The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich - Part 1: The Butcher of Prague

Prague, 27 May 1942. Two men wait at a hairpin bend on a quiet suburban road. One carries a briefcase holding an anti-tank grenade. The other is assembling a Sten gun beneath a raincoat. Their target is Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Nazi security apparatus, ruler of occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and the man who chaired the Wannsee Conference.

In Part 1, we go back to how Heydrich seized control of the Protectorate, the reign of terror that earned him the name “the Butcher of Prague,” and the political calculations in London that set Operation Anthropoid in motion. Then we board an overcrowded Halifax bomber over snow-covered Bohemia, as two Czechoslovak soldiers prepare to jump into the night.

In this episode

• The Munich Agreement and the destruction of Czechoslovakia
• How Heydrich used Karl Hermann Frank’s ambition to push aside Konstantin von Neurath
• Martial law, mass arrests and the deportation of the Protectorate’s Jews
• Heydrich’s leading role at the Wannsee Conference
• Why Edvard Beneš wanted Heydrich dead, and why Britain’s Special Operations Executive agreed
• The meaning behind the codename “Anthropoid”
• The night drop of Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš on 29 December 1941

Sources and further reading

• Callum MacDonald, The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1989)
• Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (2011)
• Miroslav Ivanov, Target Heydrich (English translation, 1974)
• Laurent Binet, HHhH (2010), a novel

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