Operation Anthropoid: Why the Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich Is Framed as Courageous

# The place and the act The author opens in the crypt beneath the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague, where seven Czechoslovak resistance fighters—including Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš—made their final stand on June 18, 1942. The physical evidence remains: bullet scars and the small crypt. That setting frames Operation Anthropoid, the targeted attack that killed Reinhard Heydrich.

# The central moral question The assassination provokes a hard question: was killing Heydrich worth the Nazi reprisals that followed? The article treats this as legitimate but rejects any argument that transfers moral blame for the reprisals to the resistors. The author warns that if resistance can be labeled immoral whenever a tyrant threatens retaliation, tyrants could immobilize opposition by threatening collective punishment.

# What followed: Lidice and other reprisals

# Who was Reinhard Heydrich? The article stresses that Heydrich was not an obscure official. He headed the Reich Security Main Office, controlling the Security Police and the SD. He was involved in Einsatzgruppen mass shootings across Eastern Europe and helped construct the administrative machinery for deportation and extermination of Jews. On January 20, 1942, Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference, where senior officials coordinated implementation of the "Final Solution." The assassination occurred while the Holocaust was unfolding.

# Why the author defends the assassination The author argues that Gabčík and Kubiš struck directly at one of the principal architects of the Holocaust while mass murder was taking place. From the author's perspective as a Jew, that action provided a service: removing a key organizer of Jewish extermination at a time when many governments were failing to act.

# Context of betrayal and resistance

# The moral framing The article insists on assigning moral responsibility for reprisals to the Nazi leadership. It rejects any doctrine that would bar resistance because a tyrant promises retaliation. The author frames courageous resistance as morally defensible against systematic mass murder, and presents Gabčík and Kubiš as among the most courageous figures of World War II for their decision to act despite foreseeable costs.