Reinhard Heydrich, the commander of the German Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the acting governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a principal architect of the Holocaust,[1] was assassinated during the Second World War in a coordinated operation by the Czechoslovak resistance.

Heydrich's death led to a wave of reprisals by SS troops, including the destruction of villages and mass killings of civilians, notably the Lidice massacre.

The events have been the subject of various films (usually in the general context of World War II in popular culture and specifically portrayals of Heydrich).

[6][7] Heydrich came to Prague to "strengthen policy, carry out countermeasures against resistance", and keep up production quotas of Czech motors and arms that were "extremely important to the German war effort".

The exiled government of Czechoslovakia under President Edvard Beneš was under pressure from British intelligence, as there had been very little visible resistance since the occupation of the Sudeten regions of the country in 1938.

Occupation of the whole country had begun in 1939, and the initial betrayal by the United Kingdom and France, along with the subsequent terror of the Nazis, seemed to break the will of the Czechs for a period.

[11] As well as terrorizing the opposition and establishing the Theresienstadt ghetto/concentration camp, Heydrich had overseen a progressive policy of good wages (equivalent to those in Germany) for industrial workers and farmers, which caused acts of sabotage to drop significantly and helped cooperative production of war materials.

[11] Resistance movements were active from the very beginning of occupation in several other countries defeated in open warfare (Poland, Yugoslavia and Greece), but the subjugated Czech lands remained relatively calm and produced significant amounts of materiel for Germany.

[12] Heydrich was chosen over Karl Hermann Frank as an assassination target due to his status as the acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia as well as his reputation for terrorizing local citizens.

[4] The operation was initiated by František Moravec, head of the Czechoslovak intelligence services, with the knowledge and approval of Beneš, almost as soon as Heydrich was appointed Protector.

[15] Training was supervised by the nominated head of the Czech section, Major Alfgar Hesketh-Prichard, who turned to Cecil Clarke to develop the necessary weapon.

[16] During extensive training, the new weapon was found to be easy to throw by Hesketh-Prichard (who had a strong cricketing background, his father having been a first-class bowler), but less so by Gabčík and Kubiš.

[21] Upon learning of the nature of the mission, resistance leaders begged the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to call off the attack, saying that "[a]n attempt against Heydrich's life... would be of no use to the Allies and its consequences for our people would be immeasurable".

They planned to pull a cable across the road that would stop Heydrich's car, but after waiting several hours their commander, Lt. Adolf Opálka (from the group Out Distance), came to bring them back to Prague.

[33] Gabčík fled into a butcher shop, where the owner, a man named Brauer, who was a Nazi sympathiser and had a brother who worked for the Gestapo, ignored his request for help.

[37] A Dr. Slanina packed the chest wound, while Dr. Walter Diek, the Sudeten German chief of surgery at the hospital, tried to remove the shrapnel splinters.

[42] Heydrich's fever and drainage subsided and his condition appeared to be improving until, while sitting up eating a noon meal on 3 June, he suddenly went into shock.

[38] A German wartime report on the incident stated, "[d]eath occurred as a consequence of lesions in the vital parenchymatous organs caused by bacteria and possibly by poisons carried into them by bomb splinters".

[49] Heydrich's condition while hospitalized was not documented in detail, but he was not noted to have developed any of the distinctive symptoms associated with botulism, which have a gradual onset, invariably including paralysis, with death generally resulting from respiratory failure.

[51] Hitler ordered an investigation and reprisals on the day of the assassination attempt, suggesting that Himmler send SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski to Prague.

[58] On 9 June 1942, the Germans committed the Lidice massacre; 199 men were killed, 195 women were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp and 95 children taken prisoner.

The Germans were unable to locate the attackers until Karel Čurda of the Out Distance sabotage group turned himself in to the Gestapo and gave up the names of the team's local contacts for the bounty of one million Reichsmarks.

Alois Moravec was unaware of his family's involvement with the resistance; he was taken to the Petschek Palace together with his 17-year-old son Vlastimil, or "Ata", who was tortured throughout the day but refused to talk.

The youth was stupefied with brandy, shown his mother's severed head in a fish tank, and warned that, if he did not talk, his father would be next; Ata gave in.

[64] Waffen-SS troops laid siege to the church the following day, but they were unable to take the assailants alive, despite the best efforts of 750 SS soldiers under the command of SS-Gruppenführer Karl Fischer von Treuenfeld.

)[65] Adolf Opálka and Josef Bublík were killed in the prayer loft after a two-hour gun battle, and Kubiš was reportedly found unconscious and died shortly after from his injuries.

Bishop Gorazd took the blame for the actions in the church to minimize the reprisals among his flock, and even wrote letters to the Nazi authorities, who arrested him on 27 June 1942 and tortured him.

[73][74] Neither the Czech government-in-exile nor the British SOE likely foresaw that the Germans would apply the principle of Sippenhaft (collective responsibility) on the scale they did to avenge Heydrich's assassination.

Even if it were possible, the benefit (in this case, the diplomatic value of British repudiation of the Munich Agreement) was not in a form that Beneš could readily compare against the nature of the cost (the loss of Czech civilian lives).

The alternate history novel The Man with the Iron Heart by Harry Turtledove is based on the premise that Heydrich survives the assassination attempt, and leads a postwar insurgency campaign, using the Werwolf.