Reinhard Heydrich

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Reinhard Heydrich (1940)

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (born March 7, 1904 in Halle an der Saale ; † June 4, 1942 in Prague ) was a German SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the police who was head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and deputy during the Nazi era Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia was responsible for numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity . In 1941 he was commissioned by Hermann Göring with the “ final solution to the Jewish question ” and has been one of the main organizers of the Holocaust since then . In this function, he headed the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on January 20, 1942 , at which the extermination of Jews living in the German sphere of influence was discussed and coordinated.

Heydrich was seriously injured in an assassination attempt by Czech resistance fighters in Prague on May 27, 1942 , and died eight days later. The Nazi regime then committed acts of revenge such as the Lidice and Ležáky massacres .

Life

Childhood and youth

Heydrich's mother Elisabeth Krantz (1871-1946) came from a wealthy family and was the daughter of the head of the Royal Conservatory in Dresden , Eugen Krantz . His father Bruno Heydrich (1865–1938) came from a poor background, but after a scholarship-funded training in composition and singing at the Royal Conservatory in Dresden, he became a recognized composer and opera singer . The parents' marriage was interdenominational , the mother Roman Catholic and the father Protestant . The three children Reinhard, Heinz and Maria were raised Catholic.

In 1899 Bruno Heydrich founded a music school for middle-class children in Halle an der Saale , which was expanded into a conservatory in 1901, which in 1904 employed eleven teachers, four assistants and a secretary, so that the Heydrich family had two maids and a butler was able to afford, quickly found access to the upper classes of the city and, among other things, maintained friendly contacts with the mayor and publisher of the local newspaper. Bruno Heydrich successfully countered rumors that he was of Jewish origin in 1916 with a defamation lawsuit , because he feared that they could have "detrimental to business" in the political climate of the anti - Semitic Wilhelmine era .

Reinhard Heydrich was brought up strictly and, at the request of his father, attended a non-denominational reform high school , where the focus was on learning modern foreign languages ​​and technology. Especially in the latter area (especially in chemistry) Heydrich showed above-average performance. Outside of school, Heydrich learned several instruments as the child of two musicians. He showed some talent, especially when playing the violin, and soon mastered it at a noteworthy level. His passion for this instrument remained unbroken even in adulthood. The father's ambition to train his son to be a professional singer was negated by the thin, frail character of Reinhard's falsified voice , which did not grow even during his youth and led to teasing among classmates.

Politically and ideologically, he was shaped early on by an extreme nationalism that prevailed in the family. The defeat of the German Empire in World War I and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II were viewed as a catastrophe by his family. Like many other students at his secondary school , Reinhard Heydrich joined a "voluntary civil service " of Georg Maercker's Freikorps in 1919, after witnessing fighting near his parents' house in his hometown , in which he served as a reporter without himself To participate in combat operations. In 1920 he became a member of the youth group of the Halle local group of the German Volkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (DVSTB), which was banned after the assassination of Foreign Minister Rathenau in 1922.

Entry into the Navy, engagement and discharge

Lina and Reinhard Heydrich attend a concert in Prague's Waldstein Palace on the occasion of the Prague Music Week (May 26, 1942)

On March 30, 1922, Heydrich joined the Reichsmarine as a midshipman . In 1926 he received his officer license as a lieutenant at sea, underwent special training as a technical intelligence officer in radio communications and served in this function on the Schleswig-Holstein liner until 1928 . On July 1, 1928, he was promoted to lieutenant at sea and transferred to the admiral staff department of the Baltic Sea naval station in Kiel.

At the beginning of his training in the Navy, Heydrich was considered an eccentric. During this time he made "a strangely apolitical impression" and - viewed negatively in the extremely conservative officer milieu of the Navy - as a " liberal ". He met Wilhelm Canaris , who later became chief of the German Abwehr , during his service on the cruiser Berlin and became friends with him. During his time in the Navy, the ambitious Heydrich practiced intensive sports: sailing, swimming, fencing; he spent a lot of time making music.

In December 1930 Heydrich met his future wife, 19-year-old Lina Mathilde von Osten (1911–1985). Two weeks later, the two became engaged after Heydrich asked her father for her. The fiancée came from a right-wing extremist family. Her brother Hans von Osten had been a member of the SA since 1928, and Lina von Osten herself was "a staunch National Socialist and ardent anti-Semite" when she met Reinhard Heydrich.

However, at the time of his engagement to Lina von Osten, Heydrich had a relationship with another woman whose identity has not yet been clarified. He ended this relationship by sending a notice of his engagement. The father of the woman concerned filed a complaint against Heydrich with the chief of naval management, Admiral Erich Raeder . A broken promise of marriage was considered dishonorable, but it was not a serious offense and could have ended without punishment from the Honorary Council of the Navy. The members of the honorary council - Admiral Gustav Hansen , Heydrich's instructor Gustav Kleikamp and Hubert von Wangenheim - were, however, persuaded by Heydrich's arrogant demeanor, who spoke ill of the woman, incriminated her and denied having promised her marriage, not to judge and put the proceedings in the sole discretion of Raeder. Raeder decided, also due to Heydrich's obvious dishonesty in the proceedings and his attempts to wash himself clean by stressing the woman, that Heydrich was "unworthy" as an officer and that his dismissal, which took effect on April 30, 1931, was to be ordered.

For Heydrich, the unexpected dismissal was a complete disaster that shook him to the core. His life planning was wasted . A request submitted to the Reich President to revoke his dismissal for the sake of mercy was not granted, Heydrich "locked himself in his room and cried for days with anger and self-pity". In the midst of the global economic crisis , Heydrich was now largely on his own - cushioned by a transitional allowance of 200 Reichsmarks per month. There was no support from his parents, since Bruno Heydrich was no longer able to run the business after a stroke in the spring of 1931 and he left the lessons to his wife and daughter.

Encounter with Heinrich Himmler and advancement in the party-internal SD

On June 1, 1931 Heydrich came - after a long time against the NSDAP had remained indifferent - under the influence Lina von Osten and her family in the Nazi Party ( membership number 544916) and a month later, on 14 July, when untersturmführer in the Schutzstaffel (SS No. 10.120). His early entry contributed to his later receiving the Golden Party Badge . His entry into the party and the SS was probably less ideologically motivated than by the desire “to find his way back to a structured life in uniform”.

In the early 1930s, Heinrich Himmler systematically expanded the SS. The growing SS needed an efficient intelligence service mainly to monitor and eliminate political opponents. Heydrich was introduced to Himmler in August 1931 through a related childhood friend, the Munich SA leader and SA brigade leader "Upper Bavaria" Friedrich Karl von Eberstein (whose mother was Heydrich's godmother). This meeting marked the beginning of a close working relationship. Heydrich briefly outlined his ideas for setting up an intelligence service. Himmler was impressed and commissioned him to set up the organization that was named "Security Service" (SD) . However, Himmler later internally admitted that Heydrich's involvement was originally based on a "mistake": What is now known as the telecommunications force had been known as an intelligence force since 1917 , and Heydrich, as a "technical intelligence officer", had actually been trained as a radio officer. However, he had nothing to do with intelligence activity in the sense of secret service activity. Nevertheless, he apparently knew how to convince Himmler - who also knew nothing about secret service work.

On December 26, 1931, the wedding with Lina von Osten took place in Großenbrode according to the Evangelical rite and with the singing of the Horst Wessel song .

Thanks to his efficient working style, Heydrich soon became indispensable for his supporter Heinrich Himmler and his ambition, and he quickly rose in the hierarchy of the SS. On December 1, 1931 he was appointed Hauptsturmführer of the SS, in July 1932 SS-Standartenführer and "Chief of the Security Service at the Reichsführer SS". Up until Heydrich's death, both of them had a close working relationship and probably friendship.

For Heydrich's ideological consolidation in the sense of National Socialism, it was only his activity in the ranks of the SS that was decisive; he was supposed to shape their structures as they shaped his thinking and his views.

Heydrich and the formation of the Third Reich

The SS took hold of police violence in Bavaria

The seizure of power by the NSDAP meant legal access to power for the SA and SS. Heydrich became deputy chief of the Bavarian police in the same year . The Enabling Act made it possible to smash the opposition . The tableau of Heydrich's “enemies of the Reich” ranged from Jews, Christian churches, Freemasons and Gypsies to “ anti-socials ”.

An early target of the 1933 persecution campaigns in Bavaria was the Nobel Prize winner for literature, Thomas Mann . When, after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor , Mann decided to extend his stay abroad until the situation in Germany was clarified, the Bavarian Political Police (BPP) searched Mann's house in Munich and confiscated the house, inventory and bank account. On April 12, 1933 Heydrich demanded that Mann be taken into “ protective custody ” immediately after his return and wrote to Reich Governor von Epp :

"This un-German, Marxist and Jewish-friendly attitude, hostile to the national movement, prompted Thomas Mann to be issued protective custody, which, however, cannot be carried out due to his absence."

Reinhard Heydrich (April 1934)

The conception of the political police in Bavaria served as a model for the later development of the security and suppression structures of the Third Reich. Himmler and Heydrich managed to detach the police from the usual administrative structures and to dovetail them closely with the SS and their intelligence service, the SD. This gave it a prominent role in the ideological formation of society in the sense of National Socialism and became a means of increasing the importance of the SS.

The SS took over police power throughout the Reich; Disempowerment of the SA

Heinrich Himmler was appointed inspector of the Prussian Secret State Police, which had previously been under Hermann Göring's control, on April 20, 1934, and appointed his close follower Heydrich to head the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) . Heydrich, who had also been the Prussian State Councilor since April 5, 1934 , relocated the SD's headquarters to his new place of work in Berlin and began to dovetail the SS and SD party formations with the police, as before in Bavaria. This expansion of the power of Himmler and Heydrich was closely related to the fear that the Nazi leadership around Hitler would lose control over the SA. The Sturmabteilung under Ernst Röhm had become increasingly dissatisfied after taking power. She had brought Hitler to power, in her opinion, but now played only a subordinate role. After the first national revolution, a part of the SA now demanded a second, socialist revolution, which threatened Hitler's alliance with the conservative elites and the Reichswehr. Hitler, who became uncomfortable with the SA, looked for ways to eliminate it. Heydrich's SD therefore operated on fabricated evidence of an allegedly imminent coup. When this so-called Röhm putsch was suppressed at the end of June 1934, the SA leadership was executed by SS and SD commands subordinate to Heydrich. With retroactive effect to this June 30, 1934, Heydrich was appointed SS-Gruppenführer for his "achievements" .

In 1936 Himmler became chief of the German police, Heydrich chief of the security police (Sipo). The latter, which was made up of the political police and the criminal police , was strictly organized, interspersed with reliable and young National Socialists with academic backgrounds and managed centrally. In it Heydrich had an efficient and ideologically closely related instrument to mercilessly pursue supposed enemies of the state, but also personal adversaries and rivals. He created a network of close police surveillance, created extensive files and commissioned scientists within the SD to analyze the activities of possible public enemies such as Jews, communists , liberals and religious groups. On May 28, 1936, Heydrich demanded in a secret order to the state police that "the use of more stringent interrogation methods should under no circumstances be put on record". The interrogation files of tortured accused are to be kept under lock and key by the head of the respective state police station.

Rivalry with the armed forces

The Wehrmacht was the SS as a second armed organization in the realm increasingly an eyesore. The SS, in turn, strengthened their position vis-à-vis the Wehrmacht by using targeted intrigues to get rid of the then Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Colonel General Werner von Fritsch , and Reich Minister of War Werner von Blomberg . In doing so, they consolidated National Socialism's control over the Wehrmacht.

There was also rivalry between Heydrichs SD and the army secret service, the Abwehr , under its former patron Admiral Wilhelm Canaris . The two bosses initially maintained a friendly relationship with the outside world and met every morning to ride out together. Behind the scenes, however, everyone tried to switch off the other - Heydrich had Canaris' offices bugged, Canaris had evidence of Heydrich's alleged Jewish ancestry searched.

Reichspogromnacht

During the Reichspogromnacht , which surprised the SS under Himmler and Heydrich insofar as it came from the party and Joseph Goebbels , he sent an urgent telex to the StaPo on November 10, 1938 with various instructions. One example is the arrangement

"[...] to arrest as many Jews - especially wealthy - in all districts as can be accommodated in the existing cells"

- Reinhard Heydrich : Telex

Founding of the Reich Security Main Office under Heydrich

In 1939 the SD and Security Police (Criminal Police and Secret State Police) were subordinated to the newly created Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), with Heydrich at the helm as head of the Security Police and the SD , who was able to prevail in a bitter controversy against SS lawyers around Werner Best in terms of personnel policy . Heydrich deliberately chose a leadership class for the RSHA who knew how to combine academic intelligence with cold, folk fanaticism. The conception and implementation of the RSHA was based heavily on the ideas of Heydrich, who himself embodied the “political concept of a merger of SS and police”. In the meantime a huge police apparatus had emerged that could collect and deliver information anywhere - an instrument for exercising absolute domination. Heydrich continued to work on the perfecting of this apparatus, which was to show all its power and ideological orientation in the National Socialist rule over Eastern Europe and the planning and implementation of the Holocaust. The RSHA, which he created according to his ideas, became “a decisive radicalizing element of Nazi politics”.

In August 1940 Heydrich also took over the presidency of the International Criminal Police Commission (IKPK), the predecessor of Interpol . The National Socialists had tried for a long time to bring the IKPK under their control. After the presidency of the IKPK had been given to the Vienna Police President Michael Skubl for five years in 1937, Otto Steinhäusl, a National Socialist , took over the presidency after Austria's "Anschluss" in 1938 . After his death in 1940, the seat of the IKPK was moved to Berlin, where it was de facto integrated into the Reich Criminal Police Office, Office V of the RSHA. The Wannsee Conference was supposed to take place on December 9, 1941 at their new office, Am kleine Wannsee 16 , but was postponed and relocated at short notice.

War of Annihilation and Final Solution

Assault on the Gleiwitz transmitter

At the beginning of August 1939 Heydrich led the preparations for the attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter and for other fictitious incidents on the German-Polish border in order to simulate Polish attacks as a pretext for the criminal war of aggression against Poland. From August 22, 1939, members of the SD and SS disguised as Polish irregulars , as well as prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp who were forced to do so (who were murdered and left lying as evidence of fighting) triggered several “border incidents”. On August 31, 1939, a group of SS men led by Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks attacked the Gleiwitz transmitter . On September 1, 1939, the attack on Poland began , which was justified by these alleged Polish attacks.

operational groups

Heydrich with Heinrich Himmler in Vienna (March 1938)

The rapidly advancing troops of the Wehrmacht were followed by so-called SS Einsatzgruppen , who ruthlessly attacked the civilian population, especially the " intelligentsia " and "Jews". With their work began the war of extermination against the civilian populations of the subject countries of Eastern Europe. "The Einsatzgruppen, which in autumn 1939 in Poland extended the police security mission of the occupying power to include the Völkische land consolidation , deportation and mass shootings, as mobile units of the RSHA represented the fighting administration that Heydrich had demanded." Successful even during the attack on Poland it was Himmler and Heydrich to further expand the competencies of SS and police forces vis-à-vis the Wehrmacht and to rule on executions through independent police tribunals in addition to the Wehrmacht justice system. At the beginning of the campaign, the Einsatzgruppen of SS, SD and police were at least nominally subordinate to the Wehrmacht, but the SS established itself as an independent force alongside the Wehrmacht.

This independence, which by no means ruled out cooperation between SS Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht, was retained in the east during the later course of the war . When Operation Barbarossa and the war against the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941 , the SS Einsatzgruppen systematically carried out massacres .

Military service with the Air Force

During the Second World War , Heydrich took part as a reserve officer in the Air Force, initially as a gunner in Kampfgeschwader 55 in the attack on Poland, and later as a fighter pilot in Jagdgeschwader 77 in missions over Norway , Northern Germany and Holland . He flew a Messerschmitt Bf 109E-7 .

In the summer of 1941 Heydrich disregarded an express prohibition of the Reichsführer SS Himmler from combat missions, reported at Bălți airfield in the southern section of the eastern front in the uniform of an Air Force major and was assigned to Group II of Jagdgeschwader 77, in which he had flown earlier. His plane was hit by a Soviet anti-aircraft gun over Jampol on the afternoon of July 22nd and the engine failed. Heydrich was forced to make an emergency landing between the front lines. In the air force base it was feared that “Heydrich was either dead or - worse still - fell into the hands of the Russian NKVD ”, but after a few hours the news came that an advanced patrol had saved him. The fact that Heydrich's flight was not approved by Himmler was addressed in his commemorative speech on Heydrich's death in 1942. In it, Himmler mentioned “with proud joy” that this was “the only secrecy he had in the eleven years of our common journey had me ”.

His biographer Robert Gerwarth judges that Heydrich was looking for a “heroic” front-line experience ”with these flying missions.

The "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"

Göring's commission to Heydrich on July 31, 1941

In the ideology of the National Socialists, Jews were regarded as the ultimate enemy. They were portrayed as “ sub-humans ” and sometimes compared in Nazi propaganda with rats (as in the film The Eternal Jew ) and other vermin.

Even before the war, Heydrich collected all information about Jewish institutions and had them monitored. First, the Jews were to be driven out of the Reich through a system of expropriation and deportation . In 1938 Heydrich sent Adolf Eichmann to Vienna to set up the central office for Jewish emigration ; it became the model for the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration established in Berlin in January 1939 . Heydrichs SD thus received a key role in the persecution of the Jews.

After the conquest of Poland, Heydrich gave the order to set up ghettos for the Jews and to form so-called Jewish councils there. The Jewish communities were forced to cooperate with the National Socialists and contribute to their own downfall. With Eichmann's help, Heydrich organized the deportations of Jews from all over the Reich as well as from Austria and parts of Poland to these newly built ghettos. In an instruction dated September 22, 1939, Heydrich differentiated between a "secret final goal", the pursuit of which must be long-term, and the means and ways to get there. Ghettos were only intermediate stops for him. The ultimate goal at that time was the deportation of all Jews from the incorporated areas to a territory on the eastern border of Poland.

With the conquest of Eastern Europe, millions of Jews and other people who were disparaged as "members of inferior races" fell into German hands. When the decision to murder all Jews was made is a matter of dispute; most historians date it between September and December 1941. The systematic murder of the Jews began in gradual radicalized steps by the Einsatzgruppen . Just eight days after the start of Operation Barbarossa, Heydrich undertook his first inspection trip on June 30, 1941 and immediately demanded in his operational order that Einsatzgruppe B should "not find it difficult to keep pace with military developments with a skilful approach". A few days later, Einsatzgruppen chief Arthur Nebe promptly reported that in the first few days "only 96 Jews had been executed" in Grodno and Lidna, but he had "given orders that this should be intensified considerably". Heydrich's inspection trips contributed to a massive increase in the mass murders of Jewish civilians in the occupied Soviet territories, so that just a few weeks after the start of the war, women and children were killed in mass shootings, with Einsatzkommando 9 under the direction of Alfred Filbert being the first. "Who systematically killed Jewish women and children in Belarus from the end of July, apparently on the express orders of Heydrich".

On July 31, 1941, Heydrich was commissioned by Hermann Göring to make all the necessary preparations for an “overall solution to the Jewish question”, be they financial, organizational or administrative in nature. Heydrich quickly realized that for this purpose, central coordination of all departments involved was necessary. On January 20, 1942, he called the Wannsee Conference to discuss ways and means of achieving the “ final solution to the European Jewish question”. Heydrich specified what should happen to the deported Jews:

“Under the appropriate guidance, the Jews are now to come to work in a suitable manner in the East as part of the Final Solution. In large columns of work, with separation of the sexes, the Jews able to work are led into these areas to build roads, although a large part will undoubtedly be lost through natural reduction. Any remaining stock will have to be treated accordingly, since this is undoubtedly the most resilient part, since this, representing a natural selection, is to be addressed as the nucleus of a new Jewish construction when released. "

Although he did not speak explicitly of the women and children who were not “able to work”, it is clear that he counted them among the “germ cells of a new Jewish structure”, which should also be given “ special treatment ” - in the language of the Perpetrator, this was the code name for killing. The mass murders of Heydrich's SS Einsatzgruppen continued. By the end of 1941 they had already killed more than 500,000 women, children and men in the occupied Soviet territories, mostly by shooting at close range. During the spring and summer of 1942 they shot at least 360,000 Jews in Ukraine and Belarus.

Deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia

Heydrich (left) with Karl Hermann Frank (right) in Prague Castle (1941)

After the cession of the Sudetenland , enforced in the Munich Agreement of 1938, the so-called remaining Czech Republic was occupied by German troops on March 15 and 16, 1939 . For the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , a “Reich Protector” was appointed who resided in Prague . This office was entrusted to Konstantin von Neurath , the foreign minister of the German Reich who was deposed on February 5, 1938 . In the opinion of Heydrich and the SS functionary Karl Hermann Frank, Neurath did not perform his task with the necessary severity - both had ambitions for Neurath's post. Heydrich collected evidence of Neurath's alleged unreliability, which led to the fact that he was "on leave" for an indefinite period - it was officially announced that he had asked the "Führer" to abdicate for health reasons.

Heydrich was appointed Deputy Reich Protector, but at the same time remained head of the RSHA. On September 27, 1941, he arrived in Prague. In his inaugural address on October 2, 1941, to employees of the German Protectorate Administration at Prague Castle , he made a drastic statement about the treatment of the Czech population as long as they were needed for the German war economy because of their economic performance:

“So I need peace and quiet in the room so that the worker, the Czech worker, can fully employ his manpower for the German war effort [...]. This means that you have to give the Czech workers that food - if I can say it so clearly that they can do their job. In this direction [...] there was a meeting with the Fuehrer with the assistance of State Secretary Backe , and we will probably ask you to keep all of this to yourself before it comes out because it has to be made propagandistically appropriate [...] to an increase in the There are fat rations among the Czech workers, which is around 400 g, that is a sum that is impressive. "

This economic exploitation took place in coordination with the Secretary of State for Food, Herbert Backe, "one of Heydrich's few close personal friends". Since the maintenance of the Czech armaments industry in particular was of great importance for the warfare of the German Reich, the Czech workers, in contrast to the “inferior races of Europe”, who did no war-relevant work for Germany, were to be adequately fed. After the war you could settle accounts with the Czechs. Heydrich immediately introduced draconian measures against the population. By the end of November 1941, 6,000 people had been arrested and 404 death sentences officially carried out. 1299 of these prisoners in the first two months of Heydrich's term of office alone were deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp in winter ; of them only 52 survived the war. This earned him the nickname “The Executioner of Prague” among the Prague population. He decided that a concentration camp for the Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia should be set up in Theresienstadt .

The estate Virgin Breschan in Prague, the Jewish sugar manufacturer before Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer removed was the Heydrich family served as manor. It included two castles, an area of ​​125 hectares of forest and an extensive garden center. From then on Lina Heydrich had inmates recruited from the Theresienstadt concentration camp to use them as workers on the country estate, on which a satellite camp was set up for this purpose.

Assassination attempt and death of Heydrich

Assassination preparations

After the invasion of German Wehrmacht troops, part of the Czech government fled to Great Britain. In London, the former President Edvard Beneš established a government in exile that carried out acts of sabotage in the occupied homeland. For this purpose, the British trained Czechoslovak soldiers who jumped parachutes over the occupied area at night. The agents were supposed to contact the Czech underground and carry out actions such as blowing up factories and setting up radio direction finders for orientation for Allied bombers. But since the surveillance system and the pressure of the Germans on the Czech population were underestimated, the actions were mostly unsuccessful.

At the end of 1941 the plan matured to carry out a sensational action - an assassination attempt on the hated Reich Protector, who, as head of the Reich Main Security Office, was also in the sights of the British secret service. With tough repression he had initially succeeded in weakening the Czech resistance considerably. The action, which was prepared by the Czechoslovak intelligence service under the direction of František Moravec , was given the code name Operation Anthropoid . A small group of soldiers was trained for this in the strictest of secrecy. In the early morning of December 29, 1941, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš were parachuted east of Pilsen by a British Halifax bomber . The two managed to make their way to Prague, to contact the underground there and to go underground for the next few months. Here they learned details about Heydrich's habits and his daily routine. So every day he let himself be driven the same distance from his estate to Prague's Hradcany , usually in an open car, without escort .

In the weeks leading up to the attack, the Czech resistance had grown stronger. Heydrich, who had sent euphemistic reports to Martin Bormann since September 1941 in order to “put his 'achievements' in the Protectorate in the right light”, admitted in a letter to Bormann on May 19, 1942 for the first time that the situation in the Protectorate was deteriorating and said at a press conference in Prague on May 26, 1942, the day before the attack:

“I feel and see that the foreign propaganda and the defeatist and anti-German whisper propaganda in the area is on the increase again considerably. [...] Even the small acts of sabotage, which do less damage than demonstrate an oppositional spirit, have increased. "

Course of the assassination

For the attack, the assassins chose a tight, sloping hairpin bend in the Prague suburb of Libeň . There was no police station nearby. The curve could only be driven through at low speed. On the morning of May 27, 1942, Gabčík and Kubiš positioned themselves near the curve. In their briefcases they had a collapsible Sten Gun submachine gun and a hand grenade made of special explosives with high explosive power. Another agent, Josef Valčík, took a position above to signal Heydrich's approach with a pocket mirror.

Heydrich's car damaged in the assassination attempt, May 27, 1942

Heydrich was late that morning. When his car finally arrived, his driver, SS-Oberscharführer Klein, had to brake the Mercedes-Benz hard before the curve . Gabčík raised his submachine gun and pulled the trigger from close range. However, the weapon jammed so that no shot was released. Heydrich, believing that he was only dealing with a lone perpetrator, made a fatal wrong decision for him personally: he ordered the driver to stop and pulled his service pistol against Gabčík. Kubiš then stepped out of cover and threw his hand grenade. This bounced off the right rear wheel and exploded next to the vehicle. Heydrich jumped out of the car and tried to shoot the assassins. His driver Klein, "disoriented by the explosion, staggered towards Kubiš", and "Heydrich suddenly collapsed with a painful face, so that Gabčík was also able to escape from his field of fire". Only after some time was he found by Czech police officers and driven in a truck to the nearby Na Bulovce hospital (on the Bulovka).

death

Czech doctors examined Heydrich. An X-ray showed a shattered rib , ruptured diaphragm, and splinters in his spleen , while his kidneys were unharmed.

Himmler sent his personal physician Karl Gebhardt to Prague for the operation. Gebhardt's plane landed late. In the meantime, the German doctors Josef Hohlbaum and Walter Dick, who lived in Prague, had performed the operation. Heydrich's condition initially appeared to be improving, but on June 3 there was a sudden deterioration with a high fever and sepsis from peritonitis , probably caused by particles of the upholstery of the car that had not been detected in the abdominal cavity. Had penicillin been used, which was not available, “Heydrich would have survived”. He fell into a coma and died on June 4, 1942 at 4:30 a.m. A study in 2012 came to the conclusion that the exact cause of death has not yet been conclusively clarified; according to this, the thesis that has so far often been held that he died of a gas fire is not tenable.

Himmler initially took over the leadership of the Reich Main Security Office on a provisional basis until he appointed Ernst Kaltenbrunner to his post on January 30, 1943 as the new head of the RSHA. He appointed the chief of the regulatory police, Kurt Daluege, to succeed Heydrich as Deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia .

Retribution, national mourning and Heydrich adoration

Investigations

Immediately after the assassination, the Gestapo officer and head of department (Section II g - Assassinations, illegal possession of weapons and sabotage ) at the Prague State Police Headquarters, Heinz Pannwitz , was entrusted with the management of a special commission to investigate the Heydrich attack. Pannwitz was the author of the official final report on the Heydrich assassination attempt and wrote two minutes on the assassination attempt in the second half of the 1950s.

Commemorative plaque at the Church of St. Cyril and Method in Prague in memory of the last fight of Heydrich's assassins

The attack on Heydrich apparently hit the Nazi leadership to the core. The search for the attackers was hectic and poorly organized at first. With the help of Bishop Gorazd ( whose real name was Matěj Pavlík), who was later canonized for this purpose , the assassins hid in the crypt of the Karl Borromeo Church (since 1935 Church of St. Cyril and Methodius ) in Prague. In the period that followed, the German occupiers exerted considerable pressure on the Czech population, mainly by taking hostages.

Persecutions

After the assassination attempt on Heydrich, martial law was immediately declared over the entire Protectorate area on May 27, 1942 , which was not revoked until July 3, 1942. During this martial law, later referred to as heydrichiáda (Heydrichiade) in Czechoslovakia , as afterwards, there were extensive waves of arrests (over 3000 people) with executions of over 1300 people. As a result, first the village of Lidice and a few days later Ležáky was razed to the ground. All 184 male residents of Lidice over the age of 16 were shot (June 9/10, 1942), the women were deported to concentration camps, while the children had to undergo a “racial examination”. Nine of the children were classified as "Germanisable" and taken to German foster parents, "the others were killed".

As a justification for the murder of the people, against better judgment, alleged evidence of a connection between Lidice and the assassins was given; for such a presumption had "proven to be false" even before Lidice was destroyed. Among the victims in Lidice and Ležáky were 3,188 Czechs sentenced to death in the summer of 1942, "of which 477 were for the sole reason that they had 'approved' the assassination attempt on Heydrich".

The hiding place in the Prague church was found indirectly through the tip of the parachute agent Karel Čurda , who on June 16, 1942, "in order to save his life and protect his family", gave the Gestapo the name of the Moravec family in Prague , where the two assassins were temporarily staying. The family's underage son, Vlastimil, broke down after a brutal interrogation "when the investigators showed him his mother's head was cut off in a glass container filled with liquid and threatened to add his father's head to it," and shared the hiding place with his tormentors the Karl Borromäus Church with.

After several hours of fighting with SS units led by Karl von Fischer-Treuenfeld , the assassins shot themselves on June 18, 1942 in a hopeless situation. Bishop Gorazd , who took responsibility for the events in the church, Father Petrek, who was found in the church, and two other Orthodox priests who had given refuge to the assassins were executed by the occupiers.

State funeral and cult

Adolf Hitler at the State Funeral for Reinhard Heydrich (June 9, 1942)
Special postage stamps of the Reich Postal Administration “Bohemia and Moravia” on the anniversary of death

Heydrich's corpse was laid out in the Hradschin two days after his death and then transferred to Berlin. On June 9th, the New Reich Chancellery hosted the largest funeral ceremony in the Third Reich since President Paul von Hindenburg's state funeral, in which all the Nazis took part. Heydrich's body was buried in the Berlin Invalidenfriedhof . Himmler gave the eulogy, who emphasized that “as a National Socialist and an SS man, he tackled all measures and actions that he took. For the deep reasons of his heart and blood he felt, understood and realized Adolf Hitler's worldview . ”Hitler praised him as a“ martyr , fallen for the preservation and security of the Reich ”, and drew him posthumously as the second German after Fritz Todt , with the highest level of the Teutonic Order , the highest distinction of the NSDAP.

After Heydrich's death, the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation was established in Prague on July 25, 1942 . Formally set up as a Reich Foundation for Scientific Research , it actually served to justify the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and to carry out work for the Germanization plans.

There was another commemoration in 1943 to mark the anniversary, and a bust of Heydrich's death mask was erected at the site of the assassination, and passers-by had to bow before it. A commemorative stamp was issued on the day of his death, Heydrich was raised to “a mythical, transfigured 'martyr' in the National Socialist pantheon of fallen heroes” and a “new climax of the Nazi cult of the dead” was staged. Hitler had him included in an honor list of fallen "fighters of the NSDAP" and the 11 SS-Gebirgs-Jäger-Regiment of the 6th SS-Gebirgs-Division "Nord" named after him, and streets and squares in the Reich Protectorate were named after Heydrich.

Thomas Mann judged at about the same time in a radio address on the BBC . He called Heydrich's death the “most natural death” that a “bloodhound like him” could have died. Because “wherever this murder servant went, the blood flowed in rivers. Everywhere, including in Germany, he was called badly and rightly: the executioner ... Well, he was murdered. And how do the Nazis take that? You fall into convulsions. They literally act as if the most incomprehensible wrongdoing had happened, as if the highest of humanity had been touched [...] and another master butcher [Himmler] tells him at the grave that he was a pure soul and a person with a high sense of humanity . It's all crazy ... "

Personality and reception

For many of his contemporaries, Heydrich embodied the epitome of the " Aryan " - blond, slim and tall. On the other hand, there are only a few tape recordings of his remarkably high voice, which earned him the nickname “goat”, despite the high positions he occupied. In addition, he was a sporty man and a capable sports fencer who participated in national and international tournaments. If it had been up to his father, he should have become a musician. Heydrich learned the piano and violin at an early age, which he mastered with virtuosity. In public he presented himself as a caring family man, especially during his time in Prague.

Heydrich was considered a power man and, as Himmler's right-hand man, did important work in integrating the political police into the apparatus of the NSDAP. Some historians argue that the basically petty-bourgeois Himmler with his penchant for esotericism would not have been able to survive the intriguing internal power struggle of the various groups in the NSDAP without the astute planning and determined action of Heydrich. "HHhH - Himmler's brain is called Heydrich" is said to have joked the former Prussian interior minister and later Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring about his competitors, who bit by bit dispute sovereignty over the police and security services. This Sottise, which the French writer Laurent Binet made the title of his novel HHhH about the assassination attempt on Heydrich in 2010 , was first spread by the lawyer and writer Carl Haensel . In 1950 he claimed in his memoirs that Göring had said to him in 1946 while in custody in Nuremberg : “You do not know Himmler. Of course not. You know, he was utterly stupid. His brain was called Heydrich. ”The biographers of Himmler and Heydrich, the historians Peter Longerich and Robert Gerwarth, did not, however, mention the Göring quote. Longerich emphasized:

“Himmler had always been sure of Heydrich's loyalty, even if Hitler's order to Heydrich to prepare the 'final solution' established a second line of command in addition to Himmler's general responsibility for combating all enemies of the Reich. These competing relationships of command do not seem to have led to a serious rivalry between Himmler and Heydrich, however. On the contrary: Himmler saw himself first and foremost affected in his own power by the murder of his comrade-in-arms. "

Heydrich, who considered political Catholicism to be the main enemy of National Socialism alongside the Jews, even toyed with the idea of ​​infiltrating the Catholic Church by infiltrating young National Socialists into the seminaries. He also considered the Freemasons to be very dangerous opponents who, if they got the upper hand in the struggle with National Socialism, would celebrate “orgies of cruelty” with which “the severity of Adolf Hitler would appear very moderate”. In the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin , he had set up a "Museum of the Freemasons" in a windowless, black-lined room, in which all sorts of cult objects of the Freemasons were illuminated by a violet light.

If he wanted to distract himself, Heydrich allegedly arranged to meet up with his closest colleagues such as the young SD head abroad, Walter Schellenberg, for nightly forays through Berlin bars and brothels. In a bar, guests who didn't know him even laughed at him when he shouted: “I'm the head of the Gestapo! I am Heydrich! I can send you all to the concentration camp! ” According to the historian Robert Gerwarth , such representations are based exclusively on claims made by Schellenberg after the war and on rumors. According to Robert Gerwarth's biography from 2011, Heydrich was not very much a political loner as a young officer, and when, after his release from his career as an officer in 1931, “under pressure from his fiancés”, he sought a “second career in uniform” with the “then still tiny SS “Tried hard in Munich, not yet an ideologically stable National Socialist. But under the influence of his wife Lina, who was already a staunch National Socialist at the age of 19, he very quickly adopted the ideological premises of his political mentor Himmler and developed into "one of the most radical advocates of the National Socialist worldview and its realization through rigid and ever more extensive Persecution ", to the" self-confident and ideologically stable leader of the RSHA and to the organizer of the Holocaust ". The extraordinarily "talented" organizer of terror, Heydrich, saw himself primarily as a "man of action" and less as a "visionary" like Hitler and Himmler.

Familiar

Heydrich had been married to the ardent National Socialist Lina Mathilde von Osten since December 1931 . The marriage had four children: Klaus (* June 17, 1933, who died in a traffic accident on October 24, 1943), Heider (* December 23, 1934), Silke (* April 9, 1939) and Marte (* 23 July 1942).

Alleged Jewish ancestry

Heydrich was confronted with rumors about his Jewish ancestry on his father's side (alleged Jewish grandfather) from his youth to adulthood. This culminated in an investigation, ordered by Gregor Strasser in 1932 and instigated by Rudolf Jordan , the Gauleiter of Halle-Merseburg . The assumption was based primarily on the fact that the father, Bruno Heydrich, was described in the Riemann Music Lexicon of 1916 as "Heydrich, Bruno, real name Suss" - Suss was a common Jewish name. This formulation came from Bruno Heydrich's former student Martin Frey, who was related to the editor of the encyclopedia and “wanted to take revenge in this way for his exclusion from the conservatory”. Heydrich initiated a "defamation" lawsuit against the editors, which he won.

The investigation showed, however, that Heydrich's grandfather had died early and the grandmother had married a man named Suss in his second marriage, so Heydrich by no means had “Jewish blood” in him. Heydrich's personal file (including the pedigree ) was kept by Martin Bormann and has been preserved. The pedigree shows only one generation of the maternal line; The grandmother's name, origin and place of birth are missing, while this was a requirement for the pedigree itself of every simple SS man.

Robert Kempner was convinced until the 1950s that the head of the department of the expert for race research at the Reich Ministry of the Interior , Achim Gercke , had delivered a courtesy report in 1932. In 1966, Shlomo Aronson traced Heydrich's maternal ancestry to 1688, and on his father's side back to 1738, thereby providing evidence that all rumors about Jewish ancestry are false. Robert Gerwarth came to the same conclusion in 2011, who also emphasized that Aronson's dissertation “deserves the merit of having refuted a long-lived myth [...] that has been revived time and again by former SS colleagues and early biographers: the myth of Heydrich's Jewish descent ”.

Widow's pension for Lina Heydrich until 1985

After the Federal Republic of Germany had denied the widow Lina Heydrich (1911–1985) the right to a widow's pension because of her husband's crimes, she was successfully litigated from 1956 to 1959. Despite "the leading role of her deceased husband in the extermination of the Jews [...] a court order granted her the pension of a widow general whose husband had died in battle" which she received until her death in 1985.

The judicial disputes over the pension led in 1958 under the Chancellorship of Konrad Adenauer to a cabinet discussion and a major inquiry by the SPD in the Bundestag .

"As if she wanted to mock the public prosecutor and the German media, who had outraged the judgment of the court," said the historian Robert Gerwarth , "Lina Heydrich chose the title of her memoir, 'Leben mit eine Kriegverrecher' , published in 1976". The widow - who during her time in Prague had insulted and harassed Jewish slave laborers who had to work in her garden and had had the supervisor whipping them (before they were exchanged for non-Jews and deported to the extermination camps) - now ran the The Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn, the "Imbria Parva" guesthouse, which often housed "former SS comrades of her husband at reunion celebrations", who "exchanged memories of 'better times'" there.

See also

  • Aktion Reinhardt (cover name for a millionfold mass murder, Heydrich's first name was eponymous)

Films, artistic processing

Character study by Heydrich from the series Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (2000–2005, staged photography by the artist Stefan Krikl )

The expressionist artist Stefan Krikl, who comes from Prague and lives in the USA, dealt with his long-term photographic project Postcards from the Front or Attention, Camera, Action! , in which he created “ snapshots ” of miniature scenarios from World War II and the Holocaust, including the assassination attempt on Heydrich and the acts of revenge by the National Socialists. Among other things, he created the series Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich from 2000 to 2005 (German murder of Reinhard Heydrich ). Here Krikl “used” a character study of an “SS leader type” for Heydrich's person; a miniature figure he designed, which he used differently in different scenarios.

literature

Biographies about Reinhard Heydrich :

Biographical sketches about Heydrich :

Publications specifically on the attack on Heydrich :

Publications on the SS, SD and Gestapo:

  • Wolfgang Dierker : Himmler's religious warrior . The SS Security Service and its Religious Policy 1933–1941. 2nd, revised edition. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 3-506-79997-5 (at the same time: Bonn, University, dissertation, 2000).
  • Heinz Höhne : The order under the skull. The history of the SS. Verlag Mohn, 1967. Many new editions followed, e. B. 2002, ISBN 3-572-01342-9 ; the last one in the Bassermann Verlag, Munich 2008, which belongs to Bertelsmann / Random House, ISBN 978-3-8094-2255-6 .
  • Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 (habilitation thesis, University of Hanover, 2001).

Publications on special aspects of Heydrich's biography and effectiveness :

  • Karin Flachowsky: New sources on the lineage of Reinhard Heydrich. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Volume 48, 2000, pp. 319-327 ( online ; PDF; 9 MB).
  • Tôviyyā Friedman (Ed.): Reinhard Heydrich and the final solution to the Jewish question. Document collection. Haifa 1997 (online see web links ).
  • Miroslav Kárný , Jaroslava Milotová, Margita Karná (eds.): German politics in the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" under Reinhard Heydrich 1941–1942. A documentation. Metropol, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-926893-44-3 .
  • Andreas Wiedemann: The Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague 1942–1945. Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, Dresden 2000, ISBN 3-931648-31-1 ( PDF; 943 kB ).

Web links

Commons : Reinhard Heydrich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Ian Kershaw : Hitler. 1936-1945 . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-421-05132-1 , p. 640; it says there in (not: from ) Bohemia and Moravia; see also Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ): Holdings Heydrich, Reinhard and Lina ( memento from September 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 57 kB), in: IfZ archive, signature ED 450, there p. 2 (accessed on May 26, 2019).
  2. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 34 f.
  3. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 38 f.
  4. a b Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 45 f.
  5. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 52.
  6. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 48.
  7. Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923 . Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-87473-000-X , p. 444; Robert Gerwarth, Heydrich, p. 50, considers it possible that Heydrich invented this membership after 1933 in order to “prove” that he belonged to the political right, ”but it can only be proven that he had contact with the political right but not how intense this contact was.
  8. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, pp. 52–59, especially pp. 58f.
  9. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 55.
  10. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 56.
  11. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 57.
  12. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, pp. 57–58.
  13. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 61.
  14. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, pp. 61, 62.
  15. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 64; with further evidence in Note 124 to Chapter II, p. 368.
  16. For the entire paragraph: Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, pp. 64–65.
  17. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 66.
  18. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 68.
  19. Mario R. Dederichs, Heydrich - The Power of Evil, Stern No. 43, Hamburg 2002.
  20. ^ Shlomo Aronson: Reinhard Heydrich and the early history of the Gestapo and SD. DVA, Stuttgart 1971.
  21. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 68.
  22. Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. Hamburg 2002, p. 241.
  23. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 79.
  24. Mario R. Dederichs, Heydrich - The Power of Evil, Stern No. 43, Hamburg 2002.
  25. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, pp. 73 ff.
  26. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 13.
  27. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 93.
  28. Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann : The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 85.
  29. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 94.
  30. Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition by HIS Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2003, p. 247.
  31. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, pp. 104–106.
  32. Michael Eggestein, Lothar Schirmer : Administration in National Socialism . Publishing house for training and studies in the Elefanten Press, Berlin 1987, p. 115 ff.
  33. Reichspogromnacht ("Reichskristallnacht")
  34. Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburg edition by HIS Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2003, p. 680.
  35. a b Michael Wildt: Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition by HIS Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2003, p. 415.
  36. Mathieu Deflem: Policing World Society. Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation . Oxford UP, Oxford 2002, pp. 181-195.
  37. Saul Friedländer : The Third Reich and the Jews . Special edition, CH Beck, Munich 2007, p. 1167.
  38. Mario R. Dederichs: Heydrich. The Face of Evil. Casemate Publishers, 2009, ISBN 1-935149-12-1 , p. 89.
  39. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 243.
  40. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 244.
  41. a b Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 243.
  42. ^ Peter Longerich: Politics of Destruction. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 , p. 223.
  43. so with Peter Longerich: Politics of Destruction. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-03755-0 , p. 253.
  44. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 236 f.
  45. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 237.
  46. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 245.
  47. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 262.
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  49. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 247.
  50. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 317.
  51. Heydrich's inaugural speech in Prague on October 2, 1941 ( Memento of December 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive ); see also Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 278 and 291.
  52. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 233 f.
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  54. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 278.
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  56. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 22 ff.
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  59. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 27 f .; see. Stanislav F. Berton (Ed.): The assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942. A report by Kriminalrat Heinz Pannwitz. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , vol. 33, issue 4 (1985), pp. 668–706 ( PDF ).
  60. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography. Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 30 f.
  61. ^ Nicolas Hardt: The assassination attempt in Prague 1942 and the surgery. Between science and politics. In: German Society for Surgery (Ed.): Communications. No. 2, 2012, pp. 157–164 ( PDF ( Memento of March 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive )).
  62. Stanislav F. Berton (Ed.): The assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942. A report by the criminal inspector Heinz Pannwitz. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 33, issue 4 (1985), p. 670 f. PDF
  63. The assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich and its consequences , report by Radio Praha, May 19, 2007, copy of the broadcast, online at: radio.cz / ...
  64. a b The Heydrich Assassination (2) - The Destruction of Lidice , report by Radio Praha, June 2, 2007, copy of the broadcast, online at: radio.cz / ...
  65. a b c Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 340.
  66. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 345.
  67. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 343.
  68. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 343.
  69. ^ Michel-Spezial Katalog Deutschland 2007, Schwaneberger Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-87858-137-8 , p. 796.
  70. ^ The Reinhard Heydrich (Death Mask) Commemorative Postal Stamp
  71. ^ Volker Ackermann: National funeral celebrations in Germany. Stuttgart 1990, p. 192.
  72. Jörn Hasselmann: Unknowns open the grave of Nazi criminals , tagesspiegel.de, December 14, 2019 (last accessed December 14, 2019).
  73. Minutes of Himmler's and Hitler's funeral speech ; see also Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 338 f.
  74. ^ Andreas Wiedemann: The Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague (1942–1945). Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism , Dresden 2000, p. 44ff., P. 54.
  75. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 338 f.
  76. Thomas Mann in a German-language radio broadcast on the BBC, quoted from: Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 342.
  77. Mario E. Dederichs: Heydrich. The face of evil . Munich 2005, pp. 170-173. Berno Bahro: Sports heroes of the SS - Reinhard Heydrich and Hermann Fegelein , in: Arnd Krüger , Swantje Scharenberg (Hrsg.): Times for heroes - times for celebrities in sport. Berlin: LIT 2014, pp. 65–91; ISBN 978-3-643-12498-2 .
  78. Mario E. Dederichs: Heydrich. The face of evil . Munich 2005, p. 32.
  79. Helmut Heiber : Reichsführer! Letters to and from Himmler . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1968, pp. 20ff; Günther Deschner: Reinhard Heydrich. Governor of total power. Biography . Bechtle, Esslingen 1977, ISBN 3-7628-0381-1 , p. 11; Guido Knopp : The SS. A warning from history . Goldmann, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-442-15252-6 , pp. 12, 146.
  80. Laurent Binet: HHhH. Himmler's brain is called Heydrich . Rowohlt, Berlin 2011 (first edition Paris 2010), ISBN 978-2-253-15734-2 .
  81. Carl Haensel: The court is adjourned. From the diary of a Nuremberg defender . Claasen, Hamburg 1950, p. 61.
  82. ^ Peter Longerich: Heinrich Himmler. Biography . Pantheon, Munich 2010 (first Siedler, Munich 2008), ISBN 978-3-570-55122-6 ; Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011.
  83. ^ Peter Longerich: Heinrich Himmler. Biography . Pantheon, Munich 2010, p. 589.
  84. Carl Jacob Burckhardt: My Danziger Mission 1937-1939. dtv, Munich 1962, p. 53 ff. Quoted from Mario R. Dederichs: Heydrich. The face of evil. Munich 2005, p. 97.
  85. ^ Shlomo Aronson: Reinhard Heydrich and the early history of the Gestapo and SD. DVA, Stuttgart 1971, p. 254. Quoted from Mario E. Dederichs: Heydrich. The face of evil. Munich 2005, p. 100.
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  90. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 45.
  91. ^ Diana Schulle: Das Reichssippenamt . Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89722-672-3 , pp. 43-45 (diss.).
  92. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 10.
  93. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 350.
  94. ^ Ulrich Enders: Legal and domestic policy . In: Hartmut Weber (Ed.): The Cabinet Protocols of the Federal Government. Volume 11: 1958 . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2002 ( bundesarchiv.de ). There are also the minutes of the cabinet meetings of September 3, 1958 , December 3, 1958 and January 14, 1959 .
  95. "Above all, his trained coldness is repulsive." Interview with Robert Gerwarth. one day , September 21, 2011; it is about the font Lina Heydrich: Life with a war criminal . With comments by Werner Maser , Verlag W. Ludwig, Pfaffenhoferbeiten 1976, ISBN 3-7787-1025-7 .
  96. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 349.
  97. ^ Robert Gerwarth: Reinhard Heydrich. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2011, p. 350.
  98. ^ Günther Morsch, Bertrand Perz: New studies on National Socialist mass killings by poison gas. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-99-2 , p. Roman 17.
  99. "Above all, his trained coldness is repulsive." Interview with Robert Gerwarth. In: one day . September 21, 2011.
  100. PDF ( Memento from March 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  101. He mainly evaluated the radio messages of the Czech resistance fighters with their exile secret service in London.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on June 8, 2005 .