Video: 'The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich | Nazi Hunters'
(Thursday, June 4, 1942, around 4:30 a.m. Central European Summer Time; during Operation Anthropoid, part of World War II) — Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of The Holocaust, died of sepsis this morning in Prague, one week after he was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers in Operation Anthropoid.
Heydrich, 38, was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy/Acting Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia and served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, later known as Interpol).
He chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalized plans for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.
In London, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile resolved to kill Heydrich. Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabcík headed the team chosen for the mission, trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). On Dec. 28, 1941, they parachuted into the Protectorate, where they lived in hiding, preparing for the mission.
Heydrich planned to meet Hitler today in Berlin. German documents suggest that Hitler intended to transfer him to German-occupied France where the French resistance was gaining ground. To get from his home in Panenské Brežany, 9 miles north of central Prague, Heydrich would have to pass a section where the Dresden-Prague road merges with a road to the Troja Bridge. The junction in the Prague suburb of Liben was well suited for the attack because motorists have to slow for a hairpin bend.
Video: 'SS-3 The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich'
As Heydrich’s car slowed, Gabcík took aim with a Sten submachine gun, but it jammed and failed to fire. Heydrich ordered his driver, SS-Oberscharführer Johannes Klein, to halt and attempted to confront Gabcík rather than speed away. Kubiš, who had not been spotted by Heydrich or Klein, threw a converted anti-tank mine at the car as it stopped, which landed against the rear wheel.
The explosion ripped through the right rear fender and wounded Heydrich, with metal fragments and fibers from the upholstery causing serious damage to his left side. He suffered major injuries to his diaphragm, spleen, and one lung, as well as a broken rib.
Kubiš received a minor shrapnel wound to his face. After Kubiš fled, Heydrich ordered Klein to chase Gabcík on foot, and Gabcík shot Klein in the leg, before escaping himself.
A Czech woman went to Heydrich’s aid and flagged down a delivery van. He was placed on his stomach in the back of the van and taken to the emergency room at Bulovka Hospital. A splenectomy was performed, and the chest wound, left lung, and diaphragm were all debrided.
Himmler ordered German medical doctor (and war criminal) Karl Gebhardt to fly to Prague to assume care. Despite a fever, Heydrich’s recovery appeared to progress well. Hitler’s personal doctor Theodor Morell suggested the use of the new antibacterial drug sulfonamide, but Gebhardt thought that Heydrich would recover and declined the suggestion.
Nazi intelligence would falsely link the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Lezaky. Both villages would be razed on June 10, 1942; the men and boys age 14 and above would be shot, and most of the women and children deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
