Not Good Enough

The Nazis could not do enough for Hangman Reinhard Heydrich. His bomb-gutted body was borne through torchlit streets; it lay in state in gabled Prague Castle. Four Black Shirts stood as a guard of honor at each of the four corners of a coffin scarred by a huge swastika. In courtyards and alleyways the volleys of retributory gunfire were like the spitting of angry cats. At each spatter another Czech fell. In ten days the Germans admitted 216 Czechs shot. But that was not good enough.

In the greatest man hunt in modern history, Nazi police moved from house to house, sniffing out new victims for the Heydrich funeral pyre. Often they chose those merely suspected of approving of the attack on Heydrich. But they did not find the two patriots, possibly Czech parachutists dropped from British planes, who had struck down the No. 2 Gestapoman. Dr. Emil Hacha, puppet President of the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate, offered a 10,000,000-crown reward ($340,000 at pre-war exchange values) for the executioners of the Executioner. It was not good enough.

A cortege, with all the outward signs of oldtime Nazi arrogance, stalked through Prague streets lined with sullen Czech workers. Then the body was shipped to Berlin for a princely funeral ordered by Adolf Hitler. What happened to Heydrich's soul, no one knew.

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