Men in Black, first published in 1942, is a novel of Czech resistance to the occupying Germans in the early days of World War Two, and the struggle against the Gestapo, or Nazi secret police. The culminating act of the resistance is the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Gestapo, which would lead to massive reprisals, including the razing of the village of Lidice and the execution of many of its inhabitants (the original subtitle of the book was "A Novel about Lidice," but the book does not detail the massacre that occurred there). Men in Black is a moving, albeit fictional, account of the courage and sacrifice made by men and women during the war, and the brutality the Nazis imposed on those who dared to resist.