Assassination Operation Anthropoid 1941-1942

The year 1938 found the Czechoslovak Republic standing at a fateful crossroad. In the first few weeks of that year it was becoming obvious that Hitler’s Germany had decided once and for all to solve the problem of its southeastern neighbour. After the “Anschluss”(annexation) of Austria, on March 12, 1938, the Czechoslovak Republic’s already incredibly complicated strategic situation dramatically deteriorated. Only five weeks later Adolf Hitler, together with top commanding officers, devised a detailed plan of attack on Czechoslovakia code-named “Fall Grün” (The Green Plan). Simultaneously in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Konrad Henlein publicly proclaimed his party’s demands for Federative Autonomy at the Sudeten-German Party Congress, (Sudetendeutsche Partei, henceforth SdP). He did this exactly in line with the strategy he had devised in detail with Adolf Hitler at a meeting in Berlin on March 28, 1938, and a day later with the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. It was decided at these meetings that the SdP would make entirely unacceptable demands of the Czechoslovak government. This was designed to lead to an escalation of international political tension and mutual confrontation. And this is precisely what happened.