The Assassination Of Heydrich

"Jan Wiener's fascinating, well-documented book tells of the heroic exploits of various Czech men and women, most of whom paid for their resistance with their lives. Above all it gives a detailed, documented account of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the most gruesome of the Nazi murderers, by Czech resisters parachuted from London but aided in their task by the Czech underground." William L. Shirer, author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich If you only read one book about what it felt like to be present during the worst time in modern human history, a time when your life could be snuffed out for having the mere thought of opposition against the Nazi regime, this should be the book because it is told by survivors and by one of the greatest survivors of them all, Jan Wiener.

Unable to compete with her friends' fancy clothes and running ability, irrepressible six-year-old Junie B. finds her own way to make the new boy at school like her.

On 4 June 1942 one of the most powerful figures of the Nazi regime died in agony from wounds sustained during an assassination attempt in Prague. This is the story of the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, a man of extraordinary intelligence, ruthlessness and ambition who had risen from obscurity to become head of the Nazi security police and Governor of Bohemia-Moravia. Regarded by many as Hitler's most likely successor, he was feared and hated even by other high-ranking Nazi officials. Heydrich's death caused shockwaves throughout the Nazi leadership, provoking ferocious reprisals against Czechs and Jews. Those who carried out the assassination were hunted down, and, trapped like rats in the cellar of a Prague church, committed suicide rather than face the certainty of torture and execution at the hands of the SS. Based on original archive material, interviews with surviving members of the Special Operations Executive, who trained the Czech assassins in the UK, and Czech military intelligence, Callum MacDonald's book is a well-researched and gripping account of one of the most audacious assassinations of the Second World War.

*Includes pictures *Describes Heydrich's war career, the plot to kill him, and the aftermath of the assassination *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Since it is opportunity which makes not only the thief but also the assassin, such heroic gestures as driving in an open, unarmoured vehicle or walking about the streets unguarded are just damned stupidity, which serves the Fatherland not one whit. That a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich should expose himself to unnecessary danger, I can only condemn as stupid and idiotic." - Hitler Cloak and dagger adventure, with daring commandos parachuted deep behind enemy lines to kill a sinister mastermind, belongs chiefly to the realm of thriller novels or films. However, World War II stretched over such vast territories and affected so many hundreds of millions of people that nearly every possible human interaction, from the vilest to the noblest, and from the most pedestrian to the exotically adventurous, achieved reality at some point during the conflict. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich stands out as one of the war's most remarkable secret operations. "The man with the iron heart," as Adolf Hitler dubbed him, made a fitting target for the dramatic events which unfolded in Prague on May 27th, 1942. According to testimony by the historian Michael Freund, "He is one of the greatest criminal figures of the Third Reich. Nowhere in the histories of the Third Reich has [Heydrich] been awarded his rightful place. He is a man of outstanding significance, a criminal mind of Luciferic grandeur." (Dederichs, 2009, 17). During the early stages of the war, the Reich Protector often walked the streets of Prague alone or with just one or two escorts, and he also favored an open-topped Mercedes 320-C convertible, which left him fully exposed to snipers, bomb throwers, and the like. Though he was ordered by the Fuhrer to install armored plates inside the seat backs to limit the effect of grenades hurled into the interior of his vehicle, these armor pieces remained idle in the castle garage on the date of Heydrich's assassination. By contrast, Heydrich found time to have expensive horsehair upholstery installed in the touring car, providing a springy, comfortable ride. That would be all the good fortune a British-trained team of Czech assassins would need. Even though the assassination attempt was mostly botched (to the extent that the assassins initially assumed they had failed), shrapnel from an anti-tank grenade caused the top Nazi official severe injuries, killing him a little over a week later. Even as Heydrich lay mortally wounded, Hitler and the Nazis planned severe reprisals, and the most notorious would come at Lidice, which the Germans tenuously (and incorrectly) linked to the plot. The Nazis ultimately razed the small village to the ground and killed every male over the age of 15 in town before sending the remainder off to concentration camps. The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich chronicles the plot to kill one of the top Nazi officials and the aftermath. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the assassination of Heydrich like never before, in no time at all.

A comprehensive biography of the Nazi mastermind behind the Holocaust and his military career, featuring interviews with his surviving family. Adolph Hitler praised Reinhard Heydrich as ‘the man with the iron heart’. He admired Heydrich so much that, despite rumors about Jewish ancestry, he considered him a potential successor. Reinhard Heydrich was undeniably one of the Führer’s most enthusiastic, brutal, and ambitious henchmen and one of the key architects of the Third Reich’s horrific genocide. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Nazi party and became one of the key architects of the Third Reich’s horrific genocide. Indeed, after his 1942 assassination, the murder of more than 2 million people at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblina was code-named ‘Action Reinhard’. In this critically acclaimed biography, which includes interviews with some of his surviving family, Mario Dederichs creates a complete and compelling portrait of Heydrich’s life. Dederichs details his short-lived naval career, to his work under the SS chief Himmler, his appointment as Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, and his assassination by Czech agents and the terrible reprisals exacted on the town of Lidice. Praise for Heydrich: The Face of Evil “A chilling study of the man who masterminded the Holocaust . . . Heydrich was inhumanely cruel, ruthless, devious, shameless, a sixteen hour a day workaholic who was feared and loathed even by his closest colleagues.” —The Daily Telegraph “An impressive mix of psychological analysis, biography and historical reporting . . . Dederichs descends into Heydrich’s personal abyss and describes it in a captivating and intelligible manner while not rejecting the scientific approach.” —Die Rheinische

A chilling biography of the head of Nazi Germany’s terror apparatus, a key player in the Third Reich whose full story has never before been told. Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany. Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich. Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward re-creating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe. “This admirable biography makes plausible what actually happened and makes human what we might prefer to dismiss as monstrous.”—Timothy Snyder, Wall Street Journal “[A] probing biography…. Gerwarth’s fine study shows in chilling detail how genocide emerged from the practicalities of implementing a demented belief system.”—Publishers Weekly “A thoroughly documented, scholarly, and eminently readable account of this mass murderer.”—The New Republic