240. The Second World War along the Elbe River
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Hello and welcome to a special episode of Battleground 45 with me, Saul David. Today I'm joined by historian Keith Lowe to look ahead to the end of the Second World War and, in particular, to discuss a tour we're jointly leading called Victory in Europe, the End of the War in the Elbe.

It's organized by the excellent National World War II Museum in New Orleans and runs from the 6th to the 13th of May with an option for two-day extensions on both ends. So we'll come to a bit more of the detail of the tour in a moment. This is going to be my first one, Keith. You've done tours for the National World War II Museum before. Give us a kind of sense of the sort of conditions that the tourists are likely to enjoy on these tours.

Well, you won't be digging your own latrines. Let's put it that way. Good to hear. It's lovely, actually. I've done a couple of these things before, and they really look after you. There's wonderful hotels you stay in. We're going to be staying on a ship, on a boat. So there's that. And?

Yeah, great food, great company, people who are interested in the subject. What could go wrong? Yeah, and it's very useful having this chat with you actually now, Keith, because I'm up on the history or at least a lot of the history of the sites and sounds and places we're going to be going to. But I haven't actually done the recce, which you did before Christmas. So it'll be quite useful to get your kind of bird's eye view of some of the sites. But we'll come on to that in a moment just to give a tiny bit more detail about

The tour, at least the one we're doing, because there are two same tours going in different directions, but our one begins in Berlin and ends in Prague and includes two nights in hotels and five aboard a ship, which you mentioned, the Viking Bela, which is, I suppose, a riverboat for a voyage down the Elbe River. And on route, we're going to take in some of the wonderful and relevant sights there.

partly connected to the end of the Second World War and partly locations that have a general historical significance in World War II. And they include Magdeburg, Wittenberg, Torgau, Dresden, Königstein Castle, Sonnenstein, Theresienstadt, and of course, Prague itself. I mentioned the option to do the two-day pre- and post-tour extensions. You're going to lead the pre-tour option, Keith, called Berlin Divided.

And I'm hosting the post-tour, which will concentrate in Prague on Operation Anthropoid. And we'll come to that. I'm sure some of the listeners are well aware what we're referring to there. But just very briefly, give us a sense of the pre-tour in Berlin. I'm going to miss that, Keith. I'm actually quite sad about that. But tell us a little bit about the ground you're going to cover in Berlin before we get on to the tour proper. Right. Well, Berlin, I mean, Berlin's kind of, it's the beginning and the end of the story, isn't it? I mean, this is...

This is where the war was conceived and run from, but it's also where the war very much came to an end. So you will be sort of seeing a bit of both, really, and a lot of what happened in between. I mean, Berlin is one of these incredible cities where...

Every street corner has got some kind of major historical significance to it. I mean, there's plaques to atrocities everywhere. There's buildings which used to be inhabited by the SS or there's bunkers buried underneath car parks that we'll be wandering past. There's, of course, all the stuff to do with the Holocaust, which was planned from Berlin. So there's the gigantic, probably the biggest memorial to...

the Holocaust in any city really in the world. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe, which is right in the centre of Berlin by the Brandenburg Gate. So we'll be doing a walking tour there. And we'll also be seeing a place which not a lot of people do. You don't get a lot of tourists going to this place. Karlshorst Palace, where of course the surrender was signed

at midnight on the 8th of May 1945. And this is a bit out of the way, but it's well worth going to. Upstairs, there's a whole exhibition about the GDR and the fight between the Soviets and the Germans. But downstairs is where the surrender documents were signed. It's preserved exactly as it was on the day. I mean, it's like being transported back in time. It's amazing.

and there's nobody there. So it's wonderful. You wander around, you've got the whole place to yourself. Yeah, I mean, the great thing about a tour of Berlin, of course, we're concentrating on the end of the Second World War, but there's so much more history than that, isn't there? The Berlin Wall. I mean, you've got that Frederick the Great, I'm sure you're not going to be going to some of those sites, but it is a wonderful city to spend a couple of days in. And I'm sure there'll be a little bit of free time for the tourists. But anyway, moving rapidly on, because we've

quite a bit of ground to cover. One of the first places we're going to get to, because I mean, I'm sure listeners will know that Berlin itself is not on the Elbe River. So we're actually going to have to move by road from Berlin to the Elbe River to Magdeburg. We're going to spend a little bit of time or a little bit of a tour of Magdeburg. Tell us what's particularly interesting about Magdeburg.

Yeah, well, along the way, I think we're probably going to go to Sachsenhausen as well, which is one of the concentration camps that is probably not so well known as places like Auschwitz and so on. So I think we might stop off there. And that's a really interesting place, but I won't go into that in too much detail now. Magdeburg, I mean, you were talking about the sort of deep history of Berlin and Frederick the Great and blah, blah, blah.

Magdeburg is another one of those cities which has got a real deep history. It was revered by the Nazis because of this deep history that the most famous guy in Magdeburg's history is Otto the Great, Otto I, who was the very first Holy Roman Emperor.

The Nazis loved this guy because he, of course, conquered the East. Magdeburg sits on the Elbe River, and on the other side of the Elbe back in the 10th century was where all the Slavic tribes were. Otto conquered these Slavic tribes, and the Nazis viewed him as the leader of the First Reich.

So they kind of had this sort of mythology about him. And they did all kinds of things in the city. Like they built a shrine for the top Nazis when they died. They were to be sort of buried in this mausoleum. So sort of the first Gauleiter of the city is buried there. And they were going to bury like SS heroes there and so on. And the point of this is that this shrine is on the city walls and it's facing eastwards to the Slavic lands that are going to be conquered by the Nazis.

All of it, which ends tragically, of course, in 1945 when the Slavs come home, come back. Yeah, it's ironic, isn't it? A day later, we're moving on down the Elbe and we're heading towards Wittenberg. There's going to be a walking tour of Wittenberg, but I think...

with particular relevance to the end of the Second World War. We'll come back to Wittenberg in a minute, or Wittenberg, I suppose I probably should call it. But we're also going to be doing a tour of Torgau. Now, this is immediately going to be a reference to listeners, I'm sure, because that is the site of the famous meeting between the Western and Eastern allies on the 25th of April, just a few days before Hitler's death. And I love the story of the meeting on the Elbe, because it's one of those kind of, you know,

happenstance moments. The Elba was pretty much set as the kind of dividing line between the allies. But actually, the Americans shouldn't even have got as far as the Elba. And there's a lovely story of this patrol from the 69th Infantry Division led by William D. Robertson.

He'd actually been told or been given some information that there were some allied prisoners of war at Torgau. So he set off from his location on the Molde River at Wurzeln, 10,000 hours on the 25th of April, and headed towards Torgau. And when he got there, he was told that actually the Russians were just on the far side. Now, there was a bridge, of course, but the Nazis had tried to destroy the bridge. It was pretty much collapsed and in the water. But Robinson...

of course, having got as far as Torgau, really effectively against his orders, thought, well, I've got to make contact with the Soviets. So first of all, he used watercolors from a chemist's shop, apparently, to turn a bed sheet into a US flag. Then he climbs up the tower of Hartenfels Castle and waves the flag from the attic window. This was seen by the Soviets on the far side of the Elbe River.

They were men of the 58th Guards Rifle Division, and they took notice of this and fired red flares. Now, what Robertson should now have done is fired green flares, which was the kind of recognition signal that had been agreed, but he didn't have any. And so the Soviets actually opened fire, thinking he was German. Eventually, the two patrols managed to communicate with the help of a Soviet prisoner of war who was able to speak to his fellow Soviets.

and Robertson and others cautiously crawled across the ruins of the Elbe Bridge, which, as I mentioned, the retreating Germans had blown up. On the far side, he met Sergeant Nikolai Andreev and other soldiers coming the other way, or at least they met in the middle, and they embraced. Without a word, neither could speak the other language, and then finally made their way back on all fours, all together, to the Soviet side, where Red Army soldiers gave them an enthusiastic welcome. That is the

first meeting of the Allies at Torgau, which we will, of course, be talking about and seeing various memorials. Torgau, an interesting place to visit, would you say, Keith? Yeah, I mean, it's one of those few places in Germany that wasn't really bombed during the war. So there's still quite a nice sort of medieval centre to wander around. And it's got a huge, great big castle that you mentioned with bears in the moat. Oh, really? Yeah.

Yeah. So you get to cross over the drawbridge and look down and there's these two lovely big brown bears there. So, yeah, it's a lovely place to wander around. Okay, good stuff. Now, I mentioned Wittenberg. Let's talk a little bit about that. I think...

I think everyone's going to know the connection with the Reformation. Is there more of a World War II connection there too, Keith? Well, not really. I mean, it was not really, it wasn't targeted at any point. It didn't get destroyed. Armies didn't pass through here so much. I mean, I think the main reason we're going there is because it's on the way and it would be really rude not to. It's such an iconic place where, you know, Luther and his 95 DCs and so on. I think probably the only real sort of major reference is

On the town church, there's this famous carving of the Judensau, you know, this sort of pig which is suckling Jews.

which is, you know, it's an offensive thing to anybody really, but doubly offensive to Jews. That's a sort of medieval image. And there's an acknowledgement there that, you know, these kind of images were carried through to the 20th century and Christians stood by while Jews were murdered in their millions. So there is an acknowledgement there of what happened during the Second World War. But otherwise, it's just a beautiful and iconic place to visit. So we're going to be stopping off there because why wouldn't you?

Exactly right. And we are, of course, going to stop in Dresden. And, you know, it's a name redolent with the kind of horrors of 1945 as the rate of dying and killing really ramps up on all fronts. But this is a site of what some people think is a great atrocity. I'm not sure everyone sees it.

quite like that. But of course, there was the aerial bombing of Dresden, which was partly a result of Stalin actually saying, well, hold on a second, we need this kind of main hub in which the Germans are sending reinforcements and supplies to their troops on the east, knocked out. So this was partly in response to the Soviet request at Yalta to do this.

Tell us a little bit about the controversy surrounding the bombing of Dresden. Now, Keith, you, of course, have written about the bombing of Hamburg and therefore are well up on all the sort of arguments for and against the strategic bombing campaign. Yeah, I mean, I wrote the book on Hamburg because I was a bit

annoyed at how much attention Dresden always gets. And it gets that attention because, I mean, unlike Hamburg, which was sort of halfway through the war, where things were a bit murkier, by the time of February 1945, the Allies knew what they were doing. And they kind of, they were kind of...

almost unopposed in the air by that point. So they could destroy whole cities at will. And they'd been doing this all over Germany since Magdeburg is a perfect example. That was a city that was completely destroyed in a single day by Allied bombing. So a month later, a month after Magdeburg, they bombed Dresden and several raids in a period of 48 hours and completely just destroyed the city by fire.

It's fire which destroys cities, not the explosions. People think of bombs landing and there being big explosions. Really, the explosions are just there to blow out the windows and knock off the roofs to allow the air to pass through and allow the fires to spread more efficiently.

So yeah, massive firestorm, rage through the city. About 20,000 people died in a single night. Famously written about by Kurt Vonnegut in his book, Slaughterhouse-Five. Yeah, I've got the book here in front of me. I've been reading it. I'm going to read out a little extract at the moment. It's fascinating, isn't it? The Kurt Vonnegut connection. I mean, I came across it recently, actually, Keith, while I was

researching my forthcoming book, Twilight of the Gods, on the end of the Second World War. And I was actually looking at the Ardennes story, that is, of course, the Battle of the Bulge. And that's where Vonnegut is captured. I mean, very unluckily, he's with the 106th Infantry Division, US 106th Infantry Division, which has literally just arrived at the front. He arrives at the front just a few days earlier.

And two whole regiments, which is really the guts of the 106th Division, are captured almost intact. I think it's something like 8,000 men, one of whom is Vonnegut. And so he not only writes about that story in Slaughterhouse-Five, but he also, of course, writes about, albeit in fictional form, his experiences in Dresden itself. So tell us a little bit about Slaughterhouse-Five. I mean, where did the name come from for the book?

Well, Vonnegut was imprisoned in what was a meat market. He was in a big warehouse in the basement of this slaughterhouse. It wasn't

Actually, you know, the fifth slaughterhouse along, the number of the street was number five. So it had a big five on the outside. I don't know whether he saw that and thought it was the number of the particular warehouse. But yeah, this warehouse still exists. And there's a little sort of memorial to him downstairs in the basement. There's nothing. It's not really hugely worth going to because it's now just a sort of big conference center, sort of expo center. They hold like business fairs there and the occasional rock concert and so on.

But yeah, the whole district was completely destroyed in this massive firestorm. And Vonnegut was amongst them. He saw some terrible things, sort of dead bodies strewn around everywhere. They had, you know, sort of all these carcasses of the meat being sort of cooked by the fires. And naturally, you've got a whole population who are starving. And they've been bombed out of their houses. In the following days, they're desperately after this meat. So there's the soldiers who are looking after them, guarding them.

say yeah okay you can go and you can cut off the the outside of this meat you can have the meat because otherwise it's just going to go to rot so that's how they sort of survived in the following days was eating the meat that had been cooked in the firestorms of of dresden extraordinary um fortune really for him i mean the fact

that he survived was because he was down in this kind of meat locker, wasn't it? Yeah. He and his fellow prisoners of war. I'm just going to read out a quick extract from the book, as I said I would, because, of course, he's writing about his fictional character, Billy Pilgrim, who no doubt is a bit of a composite character, as fictional characters always are, but certainly informed by his own experience.

And he writes in the book Slaughterhouse-Five, he's talking about Billy, of course, at this point. He was down in the meat locker on the night that Dresden was destroyed. There were the sounds like giant footsteps above. These were sticks of high explosive bombs. The giants walked and walked. The meat locker was a very safe shelter. All that happened down there was an occasional shower of calcimine. And then we move on to the following day. So this is a little bit further down the page.

It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead. And then he carries on with the line, so it goes, which he uses repeatedly in his book. It's one of the kind of refrains all the way through Slaughterhouse-Five. I mean, it's an extraordinary book, really, isn't it, Keith? Have you actually read it yet?

Yes. Yes, the Tralthamadorians. I mean, it's a science fiction book, is it? Exactly. But at the same time, a kind of history book. I mean, the thing about the Tralthamadorians is they, this alien species who can see all time simultaneously. So you're jumping backwards and forwards in time in the book. And that sort of reflects the sort of trauma that someone has with PTSD, jumping backwards and forwards in time, never knowing what's present and what's past.

because you've got this constant trauma in your mind, which presumably Kurt Vonnegut himself experienced. Yeah, and exactly right. And it's interesting when you look at...

his real history. I mean, he didn't really talk that much about it. There was one interview, I think, on C-SPAN that he did in either the 1990s or the 1980s, in which he talks about his actual experience and said, so he's not Billy Pilgrim, but of course, Pilgrim's experiences have been informed by Vonnegut's own experiences. Actually, Vonnegut makes the point that he spent a lot of time with firearms as a child, which is one of the reasons why he's

he's acting as a scout for the 106th Division. So he's obviously a lot more capable than Pilgrim. Pilgrim's really a victim. He's kind of reacting to circumstances. But in any case, it's a wonderful read and very kind of revealing, really, of the whole story of

both the Battle of the Bulge and the experience of the 106th Division there, but also, of course, the horrors in Dresden. You know, it's hard to believe as you come out of the fire of the Battle of Bulge and then be put into the frying pan of Dresden, but that's exactly what happens to Vonnegut. So we'll be telling a little bit of Vonnegut's story, I'm sure, as we go on the tour, but also looking at Dresden. I mean, Dresden's a city reborn, of course, isn't it, today?

Oh, I mean, I mean, this is part of the reason why it's become so iconic of the bombing war, because, you know, regardless of whether 20,000 people were killed there or not, I mean, there were people killed all over Germany. But the thing about Dresden is how beautiful it was and is now again, they've rebuilt the whole of the city centre again.

exactly as it was back before the bombing. And it's incredible. I mean, if you see photographs of what it looked like in the 1980s, the center of town, which is now covered in marble, used to be a car park because that's all it was worth during the Soviet times. It was just a hollowed out shell of a city. You go there now, it's stunningly beautiful.

It's kind of off the beaten track as well. So, you know, while we're there, you'll get a chance to go into the art museum. And I urge you to because you walk through that place. You recognize every single picture on the walls. I mean, they've got Caravaggio's and Titian's and Botticelli's and everybody. Name an artist. They're there. It's an unlike somewhere like Florence where you go to the Uffizi. You've got to queue up for three days and and.

You can't see the pictures. There are too many people in the way. Dresden's not quite as rammed as that yet. So now's a good time to go and visit. Definitely. Okay, we'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment when we'll be continuing the discussion of the locations we're going to see on the tour. In particular, Königstein Castle and the extraordinary story of General Henri Giraud's escape. Welcome back.

Okay, now one of my favorite locations, I haven't been there, I know you have. I've seen many, many pictures of it and I know the history, which we'll get on to in a second, is Königstein Fortress or Castle, otherwise known as the Saxon Bastille. We should say, of course, that Dresden was the ancient capital of Saxony when that was one of the sort of electors of Saxony back in pre-unification of Germany days. So this is a significant location.

part of Germany, but Konigstein is set in the most beautiful position high above the Elbe River. Tell us about the views from Konigstein before we talk about the history. Oh, I mean, it's this sort of...

mountain that sticks out up out of nowhere and on top of it is a fortress um so you know just just climbing up there and taking in the view is incredible you see all the way down the the elbow you can see for my on a clear day i have to say let's let's hope it's clear you can see for miles all around it's the the highest point you can understand why they built a fortress up there because you can see everything from the top

Really beautiful place. One of the largest fortresses in Europe and its historical significance in terms of the Second World War is that it was used as a state prison before the First World War, but also used to house Allied prisoners of war in both world wars. The Second World War, originally Poles were sent there and then later Allied prisoners, in particular French. And one of these French prisoners came into my silent warriors story and that is...

and that is Henri Giraud. Henri Giraud, at the start of the Second World War, commanded the French Seventh Army, so he's a relatively senior commander incarcerated by the Germans, and he has the extraordinary distinction of being the only Allied

officer that I discovered Keith maybe you can set me right on this who escaped from German captivity in both world wars he was obviously a younger officer in the first world war he's captured and badly wounded actually in I think in late August 1914 and eventually escaped from German captivity then but it's the escape from Königstein that's that's really astonishing and

The reason I wrote about him in Silent Warriors is because the SBS, which was the subject of Silent Warriors, the special boat service, are eventually used to rescue Giraud from France after he's escaped from Königstein. So he's captured in 1940 with, of course, most of the other senior French high command and sent to Königstein. And over the

course of two years, he meticulously plans his escape. He learns German, memorizes a map of the area, and made a 150 feet long rope out of twine, torn bed sheets, and copper wire, which friends had smuggled into the prison for him, apparently. And using a simple code embedded in his letters home, he informed his family of his plans for escape. And on the 17th of April, 1942, he lowers himself down the cliff using his homemade rope,

He'd shaved off his moustache and wearing a Tyrolean hat to fool the Germans. He travels to Shandau to meet various contacts there who are eventually going to help him get all the way to the Swiss border. Now, what's interesting about this escape is that when he's in Switzerland...

Of course, he could have stayed there, but he then goes back into Vichy France. And although the Vichy France authorities aren't very pleased with what he's done, they do not hand him over to the Germans. And he's eventually rescued, which is where the SPS come into the story, by a submarine assisted by the SPS who get him all the way back to the Allies. Why do the Allies want him? Because they're going to use him to...

lead the French troops in North Africa for Operation Torch in late 1942. And the story goes on and on and on. But that was probably the most famous escape from Königstein. And by the end of the war, which is the bit we'll particularly be looking at, of course, it still held a lot of very senior French prisoners who were finally released by the Soviets. I think that's on about the 7th or 8th of May 1945. So it's pretty much the end of the Second World War.

Yeah, I mean, when you visit this place, you can really understand why people are so excited about Giraud's escape from it. Because the walls of this fortress are sheer. Originally, they had workmen knocking off any sort of handholds and so on down the side of the mountain to stop people from escaping. So this descent for 150 feet down what's called the King's Nose

is incredible. I mean, you stand on the edge and look down. It's terrifying. And this old guy, I mean, he's not a young man by this point. He's probably about the same age as you and me, Saul. Yeah, yeah. In his 50s, I think he was at that point. Yeah. Clambering down the side of this mountain, a sheer drop. It's quite unbelievable. Really a feat. Yeah, it's astonishing. And I'm much looking forward to seeing the location itself.

Okay, lots of other fascinating locations to visit, including Sonnenstein, which was one of the kind of centers of the T4 operation. Tell us a tiny bit about Sonnenstein, Keith, and its kind of relevance to, I suppose, the final solution, because that's when they really began to experiment with the killing of, well, they would have said that undesirables, anyone with handicaps, anyone who the Nazis saw as, you know, not perfect Aryan citizens.

Yeah, this is one of the most chilling places I've actually ever visited because it's so sort of unassuming. It was used as a sanatorium for disabled people before the war and they carried out all kinds of sterilizations of them there because, you know, they didn't want

disabled people breeding because they consider them a burden on society and blah, blah, blah, or all that stuff. But really, in 1940, they began a much more disgusting campaign to use it as a killing centre. We all know about the gas chambers and so on at places like Auschwitz, but it was the T4 programme which was the forerunner to that. That was where they started the idea of gassing people. And they kind of turned it into a production line. So

At Sonnenstein, you go down into the basement, they've got one room, which is where they all undress. The next room they go in, they're all gassed. And the room next door to that is where they're stripped. And then the next one is where they're put into crematorium and burned. It's quite...

chilling and quite disgusting. And, you know, they didn't really know what to do with, they had all these ashes and personal belongings and so on at the end of it. They just chucked them out the back down the hill. And, um, it lay there as sort of a rubbish tip, which became a hiking track. Actually, during the 1980s, people were walking across the top of this on these sort of jaunts out into the countryside, not knowing what they were walking across.

It was only after 1989 when they started excavating this place and found all these personal possessions and so on, which are displayed in a little museum there. It's a really poignant, moving place.

but very disturbing. And I think it's right, isn't it, Keith, that a lot of the people involved in the T4 program, including at Sonstein, were later used in the death camps. In other words, they kind of learned the business of killing there, the industrialized killing, and they then put it into practice in some of the big camps. And I'm particularly thinking of the Commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl, who goes on to become Commandant of Treblinka, and it also worked in T4. Yeah, absolutely. What shocked me really, though, is the fact that

Doctors are involved. You know, it's the way Sonnenstein worked is they got, you know, these people sort of transported from all over Germany and they arrived in vans with sort of blacked out windows. And the first thing that happened was they were given a medical examination.

And, you know, they thought that disabled people being examined for, you know, so they can be looked after. No, they're actually just looking for good reasons to put down on the death certificate. That's all. They're all going to be killed. They just want to make it look convincing. They couldn't find anything that looked like it would work. They just put pneumonia.

on the death certificate. You know, it's so cynical. It's really chilling. Now, another of the fascinating sites we're going to be looking at, which I think the name will be familiar to a lot of listeners, is La Dici, the La Dici Memorial. And that, of course, is connected to the extraordinary story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in the operation known as Operation Antropoid. So that's the bit I'm going to be dealing with

in the post tour, but we're also going to stop off in the main tour at La Dici. Tell us a little bit about, I mean, I'll talk a little bit about the assassination in a minute, Keith, but tell us a little bit about what there is to see at La Dici. Well, it's quite amazing, actually. I mean, it's very beautiful. You would walk there. If you didn't know what was there or what was supposed to be there, would have been destroyed.

this entire village completely razed by the Nazis. If you didn't know any of that, you'd think you were in a sort of, you know, a capability brown sort of beautiful landscape garden with big long vistas. I mean, it's really lovely. It's peaceful, beautiful place. It's only when you sort of

walk around it and go down and see the foundations of buildings that have been excavated where there used to be a village. There's a couple of very moving memorials there that you realise what used to be there, what had been destroyed by the Nazis in reprisal for the killing of Heydrich in 1942.

Yeah, and it's, I mean, the killing itself is the most extraordinary story, isn't it? Operation Anthropoid, as I said, it took place on the 27th of May 1942, the attack that is. And I'll come on to the story of the attack in a moment. And actually, Heydrich doesn't die of his...

of his injuries until the 4th of June. So he had a sort of agonizing slow death. Most people believe he died of blood poisoning, sepsis. I mean, there are different theories knocking around, aren't there, Keith? But the story is worth repeating, isn't it? I mean, it's carried out by these two brave as lions Czechs. In fact, one was a Czech and one was a Slovak, Josef Gabcik and Jan Kubiš.

And they are former soldiers in the Czechoslovak army who are actually fighting for the exiled Czech government, but have been trained by the British SOE. And they're dropped into Czechoslovakia with various other comrades towards the end of 1941 with the specific mission of exiling.

killing Heydrich, who at this point, of course, is not only running the whole of the RHS, that is the kind of SS security apparatus, but he's also become protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which are, of course, the two constituent parts of what had been Czechoslovakia.

And he's, you know, using a very firm hand, a very brutal hand. So the idea is we're going to knock him out. This will be a spectacular little show how good Czech resistance still is. I think they're really thinking in the long term, the Czech government in exile, aren't they, Keith? They're thinking post-war settlement, and we want to be shown to have done something on behalf of the Allies. And so these two guys are sent in. It's interesting that Kubitsch wasn't actually one of the originals. A guy called Svoboda was, but...

He's injured during the training and Kubis replaces him at the last minute. But nevertheless, these two incredibly brave men are dropped in. And they finally, on the 27th of May, as I mentioned, begin their assassination attempt. And the plan is to intercept Heydrich right

on his way from his home, 14 kilometers north of Prague to his headquarters in Prague Castle. He's being driven in an open-top Mercedes 320 Cabriolet. And he's pretty arrogant. He thinks he can get away with driving around in an open-top car because no one's going to dare to attack him. But of course, these two

plan it, they're going to stop him on a tight curve when the car would naturally slow down. And the initial plan is to shoot him with a Sten gun. Well, they attempt that with the Sten jam. So, Heydrich stands up, draws his Luger pistol. I mean, actually, Heydrich is quite, you've got to admit, he's quite aggressive in the way he reacts to this attack.

because he yells for his driver to stop and he wants to take out these two assassins, which was a big mistake. He should have kept going. But when the car actually stops, Kubitsch, who hasn't been spotted, actually throws a modified anti-tank grenade, which doesn't actually get all the way to the car, explodes next to it. But fragments from that grenade go through the side of the car and

and into Heydrich. They don't actually disable him at this point, although he's badly injured. He actually gets out of the car and is involved in a kind of gunfight with these two assailants. But he is badly injured. And of course, it's probably a result of maybe even the upholstery, the kind of hairs from the upholstery in the car, which finally kill him. So it's an extraordinary action. The two assailants themselves are eventually trapped down

and located in a church, I think. Are we going to go and see that church? Keith, is that the plan? I think that's one of the things you might be doing on your post tour. Yes. So you get to see the basement of the church where they were all holed up being sheltered by the local priest.

but they're unfortunately given away and the church is surrounded and they're all killed or taken prisoner and executed later. Yeah, I think some of them actually commit suicide, don't they? Because they know what's likely to happen if they get into German hands. And then we get to the afters. So far, so extraordinary, really. I mean, they carried out...

the killing, which eventually kills Heydrich. But it's the reprisals that are the really grim bit of the story, aren't they? And you've already mentioned La Dice. I mean, they reckon actually more generally something like up to 5,000 people were killed in the reprisals. But La Dice is best known, I suppose, because it's a single settlement that's singled out, falsely linked to Heydrich's assassins. A Gestapo report apparently suggested it was the hiding place of the assassins, which it was not. So it's picked up

purely at random. The 200 men of the village, or 199 men, are immediately executed. And the rest of the village, that's 195 women, were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where most of them perish. And of the 95 children taken prisoner, 81 were later killed and

at Chumno extermination camp, an aid adopted by German families. Not quite sure what happened to that final aid, but it's the story of Lodice, I think, that the reprisals are best remembered for. Yeah, I mean, it's such a tragic story, especially considering that, you know, this little village had nothing to do with any of it.

One of the things that strikes me is that this was carried out on the 10th of June, 1942. 10th of June seems like one of those cursed dates because exactly two years later in Oradour-sur-Glane in France, you've got a similar massacre taking place under the SS.

So this was really the template that they used throughout Europe. Now, you get somebody killed by resistance. You react with massive reprisals, including raising entire villages. Lodica was the first major one where this happened. And it happened all the way through Europe, from Greece all the way up to Estonia. This is what they do. Somebody gets killed.

We take massive reprisals, kill 100 people in reprisal. We should just say that Carol Churda, who was the resistance fighter who betrayed the rest of the group, was finally picked up, actually, wasn't he, after the end of the Second World War and himself executed. So there was a little bit of, you know, just retribution for Churda's actions, I suppose you could say. But nevertheless, an awful lot of people have died in the interim.

So, yeah, it's a mixture of extraordinary stories, tremendous courage, but also the horror of the war, unfortunately. And, you know, in 1945, which is what we'll chiefly be concerned with, you know, as I say, the rate of killing just simply intensifies, doesn't it, on all fronts, but particularly in the East, ending up with the, you know, the absolute bloodbath of

Berlin as the Russians fight their way through into the center and, you know, effectively the immolation of Hitler on the 30th of April. And a few days later, the war is over. Yeah, I mean, it's really, this is where the war becomes its most apocalyptic.

And that's another really tragic story because it didn't have to be like that. If there had been someone rational in charge of Germany at the time, they would have surrendered and saved so many lives. But of course, there isn't. It's a dictatorship. They're all a bit mad.

They're being followed by Hitler's followed by equally obsessive people who will not allow any kind of surrender. So Magdeburg is a perfect example. The SS wanted to have that city as another fortress town. And you hold out to the last. Every man would be would go down with a sinking ship. They stuck a big flag, a big swastika on top of the cathedral, which is one of the only buildings that was still surviving.

And it was down to the people of Magdeburg to climb up there and tear down this swastika and stick a white flag up, which they did. Incredibly risky thing to do because, of course, if you get caught, you're going to be executed by your own side. So 1945 is this really apocalyptic atmosphere where the Nazis want to take everything down in flames with them.

The people of Germany have to make a decision as to whether they're going to go down in those flames or whether they're going to risk execution and resist their own countrymen. Unfortunately, mostly they don't. But yeah, it's a terrible apocalyptic time.

Great stuff, Keith. Well, I'm much looking forward to the tour. I hope you are too. And we should say that there are still a few places left. I think about 80 or 90 can come on the boat. Is that right? Something like that, yes. But we do know that there are a few slots still available. So if anyone listening to this or you know anyone else who's interested in joining us for what's going to be an absolutely fascinating and hugely enjoyable tour, I think with some ups and downs moments in

in terms of emotion, but that's what the Second World War will do to you, I'm afraid. But if you are interested, two ways to get in touch. Either go to the World War II Museum's website, that's www.ww2museumtours.org,

or email travel at nationalww2museum.org and they'll give you all the information you need. Thanks, Keith. Great to chat to you. Look forward to seeing you soon before the tour, but also on the tour itself. Always good to talk to you, Saul.

Okay, that's all we have time for. Do join us on Friday when we'll be hearing the latest from Ukraine and also next Wednesday when we'll be hearing from Roger Morehouse about the horrors of the East Prussian campaign in early 1945. Goodbye.