Operation Black Widow - Killing Richard Paulson
A photograph of Freedom Party Guards Group Leader Richard Paulson (aka the Butcher of Dayton or the Man with an Iron Heart), who until 1941 was Ferdinand Koenig's right hand man and one of the archietects for the Population Reduction before his reassignment to be Military Governor of the Occupied Territory of Ohio. In earnest, the Union Military Intelligence Service would begin plotting an assassination on Paulson.
Taking part in this operation were three men from the Union Army named Corporal Max Rasmussen,
Lieutenant Jan "Jack" Kubis, a Czech-American from the Union Intelligence Services,
and PFC Robert "Bobby" Schindler, these three men were chosen from the Union Army to take part in this operation called Black Widow.
After being dropped by the Union Air Force into Occupied Ohio, the three soldiers would link up with a local band of Anti-Confederate Resistance Fighters in Ohio, lead by one Franklin "Frank" Powell.
A photograph of Franklin Powell, circa 1940. Following the Confederate Invasion, ex-police detective turned resistance fighter Powell would form a resistance cell in Southern Ohio.
On May 27th, 1942, the Operation to kill Paulson went ahead, on that morning in Dayton Ohio. Kubis, Rasmussen, Schindler, and a resistance fighter named George Stark would launch an assassination attempt on Paulson's life. However, as they sprung out to attack, Rasmussen's and Schindler's Colt M42 SMGs would fail to open fire, which Kubis would throw a grenade at Paulson's car. The resulting explosion would kill the driver and seriously injure Paulson, and the assassins would get away before local security forces could arrive and catch them. A week after the attack, Richard Paulson would die from the wounds inflicted by Kubis's hand grenade.
Following Paulson's death, the Freedom Part Guards would raise the town of New Burlington to the ground and slaughter many of it's inhabitants. Many of it's citizens would be arrested by the guards with 800 of them being executed. Koenig would make a direct order that the assassins of Paulson must be found at all costs, and thus began a massive effort of interrogations of suspected conspirators to find out.
Following an intensive interrogation and brutal torture by Freedom Party Guards, a certain resistance fighter Thomas E. Barkley (who was captured the day after the bombing) was forced to revealing the names of the killers and the resistance fighters who hosted them. He would reveal to his captors about the whereabouts of these people, being in the Tar Hollow Forests near Laurelville. Barkley would eventually be executed on June 6th, 1942.
A photograph of Freedom Party Guardsmen being sent in to kill or capture Paulson's Assassins, on June 1st, 1942. However, the Union soldiers and the Resistance Fighters under Powell would put up a fierce some battle against the 350 Freedom Party Guardsmen, with Schindler alone gunning down 44 of them with his M41 Ripper machine-gun. All together, the partisans and the soldiers would killed 102 Guardsmen and wound another 174 of the Guardsmen, forcing them to retreat. Hours later, the Guards would attack again with 400 soldiers with 100 Confederate Army soldiers as backup. This time, the Confederate would successfully kill all of them with the exception of Rasmussen and Powell, whom both got captured and afterwards were brutally interrogated and eventually executed on June 9th, 1942 by hanging in Dayton Ohio.
The bodies of Rasmussen and Powell along with Barkley and another partisan hanging in a Park in Dayton Ohio in mid-June of 1942.
Two days after the firefight at Tar Hollow Forest, the Freedom Party Guards would raise the town of Laurelville to the ground with 600 of it's citizens getting executed and the rest being imprisoned.
In 2000, the village of
Dolní Vilémovice, the birthplace of Jan Kubis, would donate a memorial to Laurelville and New Burlington in dedication to the victims of the destruction of the two villages.
A memorial for the people to partook in Operation Black Widow in Dayton, Ohio, circa 2014.