Heydrich is building a security service for all the occupied sectors. The Wehrmacht is causing him problems in this regard, but these difficulties tend to smooth themselves out. The longer this goes on, the more the Wehrmacht shows itself incapable of dealing with these questions.
Heydrich has experience with certain parts of the Wehrmacht: they are not sympathetic to National Socialist politics, nor to a National Socialist war. As for leading the people, they understand nothing at all.
On February 16, Lieutenant Bartos, head of Operation Silver A, sends a message to London. The message is sent via the transmitter Libuse, the machine his group parachuted into the country the same night as Gabčík and Kubiš. Reading this message gives us a good idea of the difficulties encountered by the parachutists in the fulfillment of their secret mission:
The groups that you send should be given plenty of money and dressed suitably. A small-caliber pistol and a towel—difficult to find here—are very useful. The poison should be carried in a smaller tube. Depending on the circumstances, you should send the groups to areas away from those where they have to report. This makes it more difficult for the German security services to find them. The biggest problem here is finding work. Nobody will hire you unless you have a work permit. Anyone who does have one is given a job by the Work Office. The danger of forced labor increases greatly in the spring, so we can’t commit a greater number of men to secret missions without also increasing the risk that the entire system will be discovered. That’s why I consider it more beneficial to use those already here to the maximum, and to limit the arrival of new men to an absolute minimum. Signed, Ice.
Goebbels’s diary, February 26, 1942:
Heydrich sends me a very detailed report on the situation in the Protectorate. It hasn’t really changed. But what stands out very clearly is that his tactics are the right ones. He treats the Czech ministers as his subjects. Hacha puts himself completely at the service of Heydrich’s new politics. As far as the Protectorate is concerned, nothing more needs to be done at the moment.
Heydrich does not neglect his cultural life. In March, he organizes the greatest cultural event of his reign: an exhibition entitled Das Sowjet Paradies, inaugurated by the vile Karl Frank, in the presence of the old president Emil Hácha and the infamous collaborator Emanuel Moravec.
I don’t know what the exhibition is like exactly, but the idea is to show that the USSR is a barbaric, underdeveloped country with disgraceful living conditions, while underlining the intrinsic perversity of Bolshevism. It is also a chance to praise the German victories on the Eastern Front. Tanks and other military hardware taken from the Russians are exhibited like trophies.
The exhibition lasts four weeks and attracts half a million visitors, among them Gabčík and Kubiš. This is probably the first and only time that our heroes will see a Soviet tank.
To begin with, this seemed a simple-enough story to tell. Two men have to kill a third man. They succeed, or not, and that’s the end, or nearly. I thought of all the other people as mere ghosts who would glide elegantly across the tapestry of history. Ghosts have to be looked after, and that requires great care—I knew that. On the other hand, what I didn’t know (but should have guessed) is that a ghost desires only one thing: to live again. Personally, I’d like nothing better, but I am constrained by the needs of my story. I can’t keep leaving space for this ever-growing army of shadows, these ghosts who—perhaps to avenge themselves for the meager care I show them—are haunting me.
But that’s not all.
Pardubice is a town in eastern Bohemia. The Elbe runs through it. The town has a population of about 90,000 and a pretty square in the center with some handsome Renaissance-style buildings. It is also the birthplace of Dominik Hašek, the legendary goaltender and one of the greatest ice-hockey players of all time.
There is a fairly chic hotel-restaurant here called Vaselka. This evening, as every other evening, it is full of Germans. The men of the Gestapo sit around a table, making a lot of noise. They’ve had lots to eat and drink. They hail the waiter. He comes over, smart and obsequious. I imagine they want some brandy. The waiter takes their order. One of the Germans puts a cigarette to his lips. The waiter takes a lighter from his pocket and, with a bow, offers the German a light.
The waiter is very handsome. He was hired recently. Young, smiling, clear-eyed, and honest-looking, he has fine features on a large face. Here, in Pardubice, he answers to the name of Mirek Šolc. At first glance, there is no reason why we should be interested in this waiter. Except that the Gestapo is interested in him.