Plot
During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy), a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny (Walter Brennan), who is himself under suspicion by the Nazis, and his daughter Mascha (Anna Lee). As retaliation for the assassination, fifth-columnist Emil Czaka (Gene Lockhart), a brewer, helps to arrange for 400 citizens of Prague, including Professor Novotny, to be executed if the assassin is not named. Through a complex series of events, the resistance manages to frame Czaka himself for the murder, but not before the Nazis have executed many of the hostages.
Read more about this topic: Hangmen Also Die!
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“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
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