Reinhard Heydrich was a German War Criminal and a high-ranking officer in the Nazi para-military organization, Schutzstaffel. He also served police officer during the Nazi era and was the principal architect of the Holocaust. Many historians regard Heydrich as one of the darkest figures within the Nazi regime. Adolf Hitler described him as “the man with the iron heart”. Heydrich was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst, an intelligence organization charged with seeking out and neutralizing resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organize Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938. Heydrich was also responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that traveled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing, including 1.3 million Jews.
Biography
Reinhard Heydrich was born in 1904 to composer and opera singer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife, Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Heydrich. His father founded the Halle Conservatory of Music, Theatre, and Teaching and his mother taught piano there. As a child, Heydrich excelled in his schoolwork. He was also an expert swimmer and a fencer. He was shy, and insecure, and was frequently bullied for his high-pitched voice and rumored Jewish ancestry.
Heydric’s father was a German nationalist with loyalties to the last German emperor William II. He instilled patriotic ideas in his three children but was not affiliated with any political party until after World War I. At the age of 15 Heydrich began to form positive opinions about the Völkisch movement and anti-communism, as well as a distaste for the Treaty of Versailles and the positioning of the German-Polish border. This was a result of the civil unrest that took place between communist and anti-communist groups that took place in his hometown in 1919, following Germany’s defeat in World War I
The conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, as well as Germany’s large war debt during World War I, led to a financial crisis for a lot of Germans with the Heydrich Family included. In 1922, Heydrich joined the German Navy, taking advantage of the security, structure, and pension it offered. He became a naval cadet at Kiel, Germany’s primary naval base. Many of Heydrich’s fellow cadets falsely regarded him as Jewish. To counteract these rumors, Heydrich told people he had joined several antisemitic and nationalist organizations, such as the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund. In December 1930 Heydrich became engaged to Lina von Osten. Lina was already a Nazi Party follower and antisemite. The Couple got married in December 1931.
Early Contribution to Nazi
Reinhard Heydrich was dismissed from the Navy in April 1931. He had been charged with a breach of promise, having been engaged to another woman for six months before Lina. Following his dismissal, Heydrich joined the Nazi Party in Hamburg and later the SS. He was also hired by Heinrich Himmler as the chief of the new ‘Ic Service’ a counterintelligence division of the Nazi para-military organization, Schutzstaffel.
Heydrich created a network of spies and informers for intelligence-gathering purposes and to obtain information to be used as blackmail to further political aims. Heydrich’s counterintelligence service grew into an effective machine of terror and intimidation. Following Hitler’s appointment as the Chancellor of Germany, Himmler was appointed as Chief of the German Police, and Heydrich, his deputy. The two became the most powerful men in the internal administration of Germany. During this period, he also served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, now known as Interpol).
In Sept. 1941, Heydrich was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the part of Czechoslovakia incorporated into Nazi Germany). Heydrich started his rule by terrorizing the population: he proclaimed martial law and 142 people were executed within five days of his arrival in Prague. Most of them were the members of the resistance that had previously been captured and were awaiting trial. According to Heydrich’s estimate, between 4,000 and 5,000 people were arrested and between 400 and 500 were executed by Feb. 1942. Those who were not executed were sent to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, where only four percent survived.
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Role in the Holocaust
As earlier stated, Historians regard Reinhard Heydrich as one of the darkest figures within the Nazi regime and a fearsome member of the Nazi elite. Some even regard him as Hitler’s most evil General. He was one of the main architects of the Holocaust during the early war years, answering to and taking orders from only Hitler, Göring, and Himmler in all matters about the deportation, imprisonment, and extermination of Jews.
Heydrich was one of the organizers of Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany on the night of 9–10 November 1938. He sent a telegram that night to the police and various para-military organization within the Nazi Party ordering the destruction of Jewish properties and the arrest and detention of Jewish people. “Twenty thousand Jews were sent to concentration camps in the days immediately following; historians consider Kristallnacht the beginning of the Holocaust.
On Himmler’s instructions, Heydrich formed the Einsatzgruppen (task forces) to travel in the wake of the German armies at the start of World War II. They were charged with rounding up and murdering Jews via firing squad and gas vans. Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and related auxiliary troops murdered more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.
In October 1941, Heydrich was the senior officer at a “Final Solution” meeting of the RSHA in Prague that discussed deporting 50,000 Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to ghettos in Minsk and Riga. He also chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalized plans for the “Final Solution to the Jewish question”—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.
Death
Reinhard Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of Operation Anthropoid. He was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill the Reich-Protector; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive.
Heydrich died from his injuries a week later. 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 altered 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. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; the men and boys age 14 and above were shot and most of the women and children were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.
After Heydrich’s death, implementation of the policies formalized at the Wannsee conference he chaired was accelerated. The first three true death camps, designed for mass murder with no legal process or pretext, were built and operated at Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec. The project was named Operation Reinhard after Heydrich.
