Repeating my post 157:
"First, do you mean SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, and Reich governor of Bohemia and Moravia? BTW his genetic (and suspected Jewish) grandfather was named Reinhold Heydrich? Yes, The Night of the Generals (1967) was a good film, but I believe they used SS Oberst Jochen Peiper as the model for O'Toole's general. He was referred to by his men as "Blowtorch Peiper" for his unforgiving. no mercy assaults in Russia, Italy and the Bulge.
"Peiper was also the 'hard as the steel of our tanks' role model for Robert Shaw's Col. Martin Hessler in Battle of the Bulge (1965)."
Source Paul Dehn (Screenwriter 'Generals') and Bernard Gordon (front Philip Yordan: One of the writers on 'Bulge') in a screenwriters seminar in Hollywood circa 1971... I was in the audience and seem to recall both citing Peiper as their bastard model.
BTW Jochen Peiper was charged in the Boves POW Massacre during the Bulge, but was never prosecuted. I believe he later moved to France and tried to live out of sight, but former Communist French Underground members outed him. I seem to remember he was killed under mysterious circumstance and his house burned to the ground in 1976...
Well Bender2, it is obvious to me that you have a much more thorough knowledge of these historical details than I do so I defer to you, sir. Where'd you learn all this stuff?
BTW, the author who wrote Night of the Generals also wrote Crack of Doom. You ever read that one? I wish I could recomember his name. Willi something? I knew I should have kept those books but that was 25 years ago or so.