but the cocktail wasn't lit.