Hitler's Madman is a 1943 World War II drama directed by Douglas Sirk. It is a highly fictionalized account of the 1942 assassination of Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich and the resulting Lidice massacre, which the Germans committed as revenge. The film stars Patricia Morison and Alan Curtis and features John Carradine as Reinhard Heydrich. Hitler's Madman was Sirk's first American production after fleeing Nazi Germany and abandoning his German name of Detlef Sierck. The screenplay was written by Peretz Hirschbein, Melvin Levy, and Doris Malloy, from a story by Bart Lytton, with some uncredited contributions by Edgar G. Ulmer. Plot Lidice, Czechoslovakia, 1942 – The opening verses of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem The Murder of Lidice are recited over images of the bucolic Czech village. Villager Jan Hanka watches a British plane fly overhead, carrying Karel Vavra, a Czech paratrooper being dropped over his hometown to form resistance cells. Karel goes to the Hanka house, in search of daughter Jarmilla, his girlfriend since childhood. Mrs. Hanka asks Karel to take refuge in the forest. Jarmilla finds him there later. They profess their undying love and she sends him to a cave, where he discovers local vagabond, Nepomuk, who agrees to help. Nepomuk gathers villagers at the cave. Karel asks them to sabotage the German war effort. Jan, the most respected villager, warns them it’s too dangerous. They sheepishly depart. In Prague, the fearsome SS Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich decides to start executing intellectuals, who he believes organize the resistance. He interrupts a university class attended by villager Klara and arrests the teacher and students. The male students are sent as cannon fodder on the Russian Front. The women are inspected for use as sex slaves in brothels for German soldiers. Klara throws herself from a window to her death, to avoid this fate. Having lost his daughter Klara, Villager Janek dynamites the coal mine, to deny its product to the Germans. Jan catches his daughter teaching children the Czech national anthem, even though teaching is forbidden by the Germans. Jan argues she needs to be more careful. She calls him a coward. The next day, Heydrich happens to drive through Lidice during the annual harvest blessing parade. Angered to find the road blocked, he plows through the parade and shoots the town priest, Father Cemlanek, horrifying the townsfolk. Lidice Mayor Bauer, a German Nazi true-believer, prepares with his wife for