Hitler's Hangman (6 page)

with representatives of Allied countries the subject of meaningful resist-

ance to the enemy cropped up with humiliating insistence. The British

and the Russians, hard-pressed on their own battlefields, kept pointing

out to Beneš the urgent need for maximum effort from every country,

including Czechoslovakia.’5

The lack of Czech resistance to Nazi rule was increasingly damaging

Beneš’s diplomatic position and endangered his ultimate post-war objec-

tive of re-establishing Czechoslovakia along its pre-1938 borders. Beneš

feared that a negotiated peace between Germany and Britain would leave

the Bohemian lands permanently within the Nazi sphere of influence.

After all, the British government had still not disavowed the Munich

Agreement of 1938, which permitted Hitler to occupy Czechoslovakia’s

largely German-inhabited Sudetenland, and it consciously delayed any

reconsideration of that decision to keep up the pressure on Beneš.6

On 5 September 1941, an increasingly impatient Beneš radioed the

Central Leadership of Home Resistance ( ÚVOD) in Prague: ‘It is essen-

tial to move from theoretical plans and preparations to deeds . . . In London

and Moscow we have been informed that the destruction or at least a

considerable reduction of the weapons industry would have a profound

impact on the Germans at this moment . . . Our entire position wil appear

in a permanently unfavourable light if we do not at least keep pace with

the others.’7 Responding to pressure from London, ÚVOD indeed maxi-

mized its sabotage activities and co-ordinated a successful boycott of the

Nazi-control ed Protectorate press between 14 and 21 September. Only

one week later, however, Beneš’s initial enthusiasm turned into utter

frustration when Hitler decided to replace his ‘weak’ Reich Protector in

Prague, Konstantin von Neurath, with the infamous head of the Reich

Security Main Office, Reinhard Heydrich. Fol owing Heydrich’s arrival in

Prague in September 1941, the German authorities massively tightened

their grip on Czech society: communication between the Protectorate and

London temporarily ceased to exist, and the underground was paralysed by

a wave of Gestapo arrests.8

4

HITLER’S HANGMAN

As his ambitious plans for widespread resistance began to collapse

around him, Beneš found an equally beleagured ally in the British Special

Operations Executive (SOE). Launched in July 1940 and instructed by

Winston Churchill himself to ‘set Europe ablaze’ by backing popular

uprisings against Nazi rule, SOE had enjoyed very limited success in the

first year of its existence. As Hugh Dalton noted in his diary in December

1941: ‘Our last reports have been almost bare, long tales of what has not

been done . . . I am particularly anxious for a successful operation or two.’9

Just like Beneš, SOE was increasingly desperate to deliver some kind of

success to justify its existence, particularly after its well-established rival,

the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), had demanded in August 1941 that

sole responsibility for sabotage operations in enemy territory should be

transferred back to SIS and its director, Sir Stewart Menzies. Perceiving

the fledgling SOE as an amateurish upstart organization, Menzies and

his senior staff were keen to rid themselves of the seemingly inefficient

rival agency.10

Over the following weeks, Beneš’s intelligence chief, František Moravec,

and high-ranking SOE representatives met frequently to find a solution

to their common problem. They co-ordinated plans to drop Czech agents

trained in intelligence, communications and sabotage into the Protectorate,

but a combination of bad weather conditions and lack of communication

with the resistance leaders on the ground prevented concerted action.

Moreover, they began to realize that even the successful deployment of

trained experts in sabotage would not be spectacular enough to appease

their critics. And so they came up with a much more ambitious plan: since

Hitler himself was beyond their reach, they would attempt to assassinate

the head of Nazi Germany’s terror apparatus, Reinhard Heydrich.11

On 3 October 1941, two days after a secret SOE dossier described

Heydrich as ‘probably the second most dangerous man in German-

occupied Europe’ after Hitler himself, a clandestine meeting took place

in London between the head of SOE, Frank Nelson, and Moravec

during which details of the mission were discussed. They agreed that SOE

would provide the weapons and training for two or three of Moravec’s

men ‘to carry out a spectacular assassination. Heydrich, if possible.’ The

assassination of Heydrich – codenamed Operation Anthropoid – would

underline both SOE’s capability to deal a severe blow against the Nazi

security apparatus and the determination of the Czech resistance to stand

up to their German oppressors.12

If Beneš would have been satisfied with any spectacular act of

resistance, the SOE had its mind clearly set on Heydrich as the ideal

target. For their information about the target of Operation Anthropoid,

British military intelligence relied heavily on the book
Inside the Gestapo
,

D E AT H I N P R AG U E

5

published in 1940 by the now exiled ex-Gestapo officer Hansjürgen

Köhler, who described his former boss Heydrich as:

the all-powerful police executive of the Third Reich . . . Without him,

Himmler would be but a senseless dummy . . . He is the man who moves

everything – behind the scenes, yet with unchanging dexterity – he is

the Power behind the Throne, pulling the strings and following his own

dark aims. Heydrich is young and intelligent . . . In short, he is the

brutal, despotic and merciless master of the Nazi Police; a go-getter,

whose hard certainty of aim knows no deviation . . . Although he is

hot-blooded and impetuous himself, he remains soberly, coldly calcu-

lating in the background and knows that the power he coveted is already

his. Cruelty and sudden rage are just as severely disciplined in his

make-up as his untiring activity.

Köhler’s emphasis on Heydrich as the man directly responsible for ‘immeas-

urable suffering, misery and death’ was highlighted in the copy attached to

Heydrich’s SOE file.13 The assassination plan devised by SOE less than a

week later was already very specific: it cal ed for a direct attack on Heydrich

at a time when he would be driving from his country estate to Prague

Castle, ideal y at a crossroads where the car would have to slow down.14

Brutal German reprisals, so the somewhat cynical calculation implied,

would lead to a more general uprising of the Czech population against

Nazi rule. Since Beneš himself was ‘apprehensive of the possible repercus-

sions in the Protectorate’, and since the British government could not be

seen as official y violating international norms of warfare by sponsoring

acts of terrorism, even in a war against Nazi oppression, both sides felt the

‘need to produce some form of cover story’. It was quickly agreed that the

assassination was to be portrayed by Al ied propaganda as a spontaneous

act of resistance, planned and carried out by the Czech underground at

home, although the resistance in Prague itself was never informed about

London’s plan to murder Heydrich.15

As Christmas approached, three vital missions were awaiting transport

into the Protectorate: Anthropoid, the team trained to kill Heydrich, as

well as Silver A and Silver B, two radio transmitter groups assigned to

re-establish the severed communication lines between London and the

Czech home resistance. The two men selected to assassinate Heydrich

were well prepared for their mission. Jan Kubiš, a twenty-seven-year-old

former NCO from Moravia, had gained his first experiences in resistance

activities against the Germans in the spring of 1939 when he had

belonged to one of the small resistance groups that had sprung up spon-

taneously after the Nazi invasion. When the Gestapo tried to arrest him,

6

HITLER’S HANGMAN

he managed to escape to Poland where he met the second future Heydrich

assassin, Josef Gabčík, a short but powerfully built locksmith from

Slovakia who, like Kubiš, had served as an NCO in the former Czech

army before fleeing the country in despair over the Nazi occupation.

Like many other penniless young refugees from Czechoslovakia,

Gabčík and Kubiš enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and fought

briefly on the Western Front in the early summer of 1940 before being

evacuated to Britain after the fall of France. There, in accordance with an

inter-Allied agreement, they were recruited into the Czech Brigade, the

small military arm of Beneš’s government-in-exile, numbering some

3,000 men. When SOE began its recruitment for secret operations in the

Protectorate, Gabčík and Kubiš volunteered. But they were kept in the

dark about the purpose of their mission. Only after months of extensive

training, first near Manchester, then in the sabotage training camp in

Camusdarach in Inverness-shire and at the Villa Bellasis, a requisitioned

country estate in the home counties near Dorking, were they informed

that they had been chosen to kill the Reich Protector himself.16

Although proud to be selected for such an important task, both Gabčík

and Kubiš knew that they were highly unlikely to survive their mission.

The journey to the Protectorate across Nazi-controlled continental Europe

was extraordinarily dangerous in itself and even if they arrived safely in

Prague and completed their mission, there was no escape plan. The two

agents would remain underground until they were either killed or captured

or until Prague was liberated from Nazi rule. Both chose to make their

wills on 28 December 1941, the night their flight departed from Tangmere

aerodrome, a secret RAF base in Sussex.17

The heavily laden Halifax, carrying nine parachutists and the crew,

crossed the Channel into the dark skies over Nazi-occupied France before

continuing its journey over Germany. Repeated attacks by German anti-

aircraft batteries and Luftwaffe nightfighter planes interrupted the journey,

but they finally arrived over the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

shortly after 2 a.m. Heavy snow on the ground made it impossible for the

pilot to identify the designated dropping zones for the three teams.

Although instructed to aim for Pilsen (Plzeň), where the parachutists

were supposed to make contact with local members of the Czech resist-

ance, the pilot accidentally dropped Gabčík and Kubiš into a snowy field

near the village of Nehvizdy, some thirty kilometres east of Prague. Their

contact addresses were now useless.

There were other problems, too: Gabčík seriously injured his ankle

during the landing and he rightly suspected that their arrival had not gone

unnoticed. Because of the lack of visibility, the Halifax had descended to

an altitude of just over 150 metres before dropping off the parachutists

D E AT H I N P R AG U E

7

and the bomber’s heavy motors had roused half the village inhabitants

from their sleep. At least two villagers saw the parachutes float down to

earth. According to all the rules of probability, the Gestapo would pick up

their trail sooner or later.18 Luck, however, was on the parachutists’ side

that day. A local gamekeeper, sympathetic to the national cause, was the

first to find them. After seeing their parachutes buried in the snow he

followed their footprints to an abandoned quarry. He was soon joined by

the local miller of Nehvizdy, Břetislav Baumann, who happened to be a

member of a Czech resistance group and who put them in touch with

comrades in Prague.19 Baumann would pay dearly for helping the assas-

sins. After Heydrich’s death, he and his wife were arrested and sent to

Mauthausen concentration camp where they were murdered.20

Shortly after the New Year, Gabčík and Kubiš took the train to Prague

where they spent the next five months moving among various safe houses

provided by ÚVOD. Their equipment, which included grenades, pistols

and a sten gun, fol owed. In search of an ideal spot to carry out the assas-

sination, they spent weeks walking or cycling around Prague Castle,

Heydrich’s country estate and the road that Heydrich used to commute

between the two. By early February, they had identified a seemingly

ideal spot for an attack: a sharp hairpin curve in the Prague suburb of

Liběn where Heydrich passed by on his daily commute to work. The

location seemed perfect as Heydrich’s car would have to slow down to

walking pace at the hairpin bend, al owing Gabčík and Kubiš to shoot

their target from close quarters. There was also a bus stop just behind the