Hitler's Madman Reviews

German director Douglas Sirk fled to America and, with funding from German expatriates, independently produced his first American film, which detailed the horrors wrought on the Czechoslovakian town of Lidice after the assassination of Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. The film was shot in a week, and Sirk cast Carradine as the brutal governor of the occupied area of Czechoslovakia who performed his sadistic duties with relish. When Carradine is fatally wounded one day by resistance fighters while driving to his headquarters, the fate of Lidice is up for grabs. Surprisingly, Carradine denounces Hitler and his ambitions while on his deathbed. Ignoring his comrade's sudden change of heart, Himmler (Freeman) orders the town of Lidice razed and the slaughter begins--the men killed, the women sent to prison camps, and the children taken away, never to be seen again. Upon completion of the film, MGM agreed to distribute it if Sirk would shoot some additional sequences and retakes, which he did. Look in the backgrounds for a very young Ava Gardner as one of the brave Czech women.