Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most feared men in Nazi Germany. Hitler called him "the man with the iron heart." He was a key architect of the Holocaust, responsible for more than a million and a half deaths.
By 1942, Heydrich had been sent to Prague as deputy Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi Germany had occupied the Czech lands in 1939. The Reich protector, Konstantin von Neurath, was considered too lax, so Heydrich became the de facto governor.
He was anything but lax. He ordered mass arrests, executions, and deportations. Thousands of Czechs were sent to concentration camps. His reign of terror earned him a name history would never forget: the Butcher of Prague.
To the outside world, it appeared Heydrich had crushed the Czech resistance. But in the shadows, a plan to assassinate him was already in motion.
The Czech government was in exile in London. Czech military intelligence was cooperating with the British Special Operations Executive. Together, they planned a top secret mission: Operation Anthropoid.
Two soldiers were chosen for the task. Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík had met in Poland in 1939 and later joined the French Foreign Legion, the only way to fight back. In the ranks of the Legion, they became good 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 take his place.
Both men were proud soldiers who had watched their homeland fall to the Nazis 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 Gabčík and Kubiš over occupied territory. Heavy snow blinded the crew, making navigation nearly impossible. The two men were dropped at the wrong location, landing east of Prague instead of east of Pilsen.
As they approached the ground, Gabčík misjudged the height and injured his left foot. They had no idea where they were. It was night and bitterly cold. The two soldiers buried their parachutes in the snow and took shelter in the abandoned tunnels of an old stone quarry.
Their landing had not gone unnoticed. During the night, a local gamekeeper heard the plane, climbed onto the roof of his house, and saw two parachutes heading toward him. The next morning, he found the buried parachutes and followed a trail of footprints in the snow.
It did not take him long to find Gabčík and Kubiš. The young men pretended to be surveyors, but their cover story quickly fell apart. They reluctantly admitted the truth. Luckily, the gamekeeper wanted to help them.
They were stunned to learn they had landed 20 kilometers from Prague, far from their contacts. Gabčík was injured, and the mission already looked doomed. But then fate intervened.
A local miller who had also heard the plane that night 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. It violated the strictest rules of their mission, which forbade contact with the local resistance until the mission was over. But they were desperate and had no choice but to accept help.
Over the next few months, they were sheltered by a network of brave families, ordinary people risking everything to feed and hide them.
Meanwhile, Heydrich was busy organizing the infamous Wannsee Conference, a meeting called to streamline the mass murder of Jews. He did not realize that all the while, two men were observing him, learning his habits, and noting every route and ritual.
They even had inside help from people working in his castle. They sketched out several ideas for how to kill him. An attack at his castle or his estate was not an option, as the SS guarded them too closely. But they saw another opening.
Heydrich always traveled without guards, accompanied only by his chauffeur. It was the one time he was exposed. So they decided to strike while he was on the road. They considered stretching a wire across the street to force his car to slow down, but time was running out. They heard rumors that Heydrich might leave Prague soon. The pressure mounted, and they needed to move quickly.
On May 26, 1942, Heydrich and his wife attended a concert in a magnificent hall, enjoying compositions by his father, Bruno. Not far away, two men finished their final checks. Tomorrow, they would attempt to kill the Butcher of Prague.
Gabčík was armed with a British Sten gun. Kubiš carried the explosives. They packed two briefcases. One contained the disassembled Sten gun, while the other held two bombs. To an observer, the briefcases looked ordinary. The weapons were hidden beneath layers of fresh grass. It was the perfect cover. With wartime food shortages, many locals kept rabbits, so carrying grass for feed was a common sight.
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. At around 10:00, he left the safety of his castle with his chauffeur.
On a narrow street in the Libeň district on the outskirts of Prague, Kubiš waited. Gabčík was positioned a few meters away. Both had stood there for over an hour, tense, silent, ready.
Then Heydrich's Mercedes-Benz pulled up. Gabčík stepped forward, threw off his raincoat, raised the Sten, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Months of training for this one moment, and the gun jammed. Maybe grass had clogged the mechanism. The Sten had a reputation for jamming easily. Or maybe 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, but he misjudged his throw. The bomb exploded, but Heydrich survived the initial blast.
Kubiš scrambled onto his bicycle and disappeared down the street. Gabčík was chased by Heydrich's driver and fled into a nearby butcher shop. When the driver burst in, Gabčík finally got the Sten to work, shooting him in the leg and escaping.
Both assassins got away, but there was no sense of triumph. The mission had failed. They had not eliminated their target.
But Heydrich was critically wounded by the explosion. He was rushed to Bulovka Hospital in a passing delivery truck. On June 4, 1942, eight days after the attack, Reinhard Heydrich succumbed to his wounds.
Immediately after the assassination, the Gestapo launched a massive manhunt for the attackers, but they had no real leads. Frustrated, the regime demanded blood to avenge the death of the deputy Reich protector.
The Nazis chose the village of Lidice, which had 503 residents, for their revenge. They suspected some within the village supported the attackers, but there was no real evidence of this.
On June 10, 1942, a few hours after midnight, 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 were allowed to live. All other children were killed at the Chełmno extermination camp in Poland. Of the village's former 503 inhabitants, only 143 women and 17 children survived the war.
After murdering or deporting the villagers, the Nazis destroyed the entire village: the homes, the church, even the cemetery. They filmed the entire process. By 1943, only an empty field remained. For the Nazis, the destruction of the town was symbolic of their power. Usually they would try to hide their war crimes, but this time their brutality was on full display. The bloodbath was turned into propaganda.
But even after burning Lidice to the ground and murdering most of its inhabitants, the Nazis were not done. They wanted to find the men behind the attack. So they announced an amnesty. Anyone who came forward with information would be spared. And there was a reward: a million Reichsmarks.
One of Gabčík and Kubiš's comrades took the deal. His name was Karel Čurda. His story was similar to theirs. He had fled to Poland, joined the French Foreign Legion, and trained in Britain for special operations. He was also brought to the Protectorate for a mission. But on June 16, 1942, he decided to collaborate 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 of those families was the Moravec family. The Gestapo stormed their home. The mother took her own life with poison, but her son was taken for interrogation. Using truly unspeakable methods, they broke him. He eventually 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 that hundreds of innocents had already died in the Nazi reprisals. Crushed by guilt, they considered committing suicide in a public park. They hoped that leaving a note claiming responsibility might finally stop the killings.
But before they could make their move, it was too late. The Nazis surrounded the church. Then all hell broke loose. Seven men 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 he suffered in the firefight. Then one by one, the other paratroopers chose death over capture. Some used cyanide, others their last bullets. In the end, both of Heydrich's assassins were dead.
Dozens of resistors and entire families were executed for helping them. Among them were Bishop Gorazd and other members of the Czech Orthodox Church. And the Nazis' revenge did not end there. Just days later, they wiped another village, Ležáky, off the map. Every adult in the village was executed. Most children were deported and killed, and the village was burned to the ground. Like Lidice, Ležáky simply ceased to exist.
After the end of World War II, Nazi official Karl Hermann Frank, who ordered the mass murder in Lidice and Ležáky, was convicted and executed. Karel Čurda had continued to work with the Gestapo until the end of the war. He then attempted to flee but was captured and sentenced to death. He was executed in Prague on April 29, 1947.
Even after her husband's death, Lina Heydrich remained a prominent figure. She did not return to Germany until 1945. After the country's surrender, her husband's property was seized and confiscated as the assets of a war criminal. She spent the rest of her life defending his legacy, repeatedly denying that her late husband was responsible for any war crimes. In the 1950s, she won several lawsuits against West Germany, securing a substantial widow's pension and regaining her luxurious summer home.
Today, a memorial stands at the site of the ambush in Prague. It honors Jozef Gabčík, Jan Kubiš, and a third figure representing the Czech civilian resistance. In the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky, memorials mark the sites of the mass killings. These places serve as not just reminders of lives lost, but as warnings to never let something like this happen ever again.