On this date, 4 June 1942, one of
Adolf Hitler’s Henchmen, Reinhard Heydrich died of his injuries, after he was
assassinated on 27 May 1942 in Prague. If he had live longer than that month,
he could have caused more deaths to the Jews. I got the information about him
from Wikipedia.
Heydrich as a SS-Gruppenführer
(1940)
|
Deputy
Protector of Bohemia and Moravia
(acting Protector) |
|
In
office
29 September 1941 – 4 June 1942 |
|
Appointed by
|
Adolf Hitler
|
Preceded by
|
Konstantin von Neurath
(Protector until 24 August 1943) |
Succeeded by
|
Kurt Daluege
(Acting Protector) |
Director
of the Reich Main Security Office
|
|
In
office
27 September 1939 – 4 June 1942 |
|
Appointed by
|
Heinrich Himmler
|
Preceded by
|
Post created
|
Succeeded by
|
Heinrich Himmler (acting)
|
President
of Interpol
|
|
In
office
24 August 1940 – 4 June 1942 |
|
Preceded by
|
Otto Steinhäusl
|
Succeeded by
|
Arthur Nebe
|
Director
of the Gestapo
|
|
In
office
22 April 1934 – 27 September 1939 |
|
Appointed by
|
Heinrich Himmler
|
Preceded by
|
Rudolf Diels
|
Succeeded by
|
Heinrich Müller
|
Personal
details
|
|
Born
|
Reinhard Tristan Eugen
Heydrich
7 March 1904 Halle an der Saale, Province of Saxony, German Empire |
Died
|
4 June 1942 (aged 38)
Prague-Libeň, Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia (now Czech Republic) |
Nationality
|
German
|
Political party
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National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)
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Spouse(s)
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Lina von Osten (married 26 December 1931)
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Children
|
|
Military
service
|
|
Nickname(s)
|
The Hangman, The Butcher of Prague, The Blond Beast,
Himmler's Evil Genius, Young Evil God of Death
|
Rank
|
SS-Obergruppenführer
|
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (German: [ˈʁaɪnhaʁt ˈtʁɪstan ˈɔʏɡn̩ ˈhaɪdʁɪç] (7 March 1904 – 4
June 1942) was a high-ranking German Nazi official during World War II, and one
of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was SS-Obergruppenführer
(General) and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security
Office (including the Gestapo and Kripo) and Stellvertretender
Reichsprotektor (Deputy Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia (in what is
now known as the Czech Republic). Heydrich served as President of Interpol (the
international law enforcement agency) and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee
Conference, which formalised plans for the final solution to the Jewish Question—the
deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory.
Historians
regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite; Adolf Hitler christened
him "the man with the iron heart". He was the founding head of the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out
and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and
killings. He helped organize Kristallnacht, a series of co-ordinated attacks
against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November
1938. The attacks, carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians, presaged the
Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition
to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing
members of the Czech resistance.
Heydrich
was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by a British-trained team of Czech and
Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to
kill him in an operation code named Operation Anthropoid. He died from
his injuries a week later. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the
villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Lidice was razed to the ground; all adult males
were executed, and all but a handful of its women and children were deported
and killed in Nazi concentration camps.
Children of Richard Bruno Heydrich: Heinz Heydrich (seated), Reinhard Heydrich (centre), Maria Heydrich |
Early
life
Heydrich
was born in 1904 in Halle an der Saale to composer and opera singer Richard
Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Krantz, a Roman
Catholic. His two forenames were patriotic musical tributes: "Reinhard"
referred to the tragic hero from Amen (an opera his father wrote), and
"Tristan" stems from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Heydrich's
third name, "Eugen", was his late maternal grandfather's forename
(Professor Eugen Krantz had been the director of the Dresden Royal
Conservatory). Heydrich was born into a family of social standing and
substantial financial means. Music was a part of Heydrich's everyday life; his
father founded the Halle Conservatory of Music and his mother taught piano
there. Heydrich developed a passion for the violin and carried that interest
into adulthood; he impressed listeners with his musical talent.
His
father was a German nationalist who instilled patriotic ideas in his three
children, but was not affiliated with any political party until after World War
I. The Heydrich household was strict. As a youth, Heydrich engaged his younger
brother, Heinz, in mock fencing duels. Heydrich was very intelligent and
excelled in his schoolwork—especially in science—at the
"Reformgymnasium". A talented athlete, he became an expert swimmer
and fencer. But he was shy, insecure, and was frequently bullied for his
high-pitched voice and rumored Jewish ancestry. The latter claim earned him the
nickname "Moses Handel". Years later, Wilhelm Canaris said he had
obtained photocopies proving Heydrich's Jewish ancestry, but these photocopies
never surfaced. Nazi Gauleiter Rudolf Jordan also claimed that Heydrich was not
a pure "Aryan". Heydrich ultimately ordered Schutzstaffel (SS)
researchers to investigate the rumour. They reported that he had no Jewish
ancestors. Nazi official and "race expert" Achim Gercke concluded
that Heydrich was a pure Aryan, with no Jewish ancestry.
In
1918, World War I ended with Germany's defeat. In late February 1919, civil
unrest—including strikes and clashes between communist and anti-communist
groups—took place in Heydrich's home town of Halle. Under Defense Minister Gustav
Noske's directives, a right-wing paramilitary unit was formed and ordered to
"recapture" Halle. Heydrich, then 15-years old, joined Maercker's
Volunteer Rifles (the first Freikorps unit). When the skirmishes ended,
Heydrich was part of the force assigned to protect private property. Little is
known about his role, but the events left a strong impression; it was a
"political awakening" for him. He joined the Deutschvölkischer Schutz
und Trutzbund (The National German Protection and Shelter League), an
anti-Semitic organisation.
As
a result of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation spread
across Germany and many lost their life savings. Halle was not spared. By 1921,
few townspeople there could afford a musical education at Bruno Heydrich's
conservatory. This led to a financial crisis for the Heydrich family.
Reinhard Heydrich,
cadet
|
Naval
career
In
1922 Heydrich joined the Navy, taking advantage of the security, structure, and
pension it offered. He became a naval cadet at Kiel, Germany's chief naval base.
On 1 April 1924 he was promoted to senior midshipman (Oberfähnrich zur See)
and sent to officer training at the Mürwik Naval College. In 1926 he advanced
to the rank of ensign (Leutnant zur See) and was assigned as a signals
officer on the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, the flagship of Germany's
North Sea Fleet. With the promotion came greater recognition; he received good
evaluations from his superiors and had few problems with other crewmen. He was
promoted on 1 July 1928 to the rank of sub-lieutenant (Oberleutnant zur See).
But the increased rank fueled his ambition and arrogance.
Heydrich
became a notorious womaniser, having countless affairs. In December 1930 he
attended a rowing-club ball and met Lina von Osten. The two became romantically
involved and soon announced their engagement. Lina was already a Nazi Party
follower; she had attended her first rally in 1929. In 1931 Heydrich was charged
with "conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman" for breaking
an engagement promise to a woman he had known for six months before the von
Osten engagement. Admiral Erich Raeder dismissed Heydrich from the navy that
April. The dismissal devastated Heydrich, who found himself without career
prospects. But he kept the engagement and married Lina in December 1931.
Reinhard Heydrich
(middle) with Heinrich Himmler (left), Karl Wolff (right), and Hermann Esser
(far right, back to camera) at the Obersalzberg, May 1939
|
Career
in the SS and military
In
1931, Heinrich Himmler
began setting up a counterintelligence division of the SS. Acting on the advice
of his associate Karl von Eberstein, who was von Osten's friend, Himmler
interviewed Heydrich. Himmler was impressed and hired him immediately. His pay
was 180 reichsmarks per month (40 USD). His NSDAP number was 544,916 and his SS
number was 10,120.
Heydrich later received a Totenkopfring from Himmler for his service.
On
1 August 1931 Heydrich began his job as chief of the new 'Ic Service'
(intelligence service). He set up office at the Brown House, the Nazi Party
headquarters in Munich. By October he had created a network of spies and
informers for intelligence-gathering purposes and to obtain information to be
used as blackmail to further political aims. Information on thousands of people
was recorded on index cards and stored at the Brown House. To mark the occasion
of Heydrich's December wedding, Himmler promoted him to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer
(major). In just over fifteen months, Heydrich had surpassed his former naval
rank and was making what was considered a "comfortable" salary.
In
1932 a number of Heydrich's enemies began to spread rumours of his alleged
Jewish ancestry. Within the Nazi organisation such innuendo could be damning,
even for the head of the Reich's counterintelligence service. Nazi Party racial
expert Dr. Achim Gercke investigated Heydrich's genealogy. Gercke reported that
Heydrich was "... of German origin and free from any coloured and
Jewish blood".
Gestapo headquarters
on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße in Berlin, 1933
|
Gestapo
and SD
In
mid-1932, Himmler appointed Heydrich chief of the renamed security service—the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD). Heydrich's counterintelligence service grew into an
effective machine of terror and intimidation. With Hitler striving for absolute
power in Germany, Himmler and Heydrich wished to control the political police
forces of all 17 German states. They began with 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 the Munich police chief and Heydrich became the commander of
Department IV, the political police.
In
1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and through a series of decrees
became Germany's Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). The first
concentration camps, which were originally intended to house political
opponents, were established in early 1933. By year's end there were over fifty
camps.
Hermann
Göring founded the Gestapo in 1933 as a Prussian police force. When Göring
transferred full authority over the Gestapo to Himmler in April 1934, it
immediately became an instrument of terror under the SS's purview. Himmler named
Heydrich to head the Gestapo on 22 April 1934. On 9 June 1934, Rudolph
Hess declared the SD the official Nazi intelligence service.
SS-Brigadeführer Heydrich,
head of the Bavarian police and SD, in Munich, 1934
|
Crushing
the SA
Beginning
in April 1934, and at Hitler's request, Heydrich and Himmler began building a
dossier on Sturmabteilung (SA) leader Ernst Röhm in an effort to remove him as
a rival for party leadership. At this point, the SS was still part of the SA,
the early Nazi paramilitary organisation which now numbered over 3 million men.
At Hitler's direction, Heydrich, Himmler, Göring, and Viktor Lutze drew up
lists of those who should be liquidated, starting with seven top SA officials
and including many more. On 30 June 1934 the SS and Gestapo acted in
coordinated mass arrests that continued throughout the weekend. Röhm was shot
without trial, along with the leadership of the SA. The purge became known as
the Night of the
Long Knives. Up to 200 people were killed in the action. Lutze was
appointed SA's new head and it was converted into a sports and training
organisation.
With
the SA out of the way, Heydrich began building the Gestapo into an instrument
of fear. He improved his index-card system, creating categories of offenders
with color-coded cards. The Gestapo had the authority to arrest citizens on the
suspicion that they might commit a crime, and the definition of a crime was at
their discretion. The Gestapo Law, passed in 1936, gave police the right to act
extra-legally. This led to the sweeping use of Schutzhaft—"protective
custody", a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial
proceedings. The courts were not allowed to investigate or interfere. The
Gestapo was considered to be acting legally as long as it was carrying out the
leadership's will. People were arrested arbitrarily, sent to concentration
camps, or killed.
Himmler
began developing the notion of a Germanic religion and wanted SS members to
leave the church. In early 1936, Heydrich left the Catholic Church. His wife,
Lina, had already done so the year before. Heydrich not only felt he could no
longer be a member, but came to consider the church's political power and
influence a danger to the state.
Seyß-Inquart,
Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Heydrich in Vienna,
March 1938
|
Consolidating
the police forces
On
17 June 1936 all police forces throughout Germany were united, following
Hitler's appointment of Himmler as Chief of German Police. Himmler immediately
reorganised the police into two groups: the Ordnungspolizei (Order
Police; Orpo), consisting of both the national uniformed police and the
municipal police, and the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo),
consisting of the Geheime StaatsPolizei (Secret State Police; Gestapo)
and Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police; Kripo). At that point, Heydrich
was head of the SiPo and SD. Heinrich Müller was the Gestapo's operations
chief.
Heydrich
was assigned to help organise the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The games
were used to promote the propaganda aims of the Nazi regime. Goodwill
ambassadors were sent to countries that were considering a boycott. Anti-Jewish
violence was forbidden for the duration, and news stands were required to stop
displaying copies of Der Stuermer. For his part in the games' success,
Heydrich was awarded the Deutsches Olympiaehrenzeichen or German Olympic
Games Decoration (First Class).
In
mid-1939 Heydrich created the Stiftung Nordhav Foundation to obtain real estate
for the SS and Security Police to use as guest houses and vacation spots. The
Wannsee Villa, which the Stiftung Nordhav acquired in November 1940, was the
site of the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942). At the conference, senior
Nazi officials formalised plans to deport and exterminate all Jews in German-occupied
territory and those countries not yet conquered. This action was to be
coordinated among the representatives from the Nazi state agencies present at
the meeting.
On
27 September 1939 the SD and SiPo (made up of the Gestapo and the Kripo) were
folded into the new Reich Main Security Office or SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(RSHA), which was placed under Heydrich's control. The title of "Chef der
Sicherheitspolizei und des SD" (Chief of Security Police and SD) or CSSD
was conferred on Heydrich on 1 October. Heydrich became the President of
Interpol (then under Nazi control) on 24 August 1940, and its headquarters were
transferred to Berlin. He was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der
Polizei on 24 September 1941.
Red
Army purges
In
1936, Heydrich learned that a top-ranking Soviet officer was plotting to
overthrow Joseph Stalin. Sensing an opportunity to strike a blow at both the
Soviet Army and Admiral Canaris of Germany's Abwehr, Heydrich decided that the
Russian officers should be "unmasked". He discussed the matter with
Himmler and both in turn brought it to Hitler's attention. But the
"information" Heydrich had received was actually misinformation
planted by Stalin himself in an attempt to legitimize his planned purges of the
Red Army's high command. Stalin ordered one of his best NKVD agents, General
Nikolai Skoblin, to pass Heydrich false information suggesting that Marshall
Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other Soviet generals were plotting against Stalin.
Hitler approved Heydrich's plan to act on the information immediately.
Heydrich's SD forged a series of documents and letters implicating Tukhachevsky
and other Red Army commanders. The material was delivered to the NKVD. The
Great Purge of the Red Army followed on Stalin's orders. While Heydrich
believed they had successfully deluded Stalin into executing or dismissing some
35,000 of his officer corps, the importance of Heydrich's part is a matter of
speculation and conjecture. Soviet military prosecutors did not use the forged
documents against the generals in their secret trial; they instead relied on
false confessions extorted or beaten out of the defendants.
Commemorative plaque of the French victims of the Night-and-Fog Decree at Hinzert concentration camp |
Night-and-Fog
Decree
By
late 1940, German armies had swept through most of Western Europe. The
following year, Heydrich's SD was given responsibility for carrying out the
Nacht und Nebel (Night-and-Fog) decree. According to the decree, "persons
endangering German security" were to be arrested in a maximally discreet
way: "under the cover of night and fog". People disappeared without a
trace and none told of their whereabouts or fate. For each prisoner, the SD had
to fill in a questionnaire that listed personal information, country of origin,
and the details of their crimes against the Reich. This questionnaire was
placed in an envelope inscribed with a seal reading "Nacht und Nebel"
and submitted to the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). In the WVHA
"Central Inmate File", as in many camp files, these prisoners would
be given a special "covert prisoner" code, as opposed to the code for
POW, Felon, Jew, Gypsy, etc. The decree remained in effect after Heydrich's
death. The exact number of people who vanished under it has never been
positively established, but it is estimated to be 7,000.
Acting
Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia
Further
information: Czech resistance to Nazi occupation
On
27 September 1941, Heydrich was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the part of Czechoslovakia incorporated
into the Reich on 15 March 1939) and assumed control of the territory. The
Reich Protector, Konstantin von Neurath, remained the territory's titular head,
but was sent on "leave" because Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich felt
his "soft approach" to the Czechs had promoted anti-German sentiment
and encouraged anti-German resistance via strikes and sabotage. Upon his
appointment, Heydrich told his aides "[w]e will Germanize the Czech vermin."
Heydrich
came to Prague to enforce policy, fight resistance to the Nazi regime, and keep
up production quotas of Czech motors and arms that were "extremely
important to the German war effort". He viewed the area as a bulwark of
Germandom and condemned the Czech resistance's "stabs in the back".
To realise his goals Heydrich demanded racial classification of those who could
and could not be Germanized. He explained, "... making this Czech
garbage into Germans must give way to methods based on racist thought".
Heydrich started his rule by terrorising the population: 92 people were
executed within three days of his arrival in Prague. Their names appeared on
posters throughout the occupied region. Almost all avenues by which Czechs
could express the Czech culture in public were closed. According to Heydrich's
estimate, between 4,000 and 5,000 people were arrested by February 1942. Those
who were not executed were sent to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, where
only four per cent of Czech prisoners survived the war. In March 1942, further
sweeps against Czech cultural and patriotic organisations, military, and
intelligentsia resulted in the practical paralysis of Czech resistance.
Although small disorganised cells of Central Leadership of Home Resistance
(Ústřední vedení odboje domácího, ÚVOD) survived, only the communist resistance
was able to function in a coordinated manner (although it also suffered
arrests). The terror also served to paralyse resistance in society, with public
and widespread reprisals against any action resisting the German rule.
Heydrich's brutal policies during that time quickly earned him the nickname
"the Butcher of Prague".
As
Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich applied
carrot-and-stick methods. Labour was reorganised on the basis of the German
Labour Front. Heydrich used equipment confiscated from the Czech organisation
Sokol to organise events for workers. Food rations and free shoes were
distributed, pensions were increased, and (for a time) free Saturdays were
introduced. Unemployment insurance was established for the first time. The
black market was suppressed. Those associated with it or the resistance
movement were tortured or executed. Heydrich labelled them "economic
criminals" and "enemies of the people", which helped gain him
support. Conditions in Prague and the rest of the Czech lands were relatively
peaceful under Heydrich, and industrial output increased. Still, those measures
could not hide shortages and increasing inflation; reports of growing discontent
multiplied.
Despite
public displays of goodwill towards the populace, privately Heydrich left no
illusions about his eventual goal: "This entire area will one day be
definitely German, and the Czechs have nothing to expect here". Eventually
up to two-thirds of the populace were to be either removed to regions of Russia
or exterminated after Nazi Germany won the war. Bohemia and Moravia faced
annexation directly into the German Reich.
The
Czech workforce was exploited as Nazi-conscripted labour. More than 100,000
workers were removed from "unsuitable" jobs and conscripted by the
Ministry of Labour. By December 1941, Czechs could be called to work anywhere
within the Reich. Between April and November 1942, 79,000 Czech workers were taken
in this manner for work within Nazi Germany. Also, in February 1942, the work
day was increased from eight to twelve hours.
Heydrich
was, for all intents and purposes, military dictator of Bohemia and Moravia.
His changes to the government's structure left President Emil Hacha and his
cabinet virtually powerless. He often drove alone in a car with an open roof—a
show of his confidence in the occupation forces and in his government's
effectiveness.
Heydrich (left) with Karl Hermann Frank
at Prague Castle in 1941
|
Summary
of career
Main
article: Service record of Reinhard Heydrich
Heydrich's
time in the SS was a mixture of rapid promotions, reserve commissions in the
regular armed forces, and front-line combat service. During his 11 years with
the SS Heydrich "rose from the ranks": he was appointed to every rank
from private to full general. He was also a major in the Luftwaffe, flying
nearly 100 combat missions until 22 July 1941, when his plane was hit by Soviet
anti-aircraft fire. Heydrich made an emergency landing behind enemy lines. He
evaded a Soviet patrol and met up with a forward German patrol. After this
Hitler personally ordered Heydrich to return to Berlin to resume his SS duties.
His service record also gives him credit as a Navy Reserve Lieutenant, although
during World War II Heydrich had no contact whatsoever with this military
branch.
Heydrich
received several Nazi and military awards, including the German Order, Blood
Order, Golden Party Badge, Luftwaffe Pilot's Badge, bronze and silver combat
mission bars, and the Iron Cross First and Second Classes.
Role
in the Holocaust
Historians
regard Heydrich as the most fearsome member of the Nazi elite. Hitler called
him "the man with the iron heart". He was one of the main architects
of the Holocaust during the early war years, answering only to, and taking
orders from, Hitler, Göring, and Himmler in all matters pertaining to the
deportation, imprisonment, and extermination of Jews.
Heydrich
was one of the organisers of Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews throughout
Germany on the night of 9–10 November 1938. Heydrich sent a telegram that night
to various SD and Gestapo offices, helping to coordinate the program with the
SS, SD, Gestapo, uniformed police (Orpo), SA, Nazi party officials, and even
the fire departments. It talks about permitting arson and destroying Jewish
businesses and synagogues, and orders the confiscation of all "archival
material" out of Jewish community centres and synagogues. The telegram
ordered that "as many Jews – particularly affluent Jews – are to
be arrested in all districts as can be accommodated in existing detention
facilities ... Immediately after the arrests have been carried out, the appropriate
concentration camps should be contacted to place the Jews into camps as quickly
as possible." Twenty-thousand Jews were sent to concentration camps in the
days immediately following; historians consider Kristallnacht the beginning of
the Holocaust.
1938 telegram giving orders during Kristallnacht, signed by Heydrich |
When
Hitler asked for a pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler,
Heydrich, and Heinrich Müller masterminded a false flag plan code-named
Operation Himmler. It involved a fake attack on the German radio station
at Gleiwitz on 31 August 1939. Heydrich masterminded the plan and toured the
site, which was about four miles from the Polish border. Wearing Polish
uniforms, 150 German troops carried out several attacks along the border.
Hitler used the ruse as an excuse to launch his invasion.
"... the planned total measures are to be kept strictly secret ... the first prerequisite for the final aim ("Endziel") is the concentration of the Jews from the countryside into the larger cities." – Heydrich, September 1939
On
21 September 1939, Heydrich sent out a teleprinter message on the "Jewish
question in the occupied territory" to the chiefs of all Einsatzgruppen of
the Security Police. It contained instructions on how to round up Jewish people
for placement into ghettos, called for the formation of Judenräter (Jewish councils),
ordered a census, contained Aryanization plans for Jewish-owned businesses and
farms, among other measures. The Einsatzgruppen followed the army into Poland
to implement the plans. Later, in the Soviet Union, they were charged with
rounding up and killing Jews via firing squad and gas vans. By the end of the
war, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered over one million people, including over
700,000 in Russia alone.
"By order of the Reichsführer-SS, residency without possession of an identification card is punishable by death" – Heydrich, November 1939
On
29 November 1939, Heydrich issued a cable about the "Evacuation of New
Eastern Provinces", detailing the deportation of people by railway to
concentration camps, and giving guidance surrounding the December 1939 census,
which would be the basis on which those deportations were performed. In May
1941 Heydrich drew up regulations with Quartermaster general Eduard Wagner for
the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union, which ensured that the
Einsatzgruppen and army would cooperate in murdering Soviet Jews.
July 1941 letter from Göring to Heydrich concerning the
"final solution" "in the manner of emigration or
evacuation" (sic)
|
On
10 October 1941, Heydrich was the senior officer at a meeting in Prague that
discussed deporting 50,000 Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to
ghettos in Minsk and Riga. The officers also discussed taking 5,000 Jews from
Prague "in the next few weeks" and handing them over to the
Einsatzgruppen commanders Arthur Nebe and Otto Rasch. Establishing ghettos in
the Protectorate was also planned, resulting in the construction of Theresienstadt,
where 33,000 people would eventually die. Tens of thousands more passed through
the camp on their way to their deaths in the East. In 1941 Himmler named
Heydrich as "responsible for implementing" the forced movement of
60,000 Jews from Germany and Czechoslovakia to the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto
in Poland.
On
20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which he presented
his plan to deport and transport 11 million Jews from every country in Europe,
to be worked to death or killed outright in extermination camps:
Under suitable direction, the Jews should be brought to the East in the course of the Final Solution, for use as labour. In large labour gangs, with the sexes separated, the Jews capable of work will be transported to those areas and set to road-building, in the course of which, without doubt, a large part of them ("ein Großteil") will fall away through natural losses. The surviving remnant, surely those with the greatest powers of resistance, will be given special treatment, since, if freed, they would constitute the germinal cell for the re-creation of Jewry.— from Heydrich's speech at the Wannsee Conference, January 1942
The open-top Mercedes
in which Heydrich was mortally wounded
|
Death
in Prague
Main
article: Operation
Anthropoid
In
London, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile resolved to kill Heydrich. Jan
Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík headed the team chosen for the operation. Trained by the
British Special Operations Executive (SOE), the pair returned to the
Protectorate, parachuting from a Handley Page Halifax, on 28 December 1941.
They lived in hiding, preparing for the assassination attempt.
On
27 May 1942, Heydrich planned to meet Hitler in Berlin. German documents
suggest that Hitler intended to transfer Heydrich to German-occupied France,
where the French resistance was gaining ground. Heydrich would have to pass a
section where the Dresden-Prague road merged with a road to the Troja Bridge.
The intersection, in the Prague suburb of Libeň, was well-suited for the attack
because motorists have to slow for a hairpin turn. As Heydrich's car slowed,
Gabčík took aim with a Sten sub-machine gun, but it jammed and failed to fire.
Instead of ordering his driver to speed away, Heydrich called his car to a halt
and attempted to confront the attackers. Kubiš then threw a bomb (a converted
anti-tank mine) at the rear of the car as it stopped. The explosion wounded
Heydrich and Kubiš.
When
the smoke cleared, Heydrich emerged from the wreckage with his gun in his hand;
he chased Kubiš and tried to return fire. Kubiš jumped on his bicycle and
pedalled away. Heydrich ran after him for half a block but became weak from
shock and collapsed. He sent his driver, Klein, to chase Gabčík on foot. In the
ensuing firefight, Gabčík shot Klein in the leg and escaped to a local safe
house. Heydrich, still with pistol in hand, gripped his left flank, which was
bleeding profusely.
A
Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. Heydrich
was first placed in the driver's cab, but complained that the truck's movement
was causing him pain. He was placed in the back of the truck, on his stomach,
and taken to the emergency room at Na Bulovce Hospital. Heydrich had suffered
severe injuries to his left side, with major damage to his diaphragm, spleen,
and lung. He had also fractured a rib. Dr. Slanina packed the chest wound,
while Dr. Walter Diek tried unsuccessfully to remove the splinters. He
immediately decided to operate. This was carried out by Drs. Diek, Slanina, and
Hohlbaum. Heydrich was given several blood transfusions. A splenectomy was
performed. The chest wound, left lung, and diaphragm were all debrided and the
wounds closed. Himmler ordered Dr. Karl Gebhardt to fly to Prague to assume
care. Despite a fever, Heydrich's recovery appeared to progress well. Dr.
Theodor Morell, Hitler's personal physician, suggested the use of sulfonamide
(a new antibacterial drug), but Gebhardt, thinking Heydrich would recover,
refused. On 2 June, during a visit by Himmler, Heydrich reconciled himself to
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.
Heydrich
slipped into a coma after Himmler's visit and never regained consciousness. He
died on 4 June, probably around 04:30. He was 38. The autopsy concluded that he
died of sepsis. Heydrich's facial expression as he died betrayed an
"uncanny spirituality and entirely perverted beauty, like a renaissance
Cardinal," according to Bernhard Wehner, a Kripo police official who
investigated the assassination.
Postage stamp (1943)
features the death mask of Heydrich
|
After
an elaborate funeral held in Prague on 7 June 1942, Heydrich's coffin was
placed on a train to Berlin, where a second ceremony was held in the new Reich
Chancellery on 9 June. Himmler gave the eulogy. Hitler attended and placed
Heydrich's decorations—including the highest grade of the German Order, the
Blood Order Medal, the Wound Badge in Gold and the War Merit Cross 1st Class
with Swords—on his funeral pillow. Although Heydrich's death was employed for
pro-Reich propaganda, Hitler privately blamed 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.
Heydrich
was interred in Berlin's Invalidenfriedhof, a military cemetery. The exact
burial spot is not known—a temporary wooden marker that disappeared when the
Red Army overran the city in 1945 was never replaced, so that Heydrich's grave
could not become a rallying point for Neo-Nazis. A photograph of Heydrich's
burial shows the wreaths and mourners to be in section A, which abuts the north
wall of the Invalidenfriedhof and Scharnhorststraße, at the front of the
cemetery. A recent biography of Heydrich also places the grave in Section A.
Hitler wanted Heydrich to have a monumental tomb but, because of Germany's
declining fortunes, it was never built.
After
the war, the West German judicial system awarded Heydrich's widow a federal
pension. The couple 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.
Klaus was killed in a traffic accident in 1943. Lina wrote a memoir, Leben
mit einem Kriegsverbrecher (Living With a War Criminal), which was
published in 1976. She remarried once and died in 1985.
Bullet-scarred window
in the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in Prague, where Kubiš and his
compatriots were cornered
|
Aftermath
Heydrich's
assailants hid in safe houses and eventually took refuge in Ss. Cyril and
Methodius Cathedral, an Orthodox church in Prague. After a traitor in the Czech
resistance betrayed their location, the church was surrounded by 800 members of
the SS and Gestapo. Several Czechs were killed, and the remainder hid in the
church's crypt. The Germans attempted to flush the men out with gunfire, tear
gas, and by flooding the crypt. Eventually an entrance was made using explosives.
Rather than surrender, the soldiers took their own lives. Supporters of the
assassins who were killed in the wake of these events included the church's
leader, Bishop Gorazd,
who is now revered as a martyr of the Orthodox Church.
Infuriated
by Heydrich's death, Hitler ordered the arrest and execution of 10,000 randomly
selected Czechs. But after consultations with Karl Hermann Frank,
he tempered his response. The Czech lands were an important industrial zone for
the German military, and indiscriminate killing could reduce the region's
productivity. Hitler ordered a quick investigation. Intelligence falsely linked
the assassins to the towns of Lidice and Ležáky. A Gestapo report stated that
Lidice, 22 km north-west of Prague, was suspected as the assailants'
hiding place because several Czech army officers, then in England, had come
from there and the Gestapo found a resistance radio transmitter in Ležáky. On 9
June, after discussions with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, Hitler ordered
brutal reprisals. Over 13,000 people were arrested, deported, and
imprisoned. Beginning on 10 June, all males over the age of 16 in the villages
of Lidice and Ležáky were murdered. All the women in Ležáky were also murdered.
All but four of the women from Lidice were deported immediately to Ravensbrück concentration camp (four were
pregnant – they were forcibly aborted at the same hospital where Heydrich
had died and then sent to the concentration camp). A number of children were
chosen for Germanization,
but 81 were killed in gas vans at the Chełmno
extermination camp. Both towns were burned and Lidice's ruins were
levelled. At least 1,300 people were massacred after Heydrich's death.
Heydrich's
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 policies formalised at the Wannsee conference he chaired
were carried out. The first three true death camps, designed for mass killing with
no legal process or pretext, were built and
operated at Treblinka,
Sobibór,
and Bełżec.
The project was named Operation Reinhard
after Heydrich.
But for the reprisals of murder of the innocent and destruction of the towns.
ReplyDeleteThe assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich was a unfortunate but necessary action taken to subvert his growing ambitions.
What might have been the outcome if he had shot both Himmler & Hitler, offered Goring the choice of a bullet in the head or to become the new Furher of the 3rd Reich, and told all the others that Hitler & Himmler died of heart attacks, after proclaiming Goring the new Furher & himself as second in command. Within 2 years Goring a corpulent drug addict would have quietly resigned in Heydrich's favor to keep himself & his family alive.
Heydrick was 2 bullets away from really becoming the young evil God of death. Possibly Himmler engineered his passing from realizing such an eventualityif he recovered from his wounds.