In German occupied France in September 1944, Waffen-SS General Dietrich plots with other high-ranking Nazi officials to make a second attempt on Hitler's life.
In England, Major General Worden learns of the plot through the French Resistance. He and other Allied generals are worried that if Dietrich assassinates Hitler, capable Nazi commanders will continue the war beyond 1945. Worden considers Hitler "their best ally," because his incompetence as a military commander is "paralyzing his own army."
In the meantime, Major John Reisman is on trial for hijacking a shipment of steaks intended for high-ranking American officers, when Worden summons him and tells him that he is to again train twelve convicted US soldiers for a suicide mission: namely, to assassinate General Dietrich before he can assassinate Hitler. Reisman considers the idea of stopping Dietrich ludicrous, but Worden leaves him little choice, threatening to send him right back to trial if he does not cooperate.
Reisman returns to Marston Tyne Military Prison to select a new Dirty Dozen, again with the help of MP Sergeant Clyde Bowren. He initially selects thirteen prisoners — a baker's dozen: Sixkiller, Dregors, Deutsch, Valentine, Wright, Wells, Perkins, Le Clair, Rosen, Anderson, Baxley, Reynolds and Sanders.
Reisman and Bowren gather the selected soldiers together at a disused train station. Initially, there are thirteen of them but Rosen is insubordinate and Reisman has him taken back to prison, bringing the number back down to twelve. He trains the group how to storm a train, assault the guards, and find and kill Dietrich. Initially they train only with wooden guns and rubber grenades but when General Worden informs Reisman that their schedule has been bumped up, Reisman gives the men real guns. There is mild strife when, during a German air raid, convict Louis Valentine attempts to escape. However, Sixkiller and Wells capture him and beat him up before bringing him back and explaining to Reisman he was merely sleepwalking.
Dressed as elite German soldiers, Reisman and the Dozen (this time without Sergeant Bowren, who remains behind) fly to a German-held French airfield and land, where they will take a bus. Realizing a Wehrmacht soldier who was black would give them away, Reisman has Dregors bandage his face as though wounded. However his hands are bare, and a Gestapo agent notices them and sounds an alarm, forcing the Dozen to escape in the bus. The Gestapo agent and several German soldiers pursue them.
During the chase, Wright attempts to murder Reisman but instead is shot and killed by Sixkiller. The bus driver is killed, causing a crash that claims the life of Anderson. However, they manage to fend off their pursuers with grenades. Hiking through the French countryside, they find a bullet-riddled Nazi staff car and get it running, though it later breaks down.
Because of the bus crash, they are behind schedule and Dietrich's train has already left. All of the group (except Sixkiller and Wells) want to scrap the mission, Reisman however tells his men that there is a shipment of gold aboard the train, prompting them to change their minds. They agree to continue the mission, while resting in a cellar they encounter a German patrol that ends badly because, like the Gestapo agent at the airport, the lieutenant in command notices Dregors and a firefight starts, during which Perkins, Sanders and Baxley are wounded.
Aboard the train, Dietrich discovers that his longtime second-in-command Colonel Schmidt is suspicious of his motives. Fearing that Schmidt will out him as a traitor, Dietrich shoots and kills the other officer. The train arrives at a depot where it is met by hundreds of German troops. Arriving and taking shelter behind a stone wall, the Dozen watch in puzzlement. Reisman reveals he lied about the gold, angering his men. They wonder, then, if there is no treasure, why are there so many soldiers just to meet one general. They get their answer when a plane lands carrying none other than Adolf Hitler himself.
Dregors contemplates disobeying orders and shooting Hitler instead of Dietrich. Reisman however tells him if he kills Hitler, the war will just "go on and on." So, Dregors follows orders and shoots Dietrich with a sniper rifle. Chaos follows as Nazi officers bundle Hitler into a car and escape, while the soldiers attack the Dozen, who, rather than flee, recklessly attack the train, believing it to indeed contain treasure. It does contain treasure of a sort — priceless paintings and Beethoven's original piano — but these items are much too large to take with them amidst all the fighting.
They escape in the plane Hitler arrived in. During the run for the plane, everyone except for Reisman, Dregors, Perkins, Valentine and Wells (who is piloting it) are killed, although Dregors is shot in the stomach. During the trip back, Dregors dies from his wounds, and Reisman finds a briefcase tucked under a seat, containing top-secret intelligence information as well as a bag of jewels, which he agrees to split with the three remaining men.
The plane develops engine problems as they approach England but Wells manages to land them safely. Still in their uniforms, they depart, and are held at gunpoint by a farmer who thinks they are Nazis, until Reisman speaks English. The farmer tells them of a good pub in the nearby town, and Reisman agrees to buy them all a round of drinks.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
Sicherheitsdienst, full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and the Gestapo was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office, as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision".
The 20 July plot was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the chancellor and leader of Nazi Germany, and subsequently to overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944. The plotters were part of the German resistance, mainly composed of Wehrmacht officers. The leader of the conspiracy, Claus von Stauffenberg, planned to kill Hitler by detonating an explosive hidden in a briefcase. However, due to the location of the bomb at the time of detonation, the blast only dealt Hitler minor injuries. The planners' subsequent coup attempt also failed and resulted in a purge of the Wehrmacht.
Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny was an Austrian-born German SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy and the Gran Sasso raid which rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines wearing their enemies' uniforms. As a result, he was charged in 1947 at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted.
Operation Foxley was a code name of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. At the height of World War II, one option to swiftly end the war was killing Hitler. The SOE developed two potential assassination modules, one was to poison, and the other, shooting with a special gun. Although detailed preparations were made, no attempt was made to carry out the plan. The secret document, a 20-page dossier, was declassified in July 1998 by the British Public Records Office following the 30-year confidentiality limit.
The Dirty Dozen is a 1967 American war film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Lee Marvin with an ensemble supporting cast including Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Ralph Meeker, Robert Ryan, Trini Lopez, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker and Robert Webber. Set in 1944 during World War II, the film follows the titular penal military unit of twelve convicts as they are trained as commandos by the Allies for a suicide mission ahead of the Normandy landings.
Reinhard Heydrich, the commander of the German Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the acting governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a principal architect of the Holocaust, was assassinated during the Second World War in a coordinated operation by the Czechoslovak resistance. The assassination attempt, code-named Operation Anthropoid, was carried out by resistance operatives Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš on 27 May 1942. Heydrich was wounded in the attack and died of his injuries on 4 June.
Operation Valkyrie was a German World War II emergency continuity-of-government operations plan issued to the Territorial Reserve Army of Germany to implement in the event of a general breakdown in national civil order due to Allied bombing of German cities, or an uprising of the millions of foreign forced labourers working in German factories.
Hans Paul Oster was a general in the Wehrmacht and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the Abwehr, Oster was in a good position to conduct resistance operations under the guise of intelligence work.
Richard Jaeckel was an American actor of film and television. Jaeckel became a well-known character actor in his career, which spanned six decades. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor with his role in the 1971 adaptation of Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion.
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 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.
Operation Spark was the code name for the planned assassination of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler by the anti-Nazi conspiracy of German Army officers and political conservatives, known as the Schwarze Kapelle during World War II. The name was coined by Major General Henning von Tresckow in 1941. He believed that because of Hitler's many successes up to that time, his personal charisma, and the oath of personal loyalty to him sworn by all German army officers, it would be impossible to overthrow Hitler and the Nazis with Hitler still alive. Hitler's death, however, would be a "spark"—a signal that it was time to launch an internal coup d'état to overthrow the Nazi regime and end the war.
Hans von Dohnanyi was a German jurist. He used his position in the Abwehr to help Jews escape Germany, worked with German resistance against the Nazi régime, and after the failed 20 July Plot, he was accused of being the "spiritual leader" of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and executed by the SS in 1945.
The Inglorious Bastards is a 1978 Italian Euro War film directed by Enzo G. Castellari and starring Bo Svenson, Peter Hooten, Fred Williamson, Jackie Basehart, and Ian Bannen. The film, which concerns a group of prisoners who are drafted into a special war mission in 1944, is a loose (unauthorized) remake of the 1967 American film The Dirty Dozen.
Many individuals and groups in Germany that were opposed to the Nazi regime engaged in resistance, including assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler or by overthrowing his regime.
Fatherland is a 1992 alternative history detective novel by English writer and journalist Robert Harris. Set in a universe in which Nazi Germany won World War II, the story's protagonist is an officer of the Kripo, the criminal police, who is investigating the murder of a Nazi government official who participated at the Wannsee Conference. A plot is thus discovered to eliminate all of those who attended the conference, to help improve German relations with the United States.
Walter Huppenkothen was a German lawyer, Sicherheitsdienst (SD) leader, and Schutzstaffel (SS) prosecutor in the Hauptamt SS-Gericht.
The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission is a 1987 made-for-TV film and is the second sequel to the original The Dirty Dozen. It features an all-new 'dirty dozen,' this time under the leadership of Major Wright.
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission is a 1988 made-for-TV film directed by Lee H. Katzin, and is the third sequel to the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen. It features an all-new "dirty dozen", with the exception of the returning Joe Stern, under the leadership of Major Wright. The plot concerns Major Wright and his convict commando squad attempting to stop 12 top Nazis, who are trying to organize a Fourth Reich.
Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany, initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust. He was hated by his persecuted enemies and even by some of his own countrymen. Although attempts were made to assassinate him, none were successful. Hitler had numerous bodyguard units over the years which provided security.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
