On the morning of May 27, 1942, two Czech paratroopers waited in a narrow street on the outskirts of Prague. Their target was a man who had made himself the most feared figure in occupied Czechoslovakia: Reinhard Heydrich, the acting ruler of the Bohemian and Moravian Protectorate. Josef Gabčík stepped forward and raised his Sten submachine gun as Heydrich’s open car slowed for a sharp bend. He pulled the trigger, and the weapon jammed.
The plan, code-named Operation Anthropoid, had been in preparation for more than a year. It grew out of the darkest period of the German occupation. In March 1939, Nazi Germany had broken the Munich Agreement and marched into Prague without resistance. Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was proclaimed from Prague Castle the following day.
The territory was formally granted autonomy, but that fiction masked a reality of Gestapo terror, dissolved political parties, closed universities, and relentless censorship. Open resistance had been destroyed within months, and arrest and fear became ordinary parts of daily life. The occupation remained harsh but stable until September 1941, when Hitler sent Heydrich to Prague as Deputy Reich Protector. Heydrich already headed the Reich Main Security Office, the sprawling Nazi apparatus that controlled the Gestapo, the criminal police, and the intelligence service.
His arrival signaled a brutal turn. Within days he declared martial law, ordered mass arrests, and authorized executions meant to crush the resistance and intimidate the entire population. The prime minister of the protectorate government, Alois Eliáš, was arrested and sentenced to death for his contacts with the underground. Hundreds were shot, and thousands were imprisoned.
At the same time, Heydrich managed to stabilize arms production and restore order in the factories. From Berlin’s perspective, the protectorate was becoming a model of effective occupation. That calm alarmed the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. President Edvard Beneš faced a serious political problem.
Although Britain had recognized his government, the Munich Agreement remained legally valid, meaning the Western Allies had not fully restored Czechoslovakia as a subject of international law. Without visible resistance at home, the country risked being restored only within its diminished post-Munich borders. Allied governments were also pressing exile movements to demonstrate active opposition to German rule. Beneš had hoped for a political gesture from the protectorate’s own elites, but after Heydrich’s arrival those leaders accommodated German demands rather than protest.
The pressure to show that the Czech population had not accepted occupation grew unbearable. In this context, Operation Anthropoid was conceived. It was organized by the intelligence branch of the Czechoslovak Ministry of National Defense in exile, in close cooperation with the British Special Operations Executive. The SOE supplied training, instructors, weapons, explosives, aircraft, and operational support.
The decision to target Heydrich, however, was made by the Czechoslovak leadership itself. The planners regarded the mission as extremely risky and warned its participants that their chances of survival were minimal. The original team consisted of Gabčík and Karel Svoboda. When Svoboda was injured in parachute training, Jan Kubiš replaced him at Gabčík’s request.
Both men were soldiers of the Czechoslovak Army in Exile who had fought in France in 1940 and escaped to Britain after the collapse. In Scotland and England they underwent intensive SOE training: parachuting, demolition, explosives, small arms, hand-to-hand combat, navigation, and secure communication. Instructors prepared several assassination scenarios suited to different environments. Anthropoid was not launched alone.
It belonged to the first wave of Czechoslovak special operations sent into the protectorate in late 1941, alongside teams code-named Silver A and Silver B. These missions were tasked with restoring radio contact with London, gathering intelligence, and rebuilding underground structures. The coordinated deployment was designed to strengthen resistance networks while complicating German counterintelligence. After repeated postponements caused by weather and technical failures, Gabčík and Kubiš were finally deployed on the night of December 28, 1941.
The aircraft missed the planned drop zone near Pilsen by a considerable distance, and the two men landed near the village of Nehvizdy, east of Prague. From the first hours, their survival depended on the courage of civilians. Local villagers and resistance members provided shelter, food, clothing, and contacts, fully knowing that such help could lead to arrest, torture, and execution for themselves and their families. With the assistance of the resistance network, the two men gradually reached Prague.
Over the following months they lived under false identities, changed hiding places frequently, and limited their contacts to the smallest possible circle. Fake documents and work permits allowed them to move through the city. Information about Heydrich’s movements came through resistance channels connected to Prague Castle, where his daily routine could be observed. Despite the repression he directed, Heydrich continued to travel between his residence at Panenské Břežany and the castle in an open car, usually accompanied only by a driver.
His behavior reflected both arrogance and confidence in his grip on the protectorate. By spring 1942, the agents had focused on the attack itself. On the morning of May 27, Gabčík’s weapon jammed at the decisive moment. Heydrich stood up and reached for his pistol, exposing himself.
Kubiš then threw a modified anti-tank grenade, which struck the side of the car and exploded. Shrapnel and fragments of the vehicle’s body tore into Heydrich, inflicting severe internal injuries. In the chaos, both attackers escaped separately and disappeared into the streets of Prague. Heydrich was taken to hospital and initially appeared to be recovering.
But infection set in, and he died of blood poisoning on June 4, 1942. His death sent shockwaves through the Nazi leadership. The man who had been one of the chief architects of the regime’s security system had been killed in the heart of occupied Europe. The German response was immediate and brutal.
The assassination served as a pretext for mass reprisals intended to terrorize the population and wipe out any remaining resistance. Martial law was declared again. Thousands were arrested, and executions became routine. On June 10, 1942, Nazi forces descended on Lidice, a small village near Prague.
For a week afterward, their propaganda falsely claimed a connection between the village and the attackers, but no evidence ever supported it. Lidice was chosen not for anything its people had done, but for what it symbolized. All 173 men were shot; the women were separated and sent to concentration camps; the children were taken from their families. A few were selected for Germanization, and 82 were sent to extermination camps, where they were murdered.
The village itself was burned, bulldozed, and erased from maps; even the cemetery was desecrated. In total, 340 people from Lidice were murdered. Gabčík, Kubiš, and several other agents from different missions evaded capture for weeks with the help of resistance families. Seven parachutists eventually took refuge in the Orthodox Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague.
Their hiding place was only discovered after Karel Čurda, a member of another mission, betrayed them. On June 18, Nazi forces surrounded the church. After hours of fierce fighting, all seven men inside were dead. The Germans brought their bodies to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Prague, where an autopsy was carried out.
All the bodies were decapitated. The heads of Gabčík and Kubiš were to be preserved in formaldehyde and displayed in a crime museum the Nazis planned to build after the war; from the other five, only the skulls were kept. On April 20, 1945, just weeks before the liberation of Prague, the Gestapo removed the remains, and their fate afterward has never been credibly confirmed. Despite the deaths of its participants and the catastrophic reprisals, the exile government regarded Operation Anthropoid as a political and military success.
The international outrage over the German terror played a decisive role in Britain and France withdrawing recognition of the Munich Agreement. Czechoslovakia’s position among the Allies was strengthened, and the restoration of the state within its pre-Munich borders became a realistic prospect. The operation was never primarily a military act; it was a calculated political statement carried out at enormous human cost. It proved that resistance in the protectorate had not been extinguished and that the occupation could be challenged even at its highest levels.
After that, no representative of Nazi Germany could be certain that trained agents sent to avenge the persecuted would not be waiting somewhere in his path.