Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (
March 7,
1904,
Halle –
June 4,
1942,
Prague) was an
SS-Obergruppenführer, chief of the
Reich Security Main Office (which included the
Gestapo,
SD and
Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reich governor of Bohemia and Moravia.
Hitler considered him a possible successor. He was nicknamed
The Butcher of Prague,
The Blond Beast and
Der Henker (German for
the hangman).
Heydrich was one of the architects of the
Holocaust, chairing the 1942
Wannsee conference, which laid out the plans for the extermination of all European
Jews. Heydrich was assassinated by British-trained Czechoslovakian partisans in
Prague during
Operation Anthropoid.
Heydrich was named for either the main character in an opera or figures of history. "Reinhard" comes from one of his father's own operas, in a portion called - ironically enough - "Reinhard's Crime". His first middle name, Tristan, is from
Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde. It is possible that the second middle name is based on
Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose name in German is
Eugen. (The Nazi cruiser
Prinz Eugen was also named for Eugene of Savoy.)
Heydrich was born in
Halle an der Saale. His father and mother were both very heavily musically involved (his father was a composer), and Heydrich developed a passion for the
violin, which was to continue throughout his life. Although a very shy boy he excelled physically and grew up to be handsome and fit. He was an impressive athlete, excelling in
fencing and swimming.
It was later widely rumoured that Heydrich was of Jewish extraction. It is said that Adolf Hitler himself was aware of the rumour at the very least and that Himmler had definite proof of the allegation. Some sources claim that one of his great-grandparents was Jewish and others go further saying that it was actually one his grandparents - making Heydrich himself a Jew according to the
Nuremberg laws passed by
the Nazi Party in 1935. Given Heydrich's role in
the Holocaust this rumour would, if true, provide one of history's most tragic ironies.
Heydrich participated in the
Freikorps Maerker in 1919. In
1922 he joined the navy; however, he was later dismissed when he had a brief liaison with a shipyard director's daughter and subsequently became engaged to a young woman, Lina von Osten. The daughter"-who was left pregnant by Heydrich-"told her father of her anger over the incident, and he was subsequently charged with "conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman". His behavior in court was apparently so disdainful that the court also rebuked him for insubordination. Heydrich was left with no career prospects. However, he remained engaged to von Osten, whom he married in
1931.
|
Heydrich seen wearing his Totenkopfring and the Luftwaffe Pilot's Badge |
In 1931,
Heinrich Himmler began to set up a counter-intelligence division of the SS. Acting on a friend's advice, he interviewed Heydrich, and, it is alleged, after a twenty minute test whereby Heydrich had to outline plans for the new division, Himmler hired him on the spot. In doing so Himmler also effectively recruited Heydrich into the Nazi Party. He would later receive a
Totenkopfring from Himmler, for his service.
At this time, he was relatively insignificant within the Nazi intelligence apparatus. He and his staff spent their time building up a card-file system on all persons who were considered a threat to the Party, often including party officials themselves. Heydrich supported his family on a meagre salary and worked in a tiny office.
American
journalist John Gunther, during his trip to
Germany in
1934, while collecting research materials for his famed book "Inside Europe", showed considerable knowledge of
Nazi intrigues and backgrounds when he said
Himmler actually had a relatively delicate tolerance for butchery compared to a man like Heydrich, who was far more cruel. At this time, the latter was regarded as an obscure and bureaucratic medium-ranked officer.
In July
1932, Heydrich took on the leadership of the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an ideologically saturated intelligence organisation wholly committed to the defence of Nazism. He built it by recruiting a number of amateurish, if ideologically committed, agents, with whom reports could be compiled on various aspects of life in Nazi Germany. The organisation further benefitted from close cooperation with the
Gestapo, which Heydrich was also handed control of in 1936, as part of a combined security police force. Later he became the head of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), of which the SD and the Gestapo were sections.
Upon the establishment of the
Third Reich, Heydrich helped
Adolf Hitler 'dig up dirt' on many political opponents, keeping an impressive filing system listing individuals and organizations opposing the party and the regime. He is believed to be the creator of the forged documents of Russian correspondence with the German high command that sparked the
Great Purge. He was also instrumental in establishing the
false 'attack' by Poland on German national radio at Gleiwitz, which was to prove the Nazi justification for the beginning of
World War II.
Heydrich was one of the main architects of
the Holocaust during the first years of
World War II. He had initially gained some control over Jewish policy, when in November 1938,
Hermann Goering assigned him as head of the
Central Office for Jewish Emigration following
Kristallnacht. From this position, he worked tirelessly both to coordinate various initiatives that were forwarded for the
Final Solution, and to assert SS dominance over Jewish policy. Most famously in this respect, on January 20th 1942, Heydrich chaired the
Wannsee Conference, at which plans for the deportation of the
Jews to
extermination camps were discussed.
For detailed information about the assassination see main article Operation Anthropoid.
On
September 27,
1941 Heydrich was appointed acting
Reichsprotektor in the Czech
puppet state called the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He replaced
Konstantin von Neurath whom Hitler considered insufficiently harsh (but who remained titulary protector till
20 August 1943).
While virtual military governor of Bohemia and Moravia, exercising real executive power above the Czech President and Prime Minister, Heydrich often drove alone in a car with an open roof — a show of confidence in the occupation forces and the effectiveness of their repressive measures against the local population (
See Czech resistance to Nazi occupation).
Jan Kubiš and
Jozef Gabčík were
Czechoslovakian partisans who had fled the country earlier in 1941. After receiving training from the British they parachuted back into the region that December and on
May 27,
1942 ambushed Heydrich while he rode in his open car in the Prague suburb of Kobylisy. Gabčík drew a concealed British-made
Sten sub-machine gun but it failed to fire, so Kubiš threw a grenade near the car which wounded Heydrich. Some speculate that if Heydrich had not stood up to fire back with his pistol, the fragments may not have wounded him as extensively.
Despite Himmler sending his best doctors, Heydrich died in
agony in a Prague
hospital at the age of 38. Although the exact cause of death has not been definitively established, the autopsy states that Heydrich's death was from
septicemia caused by bacteria and toxins from horse-hair and upholstery fragments originating from the car seats and driven into his blood stream from the grenade fragments.
The Nazi retaliation was savage and a brutal warning against further armed resistance. About 13,000 people were arrested, some of them killed. On
June 10 all males over the age of 16 in the village of
Lidice, 22 km north-west of
Prague, and another village,
Ležáky, were murdered, a day after the town was burned.
A highly elaborate funeral was staged 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). Hitler himself perhaps best encapsulated Heydrich's general attitude in his acknowledgment that Heydrich was partly to blame for his own death through arrogance and a blasé attitude:
"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 in his Luftwaffe
Me 109) as an attempt to ensure that, should he die, his would be a dramatic death.
Heydrich was buried in Berlin's famed
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 heros, Oven and
Scharnhorst[[1]]. 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.
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, 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.
The Bioweapon Theory
Some experts on biological warfare (notably Dr.
Paul Fildes of Porton Down who claimed to be involved) have alleged that the grenade which killed Heydrich contained purified
botulinum toxin. There is circumstantial evidence to support this theory, but no conclusive proof. Certainly, the grenade used to attack Heydrich was definitely not of a standard type used by the Allies. A photograph taken by the Nazis of one of the unused grenades left at the scene shows a strangely customised
Gammon grenade tightly wrapped with adhesive tape and appearing to cover an aluminium water canteen. Purification and concentration of Botulinum toxin was well within the reach of British military scientists at
Porton Down who had done considerable practical research on the topic. Furthermore, the symptoms that Heydrich suffered before his eventual death mystified doctors treating him and bore some similarities to those of Botulinum poisoning. Botulinum
neurotoxin is so powerful that (assuming the grenade contained it) even the most minor flesh-wound would have been sufficient to kill Heydrich. [
2]
Since Heydrich's death, historical evidence has come to light that Heydrich may very well have had a Jewish grandparent and that this fact 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 most compelling evidence of Heydrich's Jewish ancestry is the testimony of
Walter Schellenberg who stated, in the 1950s, that Heinrich Himmler had held a private meeting 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. Rumours arose that this included the destruction of tombstones, but this is unconfirmed.
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 claimed 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. Also of note is that the investigation was concluded in the summer of 1932, rather than 1935.
The accuracy of both Schellenberg's and Gercke's testimonies are today still debated among historians. Some works on Heydrich have thus far dispelled the story as a rumour. The assertion is also routinely denied by neo-Nazis. However, it is widely accepted that Heydrich did believe the claims at least enough to try and make up for it by even greater devotion to the Nazi cause. As a child, neigbhorhood kids teased him by calling him "Izzy," short for "Isidor," a name popularly associated with Jews.
Dates of rank
* SS-
Mann:
14 July 1931* SS-
Sturmführer:
10 August 1931* SS-
Hauptsturmführer:
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 1941Service 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* June 1934: Appointed Commander of the
Sicherheitspolizei* September 1939: Founder and first Commander of the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt* September 1941: Appointed as Deputy Reichsprotector 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
Notable 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
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
Polish September Campaign 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 reasons of ambition. Heydrich wanted to set an example and show that the members of SS are not "asphalt" soldiers acting behind the front line, but a leading elite of the Third Reich. In April 1940 he flew a
Bf 109 in the Fighter Group II./
JG 77 "Herz As"
[For an explanation of the meaning of Luftwaffe unit designation see Luftwaffe Organization] in Norway. The planes flown by Heydrich had an ancient Germanic runic character S (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 a new accident, he returned to Berlin. In mid-June 1941, before the German attack on the USSR, he resumed flying, ignoring Himmler's ban. He flew his personal plane Bf 109E-7 again with Group II./JG 77 from Baltsi 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 Yampol by Soviet AA artillery. Heydrich managed to crash-land in no-man's land, and run back to the German lines. After this adventure he was forbidden to fly once again, 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 too old and inexperienced for a fighter pilot and he lacked the necessary free time for training flights. But despite his lack of combat success, he was decorated with the
Iron Cross Second (1940) and First (1941) Classes. The number of missions flown by Heydrich is not known, it is only recorded that he was shot down, but he was awarded the Frontflugspange (Front Pilot Badge) in silver, which usually was awarded after 60 successful combat missions.
Heydrich Dansun married Lina von Osten (1911 - August 14, 1985) and they had four children:
* Klaus (1933 - 1943), lost his life in a traffic accident in 1943.
* Heider (born 1934).
* Silke (born 1939).
* Marthe (born 1942).
The events of the Wannsee conference are recreated in the
1984 TV Movie
Wannseekonferenz (
The Wannsee Conference)[
3] directed by
Heinz Schirk, and remade in
2001 under the title
Conspiracy [
4], 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 [
5].
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 0446519006). The assassination itself has been dramatised in the
1943 Fritz Lang film Hangmen Also Die (written by
Bertolt Brecht) [
6], the
1964 Czechoslovak film
Atentát [
7] and the
1975 film
Operation Daybreak, starring Anthony Andrews (Jozef Gabcik),
Timothy Bottoms (Jan Kubis), Martin Shaw (Karel Curda) and
Anton Diffring (Heydrich) [
8].
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 0140231706), 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 embroil him in the internal feuding of the Nazi high command.
Heydrich and the events of the Wannsee conference are also the subject of Robert Harris's novel
Fatherland. The novel also portrays an alternate history where Heydrich was promoted to the rank of
Reichsführer-SS after the death of
Heinrich Himmler.
The Man in the High Castle an alternative history novel by science fiction writer
Philip K. Dick set in the 1960s describes Heydrich as head of the SS and challenging to become Reichs Chancellor after Hitler and his immediate sucessor,
Martin Bormann, are dead.
*The story of his assassination was the basis for the 1943 film
Hangmen Also Die, 1964 film
Atentat and 1975 film
Operation Daybreak*The assassination inspired
rock group
British Sea Power to write the song "
A Lovely Day Tomorrow". Originally a b-side, the song was re-recorded with the Czech band
The Ecstasy of St. Theresa in both English and Czech for a limited edition release in 2004.
*Heydrich was portrayed by
Kenneth Branagh in the 2001 HBO original movie
Conspiracy, which is a dramatic recreation of the
Wannsee Conference where the Nazi Final Solution phase of the Holocaust was devised. Branagh reportedly said that he had trouble portraying Heydrich due to the evil that surrounded him. (
Stanley Tucci also had similar reservations about playing
Adolf Eichmann in the same film.)
*The song "SS-3" by thrash metal band
Slayer is about Heydrich (y"sh). SS-3 was the license plate number of his car.
*The song "The Hangman of Prague" by black metal band
Marduk is about Heydrich.
*The song "1942" by Czech punk band
LumpyOis is about assasination.
* SS Service Record of Reinhard Heydrich,
National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park, MarylandThe Killing of Reinhard Heydrich: The SS "Butcher of Prague", by Callum McDonald. ISBN 0306808609
Assassination : Operation Anthropoid 1941-1942, by Michael Burian. Prague: Avis, 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, p. 36-38.
*
Reinhardt Heydrich
