Bleeding and stunned, Heydrich tried to give chase before collapsing. The assassins fled into the labyrinth of Prague.
On the morning of May 27, 1942, the trap was set at a sharp hairpin turn in the Libeň district. As Heydrich’s car slowed to navigate the curve, Gabčík stepped into the road and leveled his Sten submachine gun. He pulled the trigger. Silence. The gun had jammed. OperaciГіn Anthropoid
The silence of the Bohemian night was shattered only by the whistling wind as Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš tumbled from the belly of a British Halifax bomber. It was December 1941. Below them lay the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, a land suffocating under the iron grip of the man known as the Butcher of Prague: Reinhard Heydrich. Bleeding and stunned, Heydrich tried to give chase
Betrayed by a fellow paratrooper lured by a massive reward, Gabčík, Kubiš, and five other resistance members were cornered in the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral. For hours, they fought off hundreds of SS troops in a fierce siege. When their ammunition ran low and the Germans began flooding the crypt with water, the brave men chose their own end rather than capture. As Heydrich’s car slowed to navigate the curve,
Gabčík and Kubiš were not just soldiers; they were the tip of a spear forged by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and the British Special Operations Executive. Their mission, codenamed Operation Anthropoid, was as simple as it was suicidal: eliminate the architect of the Final Solution.