Our Brave Czechs and Gallant Poles: Britain’s Wartime Allies on Film

Michael Paris

Abstract

This essay deals with British-made films during the middle years of the Second World War which examined continued resistance to the Nazi invader in Eastern Europe after 1940, specifically in Czechoslovakia and Poland. For propaganda purposes these films were invaluable. Firstly, they demonstrated to the British people that even with the fall of Europe they were not alone - that resistance to the Nazis continued even in occupied Europe as they Czechs and Poles struck back at the invader. However, they also served to encourage the British to make an even greater war effort in order to avoid the same fate as the European nations, and made some contribution to the morale of the Free Czech and Polish forces exiled in Britain. However, these films did gloss over the tensions that inevitably arose between the governments in exile and the British. Unsurprisingly, these tensions were ignored in wartime cinema but were still only marginal in later films such as Richard Attenbrough’s A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Jan Sverak’s 2001 film about Czech pilots Dark Blue World. Nevertheless, it might well be argued that the cycle of films dealing with occupied Europe did to some extent help to breakdown the traditional insularity of the British people and result in far more positive images of the European in British cinema.