Possible Victims

One group of victims in Hangmen Also Die was “the Czech people.” This may sound unremarkable at first, but there are some complications to this namesake, as there are with any name defining a nationality. It is interesting to note that although there were conceptions of a Czech nationality dating back to when the region known as Bohemia and Moravia was under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a Czech state did not exist until 1992. From 1918 until then (excluding German occupation, of course) the state was Czechoslovakia. Thus, when characters in the film said they were on the side of the Czech people (rather than, say, “for Czechoslovakia”), they were making a statement about seeing the war as a struggle between nations, not states. This is interesting, because despite Hollywood’s efforts to portray the struggle with Germany as a struggle against Nazi-controlled Germany, rather than against the German people, the language employed to describe the victims was still that of national self determination. Although Nazism was a radical nationalist movement, the basic idea of nationalism was not under attack here.

Another victim was the patriarchal family. The Novotny family is ripped apart by the crisis, and we are left uncertain (as far as I can tell, although some people may have seen it differently) as to whether Professor Novotny survived in the end. The central problem for Nasha Novotny is whether it is more important to save her father or to save a Czech hero in order to lift the spirits of the resistance. Indeed, the marriage plans of Nasha and Jan are destroyed or at least delayed by the crisis, meaning that the Nazis have attacked not only the Novotny family but this potential new family. There is also some tension about fulfilling bourgeois family norms, like making sure a man doesn’t sleep over so the neighbors won’t gossip.