I realize there are some factual errors in this film, but I think this is the best film about covert operations in WWII to come out in many, many years.

I saw it some time ago, and remember really liking it.

I have not seen the movie, but I'd like to. I've been in the church where those men died a bunch of times. I lived in Prague for 9 years growing up, and my dad was big into WWII history. He'd take everybody who came to visit to that church...it was part of his orientation tour to the city...so we went there a lot. It's just around the corner from Karlovo Namesti metro station in Prague, and you can still see the pock marks from bullets in the concrete around the window to the basement where they were hiding. They fought hard, and the Nazis ultimately ended up flooding the basement with a fire hose. Inside the church is kind of a mini-museum, with actual photos of the assassination site, and the assault on the church.

I've also been to the area where they blew up Heydrich, although it has changed a bit since the 40s. The man was truly a POS and needed to die, but the cost was pretty extreme.

It's a sad story, as they all died in the end, but those guys had to know that was very likely when they undertook it, and the bravery that they showed was remarkable. The really horrific part, though, was what the Nazis did to several villages in retaliation. They found out that some of the resistance guys had family that lives in a couple of small villages outside the city. They shot all the men, gassed the children, and sent the women to camps, then bulldozed the villages to the ground. There's nothing left now but memorials. Truly sick and despicable people.

IIRC, after the war they hanged the guy who betrayed them to the Nazis. That doesn't come close to making up for the damage he wrought, though.

Need to watch this. Heydrich was an EVIL man and I'm glad he suffered on the way out. But the cost was extreme, which is the message the Nazis wanted to send.

I had the good fortune to hear in person from Col. Jaroslav Šustr about what he and his team did. He helped organize the operation with the SOE while in Britain. He came to the US after the Soviets invaded after the war and spent his last years working for the FBI and lived in walking distance of Mount Vernon in Alexandria VA, before he died of brain cancer.

quote:

After the fall of France to the Wehrmacht later in 1940, members of the 1st Czechoslovak Division sailed from southern France to Britain, then gathered in a camp at Cholmondeley, near Chester. In 1941 Capt. Jaroslav Šustr began to recruit men from this camp for secret operations that would take place behind enemy lines. Called Special Group D, the recruits went to Special Training Centers located in remote parts of England and Scotland where they learned parachuting, physical and psychological endurance, sharp shooting, man-to-man combat, handling explosives, intelligence gathering, radio operations, and cartography. Members of Operation Anthropoid, the plan to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, were among the
first to volunteer for Special Group D

Reviving an old thread. Its now playing on Amazon Prime. Excellent movie