Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich
File:SS-R.T.Heydrich.jpg Heydrich shortly before his death in 1942.
Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (acting)
In office September 29, 1941 – June 4, 1942
Preceded by	Konstantin von Neurath (titular Protector until 24 August 1943)
Succeeded by	Kurt Daluege
Personal details
Born	(1904-03-07)March 7, 1904 Halle an der Saale, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Died	June 4, 1942(1942-06-04) (aged 38) Prague, Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia (now Czech Republic)
Political party	National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)
Spouse(s)	Lina von Osten (married December 26, 1931)

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was an SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, SD and Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reichsprotektor (Reich Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. Adolf Hitler considered him a possible successor. When the Nazis moved the headquarters of Interpol to Berlin he was chosen as the President of that international law enforcement agency. Heydrich chaired the 1942 Wannsee conference, which finalized plans for the extermination of all European Jews in what is now referred to as the Holocaust. Heydrich was wounded in an assassination attempt in Prague on 27 May 1942 and died over a week later from complications arising from his injuries.

Early life

Heydrich was born in Halle an der Saale to composer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Kranz; Heydrich held a life-long passion for the violin. His two forenames were patriotic musical references: "Reinhard" from Amen, an opera written by his father, in a portion called "Reinhard's Crime". His first middle name, 'Tristan' stems from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. His third name probably derives from military hero Prince Eugene of Savoy, Eugen in German (the German cruiser Prinz Eugen was also named for Eugene of Savoy, as was the 7th Division of the Waffen-SS).He was born into a financially secure Catholic family. Music was a part of Heydrich's everyday life. his father, Bruno, was an opera singer as well as the founder of the Halle Conservatory of Music.

Young Heydrich developed an ardor for the violin, which he carried into his adult life, and he impressed listeners with his passionate musical talent. His father was a virulent anti-Semite and he instilled his three children with racist ideas. The Heydrich household was very strict and the children were frequently disciplined with lashings. As a youth, Heydrich engaged his younger brother, Heinz, in mock fencing duels, thus developing strong fencing skills. Young Heydrich was very intelligent and he excelled in his schoolwork at the Reform-Realgymnasium. He was also a talented athlete and he became an expert swimmer and fencer. However, he was a shy, insecure boy and he had few friends because most of his classmates did not accept him. The other children found three major shortcomings in Heydrich and he was frequently teased and beaten up by the other boys. Firstly, Heydrich had an unusually high-pitched voice and he was constantly taunted. Secondly, he was teased because of his family's strong Catholic leanings in his largely Protestant community. The third reason was one that he carried with him throughout his life and it strongly influenced his future Nazi career - the rumor of a Jewish ancestor.

Although the rumor was completely false, it was never laid to rest. It arose from the fact that his paternal grandmother remarried after the death of Heydrich's biological grandfather. Heydrich's widowed grandmother married a man by the name of Suess, and subsequently the Heydrich family name was sometimes hyphenated as ' Heydrich-Suess'. Although Mr. Suess was not Jewish, the name was widely considered to be a Jewish name. Mr. Suess was not even biologically related to Reinhard Heydrich, nevertheless, the rumor of his "tainted" bloodline continued to spread.

Although shy, Heydrich excelled physically and grew handsome and fit, excelling in fencing and swimming. When the first World War broke out in 1914, ten-year-old Heydrich was too young to enlist for military service. He joined the quasi-military Maracker Freikorps, a right-wing group that strongly opposed the Communists. He also joined the Deutscher Schutz und Truzbund, a strongly anti-Semitic organization. For the first time in his life, Heydrich felt at home in an organization that touted his blonde-haired, blue-eyed features and made him feel important and superior. In 1918, the first World War came to an end with Germany's defeat. Due to the conditions of Germany's surrender, inflation spread across Germany and many families lost their life savings. The wealth of Heydrich's affluent family was suddenly gone.

In 1922, he took advantage of the free education and guaranteed pension offered by the navy. He became a naval cadet at Germany's chief naval base at Kiel. Heydrich, however, found himself in the same situation that he had been in back in grade school. Due to the fact that his voice was still thin, he received taunts of "billy goat" from the other cadets, and rumors of his supposed Jewish ancestry resurfaced. He was mocked for his love of classical music and was frequently called "Moses Handel". Heydrich had an intense desire to succeed and in 1926, he advanced to the rank of second lieutenant and was assigned as a signals officer on the battleship Schleswig Holstein. The constant teasing drove him to become angry and intensely arrogant. Finding himself with considerable authority over the subordinate officers that teased him, he revenged himself by ordering them around and treating them like lowly subjects. His subordinates came to fiercely resent him, but he did not let that distract him from his dream of becoming an admiral.

Heydrich found one major distraction to his naval career - his womanizing. He had matured into a handsome young man and many women found him desirable. He became a notorious seducer and spent all of his free time chasing women. He had countless affairs, but one encounter would prove disastrous for him.

According to one version of the story, in 1930, he met the daughter of a shipyard director and spent the night with her. To Heydrich, this was just another sexual conquest. Later one night he attended a rowing club ball and instantly fell in love with a young woman by the name of Lina von Osten. The two became romantically involved and soon announced their engagement. The daughter of the shipyard director became infuriated that Heydrich was going to marry another woman. She protested to Heydrich, but he coldly told her to leave him alone. Distraught, the young woman lamented to her father, who was a major naval contractor, and friend of Erich Raeder, the commander-in-chief of the German Navy. A formal complaint was lodged against Heydrich for insulting the honor of a young woman. He was charged with "conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman" and an investigation ensued. Heydrich was called before a court of honor and he protested his innocence and accused the woman of lying. His attitude was so disdainful that the court admonished him for insubordination. Though he was exonerated, the officers demanded that he be cashiered for "conduct unbecoming a naval officer". In April 1931, admiral Erich Raeder sentenced Heydrich to "dismissal for impropriety." He was dismissed in 1931 (Bullock 1962). Heydrich was devastated, but he remained engaged to Lina von Osten. He now found himself no prospects for a career and he did not know where to turn.

Heydrich's own version was that he had intercourse with, then refused to marry, a woman. The woman revealed her difficulties to her father, who took the matter to Raeder. Admiral Raeder summoned Heydrich to his office where he and the aggrieved father demanded that Heydrich marry the girl, only to be told that he already was engaged to Lina von Osten, and considered himself bound by his "honour as a naval officer" to not dissolve the engagement. At this, the appalled Raeder is supposed to have summarily cashiered Heydrich. The tale is apparently false. Intensive post-war efforts by journalists failed to identify the woman, though Heydrich's version would have her as socially prominent. Raeder himself scoffed at that tale, while refusing to disclose his reasons for sacking Heydrich.

This leaves the question as to why Heydrich would have concocted a tale which clearly discredited him, and why would Lina Heydrich and others also maintain that Heydrich was contemptuous of the Nazis before his dismissal from the navy, which others of his acquaintance at the time categorically deny. One theory was submitted by Edouard Calic, namely that Heydrich was discharged once it emerged that he had been spying on the navy in the service of the Nazis. While Heydrich's political convictions and fascination with espionage would make this feasible and would explain why SS chief Heinrich Himmler appointed him to head the SD immediately following his discharge, direct evidence is lacking.

Nazi Party and the SS

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Reinhard Heydrich (middle) together with Heinrich Himmler, Karl Wolff and an unidentified assistant at the Obersalzberg, May 1939

In 1931, Himmler began to set up a counter-intelligence division of the SS. Acting on a friend's advice, he interviewed Heydrich. One version states that he arranged for an interview with Heydrich and was instantly impressed when Heydrich walked through the door. Himmler is said to have marveled at the tall, thin, blond, blue-eyed man that stood before him. However, as soon as Heydrich opened his mouth, he revealed an imperfection - an unusually high-pitched voice. Himmler, nevertheless remained intimidated by Heydrich. He gave him a test which allowed him 20 minutes to outline his plans for a counterintelligence service. Having no experience in the field, Heydrich put together anything that he could recall from spy novels that he read and an intelligence course that he took in the navy. Upon reading Heydrich's proposal, Himmler hired him on the spot. His pay was 180 reichsmarks per month [$ 40.00]. In doing so Himmler also effectively recruited Heydrich into the Nazi Party. He would later receive a Totenkopfring from Himmler, for his service.

To begin work, Heydrich set up office at the Brown House, the Nazi party headquarters in Munich. His office contained a kitchen table, a chair, and a typewriter. Despite his meager pay and humble office, Heydrich was a driven man. He set about to create a counterintelligence service to be reckoned with. His new position brought out the terrifying aspects of his personality; he was cold, calculating, and brilliant. His restless mind never ceased to invent methods to trap, humiliate, and destroy his enemies.

At this time, he was relatively insignificant within the Nazi intelligence apparatus. Heydrich created his own web of spies and informers and sent them out to dig up any information that could be used for blackmail, the more scandalous the better. He did not only go after opponents of the Nazis, he also sought sordid information on high-ranking Nazis. He and his staff spent their time building up a card-file system that contained dossiers which listed everyone's dirty little secrets. His office was filled with boxes which contained index cards marking the different categories of offenders: Communists, Catholics, aristocrats, Jews, Freemasons, and Nazis with shameful pasts. A special "poison file" was reserved for offenders that fit into two or more categories.

Heydrich's fiancée Lina von Osten faithfully remained by his side and in December of 1931, the two were married. That same year, Heydrich was promoted to SS major. As early as 1931, Heydrich was becoming one of the most dangerous men in the Nazi party. With his list of index cards, the fate of Nazi opponents rested with him. Also, his growing list of dirty files became invaluable to him as he had control over powerful Nazis by threatening to expose their secrets. In 1932, however, Heydrich was given a taste of his own medicine by Adolf Hitler.

A number of Heydrich's enemies had discovered the old rumors of his supposed Jewish ancestry and began to spread them around. With the Nazi party's growing power, such rumors could be deadly, even for the head of the Reich's counterintelligence service. The Nazis conducted an investigation into Heydrich's genealogy and he was found to be free of "colored or Jewish blood". Despite the fact that Heydrich was cleared by the investigation, Heinrich Himmler was distressed by the mere suggestion of a Jew heading his counterintelligence service and he even played with the idea of dismissing Heydrich. Himmler took the matter to Hitler. Normally, Hitler felt threatened by tough, conniving, and brilliant men such as Heydrich, and his natural instinct was to crush them before they became too powerful. This time, however, Hitler did not allow Himmler to dismiss Heydrich. Hitler was secure in the fact that he held all of the cards, and the rumors could be used to keep Heydrich in his place. In the Nazi party, the truth did not matter, the power of "truth" rested only with Hitler; a rumor was false only if Hitler wished it to be false. If Hitler, therefore, said that Heydrich was a Jew, it would become the truth within the Nazi party. Hitler considered Heydrich to be very useful to the Nazi party and he wanted Heydrich to continue his sly and effective counterintelligence work. Regardless of how dangerous Heydrich was, Hitler could "expose" him as a Jew at any given moment and Heydrich would be destroyed by the very instrument of terror that he created. Heydrich was fully aware of his tenuous position and he blindly obeyed Hitler with slavish loyalty throughout his life.

Gestapo & SD

In July of 1932, Heydrich's counterintelligence service grew into an effective machine of terror and intimidation and it was officially named Sicherheitsdienst [SD] - Security Service, an intelligence organization wholly committed to the defence of Nazism. He built it by recruiting agents from unusual sources, some of whom were not really committed Nazis, just people Heydrich found talented or useful, from whom reports could be compiled on various aspects of life in Nazi Germany. The organisation benefitted from close cooperation with the Gestapo, which Heydrich also gained control of in 1936, as part of a combined security police force. With his first task being the suppression of all possible dissent prior and during the Olympic Games of 1936, a task he executed with a cold and systematic brutality that gained him the German Olympia Honor Badge (First Class) (Deutsches Olympiaehrenzeichen). Later, the SD and the Gestapo were united under the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) under Heydrich. Heydrich was further promoted to SS colonel.

With Hitler clambering for real political power in Germany, Himmler and Heydrich wished to control all of the political police forces of all of the 17 states of Germany, and they began with the state of Bavaria. In 1933, Heydrich gathered some of his men from the SD and together they stormed police headquarters in Munich and took over the police using intimidation tactics. Himmler became commander of the Bavarian political police with Heydrich as his deputy. From there, the duo moved on to the rest of the police forces of the 16 remaining German states. With 15 states under control, they locked horns with Hermann Goering in Prussia.

Goering controlled the Prussian political police and he neither liked nor trusted the Himmler-Heydrich twosome. Goering's intentions were that his police force would stand apart from any other police organization and they would obey no laws, they would be a law unto themselves. He named his organization Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police). For the purpose of a franking stamp, a postal clerk abbreviated the name to Gestapo. Goering wanted to transfer them out of police headquarters and give them their own command center. He chose an address that would soon strike deadly terror in the hearts of millions of people throughout the German Reich - 8 Prinz Albrechtstrasse.

In 1933, Hitler became chancellor of Germany, but he still did not have the dictatorial powers that he desired. In order to give himself more power, he pressured President Paul von Hindenburg to sign a series of decrees which would hamper opposition parties such as the Communists and Socialists. With these decrees, the police had the authority to search and confiscate property and arrest and detain people without allowing a hearing or trial. Reinhard Heydrich consulted his list of index cards and supplied the SS and the brown-shirted SA with lists containing the names of offenders that needed to be arrested. Since Heydrich's index cards numbered in the thousands, the prisons were soon overflowing and the first concentration camps were established in order to deal with the overflow of prisoners.

Crushing the SA

In early 1934, Hitler was chancellor of Germany, but he was dreaming of absolute power. He was facing problems because Ernst Roehm and the SA stormtroopers were instigating trouble with the German army. To Hitler, this was most unwelcome because he needed the support of the German army to achieve his dictatorial ambitions and it did not make a pretty picture for his stormtroopers to induce adversity with the army. The powerful men of the army told Hitler in no uncertain terms that if he did not obliterate Roehm and the SA, he will be overthrown by the army. Unwilling to let his dreams of power die, Hitler decided to placate the army by dissolving the SA. This presented a problem for Hitler because Roehm was one of his closest friends and indulging the army meant killing his friend.

Goering viewed the SA as dangerous rivals to his Gestapo. Under the leadership of Ernst Roehm, the brown-shirted stormtroopers were a powerful and feared organization. Wary of the SA's power, Goering did not want to stand alone against them. His anxiety over the power of the SA was stronger than his dislike for Himmler and Heydrich and on April 20th 1934, he formed a partnership and placed the Gestapo into the eager hands of the dangerous pair. With control of the Gestapo the first order of business for Himmler and Heydrich was to crush the SA.

Reinhard Heydrich also wanted the SA out of the way, he was not keen on the idea of the SD and Gestapo sharing the spotlight with the power hungry stormtroopers. Heydrich was not about to let a fourteen-year friendship between Hitler and Roehm stand in the way of his quest for power. Turning Hitler against his friend was almost too easy for Heydrich, he simply had his SD men uncover false "evidence" that Roehm was plotting to overthrow Hitler. Heydrich and Himmler put pressure on Hitler to slaughter the leading members of the SA, and they assured him that the SS would carry out the murders. Heydrich drew up lists of all of the powerful SA men that needed to be killed along with Roehm. Through surveillance, members of the SD had learned the routines of all of the marked men and knew the best time to strike. Himmler and Heydrich took care of the details; all that was left was for Hitler to give the go ahead. On the Friday of June 30th 1934, the SS attacked the SA in a bloody massacre that lasted throughout the entire weekend. Roehm was killed along with all of the important members of the stormtroopers in this bloodbath which the nazis coined the Night of the Long Knives.

With the SA out of the way, Heydrich began building the Gestapo into an instrument of fear. He improved his index card system; since he created more categories of offenders, the cards were now color-coded. The line between criminal and law abiding citizen became blurred and the most trivial things became crimes; even if someone made an anti-Hitler comment in jest, the penalty was death. The Gestapo had the authority to arrest citizens on the mere suspicion that they might commit a crime. People were arrested for walking suspiciously, and since the Gestapo obeyed no law but their own, it was their discretion to decide what was considered "walking in a suspicious manner". The Gestapo had the right to arrest, beat, and murder whomever they wished. People were hesitant to speak in public places out of the morbid fear that their words might be misconstrued and they would find themselves under arrest. The members of the Gestapo were instructed to be merciless and people began disappearing throughout Germany never to be seen again. Sometimes a person would disappear for no apparent reason and at a later date, their family would receive an urn containing their ashes. Under Himmler and Heydrich, Germany became a legitimate and terrifying police state.

Night and Fog Decree

By late 1940, Hitler's armies had swept through most of western Europe. To Hitler's dismay, anti-Nazi resistance was alive and well, especially in the countries of France, Holland, and Belgium. In an effort to crush them, Hitler issued the Night and Fog Decree on December 7th 1941. In 1941, the SD was given the responsibility of carrying out an ominous decree, the Nacht und Nebel Erlass - Night and Fog Decree. This decree was born out of Hitler's frustration with anti-Nazi resistance in occupied countries. The decree was signed by Wilhelm Keitel, chief of Staff of the German army, thus it was sometimes referred to as "the Keitel Order". According to the decree, suspects had to be arrested in a maximally discrete way "under the cover of night and fog". People simply disappeared without a trace and no one was told of their whereabouts or their fate, not even family members or friends. The main intention of the decree was to generate a climate of fear and intimidation, thus making organized resistance more difficult. As Hitler intended, enemies of the Reich were to "vanish into the night and fog". These people were captured and handed over to the SD. In the files of the SD, they were categorized with the initials "NN" for Nacht und Nebel [Night and Fog]. For each "NN" prisoner, the SD was required to fill out a questionnaire containing personal information, country of origin and details of their crimes against the Reich. This questionnaire was to be put into an envelope inscribed with a seal that read Nacht und Nebel and submitted to the Reich Central Security Office (RSHA). This decree remained in effect after Heydrich's assassination in 1942. The exact number of people who vanished in the name of the decree has never been positively established, but it is estimated to be roughly 7,000.

On June 17th 1936, all political police forces throughout Germany were united with Heinrich Himmler as the chief. On June 26th, Himmler reorganized the police into two groups:

- Ordnungspolizei (ORPO) which consisted of the national uniformed police and the municipal police.

- Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO) which consisted of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police.

Reinhard Heydrich was placed in charge of the Sicherheitspolizei. In 1939, the SD, the Gestapo, and the Criminal Police were unified under one office, the Reich Central Security Office [RSHA], which was placed under the control of Reinhard Heydrich.

Himmler and Heydrich

As chief of all police forces, Himmler was technically responsible to Wilhelm Frick, the minister of the Interior, however, Himmler had no time for such silly formalities. Everyone knew the pecking order; Himmler answered to no one but Adolf Hitler. Himmler's police forces were independent and they obeyed no government laws. Rather than protecting the citizens of the Reich, the role of the police had become that of protecting the Reich from its citizens. Reinhard Heydrich's ruthlessness in this department earned him the nicknames "the blonde beast" and "Himmler's evil genius".

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Heydrich and Himmler had an odd but practical working relationship. Although Himmler was the boss, Heydrich was the true force behind the SD. The two men were vastly different personalities but they were united by their desire to succeed. Heydrich was everything that Himmler wished to be: tall, blonde, blue-eyed, cold, calculating, and intelligent. Himmler suppressed his jealousy because Heydrich was helping him to achieve power. By the same token, Heydrich blindly obeyed Himmler despite the fact that he considered him to be a fool. He knew that Himmler was his ticket to power. Thus the two men formed a solid partnership and became a dangerous duo. Their thirst for power took them beyond the periphery of the SD.

American journalist John Gunther, during his trip to Germany in 1934, while collecting research materials for his book Inside Europe, showed considerable knowledge of Nazi intrigues and backgrounds when he said that Himmler actually had a relatively small tolerance for butchery compared to a man like Heydrich, who was far more cruel. At this time, Heydrich was regarded as an obscure medium-ranked officer in the SS bureaucracy.

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Poster depicting Reinhard Heydrich.

While Heydrich's abilities were never doubted by superiors and subordinates alike, his constant sarcasm, occasionally boorish behaviour, extreme oversensitivity to being underestimated (in contrast to Himmler who preferred to be underestimated by would-be opponents) and aggressiveness won him few loyalists, while his propensity for rash actions such as the arrest of a Kreisleiter in 1935, or telling Göring and the council of ministers in 1940 that the security police would exercise limitless powers whether they granted them or not, was an ever present annoyance for Himmler, who had to clean up the messes. Himmler would occasionally lose his patience with Heydrich, berating and abusing him, sometimes calling him "Genghis Khan". Although Himmler thought Heydrich was at times exasperating, he generally found him indispensable.

In Light of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair Heydrich braced himself for the possibility of being fired by Himmler. Himmler did not fire Heydrich, but he was clearly angered. In a public speech, Himmler stated that he was misguided by his incapable subordinates. Although he did not name Heydrich specifically, Heydrich knew that he was one of them. But this only made Heydrich more driven to prove himself.

Upon the establishment of the Third Reich, Heydrich helped Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler gather information on many political opponents, keeping an impressive filing system listing individuals and organizations who opposed the party and the regime. He is believed to be the creator of the forged documents of Russian correspondence with the German High Command. While it is now known that the Stalinist Great Purge of the Soviet military officer corps was at most tangentially related to these forgeries, at the time it was widely believed to have resulted from Heydrich's actions, enormously adding to his prestige. He was also instrumental in establishing the false 'attack' by Poland on German national radio at Gleiwitz, intended to provide the Nazi justification for the beginning of World War II, though this failed miserably and only came to light post-war when allied investigators began researching the captured German documents, since the station selected was merely a relay station for Radio Breslau whose stronger signal drowned out the fake `Polish propaganda` emanating from Gleiwitz.

Reinhard Heydrich's masterful abilities in matters of intrigue made him useful to Adolf Hitler and he involved himself in matters outside of his duties as head of the Sicherheitspolizei. Heydrich was the driving force behind some of the Nazis' most hair raising exploits.Heydrich was one of the main architects of the Holocaust during the first years of World War II, answering only to, and taking orders only from Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in all matters that pertained to the Holocaust. He had initially gained some control over Jewish policy, when in November 1938, Göring assigned him as head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration following the Kristallnacht. In this position, he worked tirelessly both to coordinate various initiatives for the Final Solution, and to assert SS dominance over Jewish policy. Most famously in this respect, on 20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which he presented to the heads of a number of German Government departments a plan approved by Hitler for the deportation of the Jews of Europe to German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union, where the Jews fit for labour would be used for building roads. (That plan was not implemented in full, and instead most of the Jews under German control were later sent to extermination camps or concentration camps).

Additional service as fighter pilot

Reinhard Heydrich also served as Reserve Hauptmann, then Major in the Luftwaffe. Some sources claim that he served in the Invasion of Poland as a bomber gunner, but this is not confirmed. Then, despite his advanced age, he completed a fighter pilot course in 1940, probably due to his ambition. Heydrich wanted to set an example and show that the SS were not "asphalt" soldiers behind the front lines, but the elite of the Third Reich. In April 1940 he flew a Bf 110 in the Fighter Group II./JG 77 "Herz As" in Norway. The planes flown by Heydrich had an ancient Germanic runic character S for Sieg -- "victory" painted on the side of the fuselage. On May 13 1940 he crashed his plane during take-off and was injured. For a short time in May, he flew patrol flights over North Germany and the Netherlands. Then, after another accident, he returned to Berlin. In mid-June 1941, before the German attack on the USSR, he resumed flying, ignoring Himmler's orders. He flew his personal Bf 109E-7 again with Group II./JG 77 from Bălţi, Romania on the southern Eastern Front, which put the wing commander under pressure due to Heydrich's position and lack of experience. On July 22 1941, his plane was badly damaged over Yampil by Soviet AA artillery. Heydrich managed to crash-land in no-man's land, and run back to the German lines. After this, he was forbidden to fly once more, as it was realized that Heydrich's capture as a POW would be a major security breach for Germany, and he never again returned to active flying.

Heydrich was really too old and too inexperienced to be a fighter pilot and he lacked the necessary free time for training flights. But despite his lack of experience, he was decorated with the Iron Cross Second (1940) and First (1941) Classes. The number of missions flown by Heydrich is not known, but he was awarded the Frontflugspange (Front Pilot Badge) in silver, which usually was awarded after 60 combat missions. According to Alan Wykes in Heydrich (War Leader book #22 as part of Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century 1973), Heydrich flew 97 missions in a Me-110 twin engine fighter.

Reichsprotektor of Bohemia & Moravia and Assassination in Prague

Main article: Operation Anthropoid

On 27 September 1941 Heydrich was appointed acting Reichsprotektor in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the part of Czechoslovakia incorporated into the Reich on March 15, 1939). He replaced Konstantin von Neurath whom Hitler considered ineffective. (Neurath remained titular Protector until 20 August 1943).

Neurath's policy as Protector was based on giving privileges to the nobility and upper classes. This led to passive resentment among ordinary people, mainly workers. The Protectorate was a vital weapons and war material producer for the Third Reich. During Neurath's service as Protector, war production substantially dropped. Heydrich came to Prague to restore production quotas.

The car in which Heydrich was assassinated (currently in the Military History Museum in Prague).

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The car, another view.

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The scene of assassination.

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The road corner where Heydrich was assassinated.

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The corner as it looked in 1999.

As the governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich applied "carrot-and-stick" methods. The black market was suppressed, food rations and pensions were increased, and unemployment insurance was established for the first time. Those associated with the resistance movement or black market were tortured or executed. Under Heydrich, Prague and the rest of the Czech lands became quite pacified and industrial output went up. Because of his success in Prague, Hitler was considering making Heydrich the governor of Paris. When British intelligence heard this, they wanted to stop this at all costs. They would not let a man who butchered the Czechs and Jews of Prague to do the same to the French Resistance.

While virtual military governor of Bohemia and Moravia, exercising real executive power above the President and Prime Minister of the so called Protectorate, Heydrich often drove alone in a car with an open roof — a show of confidence in the occupation forces and the effectiveness of his government (See Czech resistance to Nazi occupation).

In London, the Czechoslovak government in exile (Prozatímní státní zřízení) was plotting for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. Two specially trained men were chosen for the operation: Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík. These were Czechoslovak soldiers who fled the country earlier in 1941. After receiving training from the British, they returned by parachute in December, dropped from a Halifax of 138 Squadron RAF.

On 27 May, 1942, Heydrich was scheduled to attend a meeting with Hitler in Berlin. In Heydrich's travel to Berlin, he would have to pass a section where the Dresden-Prague road merged with road leading to the Troja Bridge. That intersection was a perfect spot for the attack because Heydrich's car would have to slow down to make a hairpin turn. The attack was, therefore, scheduled for May 27th. They ambushed Heydrich while he rode in his open car in the Prague suburb of Kobylisy. As the car slowed to take the hairpin bend in the road, Gabčík took aim with a Sten sub-machine gun but it failed to fire. At that very moment, instead of ordering his driver to speed away Heydrich called his car to a halt in an attempt to take on the two attackers. Kubiš then immediately threw a bomb (a converted anti-tank mine) at the rear of the car. The explosion wounded Heydrich and also Kubiš himself.

It is alleged that when the smoke cleared, Heydrich emerged from the wreckage with his gun still in his hand and he gave chase after Kubis and tried to return fire but his pistol was not loaded. He ran for half a block, became weak from shock, and sent his driver Klein on foot to chase Gabčík. In the ensuing firefight, Gabčík shot Klein in the leg and escaped. Heydrich appeared not to be injured seriously.

One version suggests that a Czech woman is said to have come to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a truck delivering floor polish. First, Heydrich was placed in the back seat, but after complaining that the movement of the truck was causing him pain, he was placed in the back of the truck, lying on his stomach, and he was taken to Bulovka hospital. He suffered a severe injury to the left side of his body with major damage to his diaphragm, spleen, lung, and he also had a broken rib. The doctors immediately performed an operation and despite a slight fever, his recovery appeard to progress quite well. On June, 2nd, he had a visit from Himmler, who it is said to have broken down into tears when he heard of the attempt on Heydrich's life. During Himmler's visit, Heydrich reconciled himself with his fate by reciting a part of one of his father's operas:

"The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns Himself. We all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum."

After Himmler's visit, Heydrich slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness. He is said to have died at 4:30am on June 4th at the age of 38. Although the exact cause of death has not been definitively established, the autopsy states that Heydrich's death was most likely caused by bacteria and toxins from the bomb splinters.

The bomb explosion drove fragments from the car seats into Heydrich's body, including bits of springs and dirty upholstery. This led to massive infections of his internal organs. Despite Himmler sending his best doctors, Heydrich died in a Prague hospital eight days later. The autopsy stated that Heydrich's death was the result of septicemia.

Aftermath

Upon Himmler's orders, the Nazi retaliation was brutal. About 13,000 people were arrested, deported, imprisoned or killed. On 10 June all males over the age of 16 in the village of Lidice, 22 km north-west of Prague, and another village, Ležáky, were murdered. The towns were burned and the ruins leveled.

Heydrich's assassins took refuge in the crypt of an Orthodox church in Prague. Their presence there was betrayed to the Nazis, who surrounded the church and started firing on it. Rather than surrender, the assassins took their own lives.

There is a special memorial to both the assassins and the dead of Lidice and Lezaky in Jephson Gardens, Royal Leamington Spa, UK. This was the town where the Czech forces were stationed during the war, and where their training took place. The memorial fountain is in the form of a parachute, with water running over the centre fold. Planted around the fountain is the special white Lidice Rose, grown in commemoration of the dead. This memorial is believed to be the only place outside of Czechoslovakia where the special rose is grown. The fountain was designed and is maintained by Warwick district council.

An elaborate funeral was conducted for Heydrich in Prague and Berlin, with Hitler attending (and placing Heydrich's decorations on his funeral pillow, the highest grade of the German Order and the Blood Order Medal). Although Heydrich's death was employed as pro-Reich propaganda, Hitler seemed privately to blame Heydrich for his own death, through carelessness:

Since it is opportunity which makes not only the thief but also the assassin, such heroic gestures as driving in an open, unarmoured vehicle or walking about the streets unguarded are just damned stupidity, which serves the Fatherland not one whit. That a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich should expose himself to unnecessary danger, I can only condemn as stupid and idiotic.

Lina Heydrich later stated that she believed Heydrich had expected an early death, saying that she saw his frequent unnecessary risk-taking (such as his recklessness during his stint as a fighter pilot) as an attempt to ensure that, should he die, his would be a dramatic death.

Heydrich was buried in Berlin's Invalidenfriedhof, which had the misfortune to be on the border between West and East Berlin. His plot was between those of two famous German war heroes, Oven and Scharnhorst.. In 1945, however, his headstone and grave marker were removed by the Allies, who feared his tomb would become a rallying point for Neo-Nazis. During the time when the Berlin Wall was standing, the grave was part of the so-called "death strip" between the two Berlins and inaccessible to the public.

Heydrich's eventual replacements were Ernst Kaltenbrunner as the chief of RSHA, and Karl Hermann Frank 27 - 28 May 1942 and Kurt Daluege 28 May 1942 - 14 October 1943 as the new acting Reichsprotektors.

After Heydrich's death, his legacy lived on; the first three "trial" death camps were constructed and put into operation at Treblinka, Sobibór, and Belzec. The project was named Operation Reinhard in Heydrich's honor.

It is said that when told of Heydrich's death, Odilo Globocnik said, "Thank God that sow's gone to the butcher."

Family

In December 1930 Heydrich met Lina Mathilde von Osten (14 June 1911 - 14 August 1985). She was the daughter of Jürgen von Osten, a minor German aristocrat. They were married on 26 December 1931 in Großenbrode. The couple had four children. According to historian Jaroslav Čvančara, Heydrich had an additional child with a mistress, a leader of League of German Girls (BDM).

Heydrich's younger brother Heinz Siegfried (September 29 1905 in Halle/S), though initially as fanatical a Nazi as his brother, gradually became disenchanted with Nazism and even became involved in obtaining false identification documents for Jews to save them from persecution. When his activities were uncovered by the Gestapo he was given the choice of committing suicide rather than face trial with the attendant hardships for his family (and embarrassment to the regime). He shot himself on November 19, 1944.

Heydrich had four children: Klaus, born in 1933; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942. In 1943, Klaus lost his life in a traffic accident. In 1944, Lina Heydrich had Heider removed from the Hitler Youth out of fear that he may meet the same fate as his father. After the war, Lina moved to the island of Fehmarn, located in the Baltic sea, where she operated a hotel.

At the end of the war Heydrich's widow Lina returned to the island of Fehmarn with the surviving three of her four children. She owned and ran a hotel and restaurant. The Finnish theatre director and poet Mauno Manninen (1915-1969), a nephew of the composer Sibelius, was a frequent guest at the hotel. He took pity on the difficulties she experienced as a result of her infamous name and offered to marry her to enable her to change it. They married in 1965 but did not live together. She died in 1985, claiming till the end that she had known nothing about the atrocities committed and ordered by her first husband.

Since Heydrich's death, it has also been suggested that Heydrich had Jewish grandparents and that this was known to high Nazi leaders including Hitler and Himmler. Under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Jewishness was defined as any person with one Jewish grandparent. That would have classified Heydrich as "a person of mixed Jewish blood in the second degree", meaning he had one pure German and one half Jewish parent. As a "Mischling" (of mixed blood) Heydrich would, at the very least, have been subject to expulsion from the SS.

The testimony of Walter Schellenberg is cited in support of this view. He stated in the 1950s that Heinrich Himmler had met privately with Heydrich in 1935, after learning that one of Heydrich's relatives had held the surname of "Süss", a common Jewish name. According to Schellenberg, Heydrich admitted that one of his grandparents was Jewish and Himmler had reportedly informed Hitler. Hitler, however, stated Heydrich was a special case since "his Aryan blood far suppressed his Jewish heritage". Shortly thereafter, Gestapo personnel were dispatched to Halle, where Heydrich had been born, to erase certain records of Heydrich's past.

It was not long before other Nazis had heard insinuations that Heydrich might have had a Jewish relative in his background. Dr. Achim Gercke, the Nazi Party's leading genealogist, was commissioned by Gregor Strasser to look into Heydrich's background after a Nazi official, Rudolf Jordan, revealed Heydrich's suspected Jewish grandfather to Party Headquarters in 1932. Gercke said that research showed that not only was the Süss in question, a locksmith, not even a Jew, but that he wasn't even Heydrich's genetic grandfather, whose name was Reinhold Heydrich. The accuracy of both Schellenberg's and Gercke's accounts are debated among historians.

Heydrich had four children, mainly:

• Klaus (born 17 June 1933) died in a traffic accident in the lower castle in Panenské Břežany (Jungfern-Breschan) on 24 October 1943
• Heider (born 28 December 1934)
• Silke (born 9 April 1939)
• Marte (born 23 July 1942)

As of 2008, Heider, Marte and Silke are reported as still being alive.

Summary of SS career

Dates of rank

• SS-Mann: 14 July 1931
• SS-Sturmführer: 10 August 1931
• SS-Sturmhauptführer: 1 December 1931
• SS-Sturmbannführer: 25 December 1931
• SS-Standartenführer: 29 July 1932
• SS-Oberführer: 21 March 1933
• SS-Brigadeführer: 9 November 1933
• SS-Gruppenführer: 30 June 1934
• SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei: 27 September 1941

The earliest official photographs of Heydrich wearing an SS uniform are from 1933 when he held the rank of SS-Oberführer. Some private photographs exist showing him as an SS-Standartenführer from 1932, but there are no known pictures of Heydrich wearing a junior SS rank from before this time.

Service history

• July 1931: Appointed as an SS member under SS Number 10120
• August 1931: Appointed as SS officer and tasked with forming the SS Security Service
• July 1932: Founded the Sicherheitsdienst
• 1936: Appointed Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei
• September 1939: Founder and first Commander of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
• September 1941: Appointed as Deputy Reichsprotector of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
• January 1942: Chairman of the Wannsee Conference
• May 1942: Attacked by British supported Czechoslovak partisans in Prague
• June 1942: Died from wounds received in partisan attack

Heydrich's decorations

• German Order (Posthumous)
• Blood Order (Posthumous)
• Golden Nazi Party Badge
• Iron Cross Second (1940) and First (1941) Classes
• Luftwaffe Pilot's Badge (Flugzeugführerabzeichen)
• Luftwaffe Front Pilot Badge (Frontflugspange) in bronze (1940) and in silver (1941)
• Danzig Cross (First Class)
• Anschluss Medal
• Sudetenland Medal with Prague Castle Bar
• Memel Medal
• Olympic Games Decoration (First Class)
• Social Welfare Decoration (First Class)
• NSDAP Long Service Ribbon for 10 years service
• Police Service Ribbon for 18 years service

Heydrich in popular culture

• Kenneth Branagh reportedly said that he had trouble portraying Heydrich in Conspiracy due to the evil that surrounded him (Stanley Tucci also had similar reservations about playing Adolf Eichmann in the same film).
• Actor Anton Diffring played the central character Heydrich in the film "Operation Daybreak" about the assassination of the Reichsprotektor. Interestingly, Diffring was 57 years old when he shot this movie; the real Heydrich died at 38.
• Heydrich was portrayed by David Warner twice: in the 1978 TV miniseries Holocaust, and in the 1985 TV movie Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil. The movie followed the career of his subordinate Helmut Hoffmann, played by Bill Nighy.
• A Heydrich action figure has been produced by In The Past Toys, amongst many other people of the Third Reich military and police organization.
• The English indie band British Sea Power wrote a song called "A Lovely Day Tomorrow" about Heydrich's assassination by the Czech resistance. Originally a b-side, the song was re-recorded in 2004 as a limited edition single in collaboration with Czech band the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa. The single included both English and Czech versions of the song.
• The song SS-3 from thrash metal band Slayer's Divine Intervention album is about Heydrich, the title coming from the numberplate of the car he was killed in.
• The Black metal band Marduk released a song called “The Hangman of Prague” in their Plague Angel album inspired by Heydrich's assassinations in Prague.
• The song 1942 by Czech punk band Incrux is about Heydrich, referring to year of Heydrich's assassination.
• The 1943 Fritz Lang film Hangmen Also Die takes place in Prague and is based on Heydrich's assassination.
• The 1962 fictional work The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick mentions Heydrich in a timeline without his assassination.

Fiction

The events of the Wannsee conference are recreated in the 1984 TV Movie Wannseekonferenz (The Wannsee Conference)[1] directed by Heinz Schirk, and remade in 2001 under the title Conspiracy [2], with Kenneth Branagh playing Reinhard Heydrich. The Conference was also the subject of a 1992 English language documentary film entitled The Wannsee Conference directed by Dutch director Willy Lindwer [3].

The plan to kill Heydrich is central to the plot of the 1998 novel As Time Goes By, a sequel to the movie Casablanca, written by Michael Walsh. (ISBN 0-446-51900-6). The assassination itself has been dramatised in the 1943 Fritz Lang film Hangmen Also Die (written by Bertolt Brecht) [4], the 1964 Czechoslovak film Atentát [5] and the 1975 film Operation Daybreak, starring Anthony Andrews (Jozef Gabcik), Timothy Bottoms (Jan Kubis), Martin Shaw (Karel Curda) and Anton Diffring (Heydrich) [6]. As another instance of Heydrich's courting of disaster, this film shows him risking death by wearing the Crown of Bohemia which was historically fatal to anyone unentitled to do so.

Heydrich, as the "Reich's Crown Prince of Terror", plays a leading role in March Violets and The Pale Criminal, the first two novels in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy (ISBN 0-14-023170-6), in which Bernie Gunther, a Berlin private eye in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe who left the Berlin police when the Nazis came to power, finds his investigations embroiling him in the internal feuding of the Nazi High Command.

Heydrich and the events of the Wannsee conference are also the subjects of Robert Harris's novel Fatherland. The book portrays an alternate history where Heydrich is promoted to the rank of Reichsführer-SS (4-star General) after the death of Himmler. For a brief three seconds at movie's end (an ending in direct contradiction to that in the novel) he is shown standing with two other officials while the evidence of the Holocaust is given to U.S. President Joseph P. Kennedy.

The Man in the High Castle, an alternate-history novel by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick set in the 1960s describes Heydrich as head of the SS and maneuvering to become Reich Chancellor after Hitler and his immediate successor, Martin Bormann, are dead.

In the Robert Ludlum novel, The Tristan Betrayal, Heydrich plays a small but pivotal role. In this World War II thriller Heydrich is the master and father figure to a German assassin, Kleist, who serves as one of the antagonists of the novel. The book portrays Heydrich as a cruel, calculating man (nothing new) who had utmost respect from his fellow Nazi officials (debatable).

Heydrich also plays a pivotal role in William Harrington's novel "The English Lady".

"The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich" is a short story by Jim Shepard which explores the plot to assassinate Heydrich from the conspirators' perspective.

See also

• List of rulers of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia
• Ernst Kaltenbrunner

References

Bibliography

• SS Service Record of Reinhard Heydrich, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland
• The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS "Butcher of Prague", by Callum MacDonald (Da Capo Press, N.Y. 1989), ISBN 0-306-80860-9
• Assassination : Operation Anthropoid 1941-1942, by Michael Burian (Avis, Prague 2002)
• The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership, by Joachim Fest (Da Capo Press)
• "Reinhard Heydrich - Der deutsche Polizeichef als Jagdflieger", by Stefan Semerdjiev, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift, No 41 Sept/Okt.2004, pp. 36-38.
• "Leben mit einem Kriegsverbrecher" ("Life with a War Criminal"), by Lina Heydrich (Ludwig Verlag, Pfaffenhofen 1976) ISBN 3-7787-1025-7
• Heydrich: The Face of Evil, by Mario R. Dederichs, tr. Geoffrey Brooks (Greenhill Books, London 2006)
• Hitler: A Study In Tyranny, by Alan Bullock (HarperCollins, New York 1962)
• Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf (Verlag der Spiegel, Hamburg, 1966), by Heinz Höhne; translated as The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS (Richard Barry, transl.) (Pan Books 1972).
• The Labyrinth, by Walter Schellenberg, with introduction by Alan Bullock (Da Capo Press, original copyright, 1956 by Harper & Brothers)
• The Assassination of Heydrich, by Jan Wiener (Grossman Publishers, N.Y. 1969)
• The Life and Times of Reinhard Heydrich, by G.S. Graber (Robert Hale, London 1980)

External links

• Wiesenthal Center Information Page
• Heydrich's gravesite (Find-a-Grave)
• Special SS memorial publication. In English.
• Website with many contemporary photographs
• The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
• Reinhard Heydrich on www.adolfhitler.ws
• Axis History Forums