On the morning of May 27, 1942, the trap was set at a sharp hairpin turn in the Libeň district. As Heydrich’s car slowed to navigate the curve, Gabčík stepped into the road and leveled his Sten submachine gun. He pulled the trigger. Silence. The gun had jammed.
Gabčík and Kubiš were not just soldiers; they were the tip of a spear forged by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and the British Special Operations Executive. Their mission, codenamed Operation Anthropoid, was as simple as it was suicidal: eliminate the architect of the Final Solution. OperaciГіn Anthropoid
At first, it seemed the mission had failed. Heydrich was alive. But the "Butcher" would not survive the infection caused by the horsehair and upholstery debris lodged in his wounds. On June 4, he died. On the morning of May 27, 1942, the
The world seemed to freeze. Heydrich, instead of ordering his driver to speed away, stood up and drew his pistol. In that desperate second, Kubiš acted. He hurled a modified anti-tank grenade at the vehicle. The explosion rocked the street, shrapnel tearing into the car and Heydrich’s side. Silence
The following story details the events of Operation Anthropoid, the mission to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich during WWII.
The silence of the Bohemian night was shattered only by the whistling wind as Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš tumbled from the belly of a British Halifax bomber. It was December 1941. Below them lay the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a land suffocating under the iron grip of the man known as the Butcher of Prague: Reinhard Heydrich.
Betrayed by a fellow paratrooper lured by a massive reward, Gabčík, Kubiš, and five other resistance members were cornered in the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral. For hours, they fought off hundreds of SS troops in a fierce siege. When their ammunition ran low and the Germans began flooding the crypt with water, the brave men chose their own end rather than capture.