On the morning of May 27, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, who was then Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, was seriously wounded in an attack by Czech resistance fighters. He died eight days later in a Prague hospital at the age of thirty-eight. Heydrich played an important role in developing the SS into the Nazi dictatorship’s most important instrument of terror. He was also a key contributor to the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” On January 30, 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner was named his successor as head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).