Crossroads - Film “Operation Anthropoid” and Real Events Happened
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A famous person said: history is always similar to be seen in multiple events along the historical river.
So a series of arrows will eventually point to the single event through various facts and documents. This event may be ranged shortly among very short moment or a long historical stage.
This paper will focus on the history from the film ‘Anthropoid’ through investigating and collecting information as to give a clear, equal and unbiased appearance towards every main characters in the film. Additionally, this paper will focus on the eventsappeared in this film.
Before introducing the event of Operation Anthropoid which is the original event in the film, we should firstly introduce the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a protectorate of Nazi Germany established on 16 March 1939 following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939. Czechoslovakia was firstly demanded to give the control of the Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler in September 1938. And on 26 September 1938, Britain and France ceded control in the Appeasement at the Munich Conference, which was finally known by the world, the Munich Agreement. Additionally, the remainder (“rump”) of Czechoslovakia was invaded and divided into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the puppet Slovak State.
Until to the date on 27 September 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, the aim of Operation Anthropoid, was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and assumed control of the territory.
Due to the reason that Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich felt the former protector Konstantin von Neurath’s “soft approach” to the Czechs had promoted anti-German sentiment and encouraged anti-German resistance via strikes and sabotage. Upon his appointment, Heydrich told his aides:
We will Germanize the Czeh vermin.
Heydrich came to Prague, the capital of Czech, to enforce policy, fight resistance to the Nazi regime, and keep up production quotas of Czech motors and arms that were “extremely important to the German war effort”. To realize his goals Heydrich demanded racial classification of those who could and could not be Germanized. He explained:
Making this Czech garbage into Germans must give way to methods based on racist thought.
During his rule by terrorizing the population of Protector before the date on December 1941, the date of starting the plan of Operation Anthropoid, Heydrich arrested estimated between 4,000 and 5,000 people. By 3 October 1941, the decision was taken by Czechoslovak military intelligence in London to kill Heydrich. This is the starting date of planning Operation Anthropoid.
Planning Operation
There are several reasons of planning to kill Heydrich. Firstly, he was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and an important figure in the rise of Adolf Hitler; he was given overall charge of the Final Solution (Holocaust) of the Jews in Europe. Secondly, killing him can help confer legitimacy on government-in-exile in London, as well as for retribution against Heydrich’s brutally efficient rule. The third reason is that, during the WWII, the resistance was active from the very beginning of occupation in several other countries defeated in open warfare, but the subjugated Czech lands remained relatively calm and produced significant amounts of materiel for Nazi Germany. The purpose of operation is to demonstrated to senior Nazis that they were not beyond the reach of allied forces and the resistance groups they supported. (Maybe this is the reason in the beginning screen that the locals want to sell the two intelligence to the Nazi. Some of the locals in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia wanted to follow the rule by Nazi German rather than defeating. Another reason of selling was probably the terrorizing control by Heydrich.)
After starting the plan, Czechoslovak intelligence was trained by the British Special Operation Executive (SOE). Preparation began on 20 October 1941. the intelligence was selected from 2,000 exiled Czechoslovak soldiers based in Britain. In the training, one of the intelligence of operation was replaced by another person after the intelligence received a head injury during training. This replacement made the new intelligence named Jan Kubis had not completed training, nor had the necessary false documents been prepared for him. (The potential reason of operation “failure”) Another intelligence was Jozef Gabcik.
Insertion
On 28 December 1941, the intelligence, Gabcik and Kubis landed near the east of Prague and there was a mistaken landing due to the navigation problems of pilots. In Prague, they contacted several families and anti-Nazi organizations who helped them during the preparations for the assassination. Upon learning of the nature of the mission, resistance leaders begged the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to call off the attack, say that:
An attempt against Heydrich’s life... would be of no use to the Allies and its consequences for our people would be immeasurable. Benes, the head of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in British, personally broadcast a message insisting that the attack go forward, although he denied any involvement after the war. Professor Voitech Mastny, an American historian of Czech descent, argues that
he clung to the scheme as the last resort to dramatize Czech resistance.
Gabcik and Kubis initially planned to kill Heydrich on a train, but after examination of the practicalities, they realized this was not going to be possible.
A second plan was to kill him on forest road that led from Heydrich’s home to Prague. They planned to pull a cable across the road that would stop Heydrich’s car but, after waiting several hours, their commander, Lt. Adolf Opalka who was a member of the Czech sabotage group Out Distance, a WWII anti-Nazi resistance group and a participant in Operation Anthropoid, came to bring them back to Prague.
A third plan was to kill Heydrich in Prague.
The Attack in Prague and Medical Treatment and Death of Heydrich
On 27 May 1942 at 10:30, Heydrich started his daily commute from his home in Paneske Brezany to his headquarters at Prague Castle. Gabcik and Kubis waited at the tram stop at a tight curve near Bulovka Hospital in Prague 8-Liben, where the curve would force the car to slow down. Josef Valcik, member of the Resistance from group Silver A, was positioned about 100 meters north of Gabcik and Kubis as lookout for the approaching car.
Heydrich's green, open-topped Mercedes 320 Convertible B reached the curve two minutes later. As Heydrich's car slowed, Gabčík stepped in front of the vehicle and tried to open fire with his Sten submachine gun, but it jammed and failed to fire. Instead of ordering his driver, SS-Oberscharführer Klein, to speed away, Heydrich called his car to halt and then stood up to shoot Gabčík with his Luger pistol. Kubiš then threw a modified anti-tank grenade (concealed in a briefcase) at the rear of the car as it stopped and its fragments ripped through the car's right rear fender, embedding shrapnel and fibres from the upholstery into Heydrich’s body, upon detonation, wounding him. Kubiš was also injured by the shrapnel.
Heydrich staggered out of the car, apparently unaware of his shrapnel injuries, with his gun in his hand; Gabčík and Kubiš fired at Heydrich with their Colt M1903 pistols but, themselves shocked by the explosion, failed to hit him. Heydrich then chased Kubiš and tried to return fire. Kubiš jumped on his bicycle and pedaled away. Heydrich ran after him for half a block but became weak from shock and collapsed. Heydrich, still with pistol in hand, gripped his left flank, which was bleeding profusely. He ordered Klein to chase Gabčík on foot, saying "Get that bastard!". Klein chased him into a butcher shop, where Gabčík shot him twice with a pistol, severely wounding him in the leg. Gabčík then escaped in a tram, reaching a local safe house.Gabčík and Kubiš did not know that Heydrich was wounded, and were convinced the attack had failed.
Late in the afternoon of 27 May, SS Karl Hermann Frank proclaimed a state of emergency and curfew in Prague. Anyone who helped the attackers was to be executed along their family. A search involving 21,000 men began and 36,000 houses were checked. By 4 June, 157 people had been executed as a result of the reprisals but the assassins had not been found and no information was forthcoming.
A Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. He was placed in the back of the van, on his stomach, and taken to the emergency room at Bulovka Hospital. He had suffered severe injuries to his left side, with major damage to his diaphragm, spleen, and one of his lungs. A splenectomy was performed, and the chest wound, left lung, and diaphragm were all debrided.
Himmler ordered another doctor, Karl Gebhardt, to fly to Prague to assume care. Despite a fever, Heydrich's recovery appeared to progress well. Theodor Morell, Hitler's personal doctor, suggested the use of sulfonamide (a new antibacterial drug), but Gebhardt, thinking Heydrich would recover, declined the suggestion. On 2 June, during a visit by Himmler, Heydrich reconciled himself to his fate by reciting a part of one of his father's operas:
The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns himself. We all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum.
Heydrich slipped into a coma after Himmler's visit and never regained consciousness. He died on 4 June; an autopsy concluded he died of sepsis which is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body’s response to infection causes injury to its tissues and organs.
Heydrich's assailants hid in safe houses and eventually took refuge in Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral, an Orthodox church in Prague. After a traitor in the Czech resistance betrayed their location, the church was surrounded by 800 members of the SS and Gestapo. Several Czechs were killed, and the remainder hid in the church's crypt. The Germans attempted to flush the men out with gunfire, tear gas, and by flooding the crypt. Eventually an entrance was made using explosives. Rather than surrender, the soldiers killed themselves. Supporters of the assassins who were killed in the wake of these events included the church's leader, Bishop Gorazd, who is now revered as a martyr of the Orthodox Church.
Consequences
Infuriated by Heydrich's deathon 9 June, the decision was made to “make up for his death”, Hitler ordered the arrest and execution of 10,000 randomly selected Czechs. But after consultations with Karl Hermann Frank, he altered his response. The Czech lands were an important industrial zone for the German military, and indiscriminate killing could reduce the region's productivity. Hitler ordered a quick investigation. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the towns of Lidice and Ležáky. A Gestapo report stated that Lidice, 22 kilometres (14 mi) north-west of Prague, was suspected as the assailants' hiding place because several Czech army officers, then in England, had come from there and the Gestapo found a resistance radio transmitter in Ležáky.
On 9 June, after discussions with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, Hitler ordered brutal reprisals. Beginning on 10 June, all males over the age of 16 in the villages of Lidice and Ležáky were murdered. All the women in Ležáky were also murdered.
All but four of the women from Lidice were deported immediately to Ravensbrück concentration camp (four were pregnant – they were subjected to forced abortions at the same hospital where Heydrich had died and the women were then sent to the concentration camp). Some children were chosen for Germanization, and 81 were killed in gas vans at the Chełmno extermination camp. Both towns were burned and Lidice's ruins were levelled.[140][141] Overall, at least 1,300 Czechs, including 200 women, were killed in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination.
Additionally, under the Hitler’s ordering investigation and reprisals on the very day of the assassination attempt, more than 13,000 were arrested, including intelligence Jan Kubis girlfriend Anna, who subsequently died in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. First Lieutenant Adolf Opalka’s aunt Marie Opalkova was executed in the Mauthausen camp on 24 October 1942; his father Viktor Jarolim was also killed. According to one estimate, 5,000 people were murdered in the reprisals.
Furthermore, in the investigation, a deadline was publicly issued to the military and the people of Czechoslovakia for the assassins to be apprehended by 18 June 1942. If they were not caught by then, the Germans threatened to spill far more blood as a consequence, believing that this threat would be enough to force a potential informant to sell out the culprits. Many civilians were indeed weary and fearful of further retaliations, making it increasingly difficult to hide information much longer. The assailants initially hid with two Prague families and later took refuge in Karel Boromejsky Church, an Eastern Orthodox church dedicated to Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Prague. The Germans were unable to locate the attackers until Karel Čurda of the "Out Distance" sabotage group turned himself in to the Gestapo and gave them the names of the team's local contacts for the bounty of one million Reichsmarks which is a currency in Germany.
(Karel Curda was an active Czech Nazi collaborator during WWII. A solider of the Czechoslovak army in exile, he was parachuted into the protectorate in 1942 as a member of the sabotage group Out Distance. After the war, Curda was tracked down and arrested. Curda was found guilty of treason and hanged on 29 April 1947. In the alternative theory from Czech historian Plachy, he gave a different account of Curda’s personality and motives. The immediate aftermath of the assassination put Curda under huge pressure as he knew the Nazis could wipe out his whole family and village, just as they had wiped out Lidce and Lezaky, two villages. However, the problem with this theory is that the massacres in Lidice and Lezaky did not occur until almost a moth after Karel Curda’s betrayal. Thus, his betrayal was mainly due to the rewarding of selling out the names of intelligence agent.)
Čurda betrayed several safe houses provided by the Jindra group, including that of the Moravec family in Žižkov. At 05:00 on 17 June, the Moravec flat was raided. The family was made to stand in the hallway while the Gestapo searched their flat. Marie Moravec was allowed to go to the toilet, where she bit into a cyanide capsule and killed herself. Alois Moravec was unaware of his family's involvement with the resistance; he was taken to the Petschek Palace together with his 17-year-old son Ata, who was tortured throughout the day but refused to talk. The youth was stupefied with brandy, shown his mother's severed head in a fish tank, and warned that, if he did not reveal the information that they were looking for, his father would be next. Ata's strong willpower finally snapped, and he told the Gestapo what they wanted to know. Vlastimil "Ata" Moravec was executed by the Nazis in Mauthausen on 24 October 1942, the same day as his father, his fiancée, her mother and her brother were executed.
Waffen-SS troops laid siege to the church the following day, but they were unable to take the paratroopers alive, despite the best efforts of 750 SS soldiers under the command of SS-Gruppenführer Karl Fischer von Treuenfeld. Kubiš, Adolf Opálka, and Josef Bublík were killed in the prayer loft after a two-hour gun battle. (Kubiš was said to have survived the battle and to have died shortly after from his injuries.) Gabčík, Josef Valcik, Jaroslav Svarc and Jan Hruby committed suicide in the crypt after repeated SS attacks, attempts to force them out with tear gas, and Prague fire brigade trucks brought in to try to flood the crypt. The German SS and police suffered casualties, as well, with 14 SS allegedly killed and 21 wounded, according to one report, although the official SS report about the fight mentioned only five wounded SS soldiers. The men in the church had only small-caliber pistols, while the attackers had machine guns, submachine guns, and hand grenades. After the battle, Čurda confirmed the identity of the dead Czech resistance fighters, including Kubiš and Gabčík.
(Gabcik and the others, with the exception of Kubis, who was seriously wounded by a grenade, committed suicide before the Nazis could take them alive in the Church catacombs.
Kubis was wounded in the gun battle and died shortly after arrival at the hospital. In revenge, the Nazis murdered 24 family members and close relatives of Jan Kubis in the concentration camp.
Adolf Opalka was injured by shrapnel, committed suicide. Shortly after his departure, on his 27thbirthday, Opalka wrote of homesickness:
I'm 27 years old today, the entire trip I pondered upon the words "Longing for home is a terrible thing, I know". Yes, only now do I know and understand. And this "homesickness" of Božena Němcová, which I never understood, is nothing compared to my longing for home. I'm willing to suffer through, and do whatever it takes, but only home and home and to honestly work, work for something... How can some speak of beauty, when they've never seen Rešice and the fields from Kordula to Rešice, who never strolled through the warm dirt there, who never felt the warm air and over the grain fields, who never saw our chapel in the milk of white cherries, Husák's garden, which always reminded me of Sholokhov, especially the dirt lumps under the "vortex" and the "Bare Hill" and all the other places on all of which I am. Parts of me are all over the world. In England, little was left of me, maybe more in Scotland... 27 years of life behind me. Death for my homeland. With that I have dealt, and am ready to do what it takes.
The other agents names are Josef Bublik, Jan Hruby, Josef Valcik and Jaroslav Svarc.)
Bishop Gorazd took the blame for the actions in the church, in an attempt to minimize the reprisals among his flock, and even wrote letters to the Nazi authorities, who arrested him on 27 June 1942 and tortured him. On 4 September 1942, the bishop, the church's priests, and senior lay leaders were taken to Kobylisy Shooting Range in a northern suburb of Prague and shot by Nazi firing squads. For his actions, Bishop Gorazd was later glorified as a martyr by the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Future Aftermath
Heydrich's replacements were Ernst Kaltenbrunner as the chief of RSHA, and Karl Hermann Frank (27–28 May 1942) and Kurt Daluege (28 May 1942 – 14 October 1943) as the new acting Reichsprotektors. After Heydrich's death, implementation of the policies formalised at the Wannsee conference he chaired was accelerated. The first three true death camps, designed for mass killing with no legal process or pretext, were built and operated at Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec. The project was named Operation Reinhard after Heydrich.
文献全部摘自维基百科，由本人筛选和整理，主要出自如下：
Operation Anthropoid from Wikipedia
Reinhard Heydrich from Wikipedia
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from Wikipedia
German occupation of Czechoslovakia from Wikipedia
- 导演: 西恩·埃利斯
- 主演: 詹米·多南 / 基里安·墨菲 / 哈里·劳埃德
- 类型: 剧情 / 历史 / 战争
- 地区: 捷克 / 英国 / 美国 / 法国
- 上映: 2016-07-01(卡罗维发利电影节) / 2016-09-09(英国)