Video: 'Lidice Massacre - Brutal Nazi Revenge for Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich - Operation Anthropoid'

(Wednesday, June 10, 1942, the shooting of the men commenced at about 7:00 a.m. and continued until the afternoon hours Central European Summer Time; during the Lidice massacre, part of World War II) — German forces burned the tiny Czech village of Lidice today after executing 173 men and shipping the women and children to concentration camps in reprisal for the recent assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich, architect of The Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews during World War II.

A further 11 men from the village who were not present were later arrested and executed soon afterward, along with several others who were already under arrest. Overall, approximately 340 people from Lidice were murdered in the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women, and 88 children).

Out of 503 inhabitants, 307 women and children were sent to a makeshift detention center in a Kladno school. Of these, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; 7 children who were considered racially suitable and thus eligible for Germanisation were handed over to SS families, and the rest were sent to the Chelmno extermination camp, where they were gassed.

After the war ended, only 143 women and 17 children returned.

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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 on May 27, 1942, in Berlin. German documents suggest that Hitler intended to transfer him to German-occupied France where the French resistance was gaining ground.

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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.

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.

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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.

On June 4, 1942, Heydrich died from septicemia caused by pieces of horsehair from the upholstery and his clothing entering his body when the bomb exploded.

The eulogies at Heydrich’s funeral in Berlin were not yet over when, on June 9, 1942, the decision was made to “make up for his death.” SS-Gruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank, Secretary of State for the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the Führer had commanded the following concerning any village found to have harbored Heydrich’s killers:

1. Execute all men
2. Transport all women to a concentration camp
3. Gather the children suitable for Germanisation, then place them in SS families in the Reich and bring the rest of the children up in other ways
4. Burn down the village and level it entirely

The Nazi regime chose Lidice because its residents were suspected of harboring local resistance partisans and were falsely associated with aiding Heydrich’s assassins.