The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS 'Butcher of Prague' [Paperback]

Callum Macdonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 1998

If anyone warranted assassination during World War II, the man to know was Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942)—chief of the security police, rabid anti-Semite, architect of the Final Solution, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and Hitler's most likely successor. In 1941, at the height of the Nazi's seeming invincibility, the Czech government-in-exile launched a desperate operation to kill Heydrich. From the assassins' training in England to their Thermopylae-like last stand in the flooded crypt of a Prague church, and the Nazi's savage reprisals (including the obliteration of two villages), The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich brilliantly recounts one of World War II's most daring and tragic missions.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Reinhard Heydrich was one of Hitler's most ruthless Nazis. In addition to heading the occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was a leading architect of the Holocaust. There was even talk of his one day succeeding Hitler. For these reasons and others, he became a target--and ultimately the victim--of Allied special operations. This compelling book by English author Callum MacDonald is a skillful, journalistic retelling of a story that would make a solid espionage novel. It begins with a brief sketch of Heydrich--a handsome, violin-playing villain. His fierce anti-Semitism apparently was an emblem of self-hatred; all his life he was bewitched by the knowledge that some of his ancestors may have been Jewish. The bulk of the book turns to the assassination itself, from its planning stages in Britain, to the nighttime airdrop of the conspirators, to their arrangements in Prague, to the nearly botched event itself. Following Heydrich's death, which Hitler compared to losing a battle, the assassins eluded a massive manhunt. Sympathetic priests had hidden them in a Greek Orthodox Church. Despite the success of their mission, their story does not have a happy ending--the Nazis eventually learned of their whereabouts, and the book climaxes with their bloody last stand in the church crypt. This is an outstanding tale of evil, intrigue, and heroism. --John J. Miller

From Library Journal

Here's one who didn't get away. Quite the contrary, Heydrich, the perfect NaziAif there could be such a thingAwas assassinated in 1942 by Czech patriots who planted a bomb in his car. MacDonald's 1989 volume, which reads like a good thriller, follows this plot to kill the head of the Nazi security police.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306808609
• ISBN-13: 978-0306808609
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #231,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > History > Europe > Czech Republic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Multi-layered account of a killer's killing, April 7, 2002

By 

Norman Dale (Prince George) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS 'Butcher of Prague' (Paperback)

True war stories are not a genre I especially seek out. I read this account of the complex web of intrigue and decisions behind Nazi Heydrich's assassination because a relative of mine was actually involved in the plot. I can't say it was spellbinding since it's hard to build much suspense about a case with so well known an outcome. But this book is not just about or even, I would say, primarily about, the halting, fascinating and nearly abortive ground operation that ended the life of one of Nazi Germany's most determined mass murderers. The opening several chapters are about Heydrich's rise to power after a checkered sometimes-disgraced early career in the military. Callum MacDonald clearly has a penchant for dissecting the meticulous planning and thirst for raw power that lay behind this ascent, and the frigidly cold-blooded maneuvers rising stars of the Nazi regime used, including against each other.

MacDonald then maps in detail the even more complicated political terrain navigated by Czech president in absentia Eduard Benes. Ever since the May 1942 killing of Heydrich and the predictable gory aftermath of reprisals -- including the systematic and total destruction of the Czech village of Lidice -- the wisdom a plot to kill such a high ranking Nazi and bring on excessive retaliation, has been doubted. The author depicts the rationale in terms of tragic choices Benes faced in trying to shore up the very limited and shaky international support for his government-in-exile. In a nutshell, the very existence of Czechoslovakia seemed, at that time, to be in question, as German military success against Russia led the latter to call for uprisings behind Nazi lines. From Benes' point of view, had his exiled government accomplished nothing dramatic in the war effort, Russia would have turned to the Czech communist party and thereby ensured their eventual rule in post-war Czechoslovakia. Thus sprang Operation Anthropoid, and the parachuting of assassins into occupied Eastern Europe.

MacDonald has been painstaking in his research into and use of primary once top-secret files. He has then brilliantly boiled it down to just the right amount of detail to both educate and tell a good story. At the end he devotes what seems to be a bit of an afterthought to the question of whether, in sum, the assassination was worth it. I hungered for MacDonald's last word and opinion on something he spent such obvious care researching. But in the end his balanced answers and the way he weighs the complexities may have real bearing on the difficult questions the free world now faces today confronting the new century's brutes and monsters.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well done!, May 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS 'Butcher of Prague' (Paperback)

This book is about one the lesser known, yet most dramatic events of WWII.

On September 27, 1941, after more than two years of occupation on the Czech lands by fascist Germany, SS Obergruppenfuhrer and General of Police Reinhard Heidrich, one of the most feared men in the Third Reich, was appointed Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia. He came to Prague with the aim of establishing the first Nazi "protectorate" which would be solely under the jurisdiction of the SS. MacDonanald tells the story of the Czech nationalists and parachutists - Major Valcik, Major Gabcik, and Major Kubis - who were trained in Britain before being flown and dropped into Czechoslovakia to carry out the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. After their dramatic assassination of Heydrich, Hitler ordered brutal suppression and mass executions in Prague while an intense, house to house search for the assassins took place.

The parachutists hid within the catacombs of a cathedral in Prague, and were killed after a dramatic and hopeless battle with the SS. (after the parachutists were betrayed by a comrade)

To anyone going to Prague, I recommend that they visit the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius (the author refers to this same cathedral as Karel Boromajsky church) which is located at Resslova Street 9, Prague 2. There, you can go into the catacombs where the parachutists hid, and where the final and tragic battle took place (which has not been altered since the battle - bullet holes still in the walls, a partial tunnel where the parachutists attempted to make their way to the Prague sewers). I also recommend visiting the museum in the town of Lidice, which was destroyed in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination - all men over the age of 15 executed, all women shipped off to concentration camps, and 5 children deemed worthy of "Germanization" sent to Germany to be raised by SS families

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eisernes Herz und eine Handgranate., February 7, 2002

By 

P. Bjel (Richmond Hill, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS 'Butcher of Prague' (Paperback)

The above caption means "Iron heart and a grenade." It captures the essence of this book. SS General Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) had been called the reflection of National Socialism because he epitomized every ideological ideal that the Nazis considered revered - he was blond-haired and blue-eyed, tall, calculating, organizational and ruthless. In his lifetime, he was head of the Nazi SD (Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence branch of the elite SS), the creator of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and the Security Police (SIPO - a branch of the RSHA), the de facto governor of Nazi-annexed Bohemia-Moravia and the chairman of the Wannsee Conference, where the `Final Solution to the Jewish Question' was intimately planned. In each of these positions that he held, the outlined qualities and ideals resurfaced and certainly were put into practice. Consequently, Heydrich became one of the most hated and reviled Nazis in occupied Europe. Even within the Nazi hierarchy, he used espionage and blackmail to secure his hard-won position: many believed that he would be Adolf Hitler's eventual successor. On the morning of May 27, 1942, he was being chauffeured in an open-roofed Mercedes in a suburb of Prague, intending to reach the airport where he would fly to Berlin and meet with Hitler to discuss Nazi foreign policy. But then, at a bend in the road, he was assassinated. Hitler would call him "the man with a heart of iron," but he expired from his wounds nine days after the incident, on June 9, because shrapnel and pieces of his car got lodged in his spleen and gangrene set in. So much for iron...

Callum MacDonald first wrote this book in 1989 under the title "The Killing of SS Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich" (New York: Free Press, 1989), and it is this edition that was consulted by the reviewer. His work is the first in several years to address the full story of Heydrich's assassination, significant in itself because it was the only successful assassination of a high-ranking Nazi during the Second World War. Using the existing literature on the topic (MacDonald has cited works in English, German and Czech) as well as several primary archival sources, he vividly re-creates a full account of the whole phenomenon of Heydrich. His life is discussed in some detail, as are the details of his assassination, from its implementation, planning, involved personnel and a valuation of it, in the context of its aftermath. It is a very well written book; readers are lucky that the book has now been reissued.

Stunning are MacDonald's revelations and assessment of the exiled Czech president, Eduard Benes, who remained in England during the war and sponsored the assassination. His motives certainly bear question, as he wanted the assassination of Heydrich to prove that Czechs would not blindly accept their fate at the hands of the Germans and had "contributed" to the war, even though he had inklings and knowledge of how the Nazis would wreak their revenge on Czechs and Jews in Heydrich's name. It was these two groups that suffered most after the assassination: the towns of Lidice and Lezaky were razed to the ground and its inhabitants were massacred (except for a few children deemed worthy of "Aryanization"). Several convoys of Jewish deportees were sent to extermination camps under the words "Aktion Reinhard." From that point, occupied Bohemia-Moravia was ruled even more so by checkpoints, security police and the Gestapo than when Heydrich was still living. Benes never sighed a word of the assassination (code-named OPERATION ANTHROPOID) after the war in light of the consequences.

The three assassins, Jan Kubis, Josef Gabcik and Josef Valcik are described and given a face: heroes they were indeed, as they made the ultimate sacrifice in assassinating Heydrich. It was Kubis' grenade that blew up Heydrich's Mercedes and sent bits into his insides, while Gabcik would have mowed him down with a Sten gun, but it jammed at the crucial moment. Valcik was their lookout man, poised at the top of a hill where Heydrich would come down; he signaled with a pocket mirror to his accomplices down below that their target was on the way. MacDonald describes what happened to these three heroes: they fled the scene and hid in the cellar of an Orthodox cathedral in Prague, only to be betrayed by a comrade named Karel Curda, allegedly fearing the arrest of his mother and sister (he was rewarded with one million marks, but was hanged after the war for treason). Fighting the SS for six hours, they all used their last bullets to shoot themselves rather than be taken alive.

Callum MacDonald has written a superb and original book. It is a tale of military intelligence and espionage, heroism and grand sacrifice, banality of evil and the man that reflected Nazism more so than any other in his age, except for Hitler himself.