Wolf's Lair Replica Bound for Museum

Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Potsdam, Germany - A replica of Hitler's long-destroyed Wolf's Lair headquarters near the Russian Front is bound for a German museum after being used in a controversial Tom Cruise movie.

Cruise has just finished shooting Valkyrie, the true-life story of an aristocratic German Army colonel who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler with a bomb on July 20, 1944.

Babelsberg Studios, co-producer of the movie, handed over Monday the sets and props, which would otherwise have been scrapped after filming.

Set carpenters created the replica of the oak table that protected Hitler from the force of the bomb and the room in a wooden shed in a forest in what is now Poland.

Cruise, who plays the colonel, faced hostility in Germany on account of his beliefs: he is an advocate of the US-based creed of Scientology.

The German government initially barred the film crew from the monument marking the spot where the assassin, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, was shot by firing squad. But Berlin later relented. The colonel is hailed in today's Germany as a hero of conscience.

The sets and props were donated to the German Armed Forces' Museum of Military History in the eastern city of Dresden, which plans to show some in time for the premiere of Valkyrie next year.

The museum said it would integrate the rest of the sets into displays when the museum completes a round of renovations in 2010.

Hitler commanded the latter stages of the war from the heavily guarded Wolf's Lair and was mostly absent from Berlin. The headquarters was partly underground. Its above-ground buildings, like the shed, were concealed in the trees.

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