On this day in 1942: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia and principal architect of the Holocaust, is fatally wounded in Prague. He dies of his injuries eight days later.
On this day in 1942: In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia and principal architect of the Holocaust, is fatally wounded in Prague. He dies of his injuries eight days later.
3 comments
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, byname The Hangman, German *Der Henker*, (1904 — 4 June, 1942, Prague) was a Nazi German official who was Heinrich Himmler’s chief lieutenant in the *Schutzstaffel*, the paramilitary corps commonly known as the SS.
He played a key role in organizing the Holocaust during the opening years of World War II. Heydrich chaired the notorious Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942, whose participants discussed the logistics of the “final solution.”
In September 1941 Heydrich had been appointed Reichsprotektor (governor) of Bohemia and Moravia (now in the Czech Republic). He combined repressive measures and mass executions with an attempt to mollify Czech peasants and workers by improving social and economic conditions.
His success in “pacifying” the Czech population lulled Heydrich into a false sense of security, and on 27 May 1942, two Free Czech agents ( Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík) mortally wounded him with a bomb while he was riding in his car without an armed escort.
He died June 4 in a Prague hospital. The Nazis retaliated for his death by executing hundreds of Czechs and wiping out the entire village of Lidice.
PS The bullet-scarred window of the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague, where the assailants were cornered and killed, can be seen to this day.
I can highly recommend the book „HHhH“ by Laurent Binet. The novel provides decent insights on the preparation, the assassination and the aftermath.
Horse hair