I just found out, that those two German soldiers in the movie Saving private Ryan are not German but Czech. You can hear them surredering in Czech. All credits go to History Buffs (link in the comments)

15 comments

  5. There is a small region called Hlučínsko (Hultschiner Ländchen), where the population mostly speaks a Silesian dialect of Czech, but identifies with Germany.

    They were part of the Reich proper since the Munich betrayal of 1938, had to serve in the Wehrmacht, but once the war winds turned, they might be able to switch the roles and become Czech again, especially in face of a D-Day Allied onslaught…

    Fun fact: this population wasn’t removed from Czechoslovakia after the war, unlike most Sudeten Germans. Widows of the fallen Wehrmacht soldiers at Hlučínsko were entitled to military pensions from West Germany, paid in hard West German Mark, which made them rather wealthy compared to ordinary Czechoslovak citizens paid in weak Communist Czechoslovak Crowns. As a result, there is a lot of nice houses in that region dating from 1950s to 1980s.

  6. Lol, I remember that. The dubbed version is hilarious, since both sides speak czech, but they act like they can’t understand them and gun them down.

  7. The one one the right is played by Martin Hub, probably the most famous Czech stuntman, who also did several stunts in this movie.

  8. As a Czech person myself, I did spot that in the movie when I first saw it. Always cool to have some little snippets of Czech within a movie like this.

  11. The sniper in the tower is actually czech stuntman, Who was given the role because of the amazing job he did on the movie

Leave a Reply