On this date in 1942, the Germans visited upon the Czechoslovakian village of Lidice one of the most notorious butcheries of World War II: the physical destruction of the town, and the execution of most of the adult population, in revenge for the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich.
Heydrich had power of life and death in Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and did not scruple to use it.
“The Hangman of Prague” was no mere functionary, but a Nazi grand wizard from way back, who’d had a hand in the Third Reich’s most terrifying greatest hits — the Night of the Long Knives, Kristallnacht. Just four months before this date, Heydrich had chaired the Wannsee Conference.* (Watch Kenneth Branagh as Heydrich ride herd over a gaggle of bureaucrats to get the Final Solution up and running in Conspiracy.) Hitler called him his “man with the iron heart.”
So he was a natural target for the Czechoslovakian army-in-exile and their British handlers, made more so by his lordly disdain for common-sense security safeguards.
Zipping along a predictable route in an open car, he was a sitting duck for a hit squad, who gave the Nazi bastard a mortal shrapnel wound from a grenade that had him lingering painfully at death’s door for several days before he finally died of blood poisoning.
For this effrontery, Czechoslovakians would pay a dreadful price.
Naturally, the Nazis mercilessly hunted down and slaughtered those with any connection to the plot.
But the Reich also exacted collective reprisals to make plain that the entire “protectorate” could be considered hostage against such plots in the future.
Special transports of Jews marked “Attentat auf Heydrich” were shipped to the camps, and 152 were executed on the day Heydrich succumbed. But then, the Nazis were brutalizing Jews anyway. Something more headline-grabbing would be needed.
Enter Lidice.
After gaudy funerals for the slain Reichsprotektor, the Reich settled upon the small town of Lidice north of Prague — trumping up a few connections to resistance to “justify” collective punishment.
On this date, German troops stormed it, summarily executed all the men and boys** old enough to bear arms and a fair number of women, deported the others, and then physically destroyed and buried the town.
Lidice was intended as a demonstration — boldly published to the world as proof against a repeat,† it became the byword of Nazi cruelty towards subject nations. Though not by quantitative standards the greatest crime of the occupation, not even the greatest crime in reprisal for Heydrich, its three syllables distill all the evil of Hitler’s conquest for Czechoslovakia.
Lidice did live, and does yet, as an emblem par excellence those terrible years.
Less alive: Heydrich’s right-hand man Karl Hermann Frank, who was hanged in Prague after the war for engineering this monstrous crime. Those survivors of Lidice able to make the trip enjoyed priority seating.
* Heydrich’s aide at the Wannsee Conference, and taker of cleaned-up minutes, was Mr. Banality of Evil himself, Adolf Eichmann.
** Only three men of Lidice survived the destruction: two who were in England at that time, and one who was imprisoned in Prague for killing his son. The sentence for this crime, it turned out, was life.
† An effective proof — the calculated wholesale slaughter apparently did cool both the conquered populace and the enemies of Germany on enthusiasm for further assassinations.
On this day..
- 1996: Huugjilt, wrongful execution
- 1566: Bartholome Tecia, Geneva sodomite
- 1697: The Paisley Witches
- 1863: Not Nathaniel Pruitt, reprieved deserter
- 2015: Aftab Bahadur Masih, "I just received my Black Warrant"
- 1822: Armand Valle, carbonari plotter
- 1902: Hirsh Lekert, Jewish assassin
- 1944: Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane
- 1896: Amelia Dyer, baby farmer
- 1876: Kenneth Brown, father of Edith Cowan
- 1692: Bridget Bishop, the first Salem witch hanging
- 1358: Guillaume Cale, leader of the Jacquerie
Kristallnacht had nothing to do with the Night of the Long Knivrs and happened four years later, in 1938.
hmm. war may on occasion be justified, but what happens within is not? no short answer, but certainly not murdering civilians.
remember germans paid severly for the war. i dont know how a civilisation can lose control of its masters, but it certainly wont be the last time.
there are some good biographies on heydrich. champion fencer, fighter pilot, violinist, father, & holder of the iron cross. & total scum. perhaps assasins kubis & gabcik could have done better- hiding the sten in a bag of straw? duh… but they volunteered for a mission from which they full knew they would not return, to aid their invaded country & the aim of shortening the war. they held out for days in the church against 1000 ss. frankly, they set an infinitely finer standard for humans to aspire than did heydrich who despite his abilities sadly failed to even qualify as ‘human.’ not a perfect world yet tho, eh.
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Third line from the bottom, make that “there” and not “their”…
Why, Critic 1, you must be a German, and not a bright one at that. First, the machine gun of one of the “cowards” jammed, and wouldn’t fire at all, and second, what would you expect the two “cowards” to do once the attack was commenced, and they had done all they could do? Should they have waited for the German Army to show up? That wouldn’t be very bright, now would it?
I believe these two men established their bravery by committing to this assassination in the first place. They fully understood their chances of survival were very small after the act was completed. So I would say they are brave souls indeed.
You Germans need to get over the fact that you lost the war! You did start the damn thing, now didn’t you? And are you defending that monster Heydrich? Heydrich was an evil man, and if their is any eternal justice (and there is) he is, even as we speak, roasting in hell, and that’s where he belongs; along with Adolf, and the rest of the crew.
Lol and this is supposed to be a objective or neutral report?
It is filled with hate language and distortions; for exampla, the connection between the assassins and the village are not mentioned, the general acceptance of retaliation in case of partisan attacks, the circumstances of the Heydrich assassination which shed a very good light on the characters of both the assassins (cowards that fled the scene while bot Heydrich and his driver even pursued them).
The propaganda language of this article neglects many important facts and only picks the ones which it finds fitting. Paltry…
Thanks for giving some inside into the whole story. Did not know that they were linked to the village.
There is no room for excusing Heydrich or the Nazis. Your loathful apologetic is nauseating and an affront to decent people. If it makes you feel better, you are not far removed from your hero.
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HAVE POSTCARD DATED DEC.9,1942 WRITTEN
IN SLAVIC DEPICTIING SHOWING THE CHUCH &
FARM BUILDINGS WITH LIDICE EMBOSSED ON
THE CARD WITH DETAILS OF OF THE MASACRE.
I GOT THE CARD FROM RESIDENT OF SLOAKIA
NOW DECEASED.IT IS WRITTEN IN SLOVAK.
PLEASE ADVISE?
have a post card depicting lidice church with embossed ‘lidice’-postage-us.1cent.cancelled-
handwritten in slavic dated dec.7,1942 with
description of the events that occurred in lidice
. at that time.
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I once had a young German question me on the “immorality” of Bombing cities (both Japan and Germany) during the second World War. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I told him to compare the actions of the Japanese, German, American and British armies whenever they controlled land and people. “Each time your country unfurled its flag”, I told him “Murder and subjugation would soon follow. Not so with us.” At this he could only look at me. I finally said : ” There is a reason why German troops fled to the West as the Russians were sweeping in from the East. Study your history before beginning a conversation, will you?” And with that he walked away.
I have always found it amazing how often people will pontificate about things they know nothing about.
As an American, you think you have room to talk about the “atrocities” of OTHERS? Lol. What happened to the Indigenous Americans? Oh, right! Americans are genocidal, uncivilized, bloodthirsty savages. There were millions of Indigenous people & Americans committed genocide, ethnocide, & identity theft against all of them. You have some nerve.The U.S. is the the Land of Lynchings, particularly torch lynchings where people were burned alive at the stake. Even PREGNANT women were lynched in the U.S. What kind of savages hang pregnant women? What’s more the Third Reich learned about gas chambers & “racial hygiene” laws that gave them license to sterilize people from Americans. You must not know about CURRENT America’s murderous, neo-colonialist, imperial reputation abroad. And if the U.S. doesn’t have its army occupying a country, it sure has its CIA sabotaging their autonomy & making sure every country on the planet stays underneath its despicable thumb, ESPECIALLY if it’s a black majority country.
In short: don’t you EVER get smug with anybody anywhere concerning “atrocities” when white Americans have lynched & committed genocide bulldozing their way across this continent and you’re sitting on land that was gotten by nearly wiping out its Indigenous & Native population.
I quite agree, Kevin. It makes me so angry when people ask why the Jews did not fight back. They did in Auschwitz, in the ghettoes and in partisan groups, but they paid a high price for it when they were caught, and it’s easy to be wise after the event.
And the Germans wonder why they were bombed back into the Stone Age.
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