![]() This forced Kubiš to throw a bomb at the automobile. On May 27, 1942, Gabčík attempted to shoot Heydrich as Heydrich’s car slowed around a tight curve in a Prague street. According to the local leadership, Kubiš and Gabčík’s presence endangered the entire Czech resistance network. In the meantime, the two men hid with various members of the local Czech resistance, who did not support the assasination plan. It took Kubiš and Gabčík five months to plan and set up the assassination attempt. Among them were Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, the two men tasked with killing Heydrich. The British helped nine resistance members parachute into the Czech countryside on the night of December 28, 1941. The SOE trained a group of Czechoslovak resistance members in the tactics and skills necessary to carry out the assassination. Thus, from both the Czech and British perspectives, Heydrich seemed like an appropriate target to rouse resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He also implemented policies that aimed to eradicate Czech culture and Germanize the Czech population. In this position, he oversaw harsh occupation policies, including the Nazi persecution of Czech Jews. The SOE described him in a secret memo as “probably the second most dangerous man in German-occupied Europe.”īeginning in fall 1941, Heydrich served as Acting Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He was also a leading architect of the “Final Solution,” the mass murder of European Jews. As head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), he was responsible for the SS intelligence service (SD) and the Security Police. The leaders of the operation chose to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, who held several important positions in the Nazi regime. Meanwhile, the Czechoslovak leaders in London hoped to prove to the Allies that the Czechs were willing to resist the Nazis. By assassinating a high-level Nazi official, the SOE hoped to demonstrate its effectiveness. ![]() “Operation Anthropoid” was planned in London by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Czechoslovak government-in-exile led by Edvard Beneš. It was code-named “Operation Anthropoid.” Planning the Assasination Heydrich’s assassination was a top-secret, joint British and Czechoslovak operation. It was perpetrated in response to the assassination and death of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich. The Nazi annihilation of Lidice was a reprisal action. “Operation Anthropoid”: The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich ![]() Lidice became a symbol of Nazi Germany's wartime brutality. The destruction of Lidice and the brutal treatment of its inhabitants was widely reported internationally. They promised to obliterate the name of Lidice from the map of Europe. Next, they burned the town to the ground. In Lidice, the Germans shot the men of the town, and then deported most of the women and children. The Germans falsely claimed that two families from the town of Lidice were somehow connected to the assassins and the Czech resistance. The Nazis destroyed Lidice as a reprisal action for the assassination and death of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking Nazi leader. Beginning on the night of June 9 – 10, 1942, German police and SS officials destroyed the Czech town of Lidice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the German-occupied Czech lands).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |