Hangmen Also Die!
1943 film by Fritz Lang
Hangmen Also Die! is a 1943 war film directed by the Austrian director Fritz Lang and written by John Wexley from a story by Bertolt Brecht (credited as Bert Brecht) and Lang. The film stars Brian Donlevy, with Walter Brennan, Anna Lee, and Gene Lockhart, and Dennis O'Keefe in support. Alexander Granach has a showy role as a Gestapo detective, and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski has a cameo as Reinhard Heydrich. Hanns Eisler composed the Academy Award nominated score, and James Wong Howe was cinematographer.
The film is loosely based on the 1942 assassination of Heydrich, the Nazi Reich Protector of German-occupied Bohemia and Moravia during World War II. The number-two man in the SS, and a chief mastermind of the Holocaust, Heydrich earned the epithet of "The Hangman of Europe." Though the real Heydrich was assassinated by Czechoslovak soldiers parachuted from a British plane in Operation Anthropoid, this was not known at the time of filming. Instead, Heydrich's killer is depicted as a member of the Czech resistance with ties to the Communist Party.
Plot
In Prague, during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. František Svoboda, a member of the Czech resistance, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich. Before he can escape the scene his getaway car is discovered, forcing his planned safe house to reject him.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hangmen Also Die!” as 1943 film by Fritz Lang. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1943 film by Fritz Lang. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q758585. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943 and 1942.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hangmen Also Die!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.