I watched this movie yesterday and thought it was really good. I knew about Operation Anthropoid and saw the 1970s film "Operation Daybreak" which is also about what happened and so while I didn't learn anything new about this important episode of World War 2 the new film still stayed true to the facts and the courageous men and women that carried it out.
In 1941 Czechoslovakian soldiers, who had escaped to England when Germany was given Czechoslovakia by the British and the French in 1938, went back to German-occupied Prague to assassinate the third highest ranking German (Himmler was second and Hitler first), Reinhard Heydrich (played by Detlef Bothe.) Heydrich was the man who organized Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" (ie the Holocaust) into one main policy which streamlined the murder of millions of innocent men, women and children. He was also extremely brutal to the Czechs in Prague (and was known as the "Butcher of Prague." In May 1942, Jozef Gabčík (played by Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubiš (played by Jamie Dornan) - along with some local Czechoslovakian Resistance members - wounded Heydrich when he was driving through Prague (he died later from his wounds.) The Germans placed the city under lock-down and started rounding-up innocent people to be held as hostages. The Resistance members/Czech soldiers hid in the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius and were only found by the Germans when a former Czech Resistance member turned Nazi collaborator, Karel Čurda (played by Jiří Šimek) betrayed the fighters. After a 6 hour battle with hundreds of German soldiers storming the church from the inside and flooding the crypt from the outside all the Czechoslovak Resistance members and the Czechoslovak soldiers were killed (most taking their own life rather than be tortured or killed by the Germans. The Germans didn't stop there and a total of 15,000 Czechs were killed throughout Czechoslovakia in direct retaliation for Heydrich's death (including the residents of the town of Lidice where all 173 men over 15 were murdered with 184 women and 88 children deported to concentration camps. 153 women and 17 children survived the war.)
Operation Anthropoid was one of the key events of the European theater of World War 2 and this film does a good job to describe the events and also the aftermath. It also shows us how the Resistance members and Czech soldiers must have felt (before, during and after) their mission. They knew their actions had consequences when the Germans went after innocent people and yet they also knew that their mission was important and had to be done. The only people guilty of the murder of the innocent men, women and children before and after Heydrich's death are the Germans who participated in the war. They are the ones who should be ashamed of their crimes and actions and not the brave men and women who risked everything so that the Germans would not win the war and continue to murder millions upon millions of more innocent people.
In 1941 Czechoslovakian soldiers, who had escaped to England when Germany was given Czechoslovakia by the British and the French in 1938, went back to German-occupied Prague to assassinate the third highest ranking German (Himmler was second and Hitler first), Reinhard Heydrich (played by Detlef Bothe.) Heydrich was the man who organized Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" (ie the Holocaust) into one main policy which streamlined the murder of millions of innocent men, women and children. He was also extremely brutal to the Czechs in Prague (and was known as the "Butcher of Prague." In May 1942, Jozef Gabčík (played by Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kubiš (played by Jamie Dornan) - along with some local Czechoslovakian Resistance members - wounded Heydrich when he was driving through Prague (he died later from his wounds.) The Germans placed the city under lock-down and started rounding-up innocent people to be held as hostages. The Resistance members/Czech soldiers hid in the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius and were only found by the Germans when a former Czech Resistance member turned Nazi collaborator, Karel Čurda (played by Jiří Šimek) betrayed the fighters. After a 6 hour battle with hundreds of German soldiers storming the church from the inside and flooding the crypt from the outside all the Czechoslovak Resistance members and the Czechoslovak soldiers were killed (most taking their own life rather than be tortured or killed by the Germans. The Germans didn't stop there and a total of 15,000 Czechs were killed throughout Czechoslovakia in direct retaliation for Heydrich's death (including the residents of the town of Lidice where all 173 men over 15 were murdered with 184 women and 88 children deported to concentration camps. 153 women and 17 children survived the war.)
Operation Anthropoid was one of the key events of the European theater of World War 2 and this film does a good job to describe the events and also the aftermath. It also shows us how the Resistance members and Czech soldiers must have felt (before, during and after) their mission. They knew their actions had consequences when the Germans went after innocent people and yet they also knew that their mission was important and had to be done. The only people guilty of the murder of the innocent men, women and children before and after Heydrich's death are the Germans who participated in the war. They are the ones who should be ashamed of their crimes and actions and not the brave men and women who risked everything so that the Germans would not win the war and continue to murder millions upon millions of more innocent people.
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