Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich , 1904-42, German police official under the Nazi regime. Forced to resign (1931) from the navy for misconduct, Heydrich joined the SS (see National Socialism ). He soon won Heinrich Himmler's confidence and in 1934 was appointed deputy chief of the Gestapo (see secret police ). He was deeply involved in planning the extermination of the Jews. In 1941, Heydrich was appointed protector of Bohemia and Moravia. His ruthless methods there and elsewhere and his numerous executions earned him the name "the Hangman of Europe." In May, 1942, he was assassinated by Czech patriots. Several days later the entire male population of the village of Lidice was murdered in retaliation.

Heydrich, Reinhard (b. 7 Mar. 1904, d. 4 June 1942). Nazi police general One of the most ruthless Nazis, he joined the SS in 1931, and in 1933 became chief of the Bavarian security services. In 1934 he took an important part in the Röhm Putsch against the SA, and in the same year he became chief of the Gestapo, before being promoted to chief of the internal security service (Sicherheitsdienst) by H. Himmler. Appointed general of the police in 1941, he became responsible for the execution of the ‘final solution’. As he had also been appointed deputy ‘protector’ of Bohemia in 1941, he was murdered by a Czech in Prague. In retaliation, Lidice, a Czech village, was destroyed by the SS and Gestapo on 10 June 1942. All male inhabitants (over 160) were shot, the 192 women were deported to the concentration camp at Ravensbrück, where 52 of them died, and 96 children were deported to be ‘Germanized’ in SS camps.

Heydrich, Reinhard (1904–42),SS Obergruppenführer (lieutenant-general) who was head of the RSHA (Reichssicherheit shaumptamt, or Reich Security Main Office), Himmler's deputy, and a leading proponent of the Final Solution.

The son of a Dresden music teacher, Heydrich was born at Halle and in 1922 joined the German Navy. He served for a time under Admiral Canaris, whose rival intelligence organization, the Abwehr, Heydrich later constantly schemed against. However, in 1931 he was forced to resign from the navy after a scandal involving the daughter of a shipyard director. The same year he joined the Nazi Party and then the SS through whose ranks he rose quickly to become an SS lieutenant-general in July 1934.

In 1932 he established the intelligence department (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) of the SS, and in 1934 took command of the Prussian Gestapo in Berlin. Two years later he was appointed to command the newly formed security police (Sicherheitspolizei, or Sipo), a forerunner of the RSHA. Though the Sipo remained within the ministry of the interior, this gave Heydrich nationwide control of the Gestapo and of the criminal police (Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo). As head of the Gestapo he instituted a merciless persecution against any religious or cultural group which he deemed to be enemies of National Socialism. He built up dossiers not only on communists, Jews, and other enemies of the regime, but on his rivals for power; he helped engineer the downfall of Field Marshal Blomberg and General Fritsch in 1938, and organized the fake attack on the Gleiwitz radio station which triggered the German attack on Poland on 1 September 1939.

In September 1939 the RSHA was created as a new branch of the SS and Heydrich was given command of it. As the RSHA not only contained the SD but had the Gestapo and Kripo transferred to it from the ministry of the interior, he now had the complete secret police apparatus under his direct control. With it he organized the herding of Polish Jews into ghettos and the deportation eastwards of those living in Germany and what had been Austria, and from the annexed areas of Poland. In July 1941 he was ordered by Göring to find ‘a total solution of the Jewish question’; death camps began to be constructed specially for the destruction of the Jews—an undertaking that was to be called OPERATION REINHARD in his honour—and on 20 January 1942 he convened the Wannsee conference where it was decided how best to implement the last stages of the Final Solution. By then he had been Deputy Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia (see Czechoslovakia) for about four months and on 27 May 1942 he was fatally wounded by Free Czech agents who had been trained in the UK by SOE and parachuted into the country. He died a week later and his death led directly to the Lidiče massacre.

Though the very picture of blond Aryan handsomeness, Heydrich was reputed, wrongly, to be half-Jewish, a rumour which probably fed his sense of inferiority. His blue-eyed good looks, athletic prowess, arrogant mien, and musical talent hid a neurotic personality which was deeply divided, uncertain, and treacherous.

Bibliography

Aronson, S. , Reinhard Heydrich und die Fruhgeschichte von Gestapo und SD (Stuttgart, 1971).
MacDonald, C. , The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (London, 1989).