The day they got Heydrich

[The Aviator]

While military governor of Bohemia and Moravia, exercising real executive power above the President and Prime Minister of the so called Protectorate, Heydrich often drove alone in a car with an open roof.
This was typical of the arrogant egotist that Heyditch was.

In the December 1941, two brave Czech soldiers [Gabcik and Kubis], who had escaped to Britain, agreed to return to Prague in an attempt to assassinate the bastard.
On the 27th May 1942 they ambushed Heyditch's car in the Prague suburb of Kobylisy as the car slowed down on a bend.
When the sten that Gapcik was carrying failed to fire, Kubis threw a mills bomb into the car which injured Heyditch but also himself.
Gabcik himself shot the pursueing driver in the leg and made his escape.

Heydrich's injuries were not immediately dangerous. However, the bomb explosion drove fragments from the car seats into his body, including bits of springs and dirty upholstery. This led to massive infections of his internal organs. Despite Himmler sending his best doctors, Heydrich died in a Prague hospital eight days later. The autopsy stated that Heydrich's death was the result of blood poisoning from an infection from the horse hair in the seat.
A poetic end to a real bastard and I wish it could have ended there.
But reprisals started immediately with over 13000 innocent people losing their lives.

As an ajunct to this, the War Cabinet in Britain were reluctant to carry out any more officially sanctioned assassinations.

A pic below of Heyditch with the cruel face that suited him.
A pic of the car he was riding in that day with the number plate SS 3.

Taken from this site
Reinhard Heydrich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[von Poop]

Funnily enough I was looking at a picture the remains of Heydrich's grave earlier.
Pretty thorough removal but I thought the Soviets wouldn't have even left that much:

Heydrich_Grave.

[machine shop tom]

Originally Posted by Von Poop

Funnily enough I was looking at a picture the remains of Heydrich's grave earlier.
Pretty thorough removal but I thought the Soviets wouldn't have even left that much:

Heydrich_Grave.

Certainly more than he deserved.

tom

[Owen]

When I stayed in Prague in 1992, the apartment block I stayed in was literally around the corner from the site of the ambush.
Or so the Czech chap told me.
In 1993 driving down to Prague, we saw the turn off to Lidice but sadly couldn't stop as we were behind schedule thanks to mollusc's SAAB breaking down on the M25.
My thoughts did drift back to WW2 though.

[Christos]

It's one of the great ironies of the war that Reinhardt Heydrich should think himself such a sure bet that he could drive through Prague on a regular basis, using the same route, without an escort vehicle of any kind, and with just his officers Walther pistol for protection....the Czechs soon put paid to that little fantasy....

Heydrich was not only unprotected, the assassins were dead set lucky...they thought they had failed, and like Gavrilo Princep at Sarajevo, they were on their way back to base when Heydrichs car swung into view......Heydrich was arrogant or stupid enough to stand bolt upright in the car, but this is not what killed him...apparently, the horsehair seats he was sitting in were blown into his wounds, and caused an infection that Doctors could not control........

Was their only motivation the fact that Reinhard Heydrich was slated as Hitler's next in line? (unofficial)...The British planners and their Czech cohorts knew what the consequences of the action would be...the reprisal murder of tens of thousands of Czechs...and theres the REAL REASON....

KNOWING the Nazi pechant for reprisal killings, they knew that a target like Heydrich would DESTABILIZE an entire region; even the most prominent critics of Reinhard Heydrich have to admit, that under his direction, Bohemia-Moravia was operating very smoothly, with little or no partisan/resistence activity....something that niether the Czechs in exile, nor the British, wanted to continue....

It is often said that in a guerilla war, the only thing that reprisal actions do is recruit for the other side...this was the one region of the Reich at the time that was running smoothly...If the Czechs got the idea that their lot was to be an easier one than the rest of occupied Eurpoe, that would mean the Reich's heartland areas would be humming along till the end....

They needed to destabilize the region in the fastest possible way....if they could get the Nazis to react, then any number of people killed would therefore be completely justified...

And thats exactly the way it turned out....a great victory for British and Czech planners, and another country that was to oppose the Germans, passively, if not in outright revolt....Two Czech agents achieved all this in one afternoon...
You might call it one of the 'coups' of the war....

[The Aviator]

QUOTE FROM WIKIPEDIA Heydrich appeared not to be injured seriously. He gave chase and tried to return fire but his pistol was not loaded. After running some distance, he became weak from shock, and sent his driver Klein on foot to chase Gabčík. But in the ensuing fire-fight, Gabčík shot Klein in the leg and escaped.

Further to Heyditch's arrogance, his pistol wasn't even loaded.

[Christos]

Thanks...great correction....he was arrogant AND a silly bugger at the time.....Glad they got him....Poor Lidice...

[Owen]

Anyone going to Prague should take this with them.
ab-con1
ISSUE No. 24 (Code A024)

THE ASSASSINATION OF REINHARD HEYDRICH Czechoslovakia, The Assassination, Escape to Martyrdom, The Judas Iscariot of WWII, The Seven fight it out, The Retribution. War Film - It's all a Game - The film made by the British World War II Re-enactment Society. Wreck Recovery - 1978 Sikorski Sequel - The search for wreckage of Sikorski's Liberator. Preservation - The River Maas Buffalo - Recovery of an LVT II from the River Maas in Belgium.

[spidge]

Good quality actual footage of the man.

YouTube - Operation Anthropoid Part 1

YouTube - Operation Anthropoid Part 2

YouTube - killing heydrich part3

YouTube - killing heydrich final part

[Christos]

Anthropoid was just great.....loved the clor footage of Heydrich...from Eva Braun's home movies...just think...if it wasn't for Eva, everything concerning the nierarchy of the Third Reich would have been in black and white....Eva's home movies are a genuine historical bonus....

And those gallant Czechs....my God...I hope they were mdecorated...it would have been appropriate for these boys to get a very high medal of some sort....I hope the czech government looked after their families with a widow's pension payment or two....such selfless sacrifice benefits us all.....brave men....great heroes for the Czech nation...truly inspiring stuff...