Heydrich’s Last Drive: Operation Anthropoid and the Bend in the Road

May 27th, 1942. A tram stop on a bend in Prague. A gun jams, a bomb explodes, and the most feared man in occupied Europe is fatally wounded. This documentary follows Reinhard Heydrich from a music school in Halle to the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin and Prague Castle: the violinist mocked as a boy, the naval officer dismissed in disgrace, the founder of the SS security service, the organiser of the Night of the Long Knives, the author of the Gleiwitz deception, the chairman of the Wannsee Conference. And it tells the story of the men who stopped him: Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš of Operation Anthropoid, and of the price paid at Lidice and Ležáky. CHAPTERS 0:00 Prologue 2:49 File 01 — The violinist from Halle 5:13 File 02 — The cadet 7:09 File 03 — The broken promise 8:50 File 04 — Twenty minutes 11:15 File 05 — The rumour 12:30 File 06 — From Munich to Berlin 14:01 File 07 — The Night of the Long Knives 16:13 File 08 — The man who made files 18:33 File 09 — The Night of Broken Glass 20:27 File 10 — The fake attack 21:38 File 11 — The empire of terror 24:15 File 12 — The letter 25:00 File 13 — Prague 27:19 File 14 — The villa by the lake 29:09 File 15 — Anthropoid 31:00 File 16 — The bend 33:21 File 17 — Revenge 37:04 Epilogue — The name Sources: Neue Deutsche Biographie (deutsche-biographie.de); Deutsches Historisches Museum (LeMO); United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Holocaust Encyclopedia); House of the Wannsee Conference (ghwk.de); Lidice Memorial (lidice-memorial.cz); Military History Institute Prague (vhu.cz); Czech Radio; Czech Television; Yad Vashem. Maps: Natural Earth; historical borders: historical-basemaps (A. Ourednik). Borders and routes are approximate. Documents, cards and telegrams shown on screen are reconstructions for illustration unless marked as original. Quotes are given as reported. Music and sound effects were created for this video. Photos: Wikimedia Commons, including Bundesarchiv (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE), U.S. National Archives, Czech archives and museums. Full list of photos, authors and licences: (see CREDITS.md — paste here). This is an educational history documentary. It does not glorify or promote Nazism or any extremist ideology. We remember the victims of the Holocaust, of the terror in the Protectorate, of Lidice and Ležáky, and the paratroopers and the families who hid them. #WW2 #History #Documentary