Starting on 9th June 1942, German police and SS officials liquidated the Czech village
Starting on 9th June 1942, German police and SS officials liquidated the Czech village of Lidice as part of reprisals for the assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak resistance operatives. Heydrich, a senior Nazi official, had been appointed Acting-Protector of German-occupied Bohemia and Moravia in September 1941, where he earned the nickname "Butcher of Prague" for his brutality. On 27th May 1942, as he was being driven through Prague in his open-roofed car, he was mortally wounded in an attack by two exiled Czechoslovak soldiers, who had been trained in Britain for the mission. He died eight days later. An outraged Adolf Hitler demanded the murder of up to 10,000 Czechs as revenge for the attack but was dissuaded by the Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia, Karl Hermann Frank, who argued that this type of reprisal might interfere with long-term economic and political plans for the region. Nonetheless, Frank imposed martial law and init...