Milan Paumer (April 7, 1931 – July 22, 2010) was a member of a militant Czechoslovak anticommunist resistance group that attracted worldwide fame – and notoriety – for killing seven men in the early 1952s in robberies of money and arms and for evading the biggest manhunt in the history of the Eastern Bloc.

His five-man group, the Mašín Gang, carried out raids against state institutions in Czechoslovakia before being forced to flee to the West in October 1953.

They formed a group that became known as the "Mašín Gang" and began by carrying out minor acts of sabotage in the area around their home town, such as burning fields and defacing posters of Joseph Stalin.

They made their way across the border to East Germany but fell afoul of a railway ticket inspector, who reported his suspicions of the group to the police.

An attempted ambush by the East German police ended in a shootout that left one policeman dead and resulted in one of the Czechs, Zbyněk Janata [cs], being captured.

Following the Velvet Revolution of 1989, which ended Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, the outstanding warrants against Paumer and the Mašíns were quashed by the new government.

[2] His story was documented in the 2006 book Gauntlet: five friends, 20,000 enemy troops, and the secret that could have changed the course of the Cold War by Barbara Mašín (ISBN 9781591145158).

The decision led to a major controversy; a poll commissioned by Czech Television found that nearly half the population regarded the Mašín Gang as criminals.

Historians and commentators noted that many Czech people are still ambiguous about the Communist past, particularly as Paumer and the Mašíns were virtually alone in forcibly resisting the regime of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.