"I'm a soldier. I serve my country. But this is not my country," Stauffenberg tells his fellow conspirators when he agrees to join their mission, "If I die now, I leave nothing to my country but shame." And in many ways, Stauffenberg's words are very much what the movie ends up being about. In fact, central to the film's title is the idea of courage and honor in life and death.

While the term "valkyrie" refers to both Hitler's affinity for Wagner and the military operation in place in case of his assassination, the historical context from which both are drawn is that of the Norse "angels of death" said to fly over battlefields and separate those who fought and died with courage and honor from those who did not. In reference to Hitler, it is not difficult to imagine that he thought himself a sort of valkyrie, choosing those worthy to live and those deserving of death. As the term pertains to Operation Valkyrie, Nazi rhetoric would probably move Hitler to one of the worthy dead, with those still alive comprising his "eternal" army called to continue his reign beyond his death. But as rewritten and manipulated by Stauffenberg, when the new Operation Valkyrie is set in motion, it is in Stauffenberg and his men that we actually see what it looks like to live and die with courage and honor.

In many ways, the story of Stauffenberg's attempt on Hitler's life is much like the biblical stories of Daniel in the Lion's Den and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the Fiery Furnace. Yes, the two Bible stories do end much better for their participants than they do for Stauffenberg and his men. But in all three, the message presented is that doing the right thing may sometimes require us to lay down our lives and deny almost every human authority we know. While the world may sometimes embrace what we know to be right, there will be times when every norm and power around us will deny it. Often to do the right thing will be to commit treason and to buck every societal norm around us. But as the story of Stauffenberg and his men shows us, there come times when you simply cannot stand with the crowd any longer.

"You know God promised He would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if He could just find ten righteous men," says one of Stauffenberg's cohorts. "I have a feeling with Germany, it may come down to just one." The message: when it comes to standing up to injustice and evil in this world, its defeat truly is a matter of individual responsibility and impact. And while we may no longer live in the middle of WWII's Nazi regime, that challenge still remains true for us today—to prove that we can be a people of honor and integrity, to stand up against the powers and authorities that truly are enemies to the human race, and to live lives which we can look back upon not with shame and disgrace but with pride and the knowledge that we did what was right

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