Top 10 Assassins

 This is a list of some of the more noteworthy assassinations in world history. I put some conditions on the list when I started: the assassin had to have committed a successful assassination, had to have some political or national significance, and had to have been more or less working alone. Number one doesn’t meet this final requirement, but it is too famous not to include.

7. Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was the head of the German Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), or German secret police, during World War II. The more well known Gestapo was a division of the RSHA. On September 27, 1941, Heydrich was appointed military governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Morovia (Czechoslovakia). Heydrich’s brutality and cruelty to the Czech people and Jews in general earned him the nicknames Butcher of Prague, Blond Beast, and Hangman. Heydrich was so successful in the pacification of the Czech lands that Hitler considered making him governor of Paris. When British intelligence heard this, it was decided that Heydrich had to be eliminated at all costs. Thus was born Operation Anthropoid Kubis and Gabcik were Czechslovakian soldiers who had fled the country early in 1941. After being trained by the British they parachuted in near Prague and set up an ambush for Heydrich as he was driven to Prague Castle on May 27, 1942. After Gabcik’s gun jammed, Kubis threw a modified anti-tank grenade at Heydrich’s car, spraying Heydrich with shrapnel from the seat of the car. Heydrich died eleven days later from septicemia, probably from horsehair used in the upholstery. This was the only successful Allied assassination of a leading Nazi figure during WWII.

6. Charlotte Corday

Assassinated Jean-Paul Marat on July 13, 1793. Marat was a key figure in the French Revolution and was held up as a martyr for his cause following his death. He attained almost quasi-sainthood and busts of him actually replaced crucifixes in many churches in Paris. His support of the September Massacres and hand in starting The Reign of Terror tarnished his reputation and he was seen as something of a revolutionary monster in the Second Empire. For her part, Corday was generally reviled for murdering Marat, although during the Second Empire she was seen as a heroine of France. Marat suffered from an unknown skin disease (possibly dermatitis herpetiformis) from which the only relief he found was sitting in a cold bath. He spent the last three years of his life conducting the majority of his business from his bathtub. After gaining entrance to see Marat (while in his bath) under the auspices of informing on a planned Girondist uprising, Corday stabbed Marat in the chest with a recently purchased dinner knife piercing his lung, aorta, and left ventricle. I included Corday on this list because of the historical importance of the French Revolution and because she was the only female assassin I found in my research.