Story facts incomplete as movie was made 1943, too near actual events of 1942AD: Excellent job with what was known at time- though horrific events
"John Carradiine 'got' the evil character of Heydrich spot on; simply frightening in it's detail & subtlety; movie excellent made so closely to events as the film makers didn't have all the facts but enough to make a plausible and believable movie when all facts were not then known. To get a more factual film, would have to get one made after WW II or one recently made. The overall impact of the movie story is visceral, huge and full of the creeping fear it must have been to live under NAZI tyranny, with murderous secret hangings through out their vile 'Reich' newly invaded lands such as these of Bohemia & Moravia, now the Czech Republic. Heydrich's callous, torture and non-judicial personal villainy brought on actions by those locals who had been trained in England on how to assassinate him. His deathbed ramblings to SS head Himmler led to the choice of the people of Lidice as the point of vengeance for the assassination which is shown in some detail, including in a separate clip, some original German military film footage of the actual destruction of the village of Lidice. All males over 15 mass murdered, women sent to concentration camps, children separated from mothers, a few with Aryan features were adopted by German parents, the majority sent along with the mothers to other concentration camps to be murdered there. Ir took much planning, organization, personnel, financing, resources to do all this and the then newly modern NAZI state didn't have computers to keep up with the administrative, military, transportation and many other aspects of both paperwork as well as getting people from place to place. Remarkable attention to the details of conquest through overwhelming violence and armed, industrialized might. These same people had stamps printed as German for these occupied territory's,
Heydrich is also remembered for presenting Hitler's 'Final Solution to the Jewish Problem' to the upper echelon's of both military and business-industry at the Wansee Conference in Berlin, about 6 months prior to his assassination and is seen by many as an integral part of it's later implementation throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R., Middle East, Africa, and German colony's world wide including the Pacific basin colonies.
This film while incomplete as it was made without access to details that later became known, provides a realistic overview of what barbaric, mass murderous, far-reaching influence Hitler's Madman and those who thought like him, had in his shortened, monstrous, life.
Worth watching though romanticized partly as a patriotic love story by Hollywood, a thoughtful and accurate rendition of Heyrich's treacherous character and impact on the history of those people he murdered by the hundred's: his title there? Protector of Czechoslovakia; more lying words and concepts generated to deceive wholesale by his Third Reich bosses, Hitler and Himmler.
Stamps are set issued 1943AD, of Heydrich's death mask, thus excusing any and all revenge mass murders on his behalf, and note similarity in physical features with John Carradine as "Hitler's Madman' in film. "
In 1943 the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů wrote the musical work Memorial to Lidice.
Research in part Thanks to the Holocaust Memorial Project
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