Hangmen Also Die! (1943)

 Fritz Lang's "Hangmen Also Die!" 

Hangmen Also Die! is an anti-Nazi propoganda film made by Fritz Lang during the second World War. It was written by John Wexley, based on a story by Berlot Brecht and Lang. It is loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reich Protector of German-occupied Prague. During the time of the filming, the identity of the assassin(s) was unknown, however it was discovered after-the-fact that the culprits were Czech resistance fighters who parachuted from a British planes. Lang's direction and writing contribution, Brecht's script, and Hanns Eisler's score all displayed how German exiles influenced American culture during the war. 

The film is set during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and centers on a surgeon named Dr. Frantisek Svoboda, who assassinates Reinhard Heydrich, the "Hangman of Europe." Dr. Svoboda seeks refuge at a stranger, Mascha's, home with her family. Because the assassin cannot be found, Nazi leaders decide to take hostages and execute fourty at a time until the assassin is named. Through a complex series of events, the Czech resistance manages to frame a Nazi informer for the murder. 

Originally titled No Surrender, the film was a rallying cry for people to keep up the good fight. The film even ends with the word 'Not' in front of 'The End.' Among many of the anti-Nazi propoganda films made in the US during this time, this piece provides a call to those in the trenches of Nazi control - suggesting that they must keep together if they want to defeat the regime. The film demonstrates how Nazis create fear through oppressive social infiltration in foreign communities, but it also demonstrates how to use that same manipulation on them. In order to best the Nazis, you must be as conniving as they are.