23-9-14
Kill or capture? Morality of assassination in war | DiD - Tele > .
Operation Anthropoid was a spectacular mission. It saw the
successful assassination of the
high-ranking Nazi, Chief of the Reich Main Security Office, and
Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia,
Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was also
instrumental in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference. At this conference, the Nazis made their plans for the
‘final solution’ and the
subsequent logistics to carry it out. Many historians consider Heydrich to be one of the ‘darkest figures of the Nazi regime.’ Dying on
June 4th 1942, he was also the highest-ranking official to be
successfully assassinated in a secret operation.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ((
listen); 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German
SS and police official during the
Nazi era and
a main architect of the Holocaust. He was
chief of the
Reich Main Security Office (including the
Gestapo,
Kripo, and
SD). He was also
Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy/Acting Reich-Protector) of
Bohemia and Moravia. He served as president of the
International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, later known as Interpol) and
chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "
Final Solution to the Jewish Question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in
German-occupied Europe.
Many historians regard Heydrich as the darkest figure within the Nazi regime;
Adolf Hitler described him as "the
man with the iron heart". He was the founding head of the
Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the
Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise
Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout
Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938. The attacks were carried out by
SA stormtroopers and civilians and presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in
Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. He was directly responsible for the
Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing, including 1.3 million Jews.
Heydrich was
critically wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of
Operation Anthropoid. He was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the
Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill the Reich-Protector; the team was
trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Heydrich
died from his injuries a week later. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of
Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages
were razed;
all men and boys over the age of 16 were shot, and
all but a handful of the women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps.
