He was expelled from the party in 1929 for signing the Manifesto of the Seven, nonetheless he continued to support the Communist Party.[2] During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Vančura joined a secret communist resistance group in Autumn 1939. On 12 May 1942, at 5:00 a.m., the Gestapo assaulted his house in Zbraslav, arrested him and tortured him in the Prague Gestapo headquarters. On 27 May 1942 a commando of the Czechoslovak Foreign Army based in Britain assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler's governor in Prague.