The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

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The Pittsburgh Press (May 27, 1942)

Reich offers huge reward for assassin

Heydrich out of danger; drastic restrictions ordered by Nazis

Dispatches from enemy countries are based on broadcasts over controlled radio stations which frequently contain false propaganda. Bear this in mind.

Berlin, May 27 (UP) –
Reinhard Heydrich, high Gestapo official in charge of former Czechoslovakian territory, was wounded in an unsuccessful attempt on his life at Prague, where drastic military restrictions have been ordered in the search for the assassins, the official news agency DNB said tonight.

All Czechs were ordered off the streets of Prague tonight.

The dispatch failed to say when the attempt on the life of Heydrich, known as the No. 1 “Nazi hangman,” took place, but indicated that it was on Wednesday. Refugee officials have reported Heydrich had ordered the execution of at least 500 Czechs.

Heydrich is now out of danger, DNB said. A reward of 10 million korun was offered for capture of the persons who plotted the attack.

With the krona, or koruna, quoted in New York at 4¢, the reward offered for Heydrich’s assailants would be approximately $400,000.

The dispatch from Prague said civilians there had been forbidden to leave their homes from 9 p.m. tonight until 6 a.m. tomorrow.

Anyone on the street during that period will be shot if they fail to halt when challenged, it was added.

The British radio reported that a curfew had been ordered for all Czechoslovakia and that the “secret reprisals” were underway.

During the same period, all public houses, cinemas, theaters and places of entertainment will be closed and all public transport suspended, DNB said.

Heydrich was named chief of security and chief Gestapo official in Prague last September.

Recently, however, he had been reported in Holland, aiding Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo chieftain, in attempting to suppress Dutch outbreaks against Nazi rule.

Heydrich entered the German Navy in 1922. He resigned in 1931 and joined the Nazi Party. Now 38, with 11 years of inner party work behind him, the Gestapo official has had a meteoric rise in the Hitler regime.

He played an active role in the 1934 Nazi “blood purge,” and soon afterwards became chief of the Berlin Gestapo.

Heydrich was said to have drafted the laws against the Jews and to have organized the German intelligence network which spread terror throughout the Reich.

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Völkischer Beobachter (May 28, 1942)

Der Stellv. Reichsprotektor verletzt –
Anschlag auf Heydrich

dnb. Prag, 27 Mai –
Gegen der Stellvertretenden Reichsprotektor SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich wurde am Mittwochvörmittag in Prag von bisher unbekannten Tätern ein Anschlag verübt. SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich wurde hiebei verletzt, befindet sich jedoch außer Lebensgefahr. Für die Ergreifung der Täter ist eine Belohnung von zehn Millionen Kronen ausgesetzt werden.

The Pittsburgh Press (May 28, 1942)

Reprisals demanded –
Czechs over 15 must report to Gestapo or be killed

By John A. Parris, United Press staff writer

London, May 28 –
German authorities in Prague seeking the attackers of Deputy Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich were reported today to have ordered the shooting of all Czechoslovaks over 15 years of age who fail to report to police before Saturday night.

A Berlin dispatch published in Stockholm said that Heydrich’s condition was grave and that he might die from the bullet wounds inflicted by two middle-aged Czechs who waylaid him yesterday as he drove along a Prague street.

The threat of wholesale executions was reported by Czech quarters in London who said countless victims were being rounded up by Gestapo squads throughout Czechoslovakia and that merciless reprisals were anticipated.

Czech informants have said that the German authorities in Prague have given all Cezchs of 15 and over until Saturday night to report to police and that:

After that date, everyone found without a new registration card will be shot.

The Germans, immediately after the shooting, threatened death for anyone guilty of hiding the attackers who fired automatic rifles at Heydrich’s auto as it sped along a street leading to the Berlin highway.

The assassins both escaped. One fired on a bicycle and the other on foot under the eyes of the Gestapo. They left a briefcase, which the secret police examined carefully for clues, Czech quarters reported.

Germans linked to attack

Swedish reports said Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo, and many other high officials of the secret police had flown to Prague to conduct the investigation into Heydrich’s shooting.

The Zürich correspondent of the Stockholm newspaper Social-Demokraten said Berlin authorities believed the assailants were German oppositionists who had carefully studied Heydrich’s route and made detailed plans for the attempt on his life.

The Nazi “protectors” of Bohemia and Moravia ordered a general curfew throughout Czechoslovakia from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Premier may be shot

Heydrich, “the Hangman,” executed more than 250 Czechs within two weeks after he was commissioned by Adolf Hitler last September to quell Czech unrest.

The Stockholm newspaper Tidingen said Berlin observers expected a new reign of terror in Czechoslovakia because the assassination attempt:

…destroyed German confidence in the Czechs completely.

The newspaper’s Berlin correspondent speculated that former Czech Premier Alois Eliáš, now imprisoned in Germany for allegedly conspiring with the Allies, might be executed in reprisal. Eliáš was understood to be awaiting a decision on his appeal for a pardon.

The German occupation authorities offered a fortune of 10 million korun for the capture of the assassins.

At the last rate of exchange, quoted in May 1941, that amounted to about $235,000, the koruna is worth much less now.

A state of emergency was declared throughout the country and transportation was suspended.

Karl Hermann Frank, Heydrich’s deputy in Prague, instituted the nine-hour curfew. The purpose was obvious. Forbidden to leave their homes under penalty of being shot on sight if they failed to halt in challenge, the Czechs were easy prey for the Gestapo men rounding tip of reprisal victims.

Swift retaliation seen

Frank ordered all public houses, theaters, movies and other places of entertainment closed. He announced that persons aiding or concealing the assassins would be shot summarily and threatened execution of the entire families of such persons.

The attempted assassination came soon after Heydrich had informed the Czech administration that Czech youths must be conscripted for the Nazi labor battalions and for military service with the German armies.

Decree signed by Hitler

The Czechoslovak Foreign Minister here confirmed that he informed the Prague government yesterday that a decree signed by Hitler May 7 must be enforced.

Heydrich gave his orders to the Prague government Tuesday night. At 3:32 p.m. yesterday, according to Frank’s official announcement of the shooting, the assassins struck.

Himmler immediately began to strengthen his organization. It was reported that he hoped to double the strength of the secret police, enlisting 20 divisions before summer.

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The Pittsburgh Press (May 29, 1942)

GERMANS SEIZE 200 CZECHS AS HOSTAGES
Wounds fatal to ‘Hangman,’ Vichy hears

High Prague officials to be shot if assassins aren’t captured
By John A. Parris, United Press staff writer

London, May 29 –
German authorities in Czechoslovakia were reported tonight to have seized 200 prominent Czechs, including several government officials, as hostages who will be shot unless the would-be assassins of Reinhard Heydrich, No. 2 leader of the Nazi Gestapo, are captured.

A report originating in Vichy said that Heydrich was understood to have died in a Prague hospital late today from his wounds following an emergency operation for the removal of three bullets, but the report could not be confirmed in Czech quarters here. The German radio made no mention of his dying.

The Gestapo, which has already executed six persons of one family, including two women, in the Nazi reprisals for the attack on Heydrich, was said to have converted all of Czechoslovakia into a concentration camp within sealed frontiers.

Thousands rounded up

Reports from Stockholm, describing Heydrich’s condition as serious, said that he had been shot at least three times and was also wounded by the splinters of a bomb thrown at him in the attack, which occurred Wednesday.

A famous surgeon was said to have performed the emergency operation and extracted three bullets.

German armored cars were reported patrolling the streets of Prague. The 200 prominent hostages, it was said, were seized in various parts of the country, where thousands are being rounded up and questioned in the search for the Heydrich attackers.

Officials arrested

The hostages, seized on orders of Kurt Daluege, new Deputy Reich “Protector” of Czechoslovakia, were described in the Stockholm accounts as including several high officials of the government of President Emil Hácha, professors of Prague University and other leading men.

Meanwhile, attacks on Hitler’s Gestapo terrorists spread to Norway.

A deputy chief of the Gestapo was reported to have been slain by Norwegian patriots near Bergen and the Nazis, in swift reprisal, burned and sacked the entire village where the attack occurred, according to Stockholm advices.

Six in one family shot

Terror was reported by Czech officials here to be spreading over their country in the wake of the shooting of Heydrich.

The frontiers of Czechoslovakia have been sealed and no trains have crossed the borders since Wednesday when Heydrich was shot, Berlin advices to Stockholm said.

The Gestapo leaders killed in Norway was not identified but was said to have been:

…one of the principal Gestapo officials for Western Norway.

The Norwegian Gestapo leader was shot in the now-destroyed village of Telavåg on Sotra Island, just west of Bergen. Before the village was sacked and burned, the Germans arrested the entire population, placed 60 men in a concentration camp and killed or sold livestock.

320 arrested

In another part of Norway, 320 hostages were arrested for an assassination attempt against a police official of the Quisling government, and 80 more were scheduled for arrest. More than 100 hostages were said to have been sent to Germany. The Norwegians were forbidden to hold public meetings or to:

…talk loudly or behave obstructively.

In Czechoslovakia, although the Gestapo busily rounded up victims, Czech spokesmen here said there had been no claimants to the 10 million korun ($235,000) award for information on Heydrich’s assassins.

Take bullets from spine

Heydrich was struck by bullets fired by two men from automatic rifles as he drove along a Prague street, and his assailants fled on bicycles. Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, one of Germany’s best known surgeons, removed three bullets from “the Hangman’s” spine and spinal column in a delicate operation, a Swiss dispatch said.

With unrest becoming increasingly prevalent in the occupied countries, German military and occupation authorities in France, the Low Countries and Norway evidenced increasing nervousness concerning both patriot uprisings and the probability of an Allied invasion.

Dutch dispatches said German military headquarters in Holland were being moved back from the coast and Arthur Seyss-Inquart, German commissioner, transferred his office from The Hague to near Hilversum, southeast of Amsterdam.

Berlin radio broadcast a challenge to British and American troops to open a second front in Europe, asserting that:

For each German house or town damaged or destroyed by the enemy forces, Germany’s night fighters will destroy the nearest thing to its equivalent in England.

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The New York Times (May 30, 1942)

Heydrich is expected to die; Nazis slay 12 more Czechs

By Daniel T. Brigham

Bern, Switzerland, May 30 –
Twelve more Czechs were executed yesterday, according to official German announcements, for failing to give information to the authorities concerning the identity of the two assassins responsible for Wednesday’s attack on Reinhard Heydrich, deputy Gestapo chief and deputy Reich Protector for Bohemia-Moravia.

Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler’s “vigilante committee” on its part, however, appears to be as far from discovering the perpetrators as it was before the German secret police group left Berlin for Czechoslovakia. As for Herr Heydrich, his life was stated to be despaired of after two transfusions yesterday had failed to have the desired results.

He was reported to be suffering from at least one bullet wound in his throat, a bullet lodged in his back, while his peritoneum, according to another report, had been torn by the explosion of the bomb that wrecked the car. The chauffeur and at least one member of the deputy Gestapo leader’s bodyguard died yesterday morning from “wounds received during the attack,” it was learned.

The announcement of yesterday’s executions – nine at Brünn, three in Moravská Ostrava – was supplemented in a report from Berlin late last night of a continuation of mass arrests throughout Bohemia-Moravia as the circle of investigation widened from city to city. Armed patrols, according to a Balkan radio report, have been doubled in Prague, where order upon order from the local police has served only to increase the confusion brought about by the enforced registration of the entire population with the German authority in the space of 36 hours.

Transportation was resumed inside the capital yesterday, but interurban communications are still prohibited – a factor that has led to further reductions in the stores of foodstuffs due to arrive yesterday for today’s market, the holding of which was reportedly forbidden last night.

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Völkischer Beobachter (May 31, 1942)

Daluege vertritt Heydrich

dnb. Berlin, 30. Mai –
Der Führer hat den SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Generaloberst der Polizei Daluege mit der Vertretung des SS-Obergruppenführers und Generals der Polizei Heydrich in der Führung der Geschäfte des Reichsprotektors in Böhmen und Mähren beauftragt, solange SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich durch die Folgen des Attentats vom 27. Mai verhindert ist, die Geschäfte selbst zu führen.

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The Pittsburgh Press (May 31, 1942)

Nazi reprisal executions of Czechs mount to 45

Attack on Gestapo’s ‘Hangman’ reported made by agents landed by parachute; Heydrich’s condition serious; Germans double reward
By John A. Parris, United Press staff writer

London, May 30 –
Skilled assailants, landed secretly by parachute in Czechoslovakia, were reported tonight to have carried out the attack on Reinhard Heydrich, “Hangman” of the German Gestapo, who lies near death in Prague while the terror of Nazi reprisals sweep the country.

The German radio in Prague announced tonight that 45 Czech hostages have been executed in Prague and Brünn, including 12 women, in reprisal for the attack on Heydrich with rifles and bombs Wednesday.

The Prague radio said 26 men and six women wear shot by firing squads in Prague and seven men and six women in Brno.

The 45 were executed, the Nazis said, for:

…hiding unregistered persons suspected of helping the assassins.

Czech officials here reported that the Germans had doubled the reward offered for information leading to capture of the assassins from $240,000 to $480,000.

Official Czech refugee sources here said they could neither confirm nor deny the report that secret anti-Nazi agents, who parachuted to earth in a desolate bit of country, waylaid and attacked the No. 2 leader of the Gestapo.

It was recalled, however, that a German court in Brünn, 100 miles southeast of Prague, last Oct. 25 condemned three men to death “for aiding parachute agents who carried out sabotage” within the Czech protectorate.

The Germans acknowledged that Heydrich remains in a serious condition in a Prague hospital, following an emergency operation, for removal of three bullets and blood transfusions performed by Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch.

A Berlin dispatch to Stockholm described the No. 2 Gestapo leader’s condition as “particularly serious” and that Hitler had suffered a “personal blow” because Heydrich was one of his most intimate friends.

It was Heydrich who helped Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo, carry out the 1934 Nazi purge that eliminated Capt. Ernst Röhm and other veteran Nazis.

Reliable informants in London said that at the time of the attack, Heydrich was in Prague – after directing ruthless reprisals for anti-Nazi outbreaks in Holland – in an attempt to suppress a widespread wave of sabotage.

This sabotage was upsetting German communications over which supplies and munitions were being sent to the Russian Front and Heydrich had direct orders from Hitler to crush the resistance by any means.

Aided by Czech leaders

The report that the would-be assassins were anti-Nazi agents landed by parachute said the attackers were probably dropped 24 hours or more before the attack and that they undoubtedly received aid from leaders of Czech underground resistance.

Despite mass arrests of hostages, including government officials and university professors, and mounting executions, the Germans had few clues to the identity of the would-be assassins.

The German radio broadcast an appeal to the Czech people to aid in hunting the assailants, and provided a description of the clothing the two men were supposed to have worn when they waylaid Heydrich’s automobile.

The German radio alternately threatened the Czechs with reprisals and coaxed them to aid in the manhunt, telling of Heydrich’s “good will policy” toward the Czechs, without mentioning that he once directed the killing of 250-400 patriot Czechs.

The Moscow radio broadcast almost continuously to the people of the Nazi-occupied nations to seize upon the example of the attack on Heydrich abdxrise up against the Germans.

Anti-Nazi troubles beset the Germans through all of occupied Europe today.

In Norway, 18 hostages were reported executed in reprisal for the slaying of two German soldiers in a fishing village near Bergen.

Trouble admitted in Reich

A Russian TASS News Agency dispatch from Stockholm said that Dr. Robert Ley, chief of the Nazi Labor Front, admitted the existence of troublesome anti-Nazi organizations within Germany itself in an article appearing in the newspaper Der Angriff.

Another TASS report, from Geneva, said the Germans had launched a new “brutal persecution” of both the Catholic and Protestant clergy in Germany and occupied Poland.

The account said that 451 Catholic priests had been arrested in Poznan and Gnezno and that 74 priests were tortured to death by the Gestapo in one locality.

In Holland, executions and arrests of Dutch hostaes, more than 100 of whom have been executed recently, was said by the Aneta, Dutch news agency, to have merely served to:

… intensify anti-Nazi violence and sabotage.

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The Pittsburgh Press (June 1, 1942)

87 more slain in terror wave

New Nazi executions of Czechs reported

London, June 1 (UP) –
Refugee Czech sources reported today that 87 more persons, 17 of them women, were executed in the 24-hour period starting at noon yesterday, in reprisals for the attempted assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, deputy Gestapo chief at Prague.

Reports reaching London said 45 persons were put to death in the Moravian town of Brünn, and that the entire civil administration was wiped out in the small town of Týn.

These new executions were presumably in addition to some 82 other victims put to death since the attempt last Wednesday to assassinate the German “Protector” of Bohemia-Moravia.

Officers reported arrested

Earlier, the European Revolution Radio reported that 14 high-ranking Nazi Army officers were arrested in connection with the attempt on Heydrich’s life on the streets of Prague.

The European Revolution Radio is a clandestine broadcasting station in Germany, believed to be operated by Prussian officers opposing Adolf Hitler.

The broadcast said the attempt on Heydrich’s life had probably been made by supporters of Kurt Daluege, who succeeded “the Hangman” as “Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.” It said an attempt had been made on Daluege recently, presumably by Heydrich’s henchmen. Significantly, it asserted, Daluege confiscated Heydrich’s villa, formerly owned by Baron von Rothschild, as soon as he assumed office.

Arrest Nazi staff officers

The arrested Army officers, the broadcast said, included several from the staffs of General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst and General Ernst von Stülpnagel.

The quarters of many officers, in districts which had been inspected by Heydrich in his tours of German-occupied Europe, were said to have been searched by the secret police. The apartment of a German general in Brussels was ransacked despite protests of General von Falkenhorst.

Heydrich, meanwhile, was still in critical condition from the assassin’s bullets, and the Gestapo’s reign of terror continues throughout Czechoslovakia.

The German radio, indicating that Heydrich might have been shot by foreign agents parachuting from enemy planes, said the hostages executed in Czechoslovakia were condemned for harboring parachutists.

Emanuel Moravec, Minister of Education in the puppet Czech government, said in a Radio Prague broadcast that all the “bloodbath” victims had been proven guilty.

Blame England and Russia

He said the occupation authorities had “made no secret” of their intention of taking “hard measures against treasonable activity,” and alleged that “émigrés in the service of England and Russia” were responsible for the Czech unrest.

He said:

They don’t care whether Czech blood is shed. All they want is to get money from the British.

Dr. Emil Hácha, puppet President of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, addressing the Czech people over the government radio described Dr. Edvard Beneš, former Czechoslovakian President, as “Public Enemy No. 1.”

Puppet warns Czechs

Hácha said:

Were it not for the continuous agitation of Beneš, of his exiled assistants as well as their secret followers, this country could be the most blessed and quiet corner in Europe.

These Czechs obeying their legal government have nothing to fear. On the other hand, those who are not following my word as legal President will be punished accordingly.

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The Pittsburgh Press (June 2, 1942)

29 hostages and patriots face death as Nazi firing squads ‘work overtime’

By John A. Parris, United Press staff writer

London, June 2 –
Twenty-nine more hostages and patriots faced imminent death before German firing squads on the continent today.

Apparently none of the executions were indirectly or directly for the attack on Reinhard (The Hangman) Heydrich, for which at least 161 martyrs have now died.

The latest executions for the ambushing of Heydrich, Adolf Hitler’s purge master and assistant chief of the Gestapo, were announced by Radio Prague. 21 persons were executed there yesterday and nine were killed at Brünn. They were accused of giving refuge to persons who did not have identification cards, or publicly approving Heydrich’s fate.

Kills woman 73 years old

Among the victims were four women (one 73 years old), two university professors, two officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and a Czech major of police.

The German Transocean Agency reported the sentencing of 13 men and a woman to death at Mannheim, Germany, for anti-Nazi activities.

General Ernst von Stülpnagel, commander of German occupation forces in France, announced that 10 hostages would be shot for an attack May 27 on a German soldier in Paris, unless the guilty patriots were handed over.

Free boys in Paris

Five “communists” were sentenced to death in Sofia, and others to long imprisonment by a court-martial, a German official news agency dispatch said. They were accused of attacking a concentration camp last August and killing a policeman.

In contrast, a dispatch from Vichy reported that two boys accused of pulling down the statue of the British King, Edward VII, in Paris, had been freed. They had been assisted by more than 50 other boys, members of the Jacques Doriot’s fascist youth organization. The statue, it was reported, will not be set up again, because, in the confusion, part of it was carted away.

A Transocean dispatch from Prague said directors of the Škoda arms works, in Pilsen, had called their employees together to praise them for not listening to enemy propaganda, such as that which had provoked the shooting of Heydrich.

A recent Allied report said a Škoda worker had given his life for the privilege of tipping a cauldron of molten metal on Nazi officials inspecting the plant.

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Völkischer Beobachter (June 3, 1942)

Die Vorgänge im Protektorat

rd. Prag, 2. Juni –
Am 27. Mai – Böhmen und Mähren befanden sich mitten in einer Phase ordnender Aufbauarbeit – wurde auf den Stellvertretenden Reichsprotektor, während er mit seinem Kraftwagen in Richtung der Prager Innenstadt fuhr, ein Anschlag verübt.

Noch am Tage vorher hatte SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich in einer Arbeitsbesprechung mit der Protektoratsregierung die Durchführung einer großzügigen Verwaltungsreform beraten, die auf Grund eines Führer-Erlasses unter anderem gewisse, bisher nur von den deutschen Behörden in Böhmen und Mähren wahrgenommenen Aufgaben auf die autonome Verwaltung übertragen sollte.

Es ist offensichtlich, daß durch diesen Anschlag nicht nur der Mann beseitigt werden sollte, dem es gelungen war, im böhmisch-mährischen Raum eine verheißungsvolle Ordnung anzubahnen, sondern daß es in erster Linie um die Beseitigung dieser Ordnung selbst ging, und zwar ohne Rücksicht darauf, welche Folgen sich daraus für das tschechische Volk ergäben.

Der Ablauf der Ereignisse seit dem 27. Mai stellt sich zusammenhängend kurz folgendermaßen dar: Am Tage des Anschlages auf den Stellvertretenden Reichsprotektor war zunächst über den Oberlandesratsbezirk Prag und wenige Stunden später über das gesamte Protektoratsgebiet der zivile Ausnahmezustand verhängt worden. Für Prag wurde außerdem vom 27. Mai 21 Uhr bis 28. Mai 6 Uhr ein strenges Ausgehverbot erlassen. Die Straßen blieben in dieser Nacht, entgegen den sonstigen Gepflogenheiten, auch nach 23 Uhr beleuchtet. Polizeistreifen durchzogen die Stadt und es wurden zahlreiche Haussuchungen vorgenommen, über deren Ergebnis natürlich nichts verlautbart wird.

Für die Protektoratsangehörigen, die polizeilich noch nicht gemeldet waren, wurde eine letzte kurze Meldefrist festgesetzt. Um den darauf einsetzenden Ansturm von Menschen bewältigen zu können, amtierten die Meldestellen zwei Tage hintereinander ununterbrochen von 7 Uhr früh bis 12 Uhr nachts. Aber schon am 28. Mai nahm das Leben in Prag wieder den gewohnten Verlauf, der eigentlich nur durch das Ausgehverbot vorübergehend unterbrochen war. Außer dem Verbot tschechischer Veranstaltungen und der Vorverlegung der polizeilichen Sperrstunde auf 22 Uhr hat sich im äußeren Ablauf des Alltags nichts geändert. Die Bevölkerung verhält sich voll diszipliniert.

Am Abend ließ die Protektoratsregierung eine von allen Mitgliedern unterzeichnete Erklärung im tschechischen Rundfunk verlesen, in der es heißt, daß das Attentat im Auslande durch Benesch und seine Leute vorbereitet werden sei, von jenem Benesch, der als bezahlter Agent Englands das tschechische Volk ins Unglück stürzen wolle, obwohl er sich im Jahre 1938 freiwillig der Präsidentschaft begeben habe, mit der Versicherung, sich nie mehr in die tschechische Politik einzumischen. Wenn sich alle Tschechen nach den Weisungen der tschechischen Regierung richteten, könne das Reich seine zur Aufrechterhaltung der Sicherheit damit getroffenen Anordnungen auch auf das geringste Maß beschränken. Wer mit England und seinen Verbündeten gehe, so heißt es am Schluß dieser Erklärung, sei ein offener Feind des tschechischen Volkes und werde danach behandelt.

Auch der Staatspräsident Hacha richtete über den Rundfunk eine ernste Mahnung an das tschechische Volk. Wer bisher seine Arbeit redlich verrichtet und seine Pflicht getan habe, dem sei kein Haar gekrümmt worden. Wer aber Benesch gehorche, der habe dessen Ratschläge bereits 1938 bezahlt und bezahle sie auch heute. Auch hinter dem verabscheuungswürdigen Mordanschlag auf den Stellvertretenden Reichsprotektor General Heydrich stehe eindeutig als Urheber Benesch, der Söldling der Feindmächte. So treffe ihn und seinen Helfershelfern der Fluch der tschechischen Familien, die durch diese Untat ins Unglück gestürzt worden seien. Es gebe im heutigen Kampf keine Neutralität mehr, sondern nur eine klare Entscheidung für oder gegen das Reich.

Am Sonntag wandte sich schließlich Minister Moravec, dessen Amt für Volksaufklärung inzwischen auf Grund einer früheren Anordnung des Stellvertretenden Reichsprotektors zum selbständigen Ministerium erhoben wurde, mit einem eindringlichen Appell an die tschechische Öffentlichkeit. Er forderte die Bevölkerung auf, die britischen Agenten, die sie entweder aus Mitleid oder aus Furcht decke, rücksichtslos der Gerechtigkeit zuzuführen, denn es gehe um mehr, als mancher glauben möge – in diesen Stunden werde das Schicksal des tschechischen Volkes für eine lange Zeit, wenn nicht für immer, entschieden.

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What is European Revolution Radio? I can’t find anything about it on a Google search. I mean nothing at all. There’s hits for post-war musical tours but this thing I’ve never heard of and neither has wikipedia.

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I don’t know either. That would probably have been code for German resistance radio with Prussian officers, but I’m not sure.

It’s possible it would have been an anonymous source for the papers, but papers usually made it clear about sources (for the most part).

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The Pittsburgh Press (June 3, 1942)

Heydrich’s condition termed critical

London, June 3 (UP) –
Reinhard Heydrich, No. 2 man in Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo, was reported in a critical condition today from the rifle wounds he suffered a week ago in a roadside attack near Prague.

Coincidentally, reports reached London that the Gestapo had executed 21 more hostages at Prague, making a total of 182 innocent Czechs killed in reprisal.

The Stockholm newspaper Dagbladet’s Berlin correspondent, in a dispatch on Heydrich’s condition, said hope for his recovery had not been abandoned entirely, because of his strong physique.

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The Pittsburgh Press (June 4, 1942)

GUN WOUNDS BRING DEATH TO HEYDRICH

Killing of Nazi ‘Hangman’ increases reprisals in Czechoslovakia
By John A. Parris, United Press staff writer

Bulletin

London, June 4 –
At least 36 more Czechs were reported executed today by the Nazis, bringing to 243 the number slain since the fatal attack on Reinhard Heydrich, deputy Gestapo chief.

London, June 4 –
Germany announced today that Reinhard Heydrich, 38-year-old Gestapo “Hangman,” has died in Prague of wounds inflicted by assassins eight days ago.

The deputy chief of the Gestapo, victim of a mysterious attack with bullets and bomb on May 27, died after Adolf Hitler rushed his personal physician to Prague in an effort to save his life.

At least 202 Czechs, many of them prominent officials and university professors seized as hostages after the attack, have already been killed in the widespread German reprisals.

The German radio, announcing Heydrich’s death on the basis of official news agency dispatches, gave no details and the identity of his assailants remained a mystery despite the Nazi offer of a huge reward for information leading to arrest of the attackers.

Heydrich, known through German-occupied Europe as “The Hangman,” because of his brutality in suppressing their residents, was wounded last week as he sped in his auto through Prague streets toward the Berlin highway, by two middle-aged men on bicycles using repeating rifles.

Radio Prague reported 25 killed by the secret police yesterday – 15 in Prague and 10 in Brünn.

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Völkischer Beobachter (June 5, 1942)

An den Folgen des auf ihn verübten Attentates –
SS-Obergruppenführer Heydrich gestorben

Prag, 4. Juni –
Der Stellvertretende Reichsprotektor in Böhmen und Mähren und Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD., SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich, ist am Donnerstagvormittag an den Folgen des auf ihn verübten Mordanschlages verstorben.

Ein kämpferisches Leben ist allzu früh erloschen. Reinhard Heydrich ist in Prag den Verletzungen erlegen die er bei dem Anschlag in der Vorstadt Lieben am 27. Mai erlitt. Das Schicksal hat ihn aus einer unendlichen Fülle von Arbeit herausgerissen. Seit dem 27. September 1941 war er mit der Aufgabe betraut, die alten Lande Böhmen und Mähren noch fester in das Reich einzufügen und ihre lebendigen Kräfte lückenlos für die Kriegführung aufzubieten. Er mußte zunächst einer Verschwörung entgegentreten, die eine Gruppe unbelehrbarer und gewissenloser Elemente in Verbindung mit dem Benesch-Klüngel in London angezettelt hatte. In wenigen Tagen hat Heydrich eine Reinigung durchgeführt, die sich zunächst sehr fruchtbar auswirkte. Mitte Jänner konnte die Regierungsform in Prag den gegebenen Erfordernissen angepaßt und damit der Ausgangspunkt für eine sinngemäße Entwicklung geschaffen werden. Die Terroristen, die auf Befehl dunkler Hintermänner den Anschlag auf Heydrich verübten, haben diese Entwicklung unterbrechen wollen. Sie haben damit nur dem tschechischen Volk einen schweren Schaden zugefügt.

Wer kurz nach der Berufung der neuen Regierung Gelegenheit hatte, in Prag mit dem Stellvertretenden Reichsprotektor zusammenzutreffen, der empfing bei dieser Begegnung den Eindruck eines tatkräftigen und von der Größe seiner Aufgabe tief durchdrungenen Mannes, der entschlossen war‚ großzügig allen aufbauenden Kräften eine Chance zu geben und Vertrauen um Vertrauen zu schenken. Für ihn waren Schwierigkeiten nur dazu da, überwunden zu werden. Auf der Prager Burg empfand sich der willensstarke Kämpfer ebenso als der Soldat des Führers und des Reiches wie vordem an den Fronten in Norwegen, im Westen und im Osten, wo er sich als Flieger ausgezeichnet hatte – ein Soldat von entschlossener Härte und gerechter Unbeugsamkeit, wenn es die Stunde gebot, aber auch voller Verständnis, sobald er gutem Willen und vernünftiger Erkenntnis des Erforderlichen begegnete, die dem gemeinsamen Kampf gegen jene politische Unterwelt diente, deren Wesen sich in verbrecherischer Reaktion vom Stil Beneschs und Churchills und in dem Wahn erschöpft, das Rad der Geschichte durch terroristische Gewaltakte zurückdrehen zu können. Es rollt nur um so unerbittlicher und zermalmender über sie hinweg.

Reinhard Heydrich ist in einem Kampf gefallen, der der Kampf des deutschen Volkes um seine Sendung in Europa ist. Es muß einer späteren Zeit vorbehalten bleiben, der ganzen Fülle der Verdienste gerecht zu werden, die er sich erworben hat, seit es wieder ein Deutsches Reich gibt, das diesen Namen mit Stolz und Ehre trägt. Der Größe dieses Reiches war das Leben geweiht, das jetzt allzufrüh sein Ende gefunden hat. Der Auftrag aber, dem Heydrich mit der ganzen Leidenschaft einer tatenfrohen und verantwortungsfreudigen Persönlichkeit von einem Guß lebte‚ besteht fort, und daß er erfüllt Wird, ist eine stolze Gewißheit, in der Reinhard Heydrich die Augen für immer geschlossen hat.

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Der Krankheitsverlauf Heydrichs

dnb. Berlin, 4. Juni –
Uber den Krankheitsverlauf des am Donnerstagmorgen an den Folgen seiner Verletzungen verstorbenen Stellvertretenden Reichsprotektors SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich wird von zuständiger Stelle der nachstehende Bericht gegeben:

Die Verwundung des SS-Obergruppenführers Heydrich durch das Attentat in Prag am Mittwoch, den 27. Mai 1942‚ vormittags 10‚30 Uhr‚ war in klinischer Hinsicht vor vornherein bedenklich‚ da ein Sprengstück die elfte Rippe links neben der Wirbelsäule durchschlug, durch den unteren Brustraum fuhr‚ das Zwerchfell durchbohrte und in der Milz, diese brehe aufreißend, steckenblieb. Glücklicherwein erfolgte diese schwerwiegende Verletzung des Brust- und Bauchraumes in der Nähe des Bulowka-Krankenhauses, so daß der Obergruppenführer unmittelbar anschließend durch den Chefarzt dieses Krankenhauses Professor Dick, unter Beiziehung von Professor Hohlbaum, dem Ordinarius der Chirurgie in Prag, operiert werden konnte. Dadurch gestaltete sich der Krankheitsverlauf Zunächst aussichtsreich, jedenfalls wurden die unmittelbaren Gefahren der schweren Verwundung nämlich Nachbluten, Wundschock und örtliche Vereiterung, erfolgreich beherrscht.

Am siebenten Tage nahm das Krankheitsbild schlagartig eine bedrohliche Wendung, indem der Obergruppenführer trotz Anwendung aller neuzeitlichen klinischen Hilfsmittel in wenigen Stunden unter dem Zeichen einer schweren Allgemeinvergiftung rasch verfiel und am achten Tage nach dem Attentat morgens starb.

Die nachträgliche Wundkontrolle ergab eindeutig schon als vorläufigen Befund, daß die Wundverhältnisse im Brust- und Bauchfellraum klinisch einwandfrei, ohne Eiterung oder sonstige Nebenschädigung, beherrscht waren, während die lebenswichtigen Organe, wie Herz, Leber, Nieren usw., schwere Schädigungen durch eine AlIgemeinvergiftung, ausgelöst von besonders bösartigen Bakterien, aufwiesen. Bekanntlich sind derartige Erdinfektionen mit gasbrandähnlichen Erregern durchsetzt, wobei hier noch die Verschmutzung der Wunde durch Borsten und Polsterwatte der Wagenwand verschlimmernd hinzutrat.

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