Soviet army nearly ‘battled’ US filmmakers in Prague Spring

DAVLE, Czech Republic: Propaganda-fuelled Soviet soldiers were ready to take on American and German armies during the 1968 invasion of former Czechoslovakia -- before they realised the "enemies" were filmmakers.

"I remember the noise made by a tank unit on August 21, 1968," said Kvetoslava Dufkova, a pensioner from the small town of Davle just south of Prague, who was 14 at the time.

"The Soviets then arrived in the centre of Davle and there they came across, to their big surprise, an army they thought was German," she told AFP. Like many locals, Dufkova had been acting as an extra in "The Bridge at Remagen", a John Guillermin war film starring George Segal and Robert Vaughn that was shot in Davle.

"The guys in the tanks were stunned to suddenly see ‘a German army’ in front of them. They began negotiations, which lasted several hours," Dufkova said of the alarming moment that took place 50 years ago. After some time, the invading troops understood they were facing actors and not the expected imperialist cutthroats.

Beginning in March 1968, Davle was transformed into a movie set, with residents mingling with Hollywood stars in American and Nazi military uniforms while tanks and other army vehicles drove by.

It was also surrounded by replica buildings imitating those in Remagen, a town in western Germany. "Near our house, there was a pile of dead soldier mannequins that the filmmakers would distribute here and there during filming," said Antonin Dvorak, a 78-year-old pensioner from Davle.

The film tells the story of how the US army took hold of the last bridge still standing across the Rhine in March 1945, following the German army’s failure to destroy it while waiting for the retreating Nazi troops to cross the river.