On June 4, 1942, reinhard Heydrich, the number two man in the assassination of Nazi intelligence, died of his wounds. Heydrich's death, a loyal eagle dog and a capable general, directly alarmed The Nazi leader Hitler, who directly ordered the razing of the two small cities where the Assassins had been stranded, the men shot on the spot, and the women and children sent to concentration camps. There is also a small village called Lidice, where all 140 people were spared, and even infants who were still in their infancy were slaughtered.
If Heydrich had not been born in Germany during World War II, or had not served such an evil camp, we could have regarded him as a "talent." At the beginning of the rise of the Nazi Party, Hitler was in desperate need of a group of minions as confidants who could be sent directly to him, and Heydrich suddenly gained the favor of the leadership because of his extreme fanaticism and unparalleled loyalty. At the Wansee Conference in January 1941, Heydrich was even more ingenious in proposing to make the handling of Jews more efficient. He had obviously been planning this proposal for a long time, and gave a set of general operation plans on the spot. The move impressed Hitler and his immediate superior, Himmler, and shortly after the meeting ended, the notorious "final solution" of history was born.
The core idea of the so-called "final solution" is "physical destruction". At that time, millions of Jews were already being held in Germany's major concentration camps, and at Heydrich's proposal, the Nazis further reduced the food and water given to prisoners and forced them to work more intensely. Heydrich also carefully selected a group of dogs and horses to study how to kill people more efficiently. According to rough statistics, during the entire Second World War, heydrich directly ordered the execution or enslavement of about 750,000 Jews.
Heydrich's horrors were thoroughly manifested in Czechoslovakia in 1941, when on 29 September of that year he was ordered to Prague to undergo a "cleansing" effort. How does it take to truly conquer a country? Heydrich believed that military occupation or even colonization alone did not count, but only the fundamental destruction of the national character of the country. There is no doubt that the elite is the backbone of a country, and Heydrich has been cruel to the elite in Prague. In just three months, he had imprisoned more than 400 Czechoslovak government officials at all levels, and at least 5,000 had been sent to concentration camps for destruction and "rehabilitation."
Prior to this, Czechoslovakia had always been a major "thorn" in the German-occupied areas, and the British intelligence agencies were frequently active in the Territory of the Czech Republic, and they made some movements at both ends in three days. Less than half a year after Heydrich's arrival, Britain's elaborate intelligence network in Czechoslovakia was destroyed and the entire system was nearly paralyzed. All in all, Heydrich, with his shrewd mind and ruthless means, raised the operational capabilities of the Nazi intelligence service up a notch, and the British hated him with gritted teeth, so they planned an assassination operation, code-named "Operation Apes".
At first glance, the background of the so-called "Operation Apes" is magnificent and heavy, but it is very unreliable in many details. At that time, British intelligence found the Czechoslovak resistance group, and the two sides agreed to work together to deal a fatal blow to the "Prague Butcher". The two Assassins sent by the organization were Joseph Gabic and Jan Kubis, who had fled to England while the Germans were plotting the Munich Conspiracy, and Cubis, who had joined the British army after the fall of France. The two men resolutely accepted the operation with sincere feelings of service to the country and their deep hatred for the Nazis.
At the end of 1941, the two concealed their identities and lurked in Prague under the cover of the Resistance, waiting for orders from their superiors while also inquiring about Heydrich's information and trying to understand the other's laws of action. Soon, they noticed that the car they were riding in every day when they went to work would slow down when they made a turn in the way, thinking that this was the best time to shoot Heydrich. On May 27, 1942, the two men lay in ambush in a corner near the bend, waiting for Heydrich's car to approach.
I am afraid that no one could have predicted that the successful assassination of this result actually turned into a small probability event with a strong farce color.
According to the original plan, the two should have assembled the disassembled submachine guns on the spot, and Gabisik was strafed by the gun, but perhaps there was a deviation in the process of assembly, and when Gabišik aimed the muzzle at the car and pulled the trigger, the submachine gun actually jammed!
It is reasonable to say that an important person was assassinated, and the first time must have been to run first, the courageous Heydrich actually did the opposite, ordered the driver to stop on the spot, and raised his gun out of the car to personally return fire to the Assassins. Fortunately, the two still had a backhand, and Kubis pulled out another bomb and threw it under the fender on the right side of the car, and with a loud noise, both sides were injured by the fragments brought up by the explosion. Of course, although the brothers and sisters all looked bloody and blurred, and seemed to be not lightly injured, in fact, these injuries were not fatal. When Gabisik and Kubis, who had exhausted their tricks, tried to flee the scene, the injured Heydrich actually ran and chased for a while, shooting while running, and accidentally fell on his heel. In the pursuit, Heydrich's driver was shot dead.
Heydrich was treated in the hospital, and as we just said, the injuries he suffered were at best skin trauma, not fatal at all. The British side also got a very unfortunate news: Heydrich recovered after a few days in the hospital, eating and going to bed was not a problem, and he could be discharged from the hospital. Just when the British were frustrated, to everyone's surprise, Heydrich died because of the sudden deterioration of the wound. It has been argued that fragments from the bomb's explosion passed through the car's saddles, and while this greatly reduced the bomb's destructive power, some of the fillers stuck into the wound caused severe sepsis, which eventually and unexpectedly took Heydrich's life.
In addition, objectively speaking, the assassination plan planned by the Allies was actually full of loopholes and low feasibility, but ironically, Heydrich, who killed people without blinking an eye, as the senior regional administrator hand-picked by Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, was actually committed to creating a "pro-people image", for which he deliberately did not even bring a guard. On the day of the assassination, Heydrich was only his chauffeur, which also gave the two Assassins a great opportunity.
After Heidhli's death, Hitler held a solemn state funeral for him, and praised him at the funeral as "a man with a heart of steel." The Seventh SS "Prince Eugen" Mountain Division was ordered to carry out retaliatory destruction in a number of locations near the area where the incident occurred, and all men over the age of 16 were shot on the spot and women were sent to concentration camps. After losing such a ruthless role, the destructiveness of the Nazi intelligence services was greatly weakened. As for the two Assassins, under the cover of the Resistance, the two hid safely in a church until a traitor betrayed them for a bounty of 1 million Imperial Marks. After World War II, the traitor was sentenced to capital punishment by the Czechoslovak government.