But that isn’t all. Hitler has decided to vent all his frustrations on Lidice, so the village will serve as a means of catharsis and as a symbol of his avenging rage. The Reich’s inability to find and punish Heydrich’s assassins provokes a systematic hysteria beyond all human bounds. The order is that Lidice must be wiped off the map—literally. The cemetery is desecrated, the orchards destroyed, all the buildings burned, and salt thrown over the earth to make sure that nothing can ever grow here. The village is now nothing more than a hellish furnace. Bulldozers have even been sent to raze the ruins. Not a single trace of the village must remain, not even a hint of its former location.
Hitler wants to show people the price to be paid for defying the Reich, and Lidice is his expiatory victim. But he has committed a serious error. It is so long since Hitler and his colleagues lost touch with reality that they do not anticipate the worldwide repercussions that will be provoked by news of the village’s destruction. Up to now, the Nazis, if somewhat halfhearted in the concealment of their crimes, have nevertheless kept up a superficial discretion that has enabled some people to avert their gaze from the regime’s true nature. With Lidice, the scales have fallen from the whole world’s eyes. In the days that follow, Hitler will understand. For once, it is not his SS who will be let loose but an entity whose power he does not fully grasp: world opinion. Soviet newspapers declare that, from today, people will fight with the name of Lidice on their lips—and they’re right. In England, miners from Stoke-on-Trent launch an appeal to raise money for the future reconstruction of the village and come up with a slogan that will be echoed all around the world: “Lidice shall live!” In the United States, in Mexico, in Cuba, in Venezuela and Uruguay and Brazil, town squares and districts, even villages, are renamed Lidice. Egypt and India broadcast official messages of solidarity. Writers, composers, filmmakers, and dramatists pay homage to Lidice in their works. The news is relayed by newspapers, radio, and television. In Washington, D.C., the naval secretary declares: “If future generations ask us what we were fighting for, we shall tell them the story of Lidice.” The name of the martyred village is scrawled on the bombs dropped by the Allies on German cities, while in the East, Soviet soldiers do the same on the gun turrets of their T34s. By reacting like the crude psychopath that he is (rather than the head of state that he also is), Hitler will suffer his most devastating defeat in a domain he once mastered: by the end of the month the international propaganda war will be irredeemably lost.
But on June 10, 1942, neither he nor anyone else is aware of all this—least of all Gabčík and Kubiš. The news of the village’s destruction plunges the two parachutists into horror and despair. More than ever, they are wracked by guilt. No matter that they have fulfilled their mission, that the Beast is dead—no matter that they have rid Czechoslovakia and the world of one of its most evil creatures—they feel as if they themselves have killed the inhabitants of Lidice. They also fear that, as long as Hitler does not know them to be dead, the reprisals will continue indefinitely. Enclosed in the crypt, all of this churns over and over in their heads, until—exhausted by the nervous tension—they reach the only possible conclusion: they must turn themselves in. In their fevered brains they imagine asking to see Emanuel Moravec, the Czech Quisling. When they see him, they will hand over a letter explaining that they are responsible for Heydrich’s assassination; then they will shoot him, and kill themselves in his office. Lieutenant Opalka, Valčík, and the other comrades in the crypt need all their patience, friendship, diplomacy, and persuasiveness to convince the guilt-ridden parachutists not to go through with this insane plan. First of all, it’s technically unfeasible. Second, the Germans will never take them at their word. Finally, even if they managed to carry out their plan, the terror and the massacres had begun long before Heydrich’s death, and would continue long after their own. Nothing would change. Their sacrifice would be completely in vain. Gabčík and Kubiš weep from rage and powerlessness, but they end up being convinced. All the same, no one ever manages to persuade them that Heydrich’s death was good for anything.
Perhaps I am writing this book to make them understand that they are wrong.
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CONTROVERSY ON THE CZECH NET
An Internet site designed to get young Czechs interested in the history of the village of Lidice, which was utterly destroyed by the Nazis in June 1942, is offering an interactive game, the goal of which is to “burn Lidice in the shortest possible time.”
(
LIBÉRATION
, SEPTEMBER 6, 2006)
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The Gestapo is so short of leads you might think they’d given up looking for Heydrich’s assassins. They need a scapegoat to explain this incompetence and they think they might have found one. He is a civil servant for the Ministry of Work, and on the evening of May 27 he authorized the departure of a train full of Czech workers going to Berlin. Given that the three parachutists still haven’t been found, this lead seems as good as any other—so the Gestapo “establishes” that the three assassins (yes, the inquiry has made some progress—they now know that there were three of them) were on board the train. The men from Peček Palace are even in a position to give some surprising details: the fugitives hid beneath their seats during the journey and got off the train while it made a brief stop in Dresden, where they disappeared into the countryside. It’s true that the idea of the terrorists leaving their own country to take refuge in Germany seems rather daring, but you have to be more daring than that to escape the Gestapo. Unfortunately, the civil servant is not prepared to be the scapegoat, and his defense takes them by surprise: yes, he authorized the train’s departure, but only because he was told to do so by the Air Ministry in Berlin. Göring, in other words. Not only that, but the meticulous bureaucrat has kept a copy of the authorization, stamped by the Prague police services. So if there’s been a mistake, the Gestapo would have to accept its own share of the responsibility. The men from Peček Palace decide not to pursue this particular lead.
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The idea that finally solves the problem comes from that old soldier Commissioner Pannwitz, clearly a fine connoisseur of the human soul. Pannwitz begins with this observation: the climate of terror deliberately created since May 27 is counterproductive. He has nothing against terror, but in this case it’s inconvenient because it scares off those who might otherwise be tempted to inform. More than two weeks after the attack, nobody is going to risk trying to explain to the Gestapo that they know something but that, up to now, they haven’t admitted it. The Gestapo must promise—and deliver—an amnesty for anyone who comes forward of their own free will and provides information on the assassination, even if they themselves are implicated.