Operation Daybreak

Fred Trueman one made the cutting comment:

there haven been many great bowlers from the Kitkstall Lane Emd but Neil Mallender is not one of them”

the same  or similar comment might be made of director Lewis Gilbert. He directed many niteable films like Alfie, Shirley Valentine , Educating Rita 

and 3 Bond movies but Operation Daybreak is not one of them.

It’s the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich Protector of Bohemia and it’s based on a true story.  The cast with one exception is mediocre: Timothy Bottoms, Antony Andrews, Martin Shaw and Josh Ackland play the asssassins. the one exception is Anton Doffriy  who plays Heydrich.  Like many German actors of the 1930s -Curt Jurgens, Conrad Veidt and Marlene Dietrich- Doffriy  was no Nazi – indeed he fled to Canada and was interned during the war.  Ironically like Conrad Veidt  he was type cast as a Nazi   and therefore  ideal for this rôle.  Thete is enough action to engage the viewer for 2 hours with a shoot out in a cathedral where Anthony Andrews and Timothy Bottoms take on and defy a german platoon

This average film does however raise one interesting and relevant question : the value of assassination. Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942 by which time the USA had entered the war , The disastrous Barbarossa  campaign launched so would Heydrich’s death have made much difference? . To the inhabitants of Lidice it would as the village was linked to the assassination  , raised to the ground and all male inhabitants slaughtered The iniattor of the Final Solution at the Wannsee conference and the Einsatxgruppem was undoubtedly one of the nastier Nazis but even if he replacedHitler would this have changed the outcome of the war? Recently theI Israeliis   took out the leadership of Hezbollah and Ukrainian enforcers killed a high ranking Russian general. The only recent assassination I can think of that changed the course of history was that of Admitrsl Blanco by ETA who was Franco’s appointed successor.