The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 5 - Assassination

What are the rules of warfare you can't break?

Shooting or otherwise eliminating prisoners. That's something that's frowned upon but... I believe relatively new in the grand scheme of things? Last hundred years or so? Heck, I might be entirely wrong about that. Chemical weapons are banned, we all know that, but again that's last century as well. Bombing hospitals sounds awful, but not sure if it's war-crime-y or not. Really, there are few I know that are set in stone, but I'm sure the Geneva Convention stuff lays it out pretty clearly.

Reinhard Heydrich: Reich Protector,
Holocaust architect, and world record
holder for smallest amount of hair
ever to be parted.

The reason I'm asking is there's a grey area in much of what the Ministry was doing. Much of it (darn near all of it) was decidedly un-British, fueling the fires for all the people that hoped the Ministry would burn to the ground to save the English reputation. One such area was the idea of political assassinations. Is that something that's low on the war-respectability metre, if there was one? Sneaking in and obliterating a main target and sleeking away in the night? The Ministry fell on the side believing it was all part of the game, once more causing a raucous in the more traditional military as they scoffed at the idea. Assassinations were very much on the table. The blowback would be so strong they simply didn't tell M16 what they were doing as it was not going to be received well. Again, the Ungentlemanly would enter the world of the underhanded, backroom machinations that end in bloodshed with little support from the government or military.

As for the target, it couldn't have happened to a worse person. Reinhard Heydrich. The Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. He spent some of his time Germanizing the Aryan people there, and the rest of it killing those that weren't. His actions were so astoundingly cruel that Hitler - Hitler! - referred to him as the man with the iron heart. Fortunately for the Ministry he was also perhaps a little cocky. They discovered he went by car to Prague on a regular basis, doing so unescorted save for a driver to demonstrate his lack of fear. What the Allies saw was a lack of preparedness.

The plan was to take two Czechoslovakian men and ambush his vehicle once it was in an empty enough stretch of road. The training was extensive, as well as the planning. They were to be parachuted in with their weapons, befriend the locals, and keep a close enough watch over Heydrich to learn his schedule. To assault the car, they had a new grenade created specifically for it. A tank grenade would have been too heavy, and a regular infantry grenade likely wouldn't have gotten the job done. The people back at Churchill's Toy Shop made them a new one - light enough to throw and heavy enough to do the damage; yet another marvel of engineering that came out of such a small group.

Heydrich, right, seen partying wildly
at a Nazi shindig.

Eventually it was time for the plan to be set in motion, which on the British end was rather simple. They just had to throw the guys out of a plane and let them parachute in. There wasn't much they could do - let alone hear if they survived - as most of these plans went radio silent until they heard back from them again once they escaped. That, or, quite possibly, never hear from them again. Once they were dropped they were on their own, and unfortunately, this time the drop wasn't great. They landed in the wrong spot and one was injured upon landing. Fortunately, they managed to run into some locals who took them in and hid them while they planned. They eventually received a tip that Heydrich was to be leaving for Prague at a specific date and time. It was then they decided they would strike.

The two men planned to lay in wait and attack upon the car's arrival. Unfortunately for them, the target went on a walk with his wife and kids, resulting in an hour long delay of which the assassins didn't anticipate nor understand, making them understandably jumpy. (As a side note, it's really weird when you hear one of these guys has a wife and kids and as a reader you're actively hoping the assassination goes off without a hitch.) Nerves pounding, the assassins finally saw their target. One decided he didn't fully trust the explosive and instead pulled out his gun. When the car was about to pass, he moved to the middle of the street and fired - but the gun didn't go off. It jammed, so much like an exciting plot twist in a movie. Enraged, Heydrich ordered his driver to go and shoot the would-be killer. The other assassin, more trusting of the grenade, tossed it at the vehicle but came up short, hitting the back tire. The explosion was massive, sending shrapnel everywhere, including into the other assassin. Somehow, the grenade didn't manage to kill anyone, ally or enemy. The driver recovered, got out of the vehicle and pulled the trigger on the injured man with the jammed gun - only to discover that his gun jammed as well! Bleeding and in great risk with no weapons to fire, the assassin grabbed a nearby bike and fled. A shooting war broke out with the driver and the remaining assassin, the former pulling out a new pistol. Expecting reinforcements from the Nazi regime due to all the, you know, explosions and gunfire, the last remaining Czech fled as well. 

Heydrich's car, post-bombing. As it turns out,
driving around in a Benz in a bad neighbourhood
would cause you some trouble even back then.

They were to discover later that the shrapnel from the explosion managed to slowly kill Reinhard Heydrich, making for a successful if messy assassination. Sadly, the story doesn't end on a positive note. The two Czechs were under mounting pressure and were eventually found out and killed in a two hour gunfight in a church. In typical Nazi fashion, possible sympathizing villages had their men shot and their women and children gassed. It was an important reminder that while the Ministry was certainly finding successes, there were dire consequences as well.

It was an important lesson to learn. The Ministry had plenty of work yet left to do, and, while I apologize for the rather click-bait style sentence, what would happen next could very well have changed the course of the war.