27 May 1942 Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich was a fanatical Nazi and the third most important man in Hitler's Germany. He even had an SS-3 license plate on his Mercedes. He planned the liquidation of the Czech nation, instead he was himself liquidated on May 27, 1942 by a pair of assassins.

After the German army occupied the Czech Republic, Hitler sent Heydrich as acting Reich Protector for the newly declared Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich became a virtually unlimited ruler to whom the Czech government was also subject and who had no regard for the Czech nation.

A week after his arrival in Prague, he declared: 'After all, a Czech has no business in this area any more', because the Nazis wanted to deport the Czech citizens far away to the east of Europe, or to Germanise them. Czech as a language was to disappear. And those who did not want to turn into Germans were evicted or liquidated.

But this fate befell Heydrich himself, who was attacked by Czechoslovak paratroopers trained in England. They were sent on a dangerous mission by Czech politicians in London. The soldiers parachuted from planes over the occupied country and planned the assassination. "Two of them, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, waited for the tyrant on the 27th. On May 1942, while he was driving in his Mercedes in Prague's Holešovice district," writes Petr Švec in his book The Czech Century.

At a sharp turn, which is still called Heydrich's turn, Gabčík wanted to fire a machine gun at the Nazi, but the weapon failed. Heydrich was only wounded by a grenade thrown at the car by Kubiš. The windows of a nearby tram were strewn with glass and the passengers began to scream. Heydrich and his driver jumped out of the car and ran after the assassins. One was riding away on a bicycle. Heydrich's driver had him in his sights but accidentally pulled the safety instead of the trigger. Heydrich, wounded by the shrapnel, stumbled after him, shouting, "Shoot the bastard!"

The second assassin ran into the butcher's shop and begged for help. But the butcher, an ardent Nazi whose brother was in the Gestapo, summoned Heydrich's driver. He rushed in and collided with the attacker. The man managed to shoot him in the leg and then disappeared into a tangle of side streets. The assassins found shelter in the Church of Charles of Bohemia. The local priest sent them to the crypt, where they cursed a botched job that would cost many lives.

Heydrich died of an infection that had gotten into his wounds. Hitler was furious, and on June 4 he declared, "Heroic gestures like riding in an open unarmored car and walking down the street without security guards are expressions of utter stupidity. I can only describe as stupid and idiotic the behaviour of a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich, who puts himself in unnecessary danger."

And revenge was not long in coming. The Nazis burned and completely razed the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Five days after Heydrich's death, a train with a thousand Czech Jews left Prague for the concentration camp. Two thousand more were deported from the Terezín concentration camp. "All of them died, except one man who managed to jump off the train and save himself," Anne-Marie O'Connor notes in her book The Lady in Gold.

At the same time, the Nazis launched harsh interrogations of those suspected of collaborating with the assassins. Some of them revealed that the bombers might be hiding in the Church of Charles Borromeo, which was true. SS troops were greeted from underground by the bark of a submachine gun. Two men were wounded and cries of "We are Czechs! We will never surrender!"

The Germans had fire hoses brought in to flood the crypt. "At the same time, they threw tear gas canisters into the crypt and lobbed grenades into the crypt. The last shots rang out from inside the underground. The paratroopers didn't let them get out alive," O'Connor adds.

Anne-Marie O'Connor: The Lady in Gold, Petr Švec: The Czech Century, www.nakedtourguideprague.com