Killing of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich

Known as the Hangman of Europe, Heydrich was head of Nazi security policy, governor of occupied Bohemia-Moravia, and was considered by many of his cohorts to be the ideal SS man. MacDonald, senior lecturer at the Univ. of Warwick, England, traces his rise in the Nazi hierarchy, his role in programs of mass slaughter, and provides a nail-bitingly suspenseful account of his assassination on June 4, 1942. The book seems at first a straightforward story about the execution of a spectacularly evil war criminal, but MacDonald goes on to explore the dreadful ramifications of the act, which included the massacre of some 5000 Czechs and the destruction of the village of Lidice. As for the two assassins, recruited from the Czech Brigade in England and parachuted in by the British, they were betrayed by a third parachuted agent, a saboteur whose complicated motivations, we're shown, included a desire to put an end to the reprisals. History Book Club main selection; BOMC alternate. (Apr.)