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Protector
of Czechoslovakia
In September of 1941, the ever-ambitious Heydrich had achieved favored
status with Hitler and was thus appointed Deputy Reich Protector of
Bohemia and Moravia in former Czechoslovakia and set up headquarters in
Prague. Soon after his arrival, he established a Jewish ghetto at
Theresienstadt. He also established a
successful policy of offering incentives to Czech workers, rewarding
them with food and privileges if they filled Nazi production quotas and
displayed loyalty to the Reich. At the same time, Heydrich's Gestapo and
SD agents conducted a brutal crackdown of the Czech resistance movement.
SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich was by now a supremely arrogant young man
who liked to travel between his country home and headquarters in Prague
in an open top green Mercedes car without an armed escort as a show of
confidence in his intimidation of the resistance and successful
pacification of the population.
Attacked
by Czechs
On May 27, 1942, as his car slowed to round a sharp turn in the roadway
it came under attack from Free Czech agents who had been trained in
England and brought to Czechoslovakia to assassinate him. They shot at
Heydrich then threw a bomb which exploded, wounding him. He managed to
get out of the car, draw his pistol and shoot back at the assassins
before collapsing in the street. Himmler
rushed his own private doctors to Prague to help Heydrich, who held on
for several days, but died on June 4 from blood poisoning brought on by
fragments of auto upholstery, steel, and his own uniform that had lodged
in his spleen. In Berlin, the Nazis staged a highly elaborate funeral
with Hitler calling Heydrich "the man with the iron heart."
Meanwhile the Gestapo and SS hunted down and murdered the Czech agents,
resistance members, and anyone suspected of being involved in Heydrich's
death, totaling over 1000 persons. In addition, 3000 Jews were deported
from the ghetto at Theresienstadt for extermination. In Berlin 500 Jews
were arrested, with 152 executed as a reprisal on the day of Heydrich's
death.
Liquidation
of Lidice
As a further reprisal for the killing of Heydrich, Hitler
ordered the small Czech mining village of Lidice to be liquidated on the
fake charge that it had aided the assassins. In one of the most infamous single acts of World War Two, all
172 men and boys over age 16 in the village were shot on June 10, 1942,
while the women were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp where
most died. Ninety young children were sent to the concentration camp at
Gneisenau, with some taken later to Nazi orphanages if they were German
looking. The village of Lidice was
then destroyed building by building with explosives, then completely
leveled until not a trace remained, with grain being planted over the
flattened soil. The name was then removed from all German maps.
For months after
Heydrich's death, Heinrich Himmler hesitated on appointing a successor,
finally settling on Ernst Kaltenbrunner, a trained lawyer (and
alcoholic) who possessed little of his predecessor's skills for
intrigue. Thus after Heydrich's death, Himmler's personal power vastly
increased as he took over many of Heydrich's duties. The Final Solution
plans begun by Heydrich were further developed under Himmler,
Kaltenbrunner, and Eichmann, with the help of SS subordinates, Nazi
bureaucrats, industrialists, scientists, and people from occupied
countries. Until the end of war in 1945, Jews were transported from all
over Europe to killing centers such as Auschwitz where they were
exterminated, along with gypsies, homosexuals, priests, prisoners of
war, and ultimately persons of every nationality, religious faith, and
political persuasion.
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