What followed the assassination

Superintendent Heinz Pannwitz is named chief of the investigative committee. He has one hundred and twenty specialists from the entire Protectorate and Reich at his disposal. Around two hundred members of the Gestapo, SD, thousands of soldiers of Waffen-SS, the Wehrmacht, German and Czech police forces which are in phalanxes searching forests and colonies of cottages. Five thousand towns and villages are being searched one flat after another from the cellar to the attic. Without result. The Protectorate wireless is broadcasting threats: Those helping the assassinators or those who know something and do not report it will be shot together with their entire family. Only 309 reports are sent in. None of the reports lead anywhere. Not even an offer of a high financial reward works on anyone. The Germans burn down the village of Lidice. Later they choose a different method. They commission the minister of propaganda Emanuel Moravec to declare an amnesty for everyone, including the assassinators, if they own up in the period from the 12th to June 18th. Two thousand reports arrive at the police. The parachutist Karel Čurda enters the Gestapo headquarters in Petschek Palace on June 16th. It is he who leads the Gestapo on the right track, reveals the names and addresses of those harbouring and cooperating with the resistance fighters. Some of them cannot stand the torture and give away the parachutists who are hidden in the Prague church of St. Cyril and Methodius in Resslova Street. This is where a massive police operation takes place on June 18th 1942. Around 750 men attack the seven hidden soldiers. After about 6 hours all of the parachutists are dead. Hitler is raging after the assassination of Heydrich; nothing like it has happened before. He craves revenge. At first he wants to execute every tenth Czech citizen as a warning. This Slavic nation is to be definitively exterminated, Germanized and displaced. This does not happen. After the assassination, the Nazis torture hundreds of resistance fighters in the Petschek Palace, they wipe out the villages Lidice and Ležáky, they carry out endless executions in the Kobylisy Shooting Range, in October 1942 a total of 264 resistance fighters or their family members die in Mauthausen. Almost 15,000 thousand people are affected in some way: imprisoned, executed or deported to concentration camps.