Hangmen Also Die is a 1943 film directed by the legendary Austrian director Fritz Lang with a script by Bertolt Brecht (credited as "Bert Brecht") and John Wexley, with James Wong Howe serving as cinematographer.

The film is loosely based on the assassination of "Hangman" Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Reich Protector of German-occupied Prague, number-two man in the SS, and a chief architect of the Holocaust. In real life he was assassinated by Czech resistance fighters parachuted from a British plane (Operation Anthropoid). For the movie, which was made during World War II before the full story would have been public knowledge, Heydrich's killer is Dr. Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy), a member of the Czech resistance.

In both real life and the film, the Nazis respond to Heydrich's assassination by rounding up and executing prominent Czech citizens. The movie concerns itself first with Dr. Svoboda's escape from Nazi forces, and then the resistance's plan to frame a collaborator for the assassination so the reprisals would cease.

It was Bertolt Brecht's only script for a Hollywood film: the money he earned from the project enabled him to write The Visions of Simone Machard, Schweik in the Second World War and an adaptation of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Hanns Eisler was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical score. The collaboration of three prominent refugees from Nazi Germany—Lang, Brecht and Eisler—is an example of the influence this generation of German exiles had in American culture.

On May 27, 1942 the Nazi Reichsprotector of Bohemia/Moravia, the "Hangman" Reinhard Heydrich, died from the bullets of unidentified resistance fighters. Hangmen Also Die is the story of Heydrich's assassination in fictionalized form. It was Bertolt Brecht's only comparitively successful Hollywood project; the money he received allowed him to write "The Visions of Simone Marchand", "Schwyk in the Second World War" and his adaptation of Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi". Hanns Eisler won an Academy Award for his musical score. Written by J.Arnold Free

An apocryphal version of the assassination of the Nazi leader and Czech "protector" Reinhard Heydrich by a resistance fighter in World War II. The story follows the assassin as he evades the widening Nazi dragnet, protected by his fellow Czechs even to the point of self-sacrifice. As the Czech people are put to the sword in increasing numbers in retaliation for the assassination and their refusal to give up the killer, a plan evolves to provide the Nazis with an "assassin" who is actually a Czech traitor. Written by Jim Beaver