The controversial assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.
Latest hand-picked WWII news. See also: Heinrich Himmler, Nazi Gestapo: RSHA, Militaria items related to Nazi Leaders, German Generals.
Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich -- The first scholarly biography of Reinhard Heydrich
As the chair of the Wannsee Conference and head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Reinhard Heydrich was the personification of the cruelest aspects of Nazi Germany. But the first scholarly biography of him finds that a combination of shame, love and luck - rather than purely inherent evil - led him to pursue a path of Nazi terror. German historian Robert Gerwarth explains that at first Heydrich was more apolitical and insecure, and he didn't radicalize until joining the SS. Gerwarth thinks Heydrich became a part of Hitler's Nazi Party and annihilation machine in a bizarre way: through the influence of his fiancée Lina von Osten, an ardent National Socialist.
(spiegel.de)
Reinhard Heydrich's son offers his help to restore Czech chateau where he lived during WWII
Heider Heydrich, a son of the notorious SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich who was the deputy Reichs-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia and the chief of RSHA (Reich Main Security Office), offers his help to find funds to restore the decaying chateau in Panenske Brezany near Prague where his family lived during the Second World War.
(praguemonitor.com)
Major-General Antonin Petrak trained Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik
Antonin Petrak escaped to Britain after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia; winning the Military Cross and serving with the SOE on the plot to kill Reinhard Heydrich. When the Nazis entered Prague in 1939, Petrak, an officer in the 39th Infantry Regiment, fled to France, but after the fall of France, he travelled to UK to join the Czechoslovak Brigade. He served as a liaison officer with an anti-tank battery before volunteering for SOE training - becoming the only Czechoslovak SOE instructor. On his return home he was harassed for decades by the communist regime, which was afraid of his patriotism.
(telegraph.co.uk)
Reinhard Heydrich's assassination marked by unveiling of first monument on site
Veterans, military personnel and politicians turned out to mark the anniversary of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich's assassination. After 66 years, the two British-trained Czechoslovak paratroopers who carried out the Operation Anthropoid were dedicated a monument at the site where the attack took place. "For the first 50, almost 60 years ... no monument was built because the communist regime didn't want there to be one. And then people felt ashamed that they hadn't built a monument to Operation Anthropoid before. But under communism, only Soviet forces were commemorated," explained Josef Nosek.
(radio.cz)
Grave of Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik, who murdered Reinhard Heydrich, found
Research confirms: Paratroopers Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik, who killed Nazi Reichsprotector Reinhard Heydrich, are buried in anonymous pits at Prague's Dablice cemetery. They are, along with colleagues within the anti-Nazi resistance who committed suicide in a cache before the Gestapo could catch them, buried along with traitor Karel Curda who snitched their cache to the Nazis. Dablice is also a burial place of Alfred Bartos, Josef Valcik and Jiri Potucek (Silver A operation paratroopers), freedom fighter Vaclav Moravek and Marie Moravcova. Those buried along with them include Nazi leader Karl Hermann Frank who decided that Lidice be razed to the ground.
(militaryphotos.net)
The Lidice massacre - Retaliation for assassination of Heydrich
On 10 June, 1942, the village of Lidice was destroyed in retaliation for the assassination of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, the highest ranking Nazi official in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. 65 years after the massacre, some lesser known facts are still emerging. Eduard Stehlik is an historian for the Military Historical Institute and the author of Lidice: The Story of a Czech Village. "Even after 65 years, everybody considers the official Nazi report of the destruction of Lidice to be correct. It says that all men were shot, women were sent to a camp and children re-educated. The reality in fact was much worse than that."
(radio)
Anonymous group to erect unofficial memorial to Heydrich assassins
It's 65 years since the assassination of the Reichsprotektor of Nazi-controlled Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich, but there is no monument in Prague to mark the event. That, however, could be about to change, as a group of people plan to unveil a memorial: without the permission of the Prague authorities. On May 27th 1942, Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik carried out one of the most audacious assassinations of World War II. As SS Obergruppen Fuhrer Reinhard Heydrich made his way to his office from his villa outside Prague, the pair attacked his open car in the city's Kobylisy district. The assassins' machine gun jammed, but Jan Kubis managed to throw a bomb at the car.
(radio)
Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich was of no use? (Article no longer available from the original source)
The Prague attack on Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi Germany's third most powerful man, was a legitimate execution of a criminal rather than a mere successful murder attempt, Jiri Hanak writes. 5000-8000 people died amid the terror the Nazi launched in revenge. However, Czechoslovakia was in war and people die in wars. Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik, who fatally wounded Heydrich on May 27, 1942, are heroes far exceeding what has been usual in Czechoslovakia. The construction of a monument to Kubis and Gabcik has been still subject of disputes. Why? This may be linked with the view that the assassination of Heydrich was of no use but only triggered an unnecessary death toll.
(ceskenoviny)
The Final Solution: What Happened at Wannsee
On Jan 20, 1942, a group of Nazis met at 56-58 Am Grossen Wannsee in Berlin under SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. What happened there plays a key role in the debate between two schools of Holocaust history. "Intentionalists" argue that Nazis intended to destroy Jewry as early as the 1920s. "Functionalists" argue that Adolf Hitler played only an indirect role, and that the Final Solution was born in fits and starts, the product of a chaotic state in which no one person exercised complete control. In this theory, by the historian Martin Broszat, Hitler was an leader who gave voice to a general ideology but left it to underlings to enact his wishes.
(americanheritage)
Memorial for SS Reichprotektor Reinhard Heydrich's assassins
Czechoslovak paratroopers Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik who took part in the assassination of Nazi Reichprotektor Reinhard Heydrich in 1942 will have a memorial in Prague. It will be near a crossroads where the paratroopers fatally wounded Heydrich on June 4, 1942. After the assassination of Heydrich, Gabcik and Kubis, along with another five paratroopers, spent several weeks in hiding but their hide-out was disclosed and they were encircled by elite Nazi units. They either committed suicide or were killed in the fight. Nazis burnt down the villages of Lidice and Lezaky under the pretext of its inhabitants' cooperation with the paratroopers.
(praguemonitor)
Berlin relives assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague
More than 60 years ago, a group of Czech and Slovak exiles parachuted into their Nazi-occupied homeland and assassinated SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, the man known as the "Butcher of Prague". For the first time since the end of the World War Two, a German museum is offering a close look at "Operation Anthropoid", the codename for the only successful assassination of a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle.
(militaryphotos)
The man and training camp that prepared Czech assassins of Heydrich
It was one of the most dangerous operations of World War II - the plot to assassinate one of Adolf Hitler's most trusted lieutenants. In 1942 secret agents ambushed the deputy head of the SS: Reinhard Heydrich. Reinhard Heydrich was Hitler's right-hand man and was tipped to one day succeed the leader himself. Paul Bock was one of 4,000 Czech soldiers who fled Nazi blitzkrieg and who wound up in the safety of camps at Moreton Paddox near Leamington and at Cholomondeley Castle. With two of his closest comrades, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabchik, Paul trained in secret for an operation. But, unlike them, he's still alive to tell his tale.
(bbc)
Rudolf Krzak: Man who planned assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Major-General Rudolf Krzak, who has died aged 90, was the last survivor from the group that planned Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was wounded on May 27 1942 by two members of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile's secret service Special Group D, working with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). He died a week later from blood poisoning. After his death, the Nazis razed the village of Lidice and the hamlet of Lezaky, and murdered their male inhabitants.
(guardian)
See also:
Heinrich Himmler
Nazi Gestapo: RSHA
Militaria items related to Nazi Leaders
German Generals.