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belonged
    to the wider Czech resistance circle were unnecessarily compromised by
    the careless use of safe houses and borrowed bicycles, articles of clothing
    and briefcases that would subsequently lead the Gestapo to their helpers
    and ultimately wipe out all organized resistance in the Protectorate. For
    the time being, however, Gabčík and Kubiš were lucky enough not to be
    discovered.
    Others were less fortunate. The five parachutists of groups Silver A and
    Silver B, who had been airdropped only minutes after Gabčik and Kubiš
    on the night of 28 December, split up shortly after landing. Many of them
    were either arrested by the Gestapo or turned themselves in when they felt
    that their families were endangered. Only the group leader of Silver A,
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    HITLER’S HANGMAN
    Alfréd Bartoš, managed to re-establish contact with one of the few
    surviving commanders of ÚVOD, Captain Václav Morávek, and to install
    a radio transmitter, codenamed Libuše, which soon began beaming infor-
    mation on industrial production and the population’s mood back to
    London. His reports, however, confirmed that resistance activities in the
    Protectorate had become ‘exceptionally difficult’, if not impossible, because
    ‘for everyone politically active, there is a permanent Gestapo agent’.22
    If another of the reasons for sending agents into the Protectorate was to
    facilitate the bombing of vital arms-production plants, this, too, had limited
    success. A plan to co-ordinate a British air raid on the Škoda works in
    Pilsen with the aid of the Libuše transmitter faltered. Other missions,
    including Silver B, failed completely. Between December 1941 and the
    end of May 1942, sixteen other parachutists from England were dropped
    over the Protectorate, but none of them completed his mission: two
    were arrested by police; two placed themselves voluntarily at the Gestapo’s
    disposal in order to avoid imprisonment or torture; and some were shot or
    committed suicide when chased by the German police. Others simply
    abandoned their missions and returned home to their families. Surprised
    by the pervasiveness of the Nazi police state and holding poor-quality
    false documents, many simply panicked. In one case, a parachutist sent
    word to his mother that he was alive and wel . The excited mother told an
    acquaintance, who promptly reported the news to the Gestapo. The para-
    chutist’s father and two brothers were held as hostages and threatened with
    execution until the parachutist turned himself in.23
    In May Bartoš demanded that the parachute drops be halted altogether.
    ‘You are sending us people for whom we have no use,’ he told London.
    ‘They are a burden on the organizational network which is undesirable in
    today’s critical times. The Czech and German security authorities have so
    much information and knowledge about us that to repeat these operations
    would be a waste of people and equipment.’24 But SOE and Beneš pressed
    on. Before long, to his horror, Bartoš found out about the purpose of the
    mission entrusted to Gabčík and Kubiš.25 Twice in early May, ÚVOD
    broadcast desperate messages to Beneš entreating him to abandon the
    assassination, arguing that German reprisals for the killing of Heydrich
    were likely to wipe out whatever was left of the Czech underground:
    Judging by the preparations which Ota and Zdenek [the codenames of
    Gabčík and Kubiš] are making, and by the place where they are making
    these preparations, we assume, in spite of the silence they are maintaining,
    that they are planning to assassinate ‘H’. This assassination would in no
    way benefit the Al ies, and might have incalculable consequences for our
    nation. It would not only endanger our hostages and political prisoners,

    D E AT H I N P R AG U E
    9
    but also cost thousands of other lives. It would expose the nation to
    unparal eled consequences, while at the same time sweeping away the last
    remnants of [underground]