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78 years ago today these two men, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, assassinated the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. Their story is one of the most daring, tragic, and most consequential covert operations of WWII
Reinhard Heydrich by the spring of 1942 was one of the most powerful Nazi leaders. He was one of the main architects of the implementation of the Holocaust, having chaired the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. He was also head of the Nazi intelligence and police services
In September 1941 Heydrich had been appointed as the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, essentially the governor of Nazi occupied western Czechoslovakia. He was a brutal overseer, instituting martial law, arresting thousands and sending them to the camps, and executing hundreds
Heydrich& #39;s job was to keep the Czechs in line in order to maintain high levels of wartime industrial production. Occupied Bohemia-Moravia was a major industrial center for the Nazi war effort. By the spring of 1942 it was rumored that Heydrich might even by a successor to Hitler
After the annexation of the Sudetenland in October 1938 and then the Nazi invasion and occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, thousands of Czechoslovak soldiers went into exile, following the exiled democratic Czechoslovak government to Britain
In Britain these Czechoslovak soldiers joined the British military and largely took part in RAF operations once WWII began. Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš were two such Czechoslovak soldiers in exile in Britain, where they were trained as paratroopers
In the fall of 1941, responding to Heydrich& #39;s rising power and his actions in Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak government in exile hatched a plan to assassinate him. The plan was headed by František Moravec, the CZ spy master, with the approval of Edvard Beneš, the CZ president
Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš were among those Czechoslovak soldiers in exile recruited to take part in the assassination plan, code named Operation Anthropoid. Training occurred through the fall of 1941, while covert plans were made with agents inside Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia
On the night of December 28, 1941, Gabčík and Kubiš, along with seven other Czechoslovak soldiers, were flown over Nazi occupied Bohemia and parachuted in. Gabčík and Kubiš landed in the town of Nehvizdy, just east of Prague. Below is a memorial to them in the town today
Through the winter and early spring of 1942 Gabčík and Kubiš and their fellow soldiers embedded themselves with local anti-Nazi resistance agents in Czechoslovakia and worked on developing plans to assassinate Heydrich. Over the months they tracked Heydrich& #39;s daily routine
Heydrich was very arrogant and did not take proper security measures. On his working days he was driven into Prague from his residence in far north end of the city. The Czechoslovak paratroopers pinpointed a specific bend in the road in his commute route that was most vulnerable
By end of May 1942 Gabčík and Kubiš and their companions were ready. The plan was to ambush him in his car as he rounded the vulnerable bend in road as his driver wouldn& #39;t be able to see in time. On the late morning of May 27 Heydrich took his usual commute into the city
As Heydrich& #39;s car rounded the bend, Gabčík stepped into the street and pulled out a Stein submachine gun he had concealed in his raincoat. However, it jammed at that fatal moment and would not fire. Heydrich stood up in the car and began firing at Gabčík with his own pistol
While this was going on, Kubiš threw a grenade at Heydrich& #39;s car. It landed near the rear wheel and exploded. The shrapnel from the blast and the car tore threw Heydrich, wounding him but leaving him still alive. Heydrich& #39;s car as it looked after the explosion below
Gabčík and Kubiš took off at this point to try to reach a safe house, thinking the blast had killed Heydrich. Heydrich& #39;s driver gave pursuit to Gabčík, and was shot twice by Gabčík in the leg
Heydrich was taken to hospital but a severe infection set in within a few days. He died on June 4, 1942. His death was a major blow to the Nazi government and his funeral was a spectacle of Nazi commemoration. Hitler was enraged by the assassination and vowed terrible reprisal
Thousands of Czechoslovaks were arrested in the immediate weeks after the assassination, and were either executed or sent to the camps. An estimated at least 5,000 people were killed in reprisal. The most infamous Nazi reprisal was the destruction of Lidice and Ležáky
Lidice and Ležáky were two villages in Bohemia where the Czechoslovak paratroopers were falsely rumored to be hiding out. A radio used by the paratroopers had also been found in Ležáky. In June 1942 both villages were razed to the ground
In Lidice all men over 15 were shot, all the adult women sent to concentration camps, and the children taken away to be sent for adoption by German families. The village itself was torn down and burned. In Ležáky all adults, men and women, were killed
In the immediate weeks after the assassination Gabčík, Kubiš, and the covert agents who had helped them were in hiding and on the run. They might have made it through perhaps. But they were betrayed by one of their own: Karel Čurda. He turned himself in to the Gestapo in mid June
Čurda told the Gestapo the location of various safe house locations and became a collaborator. He was later executed after the war for treason. Gabčík, Kubiš, and others had gone into hiding in the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague but were now exposed by Čurda
On the morning of June 18, 1942 the Cathedral was surrounded by hundreds of Nazi troops. But they could not make their way in as the Czechoslovak paratroopers had barricaded themselves in and had the high ground. A fierce gun battle took place
You can still see the bullet marks on the cathedral today
As the fight dragged on though the Czechoslovak paratroopers began to take losses and run low on ammunition. To buy time they barricaded themselves in the basement of the Cathedral, letting the Nazis take over the upper part
The Nazis were unable to make their way into the basement as you could only go down into it one at a time due to the narrow entrance, and faced being shot at by the Czechoslovak paratroopers each time. But the troopers also could not now get out
In desperation, the Nazi troops hit upon the idea of trying to drown the troopers out. They put hoses into the basement through vents and pumped water into it, sometimes also putting in tear gas
As the water rose and knowing that they had no way out, and also not being willing to be taken alive to face torture and interrogation, Gabčík, Kubiš, and the remaining paratroopers committed suicide by either taking cyanide capsules or shooting themselves with their pistols
And so ends the tragic and heroic incident. Heydrich, the architect of the Holocaust and the potential successor to Hitler was successfully assassinated, thereby changing the trajectory of WWII, at the cost of thousands of Czechoslovak lives
The basement of the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague is now a memorial to Gabčík, Kubiš, and their fellow paratroopers and covert agents
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I had to leave some details out due to space, but if you want to know more, there are some good accounts of the assassination: HHhH by Laurent Binet and The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by Callum MacDonald
some pics of the assassination site and its memorial that I took last year
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