Essential: HITLER’S MADMAN (1943)

The background for this motion picture is quite interesting, maybe more interesting than the film itself. It’s an excellent piece of anti-Nazi propaganda…a “B” film turned out by personnel from poverty row studio PRC. Some of them were top-tier filmmakers in Germany such as cinematographer Eugen Schufftan and director Douglas Sirk. Despite a low budget, it’s made by competent craftsmen.

MGM boss Louis Mayer liked the film so much, he bought it from the original financiers when they were looking for a distributor. This delayed its release into theaters, since Mayer wanted scenes reshot and a few more added. So, a film made on a shoestring suddenly had its budget expanded.

Sirk, Schufftan, and one of the original producers (Seymour Nebenzal) were Germans in exile, and they depict the Nazis in a more realistic way than other films covering the same ground. The people of Lidice, Czechoslovakia are presented realistically too– the entire village of Lidice was wiped out by the Nazis.

When the Nazis gained power in Eastern Europe and took over neighboring countries, they would station “protectors” over these acquired regions. The high-ranking officials reported to Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. Underneath them were other officials and town mayors. In this case, the mayor of Lidice was a man who turned on his people and swore allegiance to The Fuhrer.

The protectors would usually drive through the various regions under their control and if something seemed off to them, the mayor and local police would be notified. One day the protector of this region (John Carradine) notices a religious assembly in Lidice. His vehicle stops, he hops out with his men, and they confront the local priest and townsfolk. Carradine is angry, because the people do not have a permit to gather in public.

During a quarrel with the priest, whom Carradine is trying to provoke, the priest is shot and killed. This is the first real violence in the area. Carradine plans to drive back through the village the next morning to see if the mayor has gotten the people back in line.

Before Carradine appears, life is idyllic. The people of Lidice may be under German control, but their way of life has not changed drastically. A resistance fighter (Alan Curtis) shows up; he’s a Czech who’s been working with American and British allies in England. He is reunited with his girlfriend (Patricia Morison), and he tries to convince her father (Ralph Morgan) to resist the Nazis.

It isn’t until Carradine kills the priest that Morgan and the townsfolk realize they need to take a stand against the Nazi regime. The mayor’s wife also sides with them, because her two sons were killed on the Russian front fighting for the Fuhrer, which upsets her terribly.

In real life Carradine’s character was ambushed along a road outside Lidice. Sirk’s film depicts that, though it takes dramatic license with some of it. This version has Curtis’ girlfriend ride a bike into the middle of the road to slow down Carradine’s jeep, so that Curtis and Morgan can get off a few good shots with their rifles.

The real life ambush did not involve any women, and the death of Carradine’s character occurred much quicker. The movie drags it out for maximum dramatic effect– before Carradine dies, we see Curtis run off with Morison; then she is shot and killed by Nazi soldiers in the woods.

After their love story concludes, we have a lengthy death scene for Carradine. Just before he finally goes to that big swastika in the sky, Himmler arrives to see him. The movie fails to include an interesting fact about the protector’s death, such as how he refused to let local Czech doctors treat his injuries, since he felt these men were inferior to German doctors.

After Carradine dies, the last ten minutes are devoted to a bloody reprisal against the village of Lidice. During a comical phone call with Hitler, Himmler decides to destroy the entire village.

The atrocities committed against the people of Lidice are staggering. Although HITLER’S MADMAN was made during the production code era, the firing squad scenes are rather graphic. Probably because the film had been originally made at PRC. If the story had started at MGM with an American director, my guess is it would have been much tamer, more sanitized.

The scenes of mass death, and the fires that level the village are expertly staged, and the movie ends on a very somber note. However, the final sequence is also presented as something meant to inspire audiences…where moviegoers should want to carry on and fight the Nazis on behalf of those who were slaughtered that day, the 10th of June 1942, in Lidice.

A few things crossed my mind when I watched HITLER’S MADMAN. First, I don’t think the Nazis and their underlings were ever buffoons. I’d say they were very brutal, very calculating. Eradicating a village was an extreme act that was in every way imaginable, a deliberate (and in their minds, justifiable) measure.

Second, Sirk had actually met the man whose character Carradine is based on, so it’s interesting that he ended up becoming a “biographer” of Reinhard Heydrich through the art of motion pictures; one German denouncing another. Third, the event occurred early during America’s involvement in the war. Americans entered the war in December 1941. The massacre of Lidice took place just six months later, and there would be another three years before Hitler and Himmler were brought down. Fourth, it’s a powerful film that must have been shocking for audiences, particularly the final sequence. It’s powerful and shocking to watch now, all these years later.

Fifth, I think there is still a lot of radical militant behavior occurring in the world today, some of it in our own country; so this movie and the legacy of Lidice is just as relevant as ever. And finally, I think this is a movie you have to watch with all other distractions drowned out. It’s something where you have to embrace the propaganda, yet put it into perspective, but also realize the deeper message about the value of human life. The Nazis wanted to remove all traces of Lidice. But Sirk’s film helps Lidice live. And if you watch HITLER’S MADMAN and absorb its message, you will be helping Lidice live.