History's Secret Heroes: Series 3: Operation Anthropoid

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A snowy morning in Berlin, January 1942.

In a villa on the shores of Lake Vanse,

senior members of the Nazi Party gathered. The meeting was convened by Reinhardt Heydrich.
He's a sort of shadowy figure.

He cultivates that image as well of being a man who is sort of the perfect Nazi. Heydrich had an interest in racist politics from a young age and married a woman who was a committed Nazi.

A family friend introduced him to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.

In 1931, Himmler brought Heydrich into the SS and put him in charge of its intelligence arm, the SD.

He was chillingly effective.

And by the time that the Second World War broke out in 1939, he had become one of the most senior and most feared Nazis. It was Heydrich's job to identify enemies of the Nazi project.

When Germany invaded Poland, his agents went in to find and often shoot nationalists. and anti-Nazis.

They also began to round up Jewish citizens for future removal. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Heydrich ordered the annihilation of Soviet Jews.

The point of the Vannsey conference in 1942 was for Heydrich to outline the logistics of his plan to eliminate Europe's Jewish population. It would become known as the final solution.

Himmler and Hitler both know that they can rely on his ruthlessness. That ruthlessness had been proven many times.
A few months earlier, in September 1941, Hitler sent Heydrich to Prague.

In order to restore order in the so-called protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which is the occupied Czech lands, Heydrich was appointed Reichsprotector.

It was his job to prosecute political opponents and take hostages. He threatens that anyone associated with underground activity would be murdered alongside his family.

At the same time, he aimed to increase the productivity of Czechoslovakian industry by appealing directly to peasants and workers.

So Heydrich is absolutely convinced that the Czech population has been subdued to a point where they are so terrified of him that no one would dare to make an attempt on his life.

In that assumption though, Reinhardt Heydrich was wrong.

I'm Helena Bonnam Carter, and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Secret Heroes: true stories of deception, acts of resistance, and courage from World War II.

Operation Anthropoid.

On the 28th of December 1941, two men hurtled over the English Channel in a Halifax bomber.

Joseph Kapček and Jan Kubisch wore heavy flying suits. They were forbidden from talking to each other or to the seven other soldiers on board.
They don't know what exactly they're volunteering for.

This is Robert Garvart, professor of modern history at University College Dublin and the author of Hitler's Hangman. One of them is Czech Jan Kuvic, the other is Slovak Józef Gapczyk.

Both are very keen to support the Czechoslovak fight for a restoration of their state and both are willing to engage in very risky operations.

There are a lot of similarities they experienced through life. Reyla Habsova is a freelance historian and writer.
Josef Kapchik

is one year older than Jan. He was born in Polušije, which is now in Slovakia.

He was born in a family who had really

very strong feeling of Czechoslovakism. His father really believed in it very strongly.
Both men had humble origins. Kubisch, age 28 from Moravia, was a conscript in the Czechoslovak army.

After the Nazis invaded, he joined a local resistance group. He was always known as a man who was calm under any circumstances.

He was physically quite strong and efficient.

When the Gestapo tried to arrest him, he fled to Poland. There he met Kabcek.
They were called twins. They didn't look like at all.
Josef was quite short, and Ian Kobic was quite different.

His eyes were blue and he was taller. and he also looked like someone who is much more introvert.

The pair enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. They fought on the Western Front.
In 1940, France fell to the Germans.

Kubisch and Kupček were recruited by the Special Operations Executive and were sent to train in the north of England and Scotland.

As Kubček boarded the Halifax bomber that would fly them both back into occupied Europe that evening in December 1941, he said to the colonel, you can rely on us.

We shall fulfil our mission as ordered. Kubysz and Kepchek awaited their chance to put their training into effect and fight for their homeland.

In 1938, Germany annexed the Zudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, most of whose people were ethnic Germans.

Controversially, Britain and France allowed this, approving Hitler's annexation with the Munich Agreement.

Their leaders hoped that Adolf Hitler could be appeased with the Zudeten land and a wider war could be avoided. But Hitler could not be appeased.

The following year, Germany violated the terms of the Munich Agreement when it invaded and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Hitler established the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Most of its population were ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The president of Czechoslovakia, Edward Benisch, fled to Paris and set up a national committee in exile.

When France fell, he and the committee moved to London to work for the cause of Czechoslovakian freedom and unity.

By 1941, Reinhardt Heydrich as Reichsprotector had weakened Czechoslovakian resistance movements. His economic policy brought him some favor from workers in the protectorate.

Benesh, in exile, was determined to make a grand gesture of resistance.

In September 1941, his head of intelligence in London approached the Special Operations Executive for assistance in getting men and equipment into the protectorate.

They hoped to carry out a spectacular assassination. Heydrich, if possible.
They are desperate for a spectacular success story and killing the head of the Nazi security services is precisely that.

Yet the surviving underground resistance forces in Prague and Bohemia argued that an assassination could have disastrous consequences.

They have a very different view of the price that will have to be paid if such an assassination attempt is successful and Benish is prepared to pay that price.

On that evening of the 28th of of December, Jan Kubisz and Josef Gabcek flew over Nazi-occupied France and into Germany.

Finally, at 2 in the morning, their plane reached the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

The location at which they were supposed to parachute out was obscured by heavy snowfall. And then they are dropped outside of Prague, some kilometers away from where they were due to land.

As they fell to the ground, Kabcek injured his ankle. From there, they make their way to Prague.
There are a number of safe houses where they remain undetected.

Eventually, they find out that their job will be to plan and carry out an assassination attempt on Reinhardt Heydrich.

Though they knew their mission put their lives in danger, Kubisch and Gabcek were fully prepared to carry it out. The patriotic

feelings for the country that was that essence

why to go to fight?

There is my country. It's my birthplace, and I wanted to keep it safe.
They had to prove that we are not a nation of sheeps, that we are not collaborators.

And also, he wanted to put a very clear message that if Nazi Germany will kill our elite,

we will bite back.

Special Operations Executive supplied Gabcek and Kubysh with a sten gun, pistols, armor-piercing bombs filled with plastic explosives, and grenades. In Prague, they went undercover.

It would take months to plan the operation to kill Reinhardt Heydrich. They start to follow him around.

Surprisingly, they are not caught doing that. Heydrich lived on a country estate just outside the city.
Every day, he traveled by car to his office in Prague Castle.

He always uses the same route, and he never travels with a security detail, which is rather strange. He only travels with his driver.
As the weather gets better, he even uses an open-top car.

In May 1942, members of the Czechoslovakian resistance sent messages to London expressing concern at the plans to assassinate Heydrich. Special Operations Executive ignored this.

By now, the mission had a code name, Operation Anthropoid, taken from the Greek for having the form of a human.

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On the morning of the 27th of May, 1942, Kapchek and Kubisch both put on caps to disguise the color of their hair and picked up battered briefcases.

Despite the clement weather, Kapček carried a raincoat to hide his hands when he was assembling the Sten gun. The gun was broken down into three pieces in one briefcase.

They were also carrying two bombs. With their briefcases hanging over the handles of their bicycles, they cycled to the suburb of Hole Shevica.

A third soldier, parachutist Josef Falci, stood further up the hill with the mirror ready to signal when Heydrich approached.

20 kilometers away, Heydrich finished breakfast and said goodbye to his pregnant wife, as well as to their two sons and young daughter.

Heydrich, as usual, gets into his car and together with his driver, they set off from his country estate.

So he's sitting in an open top car as they drive towards Prague Castle, where Heydrich's office is. They pass Hapenbend and the driver is forced to slow down the car.

There's also a tram passing by which slows down the car even further. Here, Josef Kapček emerged and aimed his stun gun at Heydrich.
But his gun is jammed.

This moment could have given Heydrich time to shout at his driver, to accelerate and flee to safety. Instead, he tells his driver to stop the car.

He wants to get out, he wants to shoot him, assuming that there's only one assassin. Heydrich drew his pistol.
In that moment though, Jan Kubisch threw a bomb towards the car.

The grenade misses the car,

but

as part of the explosion, a splinter enters Heydrich's body. The windows of a tram on the road opposite shattered.
Passengers screamed as they were hit by flying glass.

Kubisch was hit by shrapnel and staggered back.

They realize that they didn't kill Heydrich on the spot. They realize that he is injured, but they don't know how badly injured he is.

They don't know what happened.

Heydrich ran towards Gapcek, who stood paralyzed, holding his gun. But Kubisch recovered himself and pushed through the crowd of tram passengers, firing a pistol into the air.

Kubisch sped off on his bicycle. Heydrich and Gapcek exchanged fire, but then unexpectedly, Heydrich collapsed.
This was Kubček's chance to run, and he did.

Heydrich's bodyguard chased him, but Gubcezek shot him in the legs and managed to escape. Meanwhile, Heydrich had been injured by the bomb Kubisch had thrown.

He had broken a rib, his diaphragm was ruptured, and his spleen had been pierced by horse hair and wire from the car upholstery.

He's being transported immediately into a hospital where it initially looks as if he's going to survive.

Hitler responded to the attack on Heydrich by ordering 100 Czechoslovakian hostages to be executed. He went further too, demanding the indiscriminate killing of 10,000 Czechoslovakian men.

The police leader in the protectorate managed to talk him out of this, arguing it might endanger his economic plans in the region.

Hitler grudgingly agreed, on the condition that the two men who had attacked Heydrich were captured immediately.

Martial law was imposed on Prague. From nine in the evening to six in the morning every day, the city was under curfew.
Public transport stopped. Restaurants, cafes, and cinemas were shuttered.

Ten million crowns were offered as a reward for capture of the attackers. Police searching for the men raided thirty six thousand homes and buildings.

In hospital, Heydrich refused at first to be operated on by a Czechoslovakian doctor.

Then, on the 4th of June, he dies of sepsis blood infection, which is caused by some of the horse hair which is in the upholstery of the car and which enters his bloodstream.

Heydrich's body was transported to Prague Castle.

Senior police officers, members of the SS, and members of the Wehrmacht surrounded his coffin. Overhead hung a gigantic SS flag.

He's the only senior Nazi who is assassinated during the Second World War. Hitler himself spoke at the funeral and referred to him as the man with the iron heart, which I assume was praise.

But it's very clear that immediately after the funeral, the mass executions begin. On the 9th of June, the Nazis targeted the village of Ledica.

According to local sources, relatives of one of the assassins came from Ledicip. And as a result, the Gestapo surrounded the village, executed all men.

The women were sent to concentration camps, and some of the children were also sent to concentration camps. Others were given up for adoption by Germans.

The local sources were wrong. None of the assassins came from Ledica.
but it was too late. The village was burned down and destroyed with explosives.
Ledica was annihilated.

In Prague, the raids continued. There is an increase of rewards for anyone who provides information about the assassins or their supporters.

If anyone

give Gestapo a proper information led to assassins,

even

if he were involved in resistance, he would save himself, his family, and still will be rewarded. If not,

it will be just a national genocide.

Meanwhile, the assassins were hiding in a place which no one thought to search. The Cathedral of Sansiris and Metodius in Reslava Street in Prague was a perfect hideout.

It was a Greek Orthodox church. Nothing suspicious ever happened there.

Soon after the assassination attempt, Jan Kyubys and Josef Gabcek entered the church along with five fellow paratroopers from a resistance.

And they will stay there for a few days and they will be removed very soon and they will remove them outside the Prague on countryside perhaps. That was a plan.
Our reality

was a little bit different. For days, the men took turns to keep watch.
Four paratroopers slept downstairs while three stayed upstairs in the choir gallery. Darkness, boredom.
This wasn't a problem.

They were soldiers.

What was probably the toughest thing they could experience was

probably

absolute helplessness. On the 16th of June, a man entered the Gestapo headquarters.
He declared that he was a paratrooper who'd been flown in from Britain and knew where the assassins were hiding.

His name was Carol Tudor. He had been dropped into the protectorate as a resistance fighter earlier that year.
He was terrified of reprisals and disillusioned with the government in exile.

If he came forward, maybe he could protect his family. Carol Tuda, let's say

he wasn't the sharpest pen in a pencil.

And he didn't know much about Jan Combisiono Zebkapchik.

But he knew the whole

net of resistant members.

Early in the morning of the 18th of June, over 700 Waffen-SS officers surrounded the cathedral of St. Cyril and Methodius.
Ten entered through the back door of the church.

They arrested the warden there. He, of course, refused to admit that someone is hidden there.

They also arrested Father Vladimir Petrek. The Gestapos searched the church, but could still find no trace of the paratroopers.

Then they found a metal grille. It was locked.
The warden claimed he could not find the key. One of the officers forced it open with his gun.

At that moment, a grenade bounced down the stairs and shots were fired from above. Troops positioned outside opened fire through the windows.

The SS commander ordered his troops to storm the choir gallery. Three of the parachutists were there, including Jan Kubysch.

And he probably knew he will fight as long as he could to buy some time for his best friend. The SS fought their way up a twisting staircase using grenades.

When they reached the rafters, they found the bodies of two paratroopers. Jan Kubisch was still alive.
He moved through all four arches on the open gallery.

He hid behind a corner, shielding himself from gunfire. But when a grenade exploded two meters away from him, the shrapnels mostly hit his left part of the chest, belly and legs.

He was put unconscious. Kubisch was taken to hospital.
And after 20 minutes on surgery, he bled to death. The siege continued into the morning.

And Gestapo desperately wanted at least one paratrooper alive. Most of all, they wanted Josef Kapchek, Heydrich's surviving assassin.

Father Petric was questioned again by the Gestapo. This time he confessed.
So he told them that only one accessible point to crypt is a ventilation shaft.

And downstairs there are still four more men. Kupchek was one of these men.
They stayed silent in the cold dark crypt for four hours, listening to their friends fighting above.

The Gestapo turned to the ventilation shaft. They forced Father Vladimir, who took care of paratroopers for three weeks.
He was forced to ask them to surrender. Repeatedly.

But there was only one answer from below. Never ever.

We will never surrender.

Czechs never surrender. When the paratroopers fired shots from below, any negotiation ground to a halt.
Desperate, Gestapo decided to flood a crypt.

Through four hoses, the cold water started to flood the crypt. But the water did not rise high enough.
At that point, Wafaneses lost the temper and four soldiers

got order to attack the crypt. The soldiers waded through water.
In the dark, they were unable to find the paratroopers.

As a last resort, the military commander ordered for the main entrance to be blown open.

So, when the firemen destroyed the stone above the staircase, last four shots were heard from below. The room fell silent.

A soldier was sent into the cavity.

Minutes later he emerged shouting, Fertisch,

finished.

The four paratroopers were found dead in the crypt. Kabček had killed himself with his own revolver.
He fought as long as he could

and at the moment he knew he won't be able to fight anymore.

He knew

that

he won't let Enamito get him alive. Throughout the protectorate, in the aftermath of Heydrich's death, the Nazis continued their vicious reprisals.

The Nazi leadership loses a very talented manager of terror, but he was replaced and the terror continues unabated. The village of Ljaki, like Lditsa before it, was liquidated.

Outside those two villages, over 3,000 Czechoslovakians were arrested. Many were sentenced to death or sent to concentration camps.

Thousands of Czechoslovakian Jews held in Tereshenstadt concentration camp were transported to death camps in Poland where they were murdered. The Czechoslovakian resistance was all but destroyed.

Those on the ground had been right about the dangers of carrying out such a high-profile assassination.

Many who were involved in Operation Anthropoid went on to downplay or even deny their roles in its planning.

After the war though, the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust was revealed and Heydrich's central role in planning it became clear.

This led more people to conclude that his assassination had been justified. His death in 1942

didn't change the course of the war. What it did do was what it was actually intended for.

It was after the assassination of Reinhardt Heyrich the French government in exile, but also the British government, agreed to annul the Munich Agreement.

In August 1942, the British government withdrew from the Munich Agreement. It granted President Benesh's Czechoslovakian National Liberation Committee official status of government in exile.

So from Benesh's point of view, it was well worth the terrible sacrifices that had to be made.

But of course this is also somewhat cynical because I'm sure that the people in Prague, the resistance there, probably felt different because most of them were killed with their families.

So I think assessing the success or failure very much depends on the perspective that you take. Assassination put fear in the heart of our enemy, allied enemy.
It helped to be

not first but very important domino piece which helped to support resistance all around Europe because it shown that it matters. Many have praised the bravery of Heydrich's assassins.

Streets and towns are named after Jan Kubysz and Józef Kapček. Today, in what's now the Czech Republic, Rayla Hapsova gives tours of the Cathedral of Saint Cyril and Methodius.

Bullet holes mark the walls which hid Kubys, Gubček and their comrades. Rayla sees them as icons of resilience.
Jan and Josef

became

a symbol

that

you can

stand against a huge evil. much bigger than you are.

But with your best friend next to you, you can prevail. At least, you can't lose because you

won't ever surrender.

Next time on history's Secret Heroes, after the outbreak of World War II, best friends Paulina Gelman and Galia Dukotovich are recruited to fly bombers for the Soviet Union.

They definitely were adrenaline junkies. They wanted to fly, you know, they were crazy about flying.
And second of all, they were extremely patriotic. The Night Witches.

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