''Atentát'' (English title: ''The Assassination'') is a 1964 black-and-white Czechoslovak

war film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about navy, naval, air force, air, or army, land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle s ...

directed by Jiří Sequens. The

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

story depicts events before and after the assassination of top German leader

Reinhard Heydrich Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

(''

Operation Anthropoid On 27 May 1942 in Prague, Reinhard Heydrichthe commander of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), acting governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and a principal architect of the Holocaustwas attacked and wounded in an assassinati ...

''). Czech historians have called the film the historically most accurate depiction of the events surrounding ''Operation Anthropoid''. The agents portrayed in the film are not referred to by their real names but by the historical cover names they assumed for the operation. For example, Jan Kubiš is called Otto Strnad.

Plot

On September 27, 1941,

, one of the most feared top officials of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

, an architect of

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

and

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

's possible successor, is appointed "Reichsprotektor" of

Bohemia and Moravia The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; cs, Protektorát Čechy a Morava; its territory was called by the Nazis ("the rest of Czechia"). was a partially annexed territory of Nazi Germany established on 16 March 1939 following the German occ ...

. As a result of his brutality and oppression he is also called "The Butcher of Prague" or "The Blond Beast". In the UK, a squad of agents is selected and trained before parachuting into Czechoslovakia. The team operates in Prague and plans the attack for about six months. The mission,

, is executed in the capital on May 27, 1942 in an

ambush An ambush is a long-established military tactic in which a combatant uses an advantage of concealment or the element of surprise to attack unsuspecting enemy combatants from concealed positions, such as among dense underbrush or behind mo ...

. It almost fails when one of their

Sten The STEN (or Sten gun) is a family of British submachine guns chambered in 9×19mm which were used extensively by British and Commonwealth forces throughout World War II and the Korean War. They had a simple design and very low production cos ...

guns jams, but Heydrich is severely wounded by a grenade. Heydrich eventually succumbs to his wounds and during the frenzied aftermath the German high command takes savage reprisals, including the massacre of 340 men, women and children of

Lidice Lidice (, german: Liditz) is a municipality and village in Kladno District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 600 inhabitants. Lidice is built near the site of the previous village of the same name, which was co ...

and the razing of the village. The group is eventually betrayed by one of its members and they are cornered in a church crypt in Prague. In the gun-battle that follows all agents commit suicide.

Cast

* Radoslav Brzobohatý – 1st Lt. Král (based on Adolf Opálka) * Luděk Munzar – 1st Lt. Sedlák (based on Alfred Bartoš) * Ladislav Mrkvička – Serg. Vyskocil (based on

Jozef Gabčík Jozef Gabčík (; 8 April 1912 – 18 June 1942) was a Slovak soldier in the Czechoslovak Army involved in the Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of acting ''Reichsprotektor'' (Imperial-Protector) of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, ...

) * Rudolf Jelínek – Serg. Strnad (based on Jan Kubiš) * Jiří Kodet – Serg. Tousek (based on Josef Valčík) * Harry Studt -

Wilhelm Canaris Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi re ...

* Josef Vinklář – Serg. Vrbas (based on Karel Čurda)

Awards

* 4th Moscow International Film Festival - Golden Prize. * 6th Thessaloniki Week of Greek Cinema - Honorable mention, foreign film out of competition.As ''Ο δήμιος της Πράγας''

Notes

References

External links