History in the Movies: ‘Invictus’

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

We sometimes forget how recent was South Africa’s transformation. In 1994, Nelson Mandela, who had spent twenty-seven years as a political prisoner, became President of South Africa, and presided over the country’s transition from tyranny to democracy.

Tensions were high upon his election. The majority black population still seethed over the brutal repression they had endured under apartheid. A resentful white minority feared a paroxysm of revenge. A civil war seemed imminent.

The fact that South Africa was able to avoid this fate; that Mandela could move blacks and whites toward reconciliation and healing, still seems miraculous. How did he pull it off?

The unlikely answer, according to Clint Eastwood’s stirring new film, “Invictus” was through a rugby team. Mandela (played to perfection by Morgan Freeman) shrewdly transformed South Africa’s national team, the Springboks, from a symbol of the repressive white regime into a vehicle of national unity.

Under the banner, “One Team, One Country,’ the Springboks made an improbable march to the Rugby World Cup Finals in 1995. The final match became, in the words of John Carlin, the journalist whose book inspired this film, “The game that made a nation.”

Here’s how the film matches up with the historical facts.

Q. The film says that before 1994, blacks in South Africa despised the national rugby team. Why?

A. Because blacks saw rugby as a white sport, one followed with almost religious fervor by the Afrikaners, South Africa’s white minority. Springbok fans often belted out racist fight songs as they cheered on their team. During the long years of the apartheid regime, the three most hated symbols of white oppression were the white national anthem, the national flag, and the Springboks rugby team.

Q. Why then did Mandela latch on to the Springboks to foster national unity?

A. Because white Afrikaners loved it so, Mandela knew he could win points by allowing them to keep their beloved team in the face of many calls to disband it altogether, or at the very least to change its name. But reconciliation had to go both ways. So Mandela met with Francois Pienaar, the Springbok’s captain, to ensure that the team reciprocated by shedding their racist patina and truly becoming a team for the entire nation.

Q. In the film, Matt Damon plays Pienaar as a decent, upstanding guy. Was he this conciliatory towards Mandela?

A. He was, and Damon captures the awe and respect Pienaar had for Mandela and his eagerness to work with his President towards national unity. What Damon can’t quite capture is the sheer heft of the man. Rugby has all the bone-crushing, head-smashing ferocity of football, but without the pads and helmets. Professional rugby players tend toward the massive. The real Francois Pienaar stands 6 ft. 4 inches, and weighs 240 lbs, and over his career has broken his nose fourteen times and gotten some 400 stitches to his face. In interviews, Damon laughs about the physical differences. On meeting Pienaar, Damon recounts gazing up at him, and saying, “I look much bigger on screen.”

Q. Did whites working in the presidential offices all prepare to leave after Mandela’s election?

A. They did, assuming Mandela wouldn’t want them to stay. But as in the film, Mandela asked to meet with all of them, and to their great surprise, spoke to them in Afrikaans, the Afrikaner native tongue, and expressed his wish that they would stay on to assist his government. Every single one of them stayed.

The episode illustrates the secret of Mandela’s success. Met with suspicion and resentment by Afrisincerity, disarming and charming them, and thus eventually winning them over to his point of view. It wasn’t enough to end apartheid, he said once. He needed to inspire whites to want to kill it themselves.

Q. The film shows the rugby team initially refusing to sing the new national anthem. True?

A. Not at all. The team was eager to cooperate with Mandela, and enthusiastically practiced “˜Nkosi Sikelele,’ the former black liberation anthem, which now shared national anthem status with the old Afrikaner anthem, “˜Die Stem.’ (In 1997, a new hybrid anthem was created from the two.)

Q. Did the Springboks visit poor black neighborhoods during the World Cup competition?

A. They did, and South African TV cameras broadcast it to the nation. The unfamiliar sight of huge white guys playing rugby with eager black children touched the hearts of many South Africans.

Q. Did the rugby team take a field trip to Mandela’s former prison during the World Cup tour?

A. I was skeptical about this episode in the film, but turns out it did take place. Two days after the Springbok’s first World Cup victory, their manager, Morne du Plessis, arranged for the team to visit the infamous Robbins Island prison, and see the tiny cell where Mandela had spent years of his life. Du Plessis said the visit was to deepen the team’s connection with Mandela, and draw inspiration from the man’s strength and fortitude. It worked, and players later spoke movingly about the trip.

Q. So, what are the rules for scoring points in rugby, anyway?

A. Heck if I know. Fortunately, you can be as clueless as I am to the rules and still thrill to this film.

Q. No spoilers, but was the final match depicted accurately?

A. Yep. From Mandela’s reception in the stadium, to the final score and the reaction, Eastwood’s film got the details right. Including, by the way, the unexpected (and momentarily terrifying) flyover before the game by a South African Airlines jet.

Q. Where can I find more information?

A. Read John Carlin’s wonderful book, “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation.”

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu.

History in the Movies, “The Men Who Stare at Goats”

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

“More of this is true than you would believe.”

That’s the opening line of “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” a quirky film highlighting the U.S. military’s affinity for New Age philosophy and psychic beliefs. The film has oddball characters, a farfetched plot, and soldiers engaging in strange psychic experiments, including the attempt to kill goats by just staring at them.

Could any of this actually be true?

Well, sort of. The characters and the plot are highly fictionalized. As for the U.S. military dabbling in strange psychic stuff? Yeah, that part is largely true. Here’s the lowdown.

Q. Does the military have a Goat Lab where goats are stared to death?

A. Not exactly. Jon Ronson, the British journalist who wrote the book, “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” learned of a top-secret Goat Lab at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Ronson also heard rumors of soldiers who used psychic powers to kill the goats.

But the goats at Goat Lab ultimately weren’t there to get stared at. They had a more practical — and bloody — function. The goats, one-by-one, were shot in the leg, in order to provide hands-on surgical experience for Special Forces trainees.

Q. Ewan McGregor plays a journalist in the film. Is he supposed to be Ronson?

A. McGregor’s character is called Bob Wilton, and he’s only loosely based on Ronson. The real Ronson, unlike the film’s Wilton, never shared a madcap Iraqi adventure with one of the army’s “psychic spies.”

Q. George Clooney plays the offbeat Lyn Cassady. Was he a real person?

A. No. Cassady is a composite of different people Ronson interviewed for the book. One inspiration for the character was Sgt. Glenn Wheaton, who served in a Special Forces paranormal group in the 1980s called “Project Jedi.” It was designed, Wheaton told Ronson, to create “supersoldiers with superpowers,” such as the ability to become invisible.

Guy Savelli was another model for Cassady. Though he now owns a dance studio in Cleveland, Savelli had once worked with Special Forces at Fort Bragg, teaching soldiers a form of “paranormal martial arts.” He also taught them “remote influencing,” the art of using one’s mind to influence others. It was Savelli who apparently killed a goat at Goat Lab by simply wishing it dead.  Savelli later told Ronson that he had also performed the feat on a hamster.

Q. Jeff Bridges plays Bill Django, a hippiefied officer who created the “New Earth Army” unit. Did he exist?

A. Django is based on Lt. Col. Jim Shannon. In the late 1970s, Shannon, a Vietnam veteran, dived headlong into the New Age and human potential movements, looking for ideas to reinvigorate a demoralized post-Vietnam military. After months spent in meditation, naked hot tub sessions, and primal arm wrestling, Shannon returned to the army and wrote a confidential paper, which he called the “First Earth Battalion Manual.”  There he sketched out his vision of the future American soldier. They would be “Warrior-Monks,” Shannon said. They would enter hostile countries cradling baby lambs. They would greet people with hugs and “sparkly eyes.” And they would develop psychic powers — read minds, walk through solid objects, sense auras, see into the future, and stop and start their own hearts.

Believe it or not, the army loved his ideas. Unlike in the film, though, Shannon never trained a specific unit. But his “First Earth Battalion Manual” became legendary in the army, and even inspired the famous “Be all that you can be” Army recruitment slogan.

Q. Did Shannon really encourage the use of LSD for his “Warrior Monks?”

A. No, he didn’t. But as early as the 1950s, the U.S. military was experimenting with mind-altering drugs like LSD. One such experiment ended tragically. In 1953, the CIA secretly slipped LSD into the drink of a civilian scientist employed by the Army, in order to study the drug’s effects. A week later the man leapt to his death from a 10th story building. The CIA’s involvement was hushed up for two decades.

Q. The film shows Django (Shannon) getting kicked out of the military. True?

A. Never happened. The real Jim Shannon stayed in the military until retirement. Interestingly though, in 2002 he was brought out of retirement by military brass, who were looking for “creative ideas” in fighting the War on Terror.

Q. Did the War on Terror inspire more psychic experimentation in the military?

A. That’s what Ronson believes, and what the film suggests. After 9/11 the CIA was said to be using psychics to try to predict the next terrorist target. Guy Savelli, the man credited with staring a goat to death, was called back to Fort Bragg to teach soldiers how to use “the stare” to get prisoners to talk. And Ronson believes that the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere both built on and corrupted the ideals found in Shannon’s “First Earth Battalion.” The Jedi warriors turned to the dark side.

Q. Where can I find more information?

A. Ronson’s book is great. Or find his 2004 British documentary – “Crazy Rulers of the World” — on YouTube, to see the real-life characters in “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” The truth here is even stranger than the fiction.

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu.

History in the Movies, “The Informant!”

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

The phrase: Based on a true story is often used. Most fact-based films open with that declaration. But “The Informant!,” Steven Soderbergh’s film about Mark Whitacre, a corporate whistleblower turned FBI informant, adds a little twist to the familiar claim.

“While this is based on a true story,” the film begins, “certain characters are composites, and some dialogue has been dramatized. So there!”

Soderbergh’s jaunty “So there!” is a clever reminder not to take his black comedy too seriously. But strangely enough, despite the film’s farcical tone, Soderbergh gets a lot of the story right, and hews pretty closely to the details in Kurt Eichenwald’s “The Informant,” the well-researched book about Whitacre’s adventures with the FBI.

But since even good films stretch the truth a bit, here’s a guide to separate the fact from the fiction.

Q. How did Whitacre, a highly-paid executive with Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) end up working with the FBI to bust his company for their illegal practices?

A. As the film shows, Whitacre (played by Matt Damon) set the whole plot into motion accidentally. He told his bosses that a Japanese competitor was sabotaging ADM. The company called in the FBI to investigate, much to Whitacre’s chagrin, since — as we learn later — he had concocted the sabotage story as cover for his division’s poor performance.

When an FBI agent showed up to investigate the (non-existent) sabotage, Whitacre ended up instead spilling the beans to him about ADM’s egregious — and thoroughly illegal –price-fixing.

Did Whitacre do it to divert attention from his sabotage lie? Or because his conscience over ADM’s practices was bothering him? Or was it because his wife insisted he fess up? It’s not clear. But once he began cooperating with the FBI and secretly recording his colleagues’ conversations, Whitacre seemed to become intoxicated with the intrigue and James-Bondness of it all.

Q. The film shows Whitacre ostentatiously narrating while wearing a wire. Did that happen?

A. That’s a bit exaggerated. The first time he wore a wire, Whitacre did narrate a bit (“I am about to enter the building,”) and greeted people by their full names (“Hello, Terrance Wilson,”) but he stopped after an FBI warning.

Q. A funny scene from the film shows him fiddling with the tape recorder in his briefcase during a key meeting. Was that true?

A. It was. In a crucial 1993 price-fixing meeting between ADM executives and their Japanese competitors, Whitacre’s hidden tape recorder suddenly began making clicking noises. Panicked, Whitacre opened his briefcase and fumbled to fix the recorder. The FBI agents watching the videotape in a nearby room were horrified, but the other meeting attendants were chatting among themselves and somehow never noticed.

Q. Whitacre indiscreetly tells people about his secret work with the FBI in the film. Did he really do that?

A. Yes, and it infuriated the FBI agents. Whitacre confided in a number of his subordinates at ADM, claiming later it was to keep them “from getting scared” when the FBI raided ADM’s offices.

Whitacre also, for reasons never clearly explained, confessed to his gardener, Rusty Williams. Williams testified later that Whitacre told him about his informant work for the FBI, and boasted that he would soon be at the helm of ADM. “Just call me 014,” Whitacre had said to him. “Because I’m twice as smart as 007.”

Q. Was Whitacre naive enough to think that he could one day end up running ADM, even after cooperating with the FBI in their investigation of the company?

A. Apparently so. Whitacre frequently told skeptical FBI agents that after ADM’s other key executives were busted for price fixing, the board of trustees would turn to Whitacre to save the company.

Even Whitacre’s wife thought it was a pipe dream, according to Eichenwald’s account. When her husband described how he could ascend the ADM ladder after the FBI investigation became public, Ginger looked at him in disbelief.

“Mark,” she said. “Are you an idiot?”

Q. Was Whitacre quite so, well, crazy?

A. The film exaggerates some of his oddities for comic effect. But Whitacre himself, after viewing the film, apparently told Soderbergh that his portrayal was “very accurate.” And FBI agent Bob Herndon, who spent years working with Whitacre during the investigation, concurred in a recent interview that the film captured Whitacre’s idiosyncrasies.

“Mostly, I think they got it right,” he said. “I never felt like they took a cheap shot.”

Q. Was Whitacre actually bipolar, as the film suggests?

A. Hard to say. He claimed he was, and was briefly hospitalized for manic-depressive disorder. But some of his critics argued that Whitacre wasn’t sick; he was just a sociopathic liar.

There’s even disagreement over Whitacre’s suicide attempts (he had a few, which the film glosses over.) Did he really try to kill himself? Or did he fake suicide to gain sympathy? Only Whitacre knows for sure.

Q. Where can I find more information?

A. Check out “The Informant,” Eichenwald’s on which the film is based. It’s a terrific read.

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu.

History in the Movies, “Inglourious Basterds”

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

Quentin Tarantino fans will probably love his new World War II film, “Inglourious Basterds.” It’s chock full of the Tarantino trademarks — the genre-bending, black humor, quirky characters and cartoonish violence.

History buffs, however, are in for a shock.

Tarantino cheerfully and breathtakingly rewrites some key facts about that most sacrosanct of wars. The end result is more revenge fantasy than history, as the film’s Jewish characters wreak deadly havoc on their Nazi oppressors, and do so with gusto.

“Holocaust movies always have Jews as victims,” Tarantino complained in a recent interview in The Atlantic. “We’ve seen that story before. I want to see something different.”

Whether that “something different” will work for audiences remains to be seen. Here’s a guide to determine where the film bends the historical record, and where it breaks it.

Q. Was there a squad of Jewish-American soldiers sent into Nazi-occupied France to exact revenge on Germans?

A. No. Brad Pitt’s avenging Tennessee hillbilly is a product of Tarantino’s imagination, as is Pitt’s squadron of “Basterds,” (the misspelling is Tarantino’s) a fearsome group of Jewish-American soldiers committed to hunting down Nazis. But journalist Kim Masters recently wrote on “The Daily Beast” Web site that a secret group of largely Jewish commandos did exist, though in the British, not the American military. Her father, Peter Masters, had been one of them.

Called the X-Troop, Masters’s unit was comprised of European-born refugees who had fled the Nazis into England. Their fluency in German helped them stage daring reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, and allowed them to capture and interrogate German soldiers.

But there’s a key difference with the film’s commandos, as Kim Masters notes. Her father’s X-Troop did not take scalps, carve swastikas into Nazi foreheads, or bash in German heads with a baseball bat. That’s pure Tarantino.

Q. The most sinister character in the film is Col. Hans Landa, the SS officer responsible for rounding up Jews in France. Was he a real person?

A. Landa is a fictional character, but men like him certainly operated in France. Chosen for their adherence to “racial purity” and their devotion to Hitler, members of the SS were primarily responsible for implementing the anti-Jewish policies which culminated in the “Final Solution.” Like the fictional Col. Landa, they were cold, efficient and ruthless in hunting down and exterminating Jews throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.

Q. Diane Kruger plays Bridget von Hammersmark, a German actress who spies for the Allies. Is she a real person?

A. Von Hammersmark is imaginary, though her glamour and beauty evoke the popular German actress, Marlene Dietrich. Dietrich, however, was never a spy. She left Germany for fame in Hollywood in the 1930s, and became an American citizen in 1939. When the war began, Dietrich made clear her hatred of the Nazi regime, and spurned invitations by Nazi officials to return to her homeland. Instead, she raised money for U.S. war bonds, and entertained American troops for the USO.

Q. In the film, a young German soldier named Fredrick Zoller becomes famous after shooting hundreds of American and British troops from a sniper’s tower. Did anyone like him exist?

A. The most celebrated German snipers operated not in France, but on the Russian Front. The closest historical model for Zoller is Matthias Hetzenauer, a young Austrian sniper who was credited with at least 345 kills on the Eastern Front, all before his 21st birthday. Hetzenauer was awarded the Iron Cross, but German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels never based a film on his exploits, unlike the fictional Zoller.

Q. Speaking of Goebbels, the movie indicates that he aspired to be a German version of famed Hollywood producer David O. Selznick. Any truth to that?

A. There is, actually. As Minister of Propaganda he ruthlessly controlled all of Germany’s media, and became a master propagandist. But Goebbels liked to imagine he was providing simple, entertaining films to Germans, rather than overtly political ones. Goebbels’s diaries showed that two of his favorite films were Selznick’s “Gone with the Wind” and Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Q. Two of the film’s characters use film reels to start a fire. Was it as flammable as the movie suggests?

A. Absolutely. Before the 1950s, motion pictures were reproduced on nitrate film, which is highly combustible, and could ignite under the heat of the projection lamp. Theater fires, then, were not uncommon, and once begun were extremely hard to contain, since nitrate creates its own oxygen as it burns. To make matters worse, as nitrate film ages, it emits a gas which can spontaneously combust. In 1978, the National Archives lost 12 million feet of old newsreel footage when the nitrate film reels auto-ignited deep in the film vaults.

Starting in the early 1950s, film companies switched to using an acetate-based or polyester-based film, which is far safer.

Q. Without revealing any spoilers, is the ending of the film based on facts?

A. None whatsoever. I can’t deny the visceral satisfaction I felt as the film rollicked towards its conclusion, but it was startling to watch Tarantino abandon any fidelity to history there. He essentially rewrites the entire ending of World War II in his closing scenes.

To his credit, though, Tarantino warns us at the start not to take it all too seriously. He opens the film, after all, with those time-honored words, “Once upon a tim …” “Inglourious Basterds” may be set in World War II, but it isn’t history; it’s fantasy. And in Tarantino’s hands, it’s one wild ride.

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu.

History in the Movies, “”Public Enemies”"

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

John Dillinger. Baby Face Nelson. Pretty Boy Floyd. And Melvin Purvis … Melvin Purvis?

It’s telling that more than seventy years after the early 1930s’ crime spree that transfixed the nation, the names of that era’s gangsters resonate far more than those of the FBI agents like Purvis who brought them down.

“Public Enemies,” Michael Mann’s new film, illustrates this gangster infatuation of ours. Though ostensibly a story about both the robber and the cop, it’s the roguishly charming Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and not the upstanding-but-dull Purvis (Christian Bale) who commands most of the screen time.

And yet, historically, this may be just about right. The movie’s portrait of Dillinger sticks fairly closely to the facts. As for the now-forgotten Purvis? The film may give him more time and credit than he deserves.

Read on for more on what the film gets right, and where it fudges the facts.

Q. Depp plays Dillinger as the crook with a heart of gold. How true is this?

A. Partially true. Affable and handsome, Dillinger charmed the public. The press celebrated his daring bank robberies, spun anecdotes about his chivalry towards women during his heists, and made him into a sympathetic character by emphasizing his difficult childhood.

Public attitudes towards Dillinger were also shaped by the widespread anger against bankers in the early 1930s. Many Americans blamed the Great Depression on monied interests, and thus bank robbers like Dillinger or Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd became folk heroes — Robin Hood figures for a people in dire economic straits. Woody Guthrie penned a sympathetic ballad about Pretty Boy Floyd. Movie audiences cheered when John Dillinger’s face appeared in newsreels.

But not all bank robbers were chivalrous heroes. Many were like George “Baby Face” Nelson, who joined forces with Dillinger for a few months in 1934 (though contrary to the film, Nelson died after Dillinger, not before.) A sociopath with an explosive temper, Nelson shot police and bystanders indiscriminately. And though disgusted by Nelson’s rampages, Dillinger himself could be ruthless, killing at least one cop during his crime spree, and wounding many others.

Q. How accurate is the portrayal of Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent played by Christian Bale?

A. Purvis’s unit in Chicago became famous after killing Dillinger (and later Floyd and Nelson) and Purvis himself became the most celebrated G-man in the country. Bale portrays him as a competent and steely lawman, hampered by incompetent agents and an impatient J. Edgar Hoover.

But historian Bryan Burroughs argues that Purvis was actually woefully incompetent. He once “forgot” to arrest George “Machine Gun” Kelly, despite iron-clad intelligence from other FBI agents of a meeting Kelly had planned at a Chicago tavern. And under his leadership, the Dillinger manhunt became a comedy of errors. For months, Purvis inexplicably neglected to order a watch kept on the homes of Dillinger’s family and associates, allowing the outlaw to hide out in ease. Purvis ordered raids on the wrong houses, and arrests of the wrong people. And he and his men lost Dillinger’s trail countless times. They were finally able to corner him only because an informant, Ana Sage (the fabled ‘woman in red’) contacted the Chicago police with information on Dillinger’s whereabouts.

Q. Did Dillinger really escape from the Crown Point, Indiana prison by using a fake gun?

A. Legend has it that he did it with a gun carved in soap and covered in shoe polish. The film shows instead a wooden gun, which Dillinger always claimed to have used. Some evidence emerged later to suggest that Dillinger’s lawyer had bribed a guard or two to facilitate his escape. But the fact remains that Dillinger’s prison break in March of 1934 was breathtakingly audacious. Facing a trial which could lead to the electric chair, Dillinger used the “gun” to lock up or take hostage more than a dozen lawmen, and then fled the state in the sheriff’s personal car. Soon after, the FBI officially branded him its first “Public Enemy #1.”

Q. The emotional heart of the film is the relationship between Dillinger and Billie Frechette. Did they get that story right?

A. Partly. Dillinger and Evelyn “Billie” Frechette got together in the fall of 1933, meeting in a nightclub, as the film shows. But while Marion Cotillard portrays Frechette as a sweet, fragile innocent, the real Frechette had worked in nudie nightclubs for a while, and had developed an affinity for the wrong kind of men.

By all accounts, Dillinger and Frechette grew very close for the six months they stayed together, and talked of marriage. But she was arrested in April 1934, and though Dillinger spoke at first of trying to rescue her, he soon moved on. Just two months later, he moved in with a new girlfriend, Polly Hamilton. Polly would be with him the night he died.

Q. Did FBI agents really beat Frechette to get her to reveal Dillinger’s hiding place?

A. Certainly they treated her badly — handcuffing her to a chair under bright lights, and interrogating her relentlessly for more than twenty-four hours straight, while she begged to be allowed to sleep. But contrary to the film, the agents don’t seem to have slapped her around.

Q. Did Dillinger actually wander into the FBI’s Chicago offices on a whim?

A. I was skeptical of this scene, but it turns out to be fairly close to the truth. In May of 1934, Dillinger had plastic surgery done on his face. Confident that his altered looks would keep him safe, despite being the subject of the largest manhunt in the country and carrying a $15,000 price on his head, Dillinger got careless. Despite his friends’ objections, he went to nightclubs, amusement parks, and Cubs games. He even tempted fate by repeatedly taking Polly to a medical office in the same building as the FBI offices.

And Dillinger loved going to the movies, which led to the fateful encounter with the FBI in July 1934.

Q. Where can I find more information?

A. Check out the entertaining book that inspired the film: Bryan Burrough’s “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934.”

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu.

History in the Movies, “Angels and Demons”

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

Back in the spring of 2006, the impending release of “The Da Vinci Code”, Ron Howard’s film of Dan Brown’s bestseller, set off a storm of controversy. For weeks, the media was filled with Catholic leaders calling for a boycott of the film, outraged by Brown’s disputed historical claims about Church history.

But though Brown’s latest religious thriller — “Angels and Demons” — just opened nationwide, it’s been fairly quiet on the outrage front. That’s not because the Catholic Church comes off much better here than they did in “The Da Vinci Code.”

Both films feature nefarious Church officials doing dastardly deeds. But to its credit, “Angels and Demons” avoids anything like the most outrageous charge found in “The Da Vinci Code.” You remember? The one about the Catholic Church engaging in a centuries-long cover-up of the fact that Jesus had a wife and a kid?

Jesus’ marital and parental status may have been avoided in this one, but Dan Brown bashers needn’t fear. Like its predecessor, “Angels and Demons” features plenty of dubious historical details to debunk. Read on for some examples.

Q. “Angels and Demons” focuses on the Illuminati. Are they a real group?

A. In the film, Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) solemnly describes the Illuminati as a powerful secret organization, formed in the 1500s, attracting “physicists, mathematicians, astronomers … dedicated to scientific truth.” But, he adds, the Vatican hated them, and so “began to hunt them down and kill them.”

Um, no. This isn’t history; it’s conspiracy theory. Dan Brown is relying on popular myth, which has long portrayed the Illuminati as an enormously influential and secretive group, spanning nations and centuries. Some conspiracy theories have the Illuminati controlling every major world government. In other theories, they are a Satanic cult, preparing the world for the Antichrist. In Brown’s version, the Illuminati are illustrious men of science and reason, waging a centuries-long struggle with a backward and hostile Vatican.

But none of this is history. In fact, the only Illuminati for which there is historical evidence were a short-lived group founded in 1776 by an irascible Bavarian intellectual named Adam Weishaupt. Using Enlightenment ideas to oppose both the Church and the Bavarian monarchy, Weishaupt’s secretive Illuminati became a fashionable organization for free thinkers and Progressive politicians for the next few years. But infighting, led by Weishaupt himself, weakened the group. And in 1785, after only nine years of existence, the Illuminati were largely stamped out by the Bavarian government in a crackdown on secret societies.

Yet ironically, just as their actual influence was waning, their myth began to grow, and whispers soon arose of Illuminati attempts at world domination. That myth continues today. Just Google “Illuminati conspiracy’ for evidence of some of the wackier claims.

Q. So, what about Galileo? The film says he was part of the Illuminati.

A. Dan Brown likes imagining that great intellectuals like Galileo and Da Vinci spent lots of time hanging out in secret societies. I personally think they had better things to do. But regardless, it would have been rather difficult for Galileo to be a part of the Illuminati, since he died in 1642, one hundred and thirty-four years before the Bavarian Illuminati even formed.

Q. How about “La Purga,” the branding and murder of Illuminati scientists by the Vatican. Did that happen?

A. In the film, Langdon recites this as historical fact to skeptical Vatican officials. “In 1668,” he asserts, “the church kidnapped four Illuminati scientists and branded each one of them on the chest with the symbol of the cross, to purge them of their sins.” The scientists were then executed, which radicalized the Illuminati and led to an elaborate revenge plot. “Geez,” Langdon scoffs at his audience, “don’t you guys read your own history books?”

Why yes, Robert Langdon, we do. But we wouldn’t find “La Purga” in any of them because it’s a completely fictional event. The Illuminati didn’t even exist in 1668.

Q. Does antimatter exist? And is it as explosive as shown?

A. Antimatter does exist, and scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland were the first to create and trap it, just like the film shows. But CERN’s own website debunks the notion that it’s dangerous. They produce it in such miniscule amounts, they say that it “would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb” akin to the one shown in the film.

Q. Robert Langdon is a professor of symbology at Harvard. Has that department grown more popular since the success of Brown’s novels?

A. No. That’s because not only is Langdon a fictional character, but so is his department. There is no academic discipline called “symbology.”

But perhaps I’m being too hard on Dan Brown, and his “Angels and Demons.” It’s a piece of fiction after all, and a fun film to boot. So, see it if you enjoy fast-paced thrillers. See it for the great scenery of Rome. Just please, don’t see it for the “history.”

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu.

History in the Movies, “Defiance”

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

The theme of “Defiance,” the new World War II-era film starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber, is crystallized in an exchange early in the film, when a Russian scoffs, “Jews do not fight.” The response: “These Jews do.”

“Defiance” is not your typical Holocaust film. While there are fleeting scenes of Nazi atrocities, the story focuses squarely on those Jews who escaped the German dragnet and fought back. It is based on the true story of the Bielski brothers, who led hundreds of Jews into hiding in the forests of Nazi-occupied Belarus, and managed to keep them alive there for years.

But like most historical films, “Defiance,” while sticking to the broad historical outline tends to fudge some of the details. Here’s a guide to separate the fact from the fiction.

Q. Tuvia and Zus Bielski are heroic figures in the film, though they don’t always get along. Is this accurate?

A. Yes, mostly. Both Tuvia (Craig) and Zus (Schreiber) were imposing men, who even before the war had reputations for meeting any slight with an aggressive response. They commanded respect from the Jews who followed them, as well as the Soviet partisans who often fought alongside them. And it is largely true that Tuvia focused more on saving Jewish lives, while Zus yearned to exact revenge on the Nazis.

But the film takes some liberty with their relationship. The sibling rivalry is exaggerated, and most accounts say that both Zus and Asael (played by Jamie Bell) unquestioningly deferred to their older brother, Tuvia, remembered as the most impressive leader of the three. And though the film suggests Asael was much younger than the other two, he was actually only two years younger than Tuvia, while Zus was four years younger.

Q. Why didn’t more Jews escape like the Bielskis did?

A. The Bielski brothers grew up in an isolated rural area in Belarus, near huge forests where they spent many days of their childhood. They were uniquely suited not only to surviving in the forest for years, but more significantly, sheltering hundreds of others there as well.

But most European Jews had nowhere similar to hide, and as the Nazi noose tightened around them in the early years of the war, heartbreakingly few were able to find escape to such a deserted place, or to find friendly Christians willing to risk their lives to aid them.

Q. In the film, Tuvia kills a policeman responsible for his parents’ arrest, but is emotionally conflicted about it. True?

A. The killing is true. The emotional distress? Not so much. Tuvia and his brothers were fearsome fighters, and targeted a number of Nazi collaborators, often executing their entire families. The Bielskis wanted to send a message loud and clear. Targeting Jews would bring gruesome reprisals.

Q. Did the Bielskis really sneak into the heavily guarded Jewish ghettos to rescue people?

A. They did. In Eastern Europe, the Nazis didn’t immediately send Jews to concentration camps. Instead, they created walled-off ghettos in each city, where Jews were forced to work as slave labor, and kept in terror by frequent executions. Until the ghettos were liquidated, the Bielskis organized numerous forays inside to rescue people and guide them to their camp in the forest. It was a particularly daring act since the Bielski brothers each had a heavy price on his head.

Q. The Soviet partisan fighters are unfriendly and unhelpful to the Jews in the film. Was that true?

A. Yes and no. The Bielski group actually worked fairly closely with the Soviet partisans, though the film implies otherwise. While initially met with some suspicion by the Soviet guerrilla fighters (who displayed a fair bit of anti-Semitism themselves), Tuvia was masterful in dealing with Soviet partisan leaders, downplaying his group’s all-Jewish identity, and exaggerating their pro-Communist sentiments. He also proved his group’s worth with frequent acts of sabotage against the Nazis.

Q. Did Zus leave his brothers to join the partisans?

A. It makes for good dramatic tension, but it didn’t happen. The Bielski brothers stayed together until the last few months of Nazi occupation, at which time Moscow took direct control of the partisan fighters, and ordered Zus and Asael into separate partisan units.

Q. So, how did the group get all the food they needed?

A. The film’s a bit vague on this, but it primarily came from farms and homes bordering the forest. Sometimes it was given freely by friendly neighbors. At other times, the Bielskis traded valuables for food and weapons. But the typical Bielski method -shared by all the Soviet partisan fighters — was to simply demand food from peasants under gunpoint.

Q. The film shows some pretty dramatic battles between the Bielski group and Nazi soldiers. Did those occur?

A. Those scenes are emotionally satisfying, but somewhat exaggerated. The Bielskis had guns, of course, and used them. But dramatic shootouts between the Nazis and the Jewish partisans were rare.

The real heroism of the Bielskis lay not primarily in their willingness to wreck revenge on the Nazis — other Jewish and Russian partisan groups did that as well. The Bielskis stand out more for their unique work in rescuing and protecting other Jews — including those too old or weak to fight –from an almost certain death. “It is better to save one Jew than to kill ten Nazis,” says Daniel Craig’s Tuvia, echoing the real-life Tuvia.

This attitude resulted in the rescue and survival of over a thousand Jews under their watch. Today the descendants of those survivors number in the tens of thousands. The Bielskis’ heroism is a significant story, and worthy of an exciting film. And if a little creative license was used to tell the tale? Well, this historian, for one, doesn’t mind.

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu

History in the Movies, “Valkyrie”

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

Somewhere towards the end of “Valkyrie”, the new film about the 1944 assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler, I found myself momentarily believing that the German conspirators might just pull it off. Hitler would get whacked.

Berlin would be wrested from the grip of the Gestapo and the SS. And Tom Cruise with his eye patch could change history for the better.

But, alas, history tends to win out in the end. And therein lies the problem with films about true-life tales. Going in, we already know the ending.

Yet despite all this, “Valkyrie” works as a suspense film, thanks to topnotch acting and tight direction. And even though viewers know (or should) that Hitler doesn’t actually bite the dust in July of 1944, the film offers some unfamiliar yet fascinating history about the intricacies and personalities behind the real Operation “Valkyrie,”

Here are answers to questions viewers may have about it.

Q. Okay, that eye patch? Did Cruise need to wear it for his character, or was it an affectation?

A. Internet chatter has mocked Tom Cruise’s eye patch, yet it’s completely accurate historically. Cruise plays Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, a leader of the conspiracy plot, who sported a black eye patch after he lost his left eye (along with his right hand, and two fingers from his left) during a British air attack in North Africa in 1943. In fact, images of Stauffenberg from the era show a chiseled profile, which uncannily resembles Cruise.

Q. What turned Stauffenberg against Hitler?

A. The film barely touches on Stauffenberg’s motivations, and Cruise plays him as a noble and resolute Boy Scout. Yet the real Stauffenberg was a complex guy, and his motivations are murky. On the one hand, he was intoxicated by the vision of a powerful Germany, and found himself deeply impressed by Hitler’s early military successes. And though never a member of the Nazi party, Stauffenberg wasn’t immune to the regime’s anti-Semitism, at one point dismissing Polish Jews as a people “that is only comfortable under the lash.”

Yet Stauffenberg was also a devout Catholic, and in 1942, he was appalled to hear reports of widespread extermination of Jews by the SS. This combined with his disgust at Hitler’s mismanagement of the Russian front pushed him to commit to the conspiracy. By 1943, Stauffenberg had become the driving force of the assassination plot, which culminated in his planting the bomb at Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair”_ headquarters, on July 20, 1944.

Q. Did Stauffenberg have to trick Hitler into signing the changes to Operation “Valkyrie?”

A. It makes for a suspenseful scene, but apparently a fudged one.

Operation “Valkyrie” was the secret plan Hitler had authorized allowing the German Reserve Army to seize control of the country in the event of civil unrest, whether caused by Allied bombing or an uprising by the millions of slave laborers in Germany. The Army conspirators realized they could turn the plan to their own purposes. After Hitler’s assassination, they planned to initiate “Valkyrie,” and order the Reserve Army to arrest SS members and disarm Nazi leadership around the country.

But the scene in which Stauffenberg tricks Hitler into signing the revised orders never happened.

Q. In the film, the conspirators almost succeed in arresting Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi propaganda minister. True?

A. That part’s also exaggerated. In the film, an officer in the Reserve Army named Major Remer, believing he is following orders, barges into Goebbels’s office to arrest him. But the reality was less dramatic.

Hearing rumors of a coup, Goebbels himself arranged to meet with Remer, and informed him that he was being duped by the couprove it, Goebbels got Hitler on the phone, then handed the receiver to a startled Major Remer, who had believed the rumors that the Fuhrer was dead. In that moment, as the film shows, the tide turned against Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators. The coup was doomed.

Q. Kenneth Branagh plays a character who tried to blow up Hitler in 1943. What happened?

A. When Hitler visited German headquarters on the Russian front in March of 1943, a prominent conspirator named Major-General Tresckow(Branagh) planted a bomb disguised as a cognac bottle on his plane. It was one of many assassination plots Tresckow had hatched, but this one, like the others, failed. The bomb never detonated, perhaps because of faulty fusing, or perhaps due to the cold temperatures in the unheated luggage area of the plane.

Q. The film gives the impression that the German officer corps was rife with conspirators against Hitler. True?

A. Hard to say. A few German institutions — like the Intelligence Services and the Army — had managed to keep their independence from more fanatical Nazis like the SS. Anti-Hitler conspiracies and assassination plots percolated among those groups as an open secret throughout the 1930s and ’40s.

But how many sympathizers existed is impossible to determine. And as a recent London Times article points out, the problem with new films like “Valkyrie” and Kate Winslet’s “The Reader” is that by showcasing the “good Nazis,” they belie the reality that Hitler and his Nazi ideology maintained enormous popularity among rank and file Germans until the end of the war. “Good Nazis”_ surely existed, but they were not the majority.

Which leaves me with just one final question. Who thought it was a good idea to release a film about Nazis — albeit good Nazis on Christmas Day? That question, I fear, doesn’t have a good answer.

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu

History in the Movies, “Australia”

Cathy Schultz, Ph.D., a history professor at the University of St. Francis in Illinois; she writes a syndicated column on historical films.

This weekend, I recommend a trip to see “Australia.” The film, that is. Baz Luhrmann’s ambitious new movie combines the quirky charm of his Oscar-nominated “Moulin Rouge,” with the epic sweep of a “Gone with the Wind.” Throw in a love story, some gorgeous visuals, and Hugh Jackman in all of his “Sexiest Man Alive” glory. What’s not to love?

The movie also introduces us to a compelling slice of Australian history, circa 1940; one which resonates — rather surprisingly — with themes from our own national story: There are cattle drives through the outback; tension between greedy land barons and simple ranchers; an unprovoked air attack by the Japanese; and a powerful subplot about the racism encountered by a mixed-race boy.

But how much of it is real? Here’s an Aussie history guide to help answer your questions.

Q. Hugh Jackman’s character is called the “Drover.” What’s a drover anyway?

A. It’s an Australian term for someone who drives cattle (or sheep, for that matter). In a Hollywood Western, his character would just be called ‘the Cowboy.”

Q. Nicole Kidman’s character runs a ranch called Faraway Downs. Did it actually exist?

A. No, it’s fictional. But it looks like a typical ranch (or “station,” as they’re called) in Australia’s Northern Territories. Land holdings in that vast and isolated region run huge. Some stations encompass literally millions of acres, and number their cattle in the tens of thousands.

Q. The film shows the Australian government taking Aboriginal children from their parents. Is that true?

A. Unfortunately, yes. For a hundred years, beginning in the 1860s, Australian policy encouraged a forced removal of “half-caste” (mixed-race) children from their Aboriginal mothers. Brought to live in missions, and encouraged to assimilate to white society, they became known as the Stolen Generations. Many never saw their families again.

When it began, some argued that the policy protected the children from neglect or abandonment. But prejudice lay at its heart. In the film, an older white man tells Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) that the children were removed from their families because “we want to breed the black out of them.” And he reassures her not to worry, since “aboriginal mothers soon forget their offspring.”

Q. When did the Australian government finally end the policy?

A. Amazingly, not until the 1960s. And it wasn’t until this year that Australia officially acknowledged the cruelty of the policy. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke before Parliament in February of 2008, and issued a formal apology to the Aborigines on behalf of the nation. “For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind,” he said in a moving statement. “We say, we are sorry.”

Q. Little Nullah hopes to go ‘walkabout’ with his black grandfather. What does this mean?

A. To non-Aussies, it seems to simply mean a long walk. But for an Aborigine, the walkabout was a coming-of-age journey through the Australian wilderness, a chance to follow in the footsteps of their ancient ancestors.

Q. Ancient, huh? Just how far back do the Aborigines go in Australia?

A. Scholars estimate that Aborigines have been in Australia for about 40,000 years. Which is about 39,800 years longer than whites.

Q. How soon after Pearl Harbor did the Japanese bomb the Australian city of Darwin?

A. The Darwin air raids took place in February of 1942, and the Australians were caught just as flat-footed as the Americans had been two months earlier at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese unleashed more firepower against Darwin than they had in Hawaii, and destroyed ships and planes belonging to both Australia and the United States.

After the Darwin attack, many feared that the Japanese were on the verge of an invasion, for which Australia was woefully unprepared. The Australian military was mostly deployed overseas in early 1942, serving with British forces in Europe or North Africa. The Australian government quickly scrambled to get its forces back home, and fortunately, by early 1943, the threat of Japanese invasion had passed.

Q. Were the mission children actually stuck on an island in Darwin’s harbor when the Japanese attached?

A. No, this part is exaggerated. But there’s a kernel of truth to the story. One of the first Australians to spot the incoming Japanese planes was a priest, stationed on a lonely island off Darwin’s shore. “An unusually large air formation bearing down on us from the northwest,” he radioed into Darwin’s radio operators on the morning of the attack. The operators shrugged off the warning. Twenty minutes later, the town was attacked.

Q. How can I find more information about Australia?

A. There are some good books out there, but what Australia hopes is that people bypass the reading, and instead decide to come Down Under to visit. The country helped fund the film, believing it could spark a tourism boom. It might work. Though in these penny-pinching times, Australia might have to offer some extra inducements to tourists.

However, some personal time with Australia’s very own “Sexiest Man Alive” might do the trick.

You can reach Cathy Schultz at cschultz@stfrancis.edu