Operation Anthropoid: Czech SOE Commandos Hunt for Hitler's Hangman Reinhard Heydrich in Prague

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In 1941, Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most powerful and dangerous men in Nazi Germany. The Allies, the exiled Czech government, and much of Europe wanted him dead. But there was a reason his assassination, codenamed Operation Anthropoid, was the only attempt of its kind made during World War II.

In September 1941, Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich replaced the man who had been in charge of governing Bohemia and Moravia, two Nazi-occupied provinces of Czechoslovakia. Neurath, a man sentenced at the Nuremberg trials to 15 years in prison for war crimes, was too lenient for Adolf Hitler and the other Nazi leaders, which was why they were sending in Heydrich.

Their hope was that Heydrich would be able to crush the Czech resistance to German occupation and get Czech motor and arms production for the German war effort back on track. Heydrich had their full confidence — he had already been responsible for some of the greatest atrocities of World War II.

He had organized Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom that destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Jewish citizens in Nazi Germany, and founded the SD, the security organization designed to crush resistance to Nazi rule. Hitler called him “the man with the iron heart.”

The Czech people had different names for him. They called him “the Hangman” and “The Butcher of Prague” — epithets that still seem mild in comparison to what he did.

Within a week of taking power in Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich declared martial law and ordered nearly 150 Czech resistance fighters executed.
In five months, somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 citizens had been arrested; ten percent of them were executed before Heydrich had been in power for six months.

Most of those not sent to the firing squad were put on trains to concentration camps, where conditions were so poor that only four percent of prisoners would live to see the Allies declare victory.

Any effort at rebellion was met with harsh reprisals, and it wasn’t long before the Czech resistance had come to a grinding halt.

In October 1941, František Moravec, the exiled head of Czech intelligence, went to British Special Operations Executive, Winston Churchill’s famous “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” to propose an assassination.

They agreed, and the project was given the codename Operation Anthropoid. The exiled Czech government wanted the assassins to be Czech or Slovak; they wanted to show their people that they hadn’t given up the fight, though they knew reprisals would be terrible.

Twenty-four Czech soldiers — part of a force of 2,000 exiled in Britain — were chosen for the mission and sent to train in Scotland.

The two most successful soldiers were selected and the mission’s date was set for October 28 — but from that point on, almost nothing went right.
One of the men selected for the mission was injured in training, and a replacement had to be named, which entailed new training and further delays. Finally, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš boarded a plane bound for Pilsen, an area west of Prague — but a navigation error sent them to Nehvizdy.

They then made their way overland to Prague, where they met up with their contacts and explained the plan. Their connections were horrified and did their best to explain the situation on the ground: any attempt on the life of a Nazi leader would have unthinkable consequences.

But Edvard Beneš, the exiled Czech president, was desperate to relight the dying fire of Czech resistance and felt only a dramatic blow would do. He urged his men to continue with the plan despite the danger of reprisals.

It was lucky for Gabčík and Kubiš that Heydrich, always aware of his own importance and the figure he cut on the streets of Prague, rode to work in an open-topped car.

On May 27, at 10:30 a.m., he began his commute, and Operation Anthropoid went into effect. Aided by a lookout, the assassins waited for him just behind a sharp curve in the road, where they anticipated that his car would have to slow.