Plot
After all the women in a remote valley on the Welsh border awaken to find their husbands have left to serve in the covert British Resistance, German occupiers arrive in the alternative reality thriller set in 1944 in which D-Day has failed and the United Kingdom has been invaded successfully by Germany. Facing a harsh winter, the women and soldiers find they must co-operate to survive, but each distrusts the others. The women want to remain loyal to their absent husbands, the soldiers are at war and the women are their enemy. Over time, the soldiers stop wearing their uniforms. The Germans help with farm chores or may leave a couple of shot rabbits on a porch. The Germans think the war may be over soon and want to take advantage of spending the winter away from war.
Captain Albrecht becomes close to Sarah. To prove he can be trusted, he takes her to a cave where a priceless Medieval world map has been hidden from the Germans. He studied mediaeval history and even he does not want the SS or Himmler to get it. Another much more elderly wife named Maggie has become friends with Bernhardt.
Spring has arrived and Sarah convinces Albrecht to let Maggie take her prized cob horse to the county fair, and Bernhardt accompanies her. The women wanted to know if there was any news of their husbands. A friend of Maggie tells her that the group of men that blew up the railway bridge had all been hanged by the Nazis. Maggie returns to the valley with a third-place win but very changed with the knowledge that the husbands are dead. Young teen George sees Maggie's fair trip as collaboration with the enemy and shoots her horse in punishment. The loss of both her husband and her horse is enough to kill Maggie.
Soldier Steiner distrusts the valley women and he runs off to town with the Army radio. Albrecht is in love with Sarah and asks her to escape off with him before the Gestapo come. She agrees but actually goes home and writes her date of death in the family Bible. She then makes sure to burn the priceless map to keep it from the Germans. Always loyal to her husband and country, she walks off into the mountains to escape, and the film ends.
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage actress who starred in some of the more popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", and Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours around the world, and she was one of the early prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures.
To Be or Not to Be is a 1942 American black comedy film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, and featuring Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Stanley Ridges and Sig Ruman. The plot concerns a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who use their abilities at disguise and acting to fool the occupying troops. It was adapted by Lubitsch (uncredited) and Edwin Justus Mayer from the story by Melchior Lengyel. The film was released one month after actress Carole Lombard was killed in an airplane crash. In 1996, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Henri Frenay Sandoval was a French military officer and French Resistance member, who served as minister of prisoners, refugees and deportees in Charles de Gaulle's Provisional Government of the French Republic.
Rituals is an American soap opera that aired in first-run syndication from September 10, 1984, to September 6, 1985. Developed by Gene Palumbo, Clifford Champion, Joyce Corrington and John William Corrington, it was loosely based on a novel of the same name by Charlene Keel. Distributed by Telepictures, 260 25-minute episodes were produced over its single-season run.
True Women is a 1997 American Western CBS TV miniseries based on the 1993 novel by Janice Woods Windle directed by Karen Arthur, starring Dana Delany, Annabeth Gish, Angelina Jolie, Julie Carmen, Tina Majorino and Rachael Leigh Cook. It was filmed in Austin, San Antonio, and McDade, Texas. The series covers five decades, from the Texas Revolution through Native American uprisings and the Civil War to the early stages of the women's suffrage movement. This miniseries was first aired on the CBS television network over two nights during May 1997.
The Sullivans is an Australian period drama television series produced by Crawford Productions which ran on the Nine Network from 15 November 1976 until 10 March 1983. The series tells the story of a fictional average middle-class Melbourne family and the effect that the Second World War and the immediate post-war events had on their lives. It covers the period between 1 September 1939 to 22 August 1948. It was a consistent ratings success in Australia, and also became popular in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Gibraltar, Greece and New Zealand.
Carve Her Name with Pride is a 1958 British war drama film based on the book of the same name by R. J. Minney.
Virginia Hall Goillot DSC, Croix de Guerre,, code named Marie and Diane, was an American who worked with the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in France during World War II. The objective of SOE and OSS was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE and OSS agents in France allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. After World War II Hall worked for the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The Solf Circle was an informal gathering of German intellectuals involved in the resistance against Nazi Germany. Most members were arrested and executed after attending a tea party in Berlin on 10 September 1943 at the residence of Elisabeth von Thadden. The group's downfall also ultimately led to the demise of the Abwehr in February 1944.
Army of Shadows is a 1969 Franco-Italian World War II suspense-drama film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, and starring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Simone Signoret. It is an adaptation of Joseph Kessel's 1943 book of the same name, which mixes Kessel's experiences as a member of the French Resistance with fictional versions of other Resistance members.
Aristides Damalas, known in France by the stage name Jacques Damala, was a Greek military officer-turned-actor, and husband of Sarah Bernhardt in his last years. Damala's characterisation by modern researchers is far from positive. His handsomeness was as notable as his insolence and Don Juan quality. Writer Fredy Germanos describes him as an opportunistic and hedonistic person, whose marriage to the great diva would inevitably intensify and maximise his vices, namely, his vanity and obsession with women, alcohol, and drugs.
Berty Albrecht was a French feminist and French Resistance martyr of the Second World War.
Émilienne Moreau-Evrard was a French heroine of World War I, a high-profile female member of the "Brutus" Resistance network during World War II and later, a member of the Provisional Consultative Assembly. Moreover, she is one of only six women recipients of the Ordre de la Libération.
Yvonne Jeanne de Vibraye Baseden MBE, later known as Yvonne Burney, was one of approximately forty female Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents who served in France. The objective of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE agents in France allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from Britain.
Resistance is a 2007 alternative history novel by Welsh poet and author Owen Sheers. The plot centers on the inhabitants of a valley near Abergavenny in Wales in 1944–45, shortly after the failure of Operation Overlord and a successful German counterinvasion of Great Britain. A group of German Wehrmacht soldiers stay there after men leave to serve in the covert British Resistance. The novel follows abandoned farmer's wife Sarah Lewis and German commanding officer Albrecht Wolfram, as they form an unlikely relationship in spite of their backgrounds and political standings.
Richard Holmes is a British film producer.
Women in the French Resistance played an important role in the context of resistance against occupying German forces during World War II. Women represented 15 to 20% of the total number of French Resistance fighters within the country. Women also represented 15% of political deportations to Nazi concentration camps.
Generation War is a 2013 German World War II TV miniseries in three parts. It was commissioned by the public broadcasting organization ZDF, produced by the UFA subsidiary TeamWorx, and first aired in Germany and Austria in March 2013. The series tells the story of five German friends, aged around 20, on different paths through Nazi Germany and World War II: as Wehrmacht soldiers on the Eastern Front, a war nurse, an aspiring singer, and a Jewish tailor. The narrative spans four years, starting in 1941 Berlin, when the friends meet up for a last time before embarking on their journeys, enthusiastically vowing to meet up again the following Christmas. The story's conclusion is set shortly after the end of the war in 1945.
Alice Habsburg was a Swedish-born aristocrat and member of the Polish Home Army during World War II.
Berthe Fraser was a French Resistance agent who fought the Germans and helped more than 100 allied airmen escape during the Second World War. She spent two years of the war in prison, in one case being tortured for 28 days. She was awaiting execution by the Gestapo in September 1944 but was saved by Allied soldiers who drove away her captors.
