Operation Anthropoid
Ian Baxter describes the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security office, and the appalling aftermath
Reinhard Heydrich was a highranking SS and police official and a main architect of the Holocaust. He became chief of the Reich Main Security office and then deputy and acting Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He was regarded as one of the leading, most brutal figures in the Nazi hierarchy.
Through the 1930s he was the chief enforcer of Nazi terror inside Germany. Although his remit was initially limited to internal policing, as preparations against Poland were made, his powers quickly widened. As a pretext for attacking Poland, Heydrich masterminded the plan to attack a German radio station at Gleiwitz on 31 August 1939. Then, during the invasion of Poland itself, Heydrich oversaw the Einsatzgruppen (deployment forces) units travelling in the wake of the German armies through Poland. He ordered them to kill all members of the Polish leadership, including the Jews, intelligentsia, teachers, the clergy and nobility.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the murders and executions spread east.
Deputy Reich Protector
During the summer of 1941 Heydrich was continually kept busy with both home and foreign affairs. His brutal nature and success in the implementation of his murder squads and gas van programme led to being appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, on 27 September. This was the area of Czechoslavakia that was incorporated into the Reich on 15 March 1939. Heydrich was to enforce policy, fight resistance to the Nazi regime, and maintain and increase armaments production. As soon as he was appointed, Heydrich told his aides: ‘We will Germanise the Czech vermin'.
Within days of taking control of Bohemia and Moravia he began waging an unprecedented reign of terror against the population, terrorising them and proclaiming martial law. After only five days from his arrival in Prague he had 142 members of the resistance executed and posters of them plastered across the occupied country as a warning to others. Over the coming weeks and months, according to Heydrich's staff, the Deputy Reich Protector had between 4,000 and 5,000 people arrested, with many of them executed or sent to concentration camps to be killed. Even the Czech Prime Minister Alois Eliáš was among those arrested, and was put on trial in Berlin. He was later spared from being hung, but was kept hostage.
Although Heydrich displayed public goodwill towards the populace of Bohemia and Moravia, his plan was to disperse most of them to regions of Russia or murder them after the war had been won. Himmler told Heydrich the overall vision for these lands was to see it annexed directly into the Reich, and those civilians that could not be made German would be exterminated.
The Final Solution
On 10 October 1941, almost two weeks after Heydrich took control as Protector, he chaired a senior officer meeting in Prague of the RSHA outlining the
Final Solution. Their meeting was to discuss the fate of some 50,000 Jews in Bohemia and Moravia and plan sending them all to the ghettos of Riga and Minsk. He made it clear he was now responsible for the implementation of transporting 60,000 Jews from Germany and Czechoslavia to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. He added that his responsibilities included establishing ghettos in the Protectorate as well. His main task now was to ensure that there was cooperation between his commanders and administrative leaders of various government departments.
Weeks later Heydrich brought together these leaders to discuss the Final
Solution. It was known as the Wannsee conference, and was held in Berlin in January 1942. The conference was to
Heydrich gets up to shoot at the assailants in The Man with the Iron Heart from 2017 *
OPERATION ANTHROPOID
legalise the discrimination and removal of the Jewish race from existence in the occupied territories. Heydrich invited representatives from several government ministries, including state secretaries from the Foreign Office, the Justice, Interior, and State Ministries, and representatives from the SS. Also present was SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann. Heydrich had tasked Eichmann with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to the ghettos and extermination camps in Nazioccupied Europe. It was Eichmann at the conference that collected information for Heydrich, and prepared the minutes.
During the conference it was agreed that it would be the Jews in the General Government that would be dealt with first. A special organisation, later named Operation Reinhard, was established and was the code name given for the systemic annihilation of the Polish Jews in the General Government. It would mark the beginning of the most deadly phase of the programme, the use of extermination camps.
The Czechs fight back
Following the occupation of the Czech lands by the Nazis, resistance was kept to minimum, and those that did rise in any type of opposition were immediately pacified. However, because of Heydrich's ruthlessness, total contempt for humanity and a combination of terror and fear against the Czech people, the exiled government were determined they had to do something that would inspire resistance against the regime. It was decided that Heydrich would be the target, due to his status, and so plans were made to assassinate him.
The plan to kill Heydrich was put together by the Chief Czechoslovakian Intelligence Officer, František Moravec, who co-ordinated the plan with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The SOE was a secret British intelligence organisation with its sole purpose to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe. It was agreed that SOE-trained Czech assassins would be given the task to kill Heydrich after secretly parachuting into Czechoslovakia. The Operation was given the codename Anthropoid, Greek for ‘having the form of a human', a term usually used in zoology.
Training was undertaken in Scotland and supervised by the nominated head of the Czech section, Major Alfgar Hesketh-Prichard. Following initial delays in the planning and preparation of the operation, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš were selected for the mission.
On 28 December 1941, the Anthropoid pair landed near Hehvizdy, east of
Prague, and then made their way into the city to safe houses to prepare for the attack. At first Gabčík and Kubiš planned to kill Heydrich on a train, but after assessment of the practicalities, they realised this was not possible. They then decided to kill him on a forest road that led from Heydrich's home to Prague. However, this plan was called-off, and they agreed that it would be far easier and less dangerous to assassinate him during his commute into Prague.
His daily commute started from his home in Panenske Brezany, nine miles north of central Prague to his headquarters at Prague Castle. Gabčík
and Kubiš waited at a tram stop at the junction between the road then known as Kirchmayerova třída, and V Holešovičkách in Prague 8-Liben near Bulovka Hospital. The curve of the road meant that Heydrich`s car, a green open topped Mercedes 320 Cabriolet B, would have to slow, and it would be there that they would attack him.
On the morning of 27 May 1942 Heydrich left his country mansion to drive to Prague airport. He was to fly to Berlin for an important meeting with Hitler. His briefcase was full of ambitious plans to destroy resistance to Nazi rule. Heydrich had no fear of physical attack. Being arrogant and self-righteous by nature he was openly contemptuous of the Czech people, who in his words, “Had no guts to do anything.” Whilst leading Nazis, above all Hitler, travelled everywhere in armoured limousines with bullet proof glass, surrounded by bodyguards, Heydrich drove in the front seat of his 3.5l open top Mercedes convertible. Despite orders issued at the beginning of May to install armoured plating in the body work and seat plates of the Mercedes, nothing had been done. It was a mistake which was to cost Heydrich his life.
As Heydrich’s Mercedes approached the corner of the road, both men waited as a tram passed and Heydrich`s car slowed. Gabčík then dropped his rain coat concealing a British Sten gun, typically used by the SOE, and stepped into the road and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The gun had jammed. Gabčík was left standing helplessly. The Mercedes swept past, but Heydrich then made a fatal error. He stood up, drew his pistol and yelled at the driver to stop instead of simply driving on. Kubiš stepped from cover and threw his fused bomb, that was hidden in a brown leather briefcase. It sailed towards the car but fell agonisingly short before exploding.
Although the attack appeared to have failed, the detonation severely wounded Heydrich with splinters ripping through the right rear fender and embedding fragmentation and fibres from the upholstery of the car into Heydrich.
There were serious injuries to his left side, including punctures to the lung, spleen and diaphragm, as well as cracking of his ribs. In that moment the fate of Heydrich and thousands of others was sealed.
In the panic and confusion that ensued Gab č ík dropped his Sten gun and tried to flee the scene on his bicycle, but was forced to abandon this attempt and took cover behind a telegraph pole, firing at an injured Heydrich with his pistol. As Heydrich collapsed onto the pavement, Gabčík then ran from the scene with the driver, Klein in pursuit. However, as Heydrich slumped back in the car, Gabčík and Kubiš managed to escape from the scene. Klein gave up the pursuit and helped rush Heydrich to hospital, contorted with pain. He was immediately operated on as the surgeons reinflated the collapsed left lung, sutured the torn diaphragm, inserted several catheters, removed the tip of the fractured 11th rib, and removed the spleen, which contained a grenade fragment and upholstery. Due the severity of his injuries, Himmler sent his personal physician, Karl Gebhardt, to Prague who cared and administrated huge amounts of morphine to Heydrich.
Over the coming days his recovery appeared to progress well, but on 3 June, whist sitting-up and having a noon meal, he suddenly collapsed and went into shock. His health then deteriorated and soon slipped into a deep coma, never regaining consciousness again. He died in the early hours of 4 June, with the doctor giving the prognosis of death as sepsis. The assassination had succeeded.
The reprisals begin
Following the death of Heydrich some 13,000 people were arrested. A state of emergency was immediately proclaimed and a curfew was placed in Prague. It was then announced that anyone who had helped the assassins was to be executed along with their families. This included Jan Kubiš’ girlfriend Anna Malinová, who was to later to die in Mauthausen concentration camp. The village of
Lidice was also implicated in the reprisals for Heydrich’s death. Nazi intelligence misleadingly linked the village as a hiding place of the assassins.
On 9 June 1942, just two days after an elaborate funeral was held for Heydrich in Prague, SS units committed what was known as the Lidice massacre. German troops marched into the village and killed
173 men and rounded-up 195 women – deporting them to Ravensbruck concentration camp. All 95 children of Lidice were taken prisoner, with 81 later murdered in gas vans at the Chelmno concentration camp. The Czech village of Lezaky was also razed to the ground as Nazi intelligence said they had discovered a radio transmitter belonging to the SOE. All the men and women were murdered and both villages were set on fire, bombed and blasted, and the ruins of Lidice leveled and removed from the map.
On the day of the Lidice massacre a State Funeral was held in Berlin for Heydrich. His coffin had been placed on a train from Prague and journeyed to the Reich capital. Himmler was waiting at the station for him to begin
the procession through the sprawling Berlin streets to the Reich Chancellery to begin the service. Hitler was there at the Chancellery and he placed Heydrich's decorations, including the highest grade of the German Order, the Blood Order medal, the Wound badge in Gold, and the War Merit Cross 1st class with Swords, on his funeral pillow. Heydrich's body was then transported on the back of a 10.5cm gun carriage and interred in Berlin's Invalidenfriedhof military cemetery with Himmler taking the Nazi salute at his grave in his honour.
Following the State Funeral of Heydrich SD and Gestapo agents following a massive man hunt managed to later track down
Gabčík and Kubiš along with their accomplices who had taken refuge in Prague`s Cyril and Methodius Cathedral. On 18 June, over the course of a few hours, the church was surrounded by 800 members of the SS and Gestapo under the commanded by SS Gruppenfuhrer Karl Fischer von Treuenfeld. What followed was a gun fight inside the church which saw a number of German troops killed, as well as several Czechs. The remainder of the resistance group hid in the church's crypt. The Germans then attempted to flush the men out with gunfire, tear gas, and by flooding the crypt. Finally, an entrance was made using explosives. However, rather than capitulate and face certain death by execution, Gabčík and Kubiš killed themselves. Supporters of the assassins who were killed following the fighting inside the church included the church's leader, Bishop Gorazd, who is now revered as a martyr of the Orthodox Church.
Following the assassination of Heydrich, who had earned the nickname as the `Butcher of Prague' the Nazis embarked on an orgy of revenge, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, but also cowed the occupied country. In fact, on 3
July 1942, some 200,000 Czechs were forced to gather on Wenceslas Square, and humiliated by being told to pledge their loyalty to the Reich and to give the Nazi salute. Although the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia was dead, the inhabitants of the city were to endure nearly three more years under Nazi rule which saw almost 80% of the Slovak pre-war population die during this time. Heydrich's death came at a terrible cost and, although it did not change the course of the war, the assassination's most important impact was psychological. The Nazi Party hierarchy would never feel safe again.