Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
On this day, June 10, 1942, Lidice, Czechoslovakia, was destroyed in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_10• 1942 – World War II: The Lidice massacre is perpetrated as a reprisal for the assassination of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich.
• 1944 – World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children massacred at Oradour-sur-Glane, France.
• 1944 – World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece, 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.
• 1944 – World War II: Six hundred forty-two men, women and children massacred at Oradour-sur-Glane, France.
• 1944 – World War II: In Distomo, Boeotia, Greece, 218 men, women and children are massacred by German troops.
Lidice massacre
Tools
Coordinates: 50°08'35"N 14°11'25"E
Lidice in 1942 after its destruction by the Nazis
Location: Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Date: 10 June 1942
Target: Czechs
Attack type: Massacre
Weapons: Firearms
Deaths: 340 including 82 children exterminated later after transfer to Chełmno
Perpetrators: Nazi Germany
Motive: Reprisal attack following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Memorial to the murdered children of Lidice
Lidice museum
The Lidice massacre (Czech: Vyhlazení Lidic) was the complete destruction of the village of Lidice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which is now a part of the Czech Republic, in June 1942 on orders from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and acting Reichsprotektor Kurt Daluege, successor to Reinhard Heydrich. It has gained historical attention as one of the most documented instances of German war crimes during the Second World War, particularly given the deliberate killing of children.
In reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942, all 173 men from the village who were over 15 years of age were executed on 10 June 1942. A further 11 men from the village who were not present at the time were later arrested and executed soon afterwards, along with several others who were already under arrest. Out of a total 503 inhabitants, 307 women and children were sent to a makeshift detention center in a Kladno school. Of these, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; 7 children who were considered racially suitable and thus eligible for Germanisation were handed over to SS families, and the rest were sent to the Chełmno extermination camp, where they were gassed to death.
The Associated Press, quoting German radio transmissions which it received in New York, said: "All male grownups of the town were shot, while the women were placed in a concentration camp, and the children were entrusted to appropriate educational institutions." Approximately 340 people from Lidice were murdered in the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). After the war ended, only 143 women and 17 children returned.
Nazi propaganda openly and proudly announced the events at Lidice in direct contrast to the disinformation and secrecy involved with other crimes against civilian populations, with intense outrage occurring among Allied nations and particularly Anglosphere countries. The history has been depicted in multiple forms of media since the end of the conflict. Examples include the internationally known drama film Operation Daybreak and the composer Bohuslav Martinů composed orchestral work Memorial to Lidice.
{snip}
Tools
Coordinates: 50°08'35"N 14°11'25"E
Lidice in 1942 after its destruction by the Nazis
Location: Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Date: 10 June 1942
Target: Czechs
Attack type: Massacre
Weapons: Firearms
Deaths: 340 including 82 children exterminated later after transfer to Chełmno
Perpetrators: Nazi Germany
Motive: Reprisal attack following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Memorial to the murdered children of Lidice
Lidice museum
The Lidice massacre (Czech: Vyhlazení Lidic) was the complete destruction of the village of Lidice in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which is now a part of the Czech Republic, in June 1942 on orders from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and acting Reichsprotektor Kurt Daluege, successor to Reinhard Heydrich. It has gained historical attention as one of the most documented instances of German war crimes during the Second World War, particularly given the deliberate killing of children.
In reprisal for the assassination of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich in the late spring of 1942, all 173 men from the village who were over 15 years of age were executed on 10 June 1942. A further 11 men from the village who were not present at the time were later arrested and executed soon afterwards, along with several others who were already under arrest. Out of a total 503 inhabitants, 307 women and children were sent to a makeshift detention center in a Kladno school. Of these, 184 women and 88 children were deported to concentration camps; 7 children who were considered racially suitable and thus eligible for Germanisation were handed over to SS families, and the rest were sent to the Chełmno extermination camp, where they were gassed to death.
The Associated Press, quoting German radio transmissions which it received in New York, said: "All male grownups of the town were shot, while the women were placed in a concentration camp, and the children were entrusted to appropriate educational institutions." Approximately 340 people from Lidice were murdered in the German reprisal (192 men, 60 women and 88 children). After the war ended, only 143 women and 17 children returned.
Nazi propaganda openly and proudly announced the events at Lidice in direct contrast to the disinformation and secrecy involved with other crimes against civilian populations, with intense outrage occurring among Allied nations and particularly Anglosphere countries. The history has been depicted in multiple forms of media since the end of the conflict. Examples include the internationally known drama film Operation Daybreak and the composer Bohuslav Martinů composed orchestral work Memorial to Lidice.
{snip}
Mon Jun 10, 2024: On this day, June 10, 1942, Lidice, Czechoslovakia, was destroyed in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Mon May 27, 2024: On this day, May 27, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich was mortally wounded in an ambush in Prague.
Sat Jun 10, 2023: On this day, June 10, 1942 and 1944, there were three German-led massacres.
Fri Jun 10, 2022: On this day, June 10, 1942 and 1944, there were three German-led massacres.
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
although people aren't as familiar with him as they are with the others.
Heydrich was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy/Acting Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. He served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, now known as Interpol) and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.
He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938. The attacks were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians and presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing including 1.3 million Jews.
[...]
Heydrich created the "Zentralstelle IIP Polen" unit of the Gestapo to coordinate the ethnic cleansing of Poles in "Operation Tannenberg" and the Intelligenzaktion,[89] two codenames for extermination actions directed at the Polish people during the German occupation of Poland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich#
Reinhard Heydrich
Heydrich in 1940
Personal details
Born: Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich; 7 March 1904; Halle an der Saale, Prussia, German Empire
Died: 4 June 1942 (aged 38); Prague-Libeň, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
(now Prague, Czech Republic)
Manner of death: Assassination
Nicknames: The Hangman, The Butcher of Prague, The Blond Beast, Himmler's Evil Genius, Young Evil God of Death, The Man with the Iron Heart
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (/ˈhaɪdrɪk/ HY-drik; German: [ˈʁaɪnhaʁt ˈtʁɪstan ˈʔɔʏɡn̩ ˈhaɪdʁɪç] ⓘ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
Heydrich was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy/Acting Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. He served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, now known as Interpol) and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.
Many historians regard Heydrich as one of the darkest figures within the Nazi regime; Adolf Hitler described him as "the man with the iron heart". He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938. The attacks were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians and presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing, including 1.3 million Jews.
Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of Operation Anthropoid. He was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill him; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Heydrich died from his injuries on 4 June. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; the men and boys age 14 and above were shot and most of the women and children were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
{snip}
Death
Main article: Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
The Mercedes-Benz 320 Convertible B in which Heydrich was mortally wounded
Czechoslovak SOE agents who killed Heydrich
Jozef Gabčík, c. 1942
Jan Kubiš, c. 1942
In London, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile resolved to kill Heydrich. Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík headed the team chosen for the mission, trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). On 28 December 1941 they parachuted into the Protectorate, where they lived in hiding, preparing for the mission.
On 27 May 1942, Heydrich planned to meet Hitler in Berlin. German documents suggest that Hitler intended to transfer him to German-occupied France where the French Resistance was gaining ground. To get from his home to the airport, Heydrich would have to pass a section where the Dresden-Prague road merges with a road to the Troja Bridge. The junction in the Prague suburb of Libeň was well suited for the attack because motorists have to slow for a hairpin bend. As Heydrich's car slowed, Gabčík took aim with a Sten submachine gun, but it jammed and failed to fire. Heydrich ordered his driver, Klein, to halt and attempted to confront Gabčík rather than speed away. Kubiš, who had not been spotted by Heydrich or Klein, threw a converted anti-tank mine at the car as it stopped, which landed against the rear wheel. The explosion ripped through the right rear fender and wounded Heydrich, with metal fragments and fibres from the upholstery causing serious damage to his left side: he suffered major injuries to his diaphragm, spleen, and one lung, as well as a broken rib. Kubiš received a minor shrapnel wound to his face. After Kubiš fled, Heydrich ordered Klein to chase Gabčík on foot, but Gabčík escaped after he shot and wounded Klein.
A Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. He was placed on his stomach in the back of the van and taken to the emergency room at Bulovka Hospital. A splenectomy was performed, and the chest wound, left lung, and diaphragm were all debrided. Himmler ordered Karl Gebhardt to fly to Prague to assume care. Despite a fever, Heydrich's recovery appeared to progress well. Hitler's personal doctor Theodor Morell suggested the use of the new antibacterial drug sulfonamide, but Gebhardt thought that Heydrich would recover and declined the suggestion. Heydrich reconciled himself to his fate on 2 June, during a visit by Himmler, by reciting a quotation from one of his father's operas:
On 3 June, Heydrich fell into a coma; he died the following day. An autopsy concluded that he died of sepsis. Professors R. J. Defalque and A. J. Wright of the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that pulmonary embolism and/or brain ischemia may have been decisive factors. He was 38 years old.
{snip}
Heydrich in 1940
Personal details
Born: Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich; 7 March 1904; Halle an der Saale, Prussia, German Empire
Died: 4 June 1942 (aged 38); Prague-Libeň, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
(now Prague, Czech Republic)
Manner of death: Assassination
Nicknames: The Hangman, The Butcher of Prague, The Blond Beast, Himmler's Evil Genius, Young Evil God of Death, The Man with the Iron Heart
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (/ˈhaɪdrɪk/ HY-drik; German: [ˈʁaɪnhaʁt ˈtʁɪstan ˈʔɔʏɡn̩ ˈhaɪdʁɪç] ⓘ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
Heydrich was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy/Acting Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. He served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, now known as Interpol) and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.
Many historians regard Heydrich as one of the darkest figures within the Nazi regime; Adolf Hitler described him as "the man with the iron heart". He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938. The attacks were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians and presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing, including 1.3 million Jews.
Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of Operation Anthropoid. He was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill him; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Heydrich died from his injuries on 4 June. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; the men and boys age 14 and above were shot and most of the women and children were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
{snip}
Death
Main article: Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
The Mercedes-Benz 320 Convertible B in which Heydrich was mortally wounded
Czechoslovak SOE agents who killed Heydrich
Jozef Gabčík, c. 1942
Jan Kubiš, c. 1942
In London, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile resolved to kill Heydrich. Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík headed the team chosen for the mission, trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). On 28 December 1941 they parachuted into the Protectorate, where they lived in hiding, preparing for the mission.
On 27 May 1942, Heydrich planned to meet Hitler in Berlin. German documents suggest that Hitler intended to transfer him to German-occupied France where the French Resistance was gaining ground. To get from his home to the airport, Heydrich would have to pass a section where the Dresden-Prague road merges with a road to the Troja Bridge. The junction in the Prague suburb of Libeň was well suited for the attack because motorists have to slow for a hairpin bend. As Heydrich's car slowed, Gabčík took aim with a Sten submachine gun, but it jammed and failed to fire. Heydrich ordered his driver, Klein, to halt and attempted to confront Gabčík rather than speed away. Kubiš, who had not been spotted by Heydrich or Klein, threw a converted anti-tank mine at the car as it stopped, which landed against the rear wheel. The explosion ripped through the right rear fender and wounded Heydrich, with metal fragments and fibres from the upholstery causing serious damage to his left side: he suffered major injuries to his diaphragm, spleen, and one lung, as well as a broken rib. Kubiš received a minor shrapnel wound to his face. After Kubiš fled, Heydrich ordered Klein to chase Gabčík on foot, but Gabčík escaped after he shot and wounded Klein.
A Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. He was placed on his stomach in the back of the van and taken to the emergency room at Bulovka Hospital. A splenectomy was performed, and the chest wound, left lung, and diaphragm were all debrided. Himmler ordered Karl Gebhardt to fly to Prague to assume care. Despite a fever, Heydrich's recovery appeared to progress well. Hitler's personal doctor Theodor Morell suggested the use of the new antibacterial drug sulfonamide, but Gebhardt thought that Heydrich would recover and declined the suggestion. Heydrich reconciled himself to his fate on 2 June, during a visit by Himmler, by reciting a quotation from one of his father's operas:
Ja, die Welt ist nur ein Leierkasten,
den unser Herrgott selber dreht.
Jeder muß nach dem Liede tanzen,
das gerade auf der Walze steht.
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.
On 3 June, Heydrich fell into a coma; he died the following day. An autopsy concluded that he died of sepsis. Professors R. J. Defalque and A. J. Wright of the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that pulmonary embolism and/or brain ischemia may have been decisive factors. He was 38 years old.
{snip}
Mon May 27, 2024: On this day, May 27, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich was mortally wounded in an ambush in Prague.
The Man in the High Castle
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author: Philip K. Dick
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre: alternative history, science fiction, philosophical fiction
Publisher: Putnam
Publication date: October 1962
The Man in the High Castle (1962), by Philip K. Dick, is an alternative history novel wherein the Axis Powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the life of several characters living under Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany as they rule a partitioned United States. The titular character is the mysterious author of a novel-within-the-novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a subversive alternative history of the war in which the Allied Powers are victorious.
Dick's thematic inspirations include the alternative history of the American Civil War, Bring the Jubilee (1953), by Ward Moore, and the I Ching, a Chinese book of divination that features in the story and the actions of the characters. The Man in the High Castle won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963, and was adapted to television for Amazon Prime Video as The Man in the High Castle in 2015.
Synopsis
Background
In The Man in the High Castle alternative history, Giuseppe Zangara assassinates President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, resulting in the continuation of the Great Depression and the policy of United States non-interventionism at the start of World War II in 1939. American inaction allows Nazi Germany to conquer and annex continental Europe and the Soviet Union into the Reich. The exterminations of the Jews, the Romani, the Bible Students, the Slavs, and all other peoples whom the Nazis considered subhuman ensued. The Axis powers then jointly conquered Africa, and still compete for the control of South America in 1962. Imperial Japan invaded the West Coast of the United States, while Nazi Germany invaded the East Coast; the surrender of the Allies ended World War II in 1947.
By 1962, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are the world's superpowers, fighting a geopolitical cold war over the world, and in particular over the former United States and South America. Japan extended the Co-Prosperity Pacific Alliance with the establishment of the Pacific States of America (PSA), with the politically neutral Rocky Mountain States acting as a buffer with the Nazi states to the east. Nazi North America is composed of two countries: The South, and the northeastern part of the former contiguous United States of America, which is referred to as "the U.S." in the book, both ruled by collaborationist pro-Nazi puppet regimes. Canada remains an independent country.
The aged Adolf Hitler is incapacitated by tertiary syphilis, Martin Bormann is the acting Chancellor of Germany and the inner-circle Nazis—Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Hermann Göring, Arthur Seyss-Inquart—vie to succeed Hitler as the Führer of the Greater Germanic Reich. Technologically, the Nazis have drained the Mediterranean Sea for lebensraum and farmland, developed and used the hydrogen bomb, developed rockets for traveling throughout the world and into outer space, such as the colonization missions to the Moon, and to the planets Venus and Mars.
{snip}
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author: Philip K. Dick
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre: alternative history, science fiction, philosophical fiction
Publisher: Putnam
Publication date: October 1962
The Man in the High Castle (1962), by Philip K. Dick, is an alternative history novel wherein the Axis Powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the life of several characters living under Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany as they rule a partitioned United States. The titular character is the mysterious author of a novel-within-the-novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a subversive alternative history of the war in which the Allied Powers are victorious.
Dick's thematic inspirations include the alternative history of the American Civil War, Bring the Jubilee (1953), by Ward Moore, and the I Ching, a Chinese book of divination that features in the story and the actions of the characters. The Man in the High Castle won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963, and was adapted to television for Amazon Prime Video as The Man in the High Castle in 2015.
Synopsis
Background
In The Man in the High Castle alternative history, Giuseppe Zangara assassinates President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, resulting in the continuation of the Great Depression and the policy of United States non-interventionism at the start of World War II in 1939. American inaction allows Nazi Germany to conquer and annex continental Europe and the Soviet Union into the Reich. The exterminations of the Jews, the Romani, the Bible Students, the Slavs, and all other peoples whom the Nazis considered subhuman ensued. The Axis powers then jointly conquered Africa, and still compete for the control of South America in 1962. Imperial Japan invaded the West Coast of the United States, while Nazi Germany invaded the East Coast; the surrender of the Allies ended World War II in 1947.
By 1962, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany are the world's superpowers, fighting a geopolitical cold war over the world, and in particular over the former United States and South America. Japan extended the Co-Prosperity Pacific Alliance with the establishment of the Pacific States of America (PSA), with the politically neutral Rocky Mountain States acting as a buffer with the Nazi states to the east. Nazi North America is composed of two countries: The South, and the northeastern part of the former contiguous United States of America, which is referred to as "the U.S." in the book, both ruled by collaborationist pro-Nazi puppet regimes. Canada remains an independent country.
The aged Adolf Hitler is incapacitated by tertiary syphilis, Martin Bormann is the acting Chancellor of Germany and the inner-circle Nazis—Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Hermann Göring, Arthur Seyss-Inquart—vie to succeed Hitler as the Führer of the Greater Germanic Reich. Technologically, the Nazis have drained the Mediterranean Sea for lebensraum and farmland, developed and used the hydrogen bomb, developed rockets for traveling throughout the world and into outer space, such as the colonization missions to the Moon, and to the planets Venus and Mars.
{snip}
Mon May 27, 2024: "The Man in the High Castle"