Thursday, January 26, 2012

A Mercedes who killed a Nazi General...

Shorter version:
When a pair of British-trained Czech and Slovak assassins attacked one of Nazi Germany’s most sinister leaders in Prague in May 1942, they were armed with submachine guns and anti-tank mines. But even these were not enough. To complete Operation Anthropoid and kill Heydrich, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík needed a little help from the SS-Obergruppenführer’s favorite Mercedes convertible and the swarm of microbes in its upholstery. ...In late 1941, Heydrich was sent to Prague as Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, the industrial part of Czechoslovakia.... Kubiš and Gabčík were parachuted into Czechoslovakia by the Royal Air Force in December 1941, aware that it was going to be a one-way trip....On the morning of May 27, 1942, they attacked....Heydrich’s injuries didn’t appear serious. He was operated on by Heinrich Himmler’s personal doctor, the later war criminal Karl Gebhardt, and looked to be on his way to recovery when he suddenly got worse and lapsed into a coma. It was the Mercedes. Pieces of upholstery had been torn from the car by Kubiš’s anti-tank grenade and these had hit Heydrich, causing widespread bacterial infection. On June 4, the Butcher of Prague was dead, killed by two brave commandos, a car named after the granddaughter of an Austro-Hungarian rabbi, and the politics of Nazi Germany....

 Source -> http://jalopnik.com/5878368/this-mercedes-killed-a-nazi-general

 Click here to read how the Manufacture's name comes from the granddaughter of a noted Hungarian Jewish Scholar -> http://jalopnik.com/5791169/the-secret-jewish-history-of-the-mercedes-name?tag=ljk-setright

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