The Rise and Fall of SS General Reinhard Heydrich

Heydrich at Le Bourget, Paris, 6 May 1942.

  

by S. Frederick Kerns

This account deals with the central and incidental planning of the British intelligence apparat to execute Heydrich, and is detailed because the planning was detailed. The author makes no apologies for the scope, for the events responsible for the sentence, and those which were in the aftermath of the fulfillment, are important. A very straight-forward statement would tell precisely how it happened; the background information pursuant to this will put it into perspective.

While the deed is a well-known fact, some of the accounts have been concerned with other matters and could not treat it with the thoroughness and detail it deserves. These resemble a skimmed milk diet-leaving something to be desired. Other accounts of the life and death of Heydrich do not have the access to diverse elements of information required. No disrespect intended, but some of the better-known authors are afflicted by this lack of access: Mr. William L. Shirer, in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, had to rely mostly on unclassified accounts years after the fait accompli and errs by intimating that it was a time-bomb which dealt with Heydrich, with the bomb shattering his spine. Herr Albert Speer, in his Inside the Third Reich, lacked access to British, American and even some German (Abwehr) files with which to flesh out the information. Mr. William Stevenson, in A Man Called Intrepid, has a more diverse access, although the book is concerned only with the British accounts of the war as a whole. One author of a book about SS Gen. Reinhard Heydrich, whose name will not be given to avoid embarrassment, missed the boat entirely and was either misinformed or personally propagandized the account with much disinformation.

Modesty aside, this is being written as a by-product of research into intelligence matters because most of the information regarding the Heydrich matter came into visibility. British, American, Czech and German references were made available. As the book (The Black Bag Owner’s Manual) was not feasible for a vehicle to transmit the information because of a different slant, it is being spun off as a specific case of intelligence and propaganda operations directed by the Allies against Hitler’s Germany.

Reinhard Heydrich had, to say the least, a rather checkered career. He first departed from the ranks of lesser men when he was brought up before a courts-martial during his brief naval career. He had managed to impregnate the daughter of a senior naval specialist; and the tribunal expected Heydrich to marry the girl and take a minor “wrist slap.” Instead, the old gentlemen discovered what they thought to be a caddish streak as Heydrich assured them that any woman who would give herself to a man to whom she was not married was unfit to be the wife of a naval officer. As a result of the stand, they cashiered him with no regrets.

He soon saw which side of the bread had butter, and joined the National Socialist German Worker’s Party. Having a place in the cadre, he soon had more authority and power than all of the officers who had decided he was too much a cad to be in the Navy.

In 1937, Heydrich was the man responsible for the creation of the forgery and counterfeiting plant, as an outgrowth of the plot to seduce Stalin into doing 95% of the Reich’s work by killing off the Red Army Command.

1938 was a busy year for Heydrich, with various jobs on behalf of the Nazi Party. There were the “fabrications” of the Czech “outrages” which were used as a pretext for the invasion. Too, there were the plans which culminated in the “Night of Broken Glass,” which would earn him Hitler’s own praise as being “the genius of all the police and security forces in the Reich,” with the 9-10 November culmination of synagogue bonfires; arrests of Jews, “… especially rich ones …”, said Heydrich; the taxation of Jews to pay for the damages; and other items which were designed to whip up a frenzy of anti-Semitism.

In 1939, Heydrich masterminded the border incident which implicated the Poles in “aggression” and gave the pretext for invading the country. Heydrich was in personal charge of this operation, and ran the show.

Heydrich also counterfeited the evidence against the German Army’s Wernher von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief, who had managed to block the road to full Nazification of the Armed Forces. Heydrich produced some material which “proved” von Fritsch was a homosexual and general pervert.

Heydrich had managed to dig himself in so deeply that no one could touch him or control his access to Hitler, and that was no mean trick. Admiral Canaris maintained an extensive file on Heydrich’s sexual deviations—this file survived the war—and not even the chief of the Abwehr could get a grip on Heydrich. Reichleader Bormann had ideas of controlling young Heydrich, but failed to get a handle on him, too. Himmler had a very nice file on Heydrich’s Jewish background, but this served no purpose.

Generally, Heydrich had a rather spotty personality: Aside from the courts-martial, the Jewish stain Himmler knew of, and a general liking for women not his wife, he was a candidate for the “Gay Liberation” movement. In addition to having fathered two bastards plus three children by his legal wife, he was also a rather “gay blade.” Reports which come from responsible Reich files even link him with his driver/bodyguard, Oberscharführer Klein, in an affair. Klein’s records indicate that he was certainly the homosexual’s dream of a hulking, muscular man.

Despite all this, Heydrich was being indirectly groomed by Hitler, who claimed the fellow represented Hitler’s “... new kind of ruler; youthful, self-assured, untrammeled by tradition, and so brutal that the world shrinks back in horror … ruling by terror, eyes gleaming with pride and the merciless independence of the bird of prey.” That Heydrich was given the Reichsprotektor post after being told by Hitler that he (Heydrich) was Führer material lends credence to this. RSHA Amt 3, the Gestapo, the SD to a degree, and the Security Police all knew him as a chief and prime mover of policy and doctrine. Later, he was to be appointed Acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, partly as a result of personal intrigue but partly because of the grooming process.

To preface this, Hitler had always coveted these two areas, and had set about to annex all of those districts which had about fifty percent German-speaking peoples, and whichever portions of the remainder which were deemed necessary for defense of the confiscated territories. This was accomplished on 30 September 1938, in Munich-the “Munich Pact” was born.

The slight delay created by the Pact merely annoyed Hitler, for the German agents were agitating the Slovaks and Ruthenes against the Prague government, to provide further excuses. Because of the agitated results, Hitler ordered Emil Hacha and Frantisek Chvalkovsky (the President of the Supreme Administrative Court, and the replacement of Benes; and a pro-German diplomat, respectively) to come to Berlin on 14 March 1939. The ultimatum was simple: Hitler’s Luftwaffe would level Prague unless surrender was forthcoming. On 15 March the desired territories were handed over to the Germans, and included in the annexation was the arms industry at Skoda. Hitler appeared as the conquering hero in Prague and declared the next day that the territories were to become a protectorate of the Reich.

On 5 April 1939, Konstantin von Neurath arrived as Reichsprotektor of Prague, bringing with him Dr. Karl Hermann Frank, the well-known Sudeten German agitator, as State Secretary. They established Gen. Alois Elias as the puppet Prime Minister, to give an air of legality to the affair.

On 9 October 1939, the German administration decided on a policy which would result in the repression of the intellectuals and any others who had resisted the Reich, with the rest of the population being assimilated by the Reich. The chief ploy was to ship off all the Germanics to work and live in Germany. Just in time for Halloween, a demonstration by disenchanted students was used as a pretext for curtailing secondary and higher education for non-Germanic Czechs.

Even with this sort of policy, the Czechs maintained a semblance of self-respect; no conscripted Czech units fought for the Germans, no total conversion of the industrial workbase into producers of war material was attempted, and the Prime Minister had managed to woo and win most of the indigenous leaders. In short, a fair and quite careful administration was undermining the Czech resistance. There was very little to fight about, and even if there were German soldiers in the streets and education had been curtailed, the people were peaceful, by and large.

The Operation Begins

Returning to Heydrich, his fate would ultimately mesh with the fate of the Czech people, and the plans concerning his assassination began in the first part of August 1941, in New York City, by the British apparat there.

New York City was a liaison point, and a very convenient one, in light of certain facts: The Canadian government was fully behind the British, and the resources of the Canadian pulp and paper industry were such that virtually any foreign paper could be replicated by them. New York City was convenient because of quick liaison with Washington, and the large communications links there. Immunity could be assured without too much trouble, since the director of the station was a flying buddy to one Clayton Knight, who had been a friend to one Capt. Fiorello La Guardia. The Mayor of New York City could give certain immunities, such as suspending the requirements for various inspections that would have otherwise discovered the British apparat. With the U.S. not formally in the war, these slight bendings of the rules could be accomplished with little trouble; especially since the Mayor’s legal advisor was the liaison between the British and FDR. President Roosevelt assisted the British indirectly, as did Hoover of the FBI.

The strike on Heydrich was to be two-pronged, with the one side being training of the assassins and the other being a massive psychological warfare gambit to undermine Hitler’s admitted fixation with astrology. In the latter case, every place the British could reach began the story that Oriental mystics, Moslem holy men, priests, seers, crystal-gazers and star-charters saw visions/heard voices/read signs that the Führer was on the wane and his hand-groomed prize, Heydrich, would soon fall to violence.

This was rather amusing, since some of the mystics consulted saw only gold or untraceable bills, some enjoyed gazing into their crystal with a bit of the spirit in the bottom, and many charted stocks more accurately than stars. However, the British created an association for their better seers, and prompted the propagation of the “revelations,” and generally went about things rather thoroughly. Aside from being picked up and re-mentioned by the BBC, CBC and those American stations that could reach into Europe, some mystics on the Continent hopped on the bandwagon-allegedly because they noted the same thing. The campaign was to end with the absolute prediction that Heydrich was to die or be seriously crippled.

Aside from the intended task of shaking the Führer’s faith in his seers and his future, the campaign was to also give heart to the believers in Europe and America who actually followed the reports by the mystics and seers who were either in on the game or following along.

Training the Operatives

In the former part of the mission, nine men were first chosen for the assassination, and heavily trained at Camp X in the wilderness near Toronto, while special documents were being processed by Station M, somewhat nearer Toronto. The documents were so that the men would be safe from accidental arrest—first—and then to be left in the pocket of a coat dropped at the scene to divert the Germans somewhat. There were two sets of documents made up; the ones for protection, and the ones for deception.

Aside from the training, the nine operatives would be vaccinated for yellow fever, as this was the cited reason for deporting many people, and the British didn’t wish to gamble on the chance the reports weren’t true.

The unofficial doctor for the British intelligence “Station” was the brother of the chief Canadian administrator for the apparat, and he deserves a tribute for trusting his brother and never prying into all the spy-drama adventures he was asked to undertake. For the nine agents, the doctor had to meet with a runner who was to take him to the “patients,” who were given the shots as they stood averting their faces in a room that was, typically, rented for the occasion alone.

No doubt the doctor had cause to wonder about the scores of “executives” and “employees” or “secretaries” who tended to show up in hired rooms with all manner of interesting ailments, malnutrition, fresh scars from munitions or projectiles and the like afflicting them.

The agents were duly registered as Canadian military officers in order to give them some degree of authenticity and status, although the Geneva Accords mentioned that soldiers in uniforms or garments which camouflage their ranks or purpose in the war zone are to be treated as spies. Being shot as a spy or as a soldier out of uniform may be preferable to being shot as a civilian assassin, although the more likely reason might have been to avail them of a government headstone and trappings if the Germans were so good as to mark the graves.

A Judas Goat

Training was progressing apace when, in September, it was learned that Heydrich had been sent in as the new Reichsprotektor after Neurath was placed on “extended sick leave.” K. H. Frank was kept on as the State Secretary, and Elias continued as prime minister.

This prompted the British to undertake to provoke the Nazis into liquidating a prominent Czech collaborator, whom they codenamed “Judas.” Judas was to be the goat so that the British could agitate the Czechs and promote resistance. Judas, however, was not a genuine traitor, but indeed was loyal to the new government.

In order to make it seem that the Czech was conspiring with the British, the Proso-Profiles were first utilized. (This feature is carried over from the World War II beginnings in the Central Intelligence Agency’s PPIs—Personality Profile Indexes). The PP records were kept on many Nazis and collaborators, and showed general background, life and business histories, habits, and other features which would be useful in constructing a paper replica of the subjects’ minds, and for simulating a knowledge of the parties involved. In this case, the PP record was needed for implicating the subject in something useful.

Victim Judas was given a discreet mistress called “Anna” who was supposedly in Chile, then a haven for Nazis. In truth, Judas never met the writer, who was not named Anna and did not live in Chile. She was actually a Slovakian New Yorker working from prepared texts, using ink and paper provided from the Canadian paper companies; and the writer did not know why the letters were required. The finished missives were taken to Santiago by courier and put into the ordinary mails for delivery to Prague … where German censors soon discovered the very odd utilization of numbers. This certainly resembled a plain-language code, of which the Germans were quite familiar, having used the same technique rather often.

The Gestapo asked Judas about the odd letters, and Prime Minister Elias had no satisfactory answers for their questions, for he was Judas. The Gestapo insisted. Elias protested that he had never known any “Anna.” The Gestapo countered that, then, “Anna” certainly knew too much about his private affairs, and got down to business. Elias stood by his innocence. The Gestapo got physical. Elias made a great deal of noise, but still maintained his innocence. The Gestapo decided he was a tough nut to crack, and waived the need for a confession.

Elias’ trial stands as the point at which Reichsprotektor Heydrich assumed full and absolute power over the nation; Elias was charged in the First Division of the Peoples’ Court on 1 October 1941. It was a brief affair, with the trial and sentencing taking up just a little more time than a leisurely lunch. His execution for “Action in Aid of the Enemy” was performed on the morning of 2 October, in keeping with the by-word that traitor trials were performed fast and fairly, and when the subject was ultimately found guilty the execution would take place immediately.

Heydrich then addressed the government, saying, “The day of Parliamentary decisions which only hinder the practical measures of government have gone … Get out of your heads [the concept] that you can continue the old tricks of the democratic party politicians …” Heydrich cleaned house with the remaining civilian administration and sipped coffee as they were executed en masse in the courtyard of Hradcany Castle.

The Assassination is “Justified”

Events had come full circle, and Heydrich, who had managed to fool Stalin into doing most of the work by executing the Red Army Command, was then doing most of the Allied work by setting himself up as a beast and purging any who could help him control the population.

Heydrich began to change things, too: Workers who produced more were bribed with extra rations. Production was phased into military supplies. Occupation was toughened. On 20 January 1942, he formulated the “Night and Fog” plan, in which opponents would vanish with no definite trace or proof that they were alive or dead. The suspense of this hindered many resistance activities, since one could not be sure that the Germans were not holding the missing persons elsewhere, ready to execute them in reprisals for future actions. Avenging a dead friend is one thing; doing something that may be the cause of the execution of the friend is something else.

December 1941 saw the surfacing of some unexpected moral and legal justification for the attempt on Heydrich: The Bishop of Münster, Clemens Count von Galen, a Catholic, preached a sermon in which he reminded the Nazis and the Allies that the old German law which authorized the death penalty for anyone “who kills” was still in effect. The Czech government-in-exile in London, chaired by Benes, agreed that the death penalty should be brought against Heydrich. This gave the British agents full authority to act as executioners of a lawful and moral edict, from persons in authority…not that they really needed this recourse.

The Agents

The first British-trained agent had floated down into Czech territory in January 1941, one year before the “Night and Fog” edicts and before the tougher orders which declared any who actively or passively opposed the Nazis or the collaborators were “enemies of the people,” and subject to imprisonment. The British agents were surely provoking Heydrich into a defensive battle of regulations; each regulation would cause a new upsurge of resistance and underground activity, and new regulations would be imposed to combat this upsurge, which would cause a new upsurge in anti-Nazi activity, and so on.

The training of the assassins was progressing apace after the change to the new abode of Heydrich. Since it was not thought feasible to make the attempt at the castle where the target and his family lived, a replica of his green Mercedes roadster had been prepared, and the agents practiced ambushing it as it drove a set route between the Protektor’s office and his residence. Heydrich was so daring—or foolish—that he traveled with only one bodyguard, the titan Oberscharführer Klein, and with only their personal sidearms for defense. Josef Gabcik was to be the primary agent, and he was issued a Sten Mk. II with which to shoot Heydrich and Klein. Jan Kubris was issued a Gammon grenade, which was the back-up weapon in case Gabcik missed or didn’t finish the job with the Sten. Valcik and Jemelik were the other two agents parachuted in for the job. Four specially-trained agents in all, a unified and independent group.

The Plan

The agents were to liaison with the Czech underground, and act in conjunction with it if at all possible, but they were given special orders to carry on with the mission if the Czechs got cold feet or wanted to appreciably modify the plans. This is the point at which the Czech and British versions of the action begin to separate, and where the German records have become rather more detailed. All versions will be given, and the reader is urged to recall that the British reports were set down shortly after the fact, while the Czech reports were left until after the war, and originally slanted to favor the Communists.

One example of the difference of opinion is that the agents’ briefings were such that they were given full authority to act alone; while the Czech versions asserts that they were subordinate to the whims and wishes of the indigenous underground authority. Another is the later assertion that the agents were dedicated Marxist-Stalinists … although two versions exist of this, which contradict each other.

The assault was to take place on 27 May 1942, right alongside a hairpin curve going into Prague, at the foot of a hill. Gabcik and Kubris rode bicycles to the site, leaning them against a fence not too far from the corner of the street into the suburb of Holesovice, but far enough away that they could be plausibly awaiting a trolley that passed by the corner.

Their arrival had been a bit hair-raising, as they were finally dropped near the Polish frontier; shifting German deployments and sky conditions prohibited selection of a definite drop zone. The agents were well-trained for dealing with Heydrich in his Mercedes at that intersection, but they lacked the positive intelligence that the vehicle or route were the same until they liaisoned with the underground. An agent existed in the immediate cadre, but he could not release immediate information on the movements of the target. Heydrich was also flying back and forth to Berlin at irregular times, and it could not be certain that he would be in town, disposed to go to his office, and without visiting Nazi brass who would demand (and get) some additional security. Any of these alternatives would lead to embarrassing—and dangerous—waiting about on a busy corner where some occupation or collaborator official who was painfully aware of his own importance would insist to know why they were not at work.

Another error was that the Czech report assured its readers that the goal was to ambush Heydrich before he could finish his “Final Solution” plans and pass them to Berlin, and the attack was to kill the primary planner as well as snatch his briefcase containing the plans. As was seen, this was firmed up in 1938, and had three years to be expanded upon.

On the other hand, plotting an attack slated for May of 1942 from late 1941 hinders this theory a bit, if it was supposed to interdict such a report. A spy was in place in contact with Heydrich’s deputy, but this time span of plotting to interdict delivery of final plans seems rather atypical. Too, Teutonic thoroughness would dictate that several copies of even top secret plans would be made, in case one should go astray.

The Assault

On the morning of 27 May, Heydrich had an unhurried parting with his wife, dutifully bade his children so-long, and climbed into the car beside Klein for the ride to his office. He was late for his appointment with death.

Gabcik stood at the corner a short distance from Kubris trying to look patient and innocent in the fine morning while German soldiers practiced their drills in a nearby wood. One hundred meters away, on the road toward the community of Jungfern-Breschen, stood Valcik. Two hundred meters from the site, 100 meters from Valcik, stood Jemelik on the far side of the road. The latter two were spotters, and had been trained to give four sharp toots on whistles when the green Mercedes was sighted. This signal was to alert the team, who would be trying to seem as though they were not overtly watching for someone, and who might not be looking toward the spotters when the signal came.

The Czech reports have things rather differently. Their report insists the spotters had mirrors, and the spacing between three spotters was 200 meters each, for a total of 600 meters of the road being covered. These men, the Czechs agree, were parachutists. They also place a member of the underground across the road from the site with a pistol; too, they remark about two other pistol-bearing underground men in the immediate area.

The British report of the incident asserts that Heydrich usually left the castle at or around 9:30 a.m., but on this date he was late, taking 55 minutes to get to the car and be driven the usual 20 minute run to the corner where he was to be greeted. He was sighted around 10:35, and the signal passed to the assassins. The Czech report is almost an hour behind, but this may be due to differences in zones and an inaccurate watch.

As Heydrich sped to his appointment, a tandem streetcar began its trip up the hill, and a single car rolled down the grade; it would be a close race to see which would get there first. If the trams were between shooters and Heydrich, or immediately behind his car, there would be no assassination that day … the drill was to avoid injury to any civilians if at all possible. Using a tram as the backstop for the highly penetrating 9-mm Parabellum rounds, or having one approaching so closely that it would result in risks would not be in good form. If the streetcars blocked the shooters’ views when the Mercedes passed, it would be more difficult, especially if the conductor or motorman thought the assassins were waiting for that car, and stopped to let them on.

Heydrich was—according to the British agents’ reports—looking at the contents of his briefcase and his head was down as Klein motored into the curve. Heydrich was a perfect target in the open car, his SS uniform trimmed in silver and braids, and Gabcik caught his breath at the sight of him. Letting the coat drop when the car was about 35 meters away, Gabcik stepped up to the curb as he had countless times during training, and pulled the trigger of the Sten. Nothing happened.

Heydrich looked up when he was about 20 meters away, saw the man pointing a weapon at him, and shouted something to Klein as he went for his holster. He passed by so close that Gabcik could have actually thrust the muzzle into the windscreen, and Klein spun the car into a broadside skid that blocked the tram tracks.

Here again, the Czech report differs: According to this, the Obergruppenführer was driving and Klein was riding on the passenger side.

The dropped raincoat was well-prepared with false tags, documents calculated to mislead, and other alterations which would give the Germans false information.

As the car squealed around and Gabcik struggled to fire the Sten, Kubris took stock of the situation and readied the grenade, throwing it against the side of the machine. There was a vivid flash. a cloud of smoke, and the off-side windows of the nearer tram shattered with the concussion.

The Escape

Heydrich emerged from the smoke, leaping over the door of the car, and banged off a few shots at the team, then standing between two stalled trams. They began to run. Klein joined the fight and began to chase the team member he could see; Kubris was slightly wounded by the close explosion of the grenade and ran to his bike, firing off a warning shot with his pistol for the riders of the tram who threatened to cut him off, speeding away momentarily with blood running down his face. Gabcik finally recovered from the shock of his weapon not firing, but when he dropped the useless Sten the crowd had cut him off from his bicycle he ran up the hill instead, ducking down the first side street.

A report by an SS officer who had later examined the Sten showed that a woody stalk of the straw Gabcik had used to muffle the Sten’s rattle in his coat while riding to the site had become wedged into the mechanism, preventing discharge.

Klein raced after Gabcik, firing from time to time. Heydrich also started after Gabcik, but only went a few steps before stopping, obviously in pain, and pressing his left hand to the small of his back. He leaned against the car a moment, then staggered to the sidewalk. A woman recognized him and called for someone to summon an ambulance. Despite this consideration, it was an hour before a commandeered baker’s van delivered him to Bulovka Hospital near the corner in Holsovice. An SS officer later had caustic remarks to make, including one that four of the people the Protektor was serving could have hand-carried Obergruppenführer Heydrich there in half an hour or less. He also suggested that the Army officers had been strangely remiss in rushing to the aid of the Protektor, and questioned their individual and collective courage … which didn’t sit well with the Wehrmacht.

Klein kept after Gabcik, firing from time to time at a distance of about 50 meters. Gabcik called a temporary lull to this sniping by stepping behind a post in the best commando style and snapping off a few shots, which made Klein dive for cover. This emptied his pistol, however. Looking for cover to catch his breath and reload, Gabcik stepped into a butcher shop. The butcher paid little attention to anything but the empty pistol, and sauntered out as soon as he could. Gabcik counted on blood and country being thicker than water, but was disappointed, because the butcher, who had reached the middle of the street, walked over to the cautiously approaching Klein and informed on Gabcik. Presumably, he also mentioned the handgun was empty, for Klein abandoned caution and made a mad dash for the shop.

However, Gabcik had reloaded, and opened fire when Klein was within four or five meters, smashing the bodyguard’s hip and sending him sprawling. Gabcik raced out, leaped over the fallen German, and made for the main road where he leaped on a tram as though he was an ordinary tardy rider. His only thought was that he had failed miserably.

The team hadn’t, though. Where men left off invisible allies took up, for the grenade’s blast had peppered Heydrich’s back and vital organs with a barrage of metal fragments, wire or spring metal, glass, and leather and stuffing from the upholstery. One particular bit of horsehair was blown into his spleen, and a scrap of leather had penetrated the liver.

Once Heydrich had been delivered to the hospital, the director of the establishment ran into difficulty. In the turmoil no one had thought to notify Hradcany Castle—the main center of the Protectorate as well as Heydrich’s personal residence. The castle staff thought Heydrich was en route to Berlin, as was his original goal, and remarked that Dr. Frank couldn’t make it to the phone. The director admitted that this was too bad, and suggested the clerk at the other end of the line tell Dr. Frank that the Protektor was at Bulovka liberally peppered and not expected to survive. Predictably, this managed to stimulate things.

Dr. Dietrich Hohlbaum, the surgeon selected to work on Heydrich, began work as the SS surrounded the hospital and hauled out the other patients to guard against any further attempts. Reports have it that three patients died, and two had severe complications, as a result of the evacuation.

Hitler heated up the telegraph wires all about occupied, neutral and free Europe, calling for the best doctors. Specialists from Berlin and several other nations were flown in at the Reich’s expense. Hitler issued an order from his temporary headquarters on the Russian front to the effect that the Reich should destroy the “whole canker” responsible for the act.

Retribution

Retribution was swift and shocking. In Prague and the outskirts, roadblocks and detours were set up at the order of Dr. Frank, in the role of Chief of the Protektorate Police; also ordered was the curtailment of all public transport; the closing of all public establishments; a reward of a million crowns for information; the public display of the coat, bicycle and Sten; the full and exhaustive mobilization of propaganda vans to trundle through the streets repeating announcements … and later, threats; that everyone not engaged in vital war work must go home to await Gestapo interrogation teams. The only movement, aside from war workers, was train after train of SS reinforcements, extra Gestapo teams, armed patrols ordered to shoot at any provocation, and the round-up of hostages.

Aside from the immediate mass execution of all political prisoners already available, the Nazis executed 100 hostages a day. Thirteen days after the incident—four days after Heydrich had died—on the morning of 9 June, Frank claimed that the village of Lidice was the point where the assassins made contact with the underground. An entire regiment of SS blocked off Lidice. The women and children (excepting pregnant women) were trucked off to concentration camps. The latter group would be aborted, first, by the same doctors who had sought to save Heydrich, then shipped off to Berlin for other purposes. The SS shot 189 men, then herded the rest of the men and older male children into a barn and torched it. All domestic animals larger than rats were killed. All major buildings which couldn’t be burned were blown apart, and the smaller stone and masonry structures were bulldozed down. The wooden structures, and any wood resulting from the other demolition, was burned to ash. Finally, the entire site was bulldozed level. Reportedly, two stones, one atop another, were not allowed to stand. This was all put on film and the makers of the documentary were awarded a special “revenge” medal with Heydrich’s profile stamped thereon.

Actually, Lidice was not linked to the assassins at all; there were no known Czech underground members there, according to the Czech reports, and the assassins all came from different areas of Czechoslovakia. The act of erasing an entire town resulted in the renaming of three towns in North America, and a proliferation of Lidice churches, Lidice streets, and the moral stiffening of the Allies.

There were other revenge operations, ranging from small efforts with 8-30 people killed to an alleged slaughter of several thousand Russians.

Other Agents Pay the Price

Since the arrival of the assassination team in February, a dozen other British agents had arrived, and when the Germans began to scour through Prague, several were ex-filtrated, and seven took refuge in a cleverly concealed bunker under a supposed tomb in a Greek Orthodox church on Resslova Street. One of the men, Karel Curda, was ex-filtrated to the farm where his wife and mother lived … he was the one who would give the game away.

Karel’s family blamed him for the executions, the erasure of Lidice, and by crying over the accounts of reprisals they broke his nerve. He returned to Prague, went straight to the Gestapo, and informed on all he knew. He lacked the address of the church, but he did know an underground cell which, unfortunately, knew where the men were.

The cell’s address was an apartment owned by a woman called Aunt Marie and her son, Ata. Ata had carried food to the team in the church. When the Gestapo raided the flat, Marie managed to cheat them by taking her poison, but they hauled off Ata and tortured him with the severed head of his mother on a nearby table … he talked.

The following morning, the parachutists—Kubris, Pvt. Svarc, and Lt. Palka—spotted the arrival of an SS regiment to storm the church. The British identify it as the “Das Reich.” They took to the balcony.

It took the SS two hours to infiltrate the church and finally toss a stick bomb into the loft where the three were entrenched, but all were dead either by their own hands or from the blast when they were rushed off to the hospital.

The four left had gone to earth in the crypt, and when the SS found the cover they were appropriately greeted. They tried dropping a volunteer down on a rope, and he was shot up. Aside from sniping down the cut, there was nothing else that could be done. Here again, the British and Czech reports differ, and the appropriate German reports are lacking—lost or hidden during the war.

The British remarks on the matter indicate that the German approach was to rope up a machine gun, supply it with reams of ammunition, and lower it down with the trigger wired down. As the effects of an unmanned but uncontrollably barking light machine gun in a tight hiding place can better be imagined this may have happened.

The Czechs, supported by a former “Das Reich” soldier, assert that the SS then tried to smoke the four out, calling up a smoke generator and stuffing its nozzle into a vent duct for the tomb. The British agents cut the hose and heaved it back out. Then a fire hose was stuffed in after a fireman managed to grab the ladder used to reach the vent from inside and haul it out. A meter of water was pumped into the tomb, and SS troops made several charges down the flight of stairs leading into the tomb, but each charge was repulsed. After ammunition had run out, all four used his last pistol round to end it himself, rather than be captured.

Still another version, from a Gestapo man who was supposedly on the scene, asserts that stick bombs were heaved down the vent and entranceway at the same time, and one finally went off inside, before it could be tossed back out.

As the primary effort was to effect a live capture so that the men could later be tried and executed, the first and last concepts seem a bit drastic. However, after the two-hour gun battle for the three in the balcony it is possible that the men on the scene grew too enraged to give any attention to orders, and decided to kill the remainder any way at all. Too, the aftermath is not precisely vital to the consideration; the seven were traced to the church, and were killed with corresponding loss of life to the men who were attempting to get them. The disagreement starts and ends around the methods utilized for this killing.

Heydrich.

 

Heydrich.

 

Heydrich.

  

Heydrich.

 

Heydrich (left).

 

Heydrich.

 

Heydrich in fencing uniform.

 

Heydrich (sixth from left) in fencing uniform.

 

Kirchmayer Street, the place where Obergruppenführer-SS Reinhard Heydrich was killed; the empty car was still there.

 

Heydrich's car a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 320 Convertible B, shown here from Prag Gestapo file, virtually undamaged except for rear flat tire, back seat rip in upholstery and damage to door hinge.

 

Heydrich's Mercedes-Benz 320 Convertible B after the attack.