Callum A MacDonald - The killing of Reinhard Heydrich: the SS Butcher of Prague

In the unlikely setting of a park in a small Midland town, a simple monument commemorates one of the most daring secret operations of the Second World War ANTHROPOID the assassination of SS Obergruppenfhrer Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich, the head of the Nazi security police and governor of occupied BohemiaMoravia, was one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich. An ambitious, ruthless and intelligent personality, he was regarded by some as Hitlers most likely successor. When he was killed in the early summer of 1942, the Fhrer compared his death to a lost battle. Heydrich was buried as a Nazi martyr, his final resting place designed as a shrine to inspire future generations of SS men. The grave has now vanished, lost amidst the mines and barbed wire of the killing zone behind the Berlin Wall. Heydrich was the only prominent Nazi to be assassinated during the war by agents trained in Britain, and the operation has been the subject of speculation and debate ever since. According to one account, he was killed by the British Secret Service because he was about to arrest a prominent German traitor who had been supplying vital intelligence to London. According to another, Heydrich was assassinated to prevent the extermination of the European Jews, the Final Solution for which he had been made responsible in 1941. On the wilder shores of the imagination, it was even claimed that the British had Heydrich removed because he knew too much about the treasonable activities of the Duke of Windsor in the summer of 1940. The real story is different but no less dramatic. It is one of heroism and self-sacrifice, but also of political expediency, betrayal and death. In this drama, the British Secret Service was not the principal actor. The operation was rooted in the political requirements of the Czech exile President, Eduard Bene and planned by Czech military intelligence with the assistance of the British Special Operations Executive, SOE.

This account attempts to set ANTHROPOID in its proper context, using previously unpublished evidence from the files of the Foreign Office and the Special Operations Executive as well as the recollections of former Czechoslovak intelligence officers. Any book on the assassination of Heydrich owes a debt to the memoirs of Colonel Frantiek Moravek and to the research carried out by the Czech journalist Miroslav Ivanov, who, twenty years ago, tracked down many surviving resistance workers involved in the operation. It would also have been impossible to write without the assistance of a series of people, some of whom must remain anonymous. I would particularly like to thank Stanislav Berton, of Roseville, New South Wales, who was more than generous with material from his archive on the wartime occupation of Czechoslovakia, and Mr C. M. Woods, the SOE Adviser at the Foreign Office. I am also grateful to Major M. F. Kapar of the Association of Czechoslovak Legionaries, Josef Ssser, a former radio officer with Czech military intelligence, and Sir Peter Wilkinson, the former head of the Czech Section in SOE. Gustav Kay of Warwick supplied background material on the experiences of the Czechoslovak army during the war, while Ron Hockey, formerly of the RAF special duties squadron, provided many details about the ANTHROPOID drop. Professor Edward Tborsk, who served as wartime secretary to President Bene, called my attention to a diary entry relating to the operation. Professor M. R. D. Foot backed the research with good practical advice. Peter Hinchliffe of Brew Technical Translation Services translated the Czech documents. Early drafts of the book benefited from the constructive criticism of my colleague, Robin Okey, and my editor at Macmillan, Adam Sisman. I owe special thanks to my agent, Gill Coleridge, for her encouragement at every stage of the book. The research was facilitated by a grant from the British Academy. I am grateful to the following individuals and organisations for permission to quote: HM Stationery Office, the Public Record Office, the BBC Written Archives Centre, the National Archives of the United States, Stanislav Berton, Ron Hockey, and Professor Tborsk.

Callum MacDonald
Warwick 1988