On a narrow street in the Libeň district on the outskirts of Prague, two men waited in the early morning light of May 27, 1942. They had stood there for over an hour, tense and silent. One carried a briefcase packed with explosives, covered in fresh grass to look like feed for rabbits. The other held a disassembled Sten gun.
Their target was on his way. Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia, was one of the most feared men in Nazi Germany. Hitler called him the man with the iron heart. He was one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, responsible for more than a million and a half deaths.
To the Czech people, he was the butcher of Prague. Heydrich had not always seemed destined for such a path. He was the son of a singer and composer and showed musical talent as a child. But after school he joined the German Navy, where his tall, blonde, athletic appearance made him look like a walking Nazi propaganda poster.
The facade was deceptive. He spoke with a thin, high-pitched voice and was haunted by deep insecurity. Rumors spread that he had Jewish roots, and he was mocked with the nickname Blonde Moses. In a Germany turning toward Nazism, the slur was dangerous to his ambitions.
In December 1930, he met Lina von Osten at a dance in Kiel. After just four dates, they became engaged. But scandal soon struck. A former girlfriend accused him of breaking a promise to marry her, and a naval court of honor discharged him in disgrace.
A family friend later introduced him to Heinrich Himmler. Heydrich joined the Nazi Party and the SS, and from there his rise was meteoric. Within a few years he became chief of the Reich Security Main Office. In 1938 he orchestrated Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, when synagogues burned and Jewish businesses were ransacked across Germany.
In July 1941 he was tasked with planning what the Nazis called the Final Solution, the blueprint for the systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews. In autumn 1941, Heydrich was sent to Prague as deputy Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia. The territory had been occupied since 1939, and the existing protector was considered too lax. Heydrich was anything but lax.
He ordered mass arrests, executions, and deportations. Thousands of Czechs were sent to concentration camps. To the outside world, it seemed he had crushed the Czech resistance. But in the shadows, a plan to kill him was already in motion.
The Czech government was in exile in London, and Czech military intelligence was cooperating with the British Special Operations Executive. Together they planned a top-secret mission: Operation Anthropoid. The men chosen were Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík. They had met in Poland in 1939 and joined the French Foreign Legion as the only way to fight back.
In the Legion they became close friends. After the fall of France, Czech forces were moved to Britain. In the autumn of 1941, Gabčík was selected for Operation Anthropoid. When his partner was injured during training, Gabčík insisted that Kubiš replace him.
Both men had watched their homeland fall without a fight. Now they were determined to strike back, no matter the cost. In the early hours of December 29, 1941, a British Halifax bomber dropped them over occupied Czechoslovakia. But heavy snow blinded the crew, making navigation nearly impossible.
They were dropped at the wrong location, east of Prague instead of east of Plzeň. As they approached the ground, Gabčík misjudged his landing and injured his left foot. They had no idea where they were. They buried their parachutes in the snow and took shelter in abandoned tunnels of an old stone quarry.
Their landing had not gone unnoticed. A local gamekeeper heard the plane, saw the parachutes, and the next morning followed footprints in the snow. He found the two men and confronted them. They pretended to be surveyors, but the cover story quickly fell apart, and they admitted the truth.
The gamekeeper wanted to help. A local miller who also heard the plane tracked them down. He was a member of Sokol, a banned Czech nationalist group, and offered to connect them with the underground network in Prague. This violated the strictest rules of their mission: no contact with local resistance until the operation was over.
But Gabčík was injured and they were desperate. They had no choice but to accept help. Over the next few months, a network of brave families sheltered, fed, and hid them. All the while, Heydrich was organizing the Wannsee Conference, the meeting called to streamline the mass murder of Jews.
He did not realize two men were observing him, learning his habits, noting every route and ritual. They even had inside help from people working in his castle. They sketched several plans. An attack at his castle was not an option; the SS guarded it too closely.
But there was an opening. Heydrich always traveled without guards, accompanied only by his chauffeur. It was the one time he was exposed. They decided to strike while he was on the road.
They considered stretching a wire across the street to force his car to slow, but time was running out. They heard rumors Heydrich might leave Prague soon. They had to move quickly. On May 26, 1942, Heydrich and his wife attended a concert at the Wallenstein Palace, enjoying compositions written by his father.
Not far away, the two men finished their final checks. The next morning, Heydrich’s day began peacefully. It was a fresh spring morning. He finished breakfast and played with his three children.
His wife was pregnant with a fourth. Around 10:00, he left his castle with his chauffeur. On the street in Libeň, Kubiš waited near Gabčík, just a few meters away. Then Heydrich’s Mercedes-Benz pulled up.
Gabčík stepped forward, threw off his raincoat, raised the Sten gun, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The gun jammed. Perhaps grass had clogged the mechanism; the Sten was known for jamming easily.
Perhaps it was just bad luck. Heydrich thought there was only one attacker. He yelled at his driver to stop and drew his pistol. Kubiš seized the moment and threw his bomb, but he misjudged the throw.
The explosion went off behind the car. Heydrich was wounded but survived. Kubiš scrambled onto his bicycle and disappeared down the street. Gabčík was chased by the driver and fled into a nearby butcher shop.
When the driver burst in, Gabčík finally got the Sten working, shot him in the leg, and escaped. Both assassins got away. But there was no sense of triumph. They had not eliminated their target.
Yet within days, the mission would be considered a success. Heydrich was critically wounded by the explosion. He was rushed to Bulovka Hospital in a passing delivery truck. Eight days later, on June 4, 1942, he died from his wounds.
The Gestapo launched a massive manhunt, but they had no real leads. Frustrated, the regime demanded blood. They chose the village of Lidice, which had 503 residents. They suspected some villagers supported the attackers, but there was no real evidence.
Shortly after midnight on June 10, 1942, Nazi troops raided the village. They shot 173 men on the spot. The women were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Children under a year old, and those selected for re-education through placement in German families, remained alive.
All other children were killed at the Chełmno extermination camp in Poland. Of the 503 inhabitants, only 143 women and 17 children survived the war. After murdering and deporting the villagers, the Nazis destroyed the entire village: the homes, the church, even the cemetery. They filmed the whole process.
By 1943, only an empty field remained. This time, they did not try to hide their war crimes. The bloodbath was turned into propaganda. But even after burning Lidice to the ground, the Nazis were not done.
They still wanted the men behind the attack. They announced an amnesty: anyone who came forward with information would be spared. There was a reward of one million Reichsmarks. One of the paratroopers took the deal.
His name was Karel Čurda. He had fled to Poland, joined the French Foreign Legion, and trained in Britain for special operations. He was brought to the Protectorate for a mission, but on June 16, 1942, he collaborated with the Gestapo in Prague. In exchange for a new identity and the cash, he gave them the assassins and the names of the families sheltering them.
One family was the Moravec family. The Gestapo stormed their home. The mother took her own life with poison. Her son was taken for interrogation, and under unspeakable methods, he broke.
He told them what his mother had once told him: if you are ever in serious trouble, go to the church of St. Cyril and Methodius. Inside this Orthodox church, Gabčík and Kubiš had found refuge. In the damp darkness of the crypt, the two assassins and five other paratroopers waited for orders from London.
They knew about Lidice. They knew hundreds of innocents had already died in the Nazi reprisals. Crushed by guilt, they considered committing suicide in a public park, hoping a note claiming responsibility might stop the killings. But before they could make their move, it was too late.
The Nazis surrounded the church. Seven men held out against more than 700 SS and Gestapo troops. When the Nazis could not break through their defenses, they flooded the crypt. Kubiš died from injuries suffered in the firefight.
One by one, the other paratroopers chose death over capture. Some took cyanide, others used their last bullets. In the end, both of Heydrich’s assassins were dead. The revenge did not end there.
Dozens of resisters and entire families were executed for helping them. Among them was Bishop Gorazd and other members of the Czech Orthodox Church. Just days later, the Nazis wiped another village, Ležáky, off the map. Every adult was executed.
Most children were deported and killed. The village was burned to the ground. Like Lidice, Ležáky simply ceased to exist. After the war, Nazi official Karl Hermann Frank, who ordered the mass murders in Lidice and Ležáky, was convicted and executed.
Karel Čurda, who had continued working with the Gestapo until the end of the war, tried to flee but was captured, sentenced to death, and executed in Prague on April 29, 1947. Lina Heydrich remained a prominent figure after her husband’s death. She stayed in Czechoslovakia until 1945, then returned to Germany after the surrender. Her husband’s property was seized as the assets of a war criminal.
She spent the rest of her life defending his legacy and repeatedly denied he was responsible for any war crimes. In the 1950s, she won lawsuits against West Germany, securing a substantial widow’s pension and regaining her summer home. Today, a memorial stands at the site of the ambush in Prague, honoring Gabčík, Kubiš, and a third figure representing the Czech civilian resistance. In Lidice and Ležáky, memorials mark the sites of the mass killings.
They serve not only as reminders of lives lost, but as warnings never to let something like this happen again.