Reinhard Heydrich

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Reinhard Heydrich

Protector of Bohemia and Moravia

(acting)
In office
September 29, 1941 June 4, 1942
Appointed by Adolf Hitler
Konstantin von Neurath (titular Protector
Preceded by
until 24 August 1943)
Succeeded by Kurt Daluege

Director of the Reich Security Head Office

In office
September 22, 1939 June 4, 1942
Appointed by Heinrich Himmler
Preceded by Post Created
Succeeded by Ernst Kaltenbrunner

President of Interpol
In office
1940 June 4, 1942
Preceded by Otto Steinhusl
Succeeded by Arthur Nebe

Born March 7, 1904

 Halle an der Saale, Germany
June 4, 1942 (aged 38)
Died Prague, Protectorate Bohemia and
Moravia (now Czech Republic)
Nationality German
National Socialist German Workers Party
Political party
(NSDAP)
Lina von Osten (married December 26,
Spouse
1931)
Religion Roman Catholic

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (7 March, 1904 4 June, 1942) was an SS-
Obergruppenfhrer und General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Security Main Office
(including the Gestapo, SD and Kripo Nazi police agencies) and Reichsprotektor (Reich
Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. Adolf Hitler considered him a possible successor. When
the Nazis moved the headquarters of Interpol to Berlin he was chosen as the President of that
international law enforcement agency. Heydrich chaired the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which
discussed plans for the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied
territory. He was attacked by assassins in Prague on 27 May 1942 and died over a week later
from complications arising from his injuries.

Contents
[hide]
1 Early life
2 Nazi Party and the SS
o 2.1 Gestapo & SD

o 2.2 Crushing the SA

o 2.3 Night and Fog Decree

o 2.4 Reichsprotektor of Bohemia & Moravia

3 Assassination in Prague
4 Heydrich's Grave
5 Aftermath
6 Himmler and Heydrich
7 Role in the Holocaust
8 Family
9 Summary of Career
10 In popular culture
o 10.1 Film
 o 10.2 Fiction

11 See also
12 References
o 12.1 Notes

o 12.2 Bibliography

13 External links

[edit] Early life

Heydrich was born in Halle an der Saale to composer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife
Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Kranz. Her father was Hofrat Kranz, founder of the Dresden
Conservatory.[1] Reinhard's two forenames were patriotic musical references: "Reinhard" from
Amen, an opera written by his father, in a portion called "Reinhard's Crime", while his first
middle name, 'Tristan' stems from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. His third name
probably derives from military hero Prince Eugene of Savoy, Eugen in German (the German
cruiser Prinz Eugen was also named for Eugene of Savoy, as was the 7th Division of the
Waffen-SS). He was born into a well-to-do Catholic family. Music was a part of Heydrich's
everyday life; His father was an opera singer as well as the founder of the Halle Conservatory
of Music. Young Heydrich developed a passion for the violin, which he carried into his adult
life, and he impressed listeners with his musical talent.

His father was a German Nationalist who instilled patriotic ideas in the minds of his three
children.[2] The Heydrich household was very strict and the children were frequently
disciplined when needed. As a youth, Heydrich engaged his younger brother, Heinz, in mock
fencing duels, thus developing strong fencing skills. Heydrich was very intelligent and he
excelled in his schoolwork at the Reform-Realgymnasium. He was also a talented athlete and
he became an expert swimmer and fencer. However, he was a shy, insecure boy who was
frequently bullied for his high-pitched voice and his family's Catholicism (The community
was at the time largely Protestant). It was also rumored that he had some Jewish ancestry
his grandmother's second husband had a Jewish-sounding last name and these rumors were
later used by Heydrich's superiors in the Nazi Party to exercise a measure of control over him.
[3]

When World War I broke out in 1914, 10-year-old Heydrich was too young to enlist for
military service. He joined the Maracker Freikorps, a right-wing paramilitary group that
strongly opposed the Communists. He also joined the Deutschvlkischer Schutz und
Trutzbund, (The National German Protection and Shelter League), an anti-Semitic
organization [4]. In 1918, the war ended with Germany's defeat. Due to the conditions of the
Treaty of Versailles, inflation spread across Germany and many families including
Heydrich's lost their life savings.

In 1922, he joined the Navy, taking advantage of the free education and guaranteed pension it
offered. He became a naval cadet at Germany's chief naval base at Kiel. Heydrich was
unpopular among his fellow cadets, however, as rumors of his supposed Jewish ancestry
resurfaced. In 1926, he advanced to the rank of second lieutenant and was assigned as a
signals officer on the battleship Schleswig Holstein. Finding himself with considerable
authority over the subordinate officers who had once bullied him, he got his revenge by
ordering them around and treating them like lowly subjects.

Heydrich became a notorious womanizer, having countless affairs. One night in 1930, he
attended a rowing club ball and met a young woman named Lina von Osten. The two became
romantically involved and soon announced their engagement. A former lover, the daughter of
a shipyard director, became infuriated that Heydrich was going to marry another woman, and
she then complained to her father, a friend of Admiral Erich Raeder, then Chief Of Naval
Operations. A formal complaint was lodged against Heydrich for insulting the honor of a
young woman. He was charged with "conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman" and
an investigation ensued. Heydrich was called before a court of honor and he protested his
innocence, accusing the woman of lying. Though he was exonerated, the officers demanded
that he be cashiered for "conduct unbecoming a naval officer". In April 1931, Raeder
sentenced Heydrich to "dismissal for impropriety." He was dismissed in 1931. [5] Heydrich
was devastated, but he remained engaged to Lina von Osten. He now found himself with no
prospects for a career.

[edit] Nazi Party and the SS

Reinhard Heydrich (middle) together with Heinrich Himmler, Karl Wolff and an unidentified
assistant at the Obersalzberg, May 1939

In 1931, Heinrich Himmler began to set up a counter-intelligence division of the SS. Acting
on the advice of his associate Karl von Eberstein, who was a friend of Lina Heydrich,
Himmler interviewed Heydrich. A commonly stated version is that Himmler arranged for an
interview with Heydrich and was instantly impressed, hiring him on the spot. His pay was 180
reichsmarks per month (40 USD). In doing so Himmler also effectively recruited Heydrich
into the Nazi Party. He would later receive a Totenkopfring from Himmler, for his service.

To begin work, Heydrich set up his office at the Brown House, the Nazi party headquarters in
Munich. He set about creating a counterintelligence service to be reckoned with.

At this time, he was relatively insignificant within the Nazi Party apparatus. Heydrich created
his own network of spies and informers and sent them out to dig up information that could be
used as blackmail, going after the Party's opponents as well as high-ranking Nazis themselves.

In December 1931, Heydrich and Von Osten married. That same year, he was promoted to SS
major. As early as 1931, Heydrich was becoming one of the most dangerous men in the Nazi
party. With his vast archive of cross-referenced index cards the fate of Nazi opponents rested
upon his whims.

In 1932, however, Heydrich was given a taste of his own medicine by Adolf Hitler. A number
of Heydrich's enemies had discovered the old rumors of his Jewish ancestry and began to
spread them around. Within the Nazis' organization, such innuendo could be deadly, even for
the head of the Reich's counterintelligence service. An investigation was conducted into
Heydrich's genealogy, and he was found to be free of "colored or Jewish blood".
Nevertheless, Himmler was distressed by the mere suggestion of a Jew heading his
counterintelligence service and he even played with the idea of dismissing Heydrich. Hitler
considered Heydrich useful, however, and reasoned that the threat of having his "secret"
exposed would keep him in line. From that time on, Heydrich's power in relation to the
highest ranking Nazis was cowed somewhat.

[edit] Gestapo & SD

SS-Brigadefhrer Heydrich, head of the Bavarian police, in Munich, 1934

In July 1932, Heydrich's counterintelligence service grew into an effective machine of terror
and intimidation. It was officially named Sicherheitsdienst [SD] - Security Service, an
intelligence organization wholly committed to the defence of Nazism. The organisation
benefited from close cooperation with the SS.

With Hitler agitating for absolute power in Germany, Himmler and Heydrich wished to
control the political police forces of all 17 German states, and they began with the state of
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 commander of the Bavarian political police with Heydrich as his deputy. From there,
the duo moved on to the police forces of the 16 remaining German states. With 15 states
under their control, they locked horns with Hermann Gring in Prussia.

Gring controlled the Prussian political police, and he disliked both Himmler and Heydrich.
Gring's intentions were that his police force would stand apart from any other police
organization and that its officers would obey no laws, they would be a law unto themselves.
He named his organization Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police). For the purpose of a
franking stamp, a postal clerk abbreviated the name to Gestapo. Gring wanted to transfer
them out of police headquarters and give them their own command center.
In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, but he still did not have the dictatorial powers
that he desired. In order to give himself more power, he pressured President Paul von
Hindenburg to sign a series of decrees which would hamper opposition parties such as the
Communists and Socialists. With these decrees, the police had the authority to conduct
searches, confiscate property, and arrest and detain people without allowing either a hearing
or a trial. Heydrich consulted his list of index cards and supplied the SS and the brown-shirted
SA (Sturmabteilung) with lists containing the names of "offenders" to be arrested. Since
Heydrich's index cards numbered in the thousands, the prisons were soon filled beyond
capacity and the first concentration camps were established in order to deal with the overflow
of prisoners.

[edit] Crushing the SA

On 20 April 1934, Gring formed a partnership with Himmler and Heydrich. Gring
transferred authority over the Gestapo to Himmler, who was also named chief of all German
police forces outside of Prussia. Himmler on April 22, 1934 named Heydrich the head of the
Gestapo. With the Gestapo under their control, the two men plotted as to it's use along with
the SS to crush the SA.

Heydrich had his men uncover false "evidence" that SA leader Ernst Rhm was plotting to
overthrow Hitler. Heydrich and Himmler put pressure on Hitler to purge the leading members
of the SA, and they assured him that the SS would carry out the murders. Heydrich drew up
lists of all of the powerful SA men to be killed along with Rhm. On 30 June 1934, the SS
attacked the SA in a coordinated mass arrest that continued throughout the entire weekend.
Rhm was shot without trial along with all of the important members of the SA in this
bloodbath, which the Nazis coined the Night of the Long Knives.

With the SA out of the way, Heydrich began building the Gestapo into an instrument of fear.
He improved his index card system; Since he created more categories of offenders, the cards
were now color-coded. The Gestapo had the authority to arrest citizens on the mere suspicion
that they might commit a crime, and the definition of a crime was at their discretion; Hitler
himself said of the agency that "all means, even if they are not in conformity with existing
laws and precedents, are permitted if they serve the will of the Fhrer".[6] People began
disappearing throughout Germany, never to be seen again. At a later date, their families would
receive an urn containing their ashes. Under Himmler and Heydrich, Germany became a
police state.

[edit] Night and Fog Decree

By late 1940, Hitler's armies had swept through most of western Europe. To Hitler's dismay,
anti-Nazi resistance was alive and well, especially in Norway, France, the Netherlands, and
Belgium. In 1941, the SD was given the responsibility of carrying out the Nacht und Nebel
(Night and Fog) decree, designed to crush this resistance. According to the decree, suspects
had to be arrested in a maximally discreet way "under the cover of night and fog". People
simply disappeared without a trace and no one was told of their whereabouts or their eventual
fate. For each prisoner, the SD was required to fill out a questionnaire that listed their personal
information, their country of origin and the details of their crimes against the Reich. This
questionnaire was to be put into an envelope inscribed with a seal that read "Nacht und
Nebel" and submitted to the Reich Central Security Office (RSHA). This decree remained in
effect after Heydrich's death. The exact number of people who vanished in the name of the
decree has never been positively established, but it is estimated to be roughly 7,000.

On 17 June 1936, all police forces throughout Germany were united with Himmler as the
chief. On 26 June, Himmler reorganized the police into two groups:

- Ordnungspolizei (ORPO) which consisted of the national uniformed police and the
municipal police.

- Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO) which consisted of the Gestapo and the KRIPO or Kriminalpolizel
(Criminal Police).

At that point, Reinhard Heydrich was head of the SIPO, Gestapo, KRIPO and SD. Heinrich
Mller, was the chief of operations of the Gestapo. Heydrich's first task was the suppression
of all possible dissent prior to and during the 1936 Olympics, a task he executed with a cold
and systematic ruthlessness that gained him the German Olympia Honor Badge (First Class)
(Deutsches Olympiaehrenzeichen).

In 1939, the SD, the Gestapo, and the Criminal Police were unified under one office, the
Reich Main Security Office RSHA, which was placed under Heydrich's control. He was
promoted to SS-Obergruppenfhrer und General der Polizei on 24 September 1941.

Heydrich at Prague Castle in 1941

[edit] Reichsprotektor of Bohemia & Moravia

On 27 September 1941 Heydrich was appointed acting Reichsprotektor in the Protectorate of

Bohemia and Moravia (the part of Czechoslovakia incorporated into the Reich on 15 March
1939). Hitler felt Konstantin von Neurath, Heydrich's predecessor, wasn't draconian enough.
(Neurath remained titular Protector until 20 August 1943). Heydrich came to Prague to restore
production quotas.
As the governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich applied "carrot-and-stick" methods. The
black market was suppressed, food rations and pensions were increased, and unemployment
insurance was established for the first time. Those associated with the resistance movement or
the black market were tortured or executed. Under Heydrich, conditions in Prague and the rest
of the Czech lands were relatively peaceful and industrial output went up. Because of his
success in Prague, Hitler considered making Heydrich the governor of Paris.

Heydrich was, for all intents and purposes, military dictator of Bohemia and Moravia;
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 the effectiveness of his government (See Czech resistance to Nazi
occupation).

[edit] Assassination in Prague

Main article: Operation Anthropoid

The road corner where Heydrich was assassinated.

The car in which Heydrich was assassinated.

The restored car in which Heydrich was assassinated (currently in the Military History
Museum in Prague)

In London, the Czechoslovak government in exile (Prozatmn sttn zzen) was plotting to
assassinate Heydrich. Two specially trained men by the British SOE or Special Operations
Executive Jan Kubi and Jozef Gabk, were chosen for the operation. After receiving training
from the British, they returned by parachute in December, dropped from a Halifax of 138
Squadron RAF.

On 27 May 1942, Heydrich was scheduled to attend a meeting with Hitler in Berlin. Heydrich
would have to pass a section where the Dresden-Prague road merged with a road leading to
the Troja Bridge. That intersection was a perfect spot for the attack because Heydrich's car
would have to slow down to make a hairpin turn. The attack was, therefore, scheduled for 27
May. On that date, Heydrich was ambushed while he rode in his open car in the Prague suburb
of Kobylisy. As the car slowed to take the hairpin bend in the road, Gabk took aim with a
Sten sub-machine gun, but it failed to fire. At that very moment, instead of ordering his driver
to speed away, Heydrich called his car to a halt in an attempt to take on the two attackers.
Kubi then immediately threw a bomb (a converted anti-tank mine) at the rear of the car. The
explosion wounded Heydrich and also Kubi himself.

It is alleged that when the smoke cleared, Heydrich emerged from the wreckage with his gun
still in his hand and he gave chase after Kubis and tried to return fire. Some accounts state that
his pistol was not loaded. He ran for half a block, became weak from shock, and sent his
driver, Klein, on foot to chase Gabk. In the ensuing firefight, Gabk shot Klein in the leg
and escaped. Heydrich appeared not to be seriously injured.

One version suggests that a Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a truck
delivering floor polish. First, Heydrich was placed in the back seat, but after complaining that
the movement of the truck was causing him pain, he was placed in the back of the truck, lying
on his stomach, and he was taken to Bulovka hospital. He suffered a severe injury to the left
side of his body with major damage to his diaphragm, spleen, and lung, as well as a broken
rib. The doctors immediately performed an operation and, despite a slight fever, his recovery
appeared to progress quite well. On 2 June, during a visit with Himmler, Heydrich reconciled
himself with 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."[7]

After Himmler's visit, Heydrich slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness. He is
said to have died at 4:30am on 4 June at the age of 38. The autopsy states that he died of
septicemia.

[edit] Heydrich's Grave

Heydrich was buried in Berlin's Invalidenfriedhof, on the border between West and East
Berlin. The location of the grave in the Invalidenfriedhof is not entirely certain. Heydrich's
plot may be between those of two famous German war heroes, Adolf Karl von Oven and
Gerhard von Scharnhorst (cemetery section C)[8]. Hitler wanted Heydrich to have a
monumental tomb, but because of the downhill course of the war the tomb was never built. In
1945 Heydrich's temporary wooden grave marker disappeared. The marker was never
replaced, because the Allies and Berlin authorities feared Heydrich's grave would become a
rallying point for Neo-Nazis, as is the grave of Rudolf Hess in the little Bavarian town of
Wunsiedel. During the time when the Berlin Wall was standing, Heydrich's grave may have
been part of the so-called "death strip" between the two Berlins and inaccessible to the public,
though this is unlikely because section C of the Invalidenfriedhof is in the front of the
cemetery, near the Scharnhorststrae entrance, and the death strip was in the back (southwest
sections E, F, and G and along the Schiffahrtskanal). A letter published in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung in 1992 asserted that Heydrich's grave is in cemetery section A next to
General of Infantry Count Tauentzien von Wittenberg, who fought against Napoleon in the
wars of liberation (1813)[9]. A photograph of Heydrich's burial also shows the wreaths and
mourners to be in section A, which abuts the north wall of the Invalidenfriedhof and
Scharnhorststrae at the front of the cemetery [10][11]

[edit] Aftermath
Main article: Lidice

Infuriated, Hitler ordered the arrest and execution of 10,000 randomly selected Czechs, but,
after consultations with Karl Hermann Frank, he reduced his response.[12] Upon Himmler's
orders, the Nazi retaliation was brutal. About 13,000 people were arrested, deported,
imprisoned or killed. On 10 June all males over the age of 16 in the village of Lidice, 22 km
north-west of Prague, and another village, Leky, were murdered. The towns were burned
and the ruins leveled.

Heydrich's assassins took refuge in the crypt of an Orthodox church in Prague. The Nazis
surrounded the church and started firing on it. Rather than surrender, the assassins took their
own lives. Among those tortured and killed was the church's leader, Bishop Gorazd, who is
now revered as a martyr of the Orthodox Church.

There is a special memorial to both the assassins and the dead of Lidice and Lezaky in
Jephson Gardens, Royal Leamington Spa, where the Czech forces were stationed during the
war, and where their training took place. The memorial fountain is in the form of a parachute,
with water running over the centre fold. Planted around the fountain is the special white
Lidice Rose, grown in commemoration of the dead. This memorial is believed to be the only
place outside of Czechoslovakia where the special rose is grown. The fountain was designed
and is maintained by Warwick district council.

Stamp memorializing Heydrich

An elaborate funeral was conducted 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). Although Heydrich's death was employed as pro-Reich
propaganda, Hitler seemed privately to blame 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.[13]

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, his legacy lived on; the first three "trial" death camps were
constructed and put into operation at Treblinka, Sobibr, and Belzec. The project was named
Operation Reinhard in Heydrich's honor.

[edit] Himmler and Heydrich

As chief of all police forces, Himmler was technically responsible to Wilhelm Frick, the
minister of the Interior, but in practice answered only to Hitler. Himmler's police forces were
independent and they obeyed no government laws. Rather than protecting the citizens of the Reich,
the role of the police had become that of protecting the Reich from its citizens. Heydrich's
ruthlessness in this department earned him the nicknames "the blonde beast" and "Himmler's evil
genius".

Excerpt from a speech by Reinhardt Heydrich in 1941.

Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Heydrich and Himmler had an odd but practical working relationship. Although Himmler was
the boss, Heydrich was the true force behind the SD. While they personally disliked each
other,[14] the two men formed a solid partnership and became a force to be reckoned within the
Party. Their thirst for power took them beyond the periphery of the SD.

While Heydrich's abilities were never doubted by superiors and subordinates alike, his
arrogance and combativeness won him few supporters within the Party and occasionally
embarrassed Himmler, who had to clean up the messes. Himmler would occasionally lose his
patience with Heydrich, berating and abusing him, sometimes calling him "Genghis Khan".

In light of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, Heydrich braced himself for the possibility of
Himmler firing him. Himmler did not fire Heydrich, but he was clearly angered. In a public
speech, Himmler stated that he was misguided by his incapable subordinates; Although he did
not name Heydrich specifically, Heydrich knew that he was one of them.
Upon the establishment of the Third Reich, Heydrich helped Hitler and Himmler gather
information on many political opponents, keeping an extensive filing system listing
individuals and organizations who opposed the party and the regime. He is believed to be the
creator of the forged documents of Russian correspondence with the German High Command.
While it is now known that the Stalinist Great Purge of the Soviet military officer corps was at
most tangentially related to these forgeries[citation needed], at the time it was widely believed to
have resulted from Heydrich's actions, enormously adding to his prestige. He was also
instrumental in establishing the false 'attack' by Poland on German national radio at Gleiwitz,
intended to provide the Nazi justification for the beginning of World War II. This failed
miserably, however, and only came to light after the war, when Allied investigators began
researching the captured German documents.

[edit] Role in the Holocaust

1939 Telegram giving orders during Kristallnacht, signed by Heydrich

July 1941 letter from Gring to Heydrich concerning the "final solution"

Heydrich was one of the main architects of the Holocaust during the first years of the war,
answering only to, and taking orders only from Hitler and Himmler in all matters that
pertained to the deportation, imprisonment, and extermination of Jews.

During Kristallnacht, in November 1938, he sent a telegram to various SD and Gestapo

offices, helping to coordinate the pogrom with the SS, the SD, the Gestapo, the Order Police,
the Nazi party, and even the Fire departments. It talks about permitting arson and destruction
of Jewish businesses and synagogues, and orders the taking of all "archival material" out of
Jewish community centers and Synagogues. The telegram also 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."[15]

After Kristallnacht, Gring assigned him as head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration.
In this position, he worked tirelessly both to coordinate various initiatives for the Final
Solution, and to assert SS dominance over Jewish policy.

He was involved in several mass deportations. On Oct 10, 1941, he was the senior officer at a
meeting in Prague that discussed evacuating 50,000 Jewish people from the Protectorate of
Bohemia and Moravia (mostly in the modern day Czech Republic) to ghettos in Minsk and
Riga. Also discussed was the taking of 5,000 Jewish people "in the next few weeks" from
Prague and handing them over to the Einsatzgruppen commanders Nebe and Rasch. The
creation of ghettos in the Protectorate was also discussed, which would eventually result in
the construction of Theresienstadt[16], where 33,000 people would eventually die, and tens of
thousands more would pass through on their way to death in the East.[17].

In 1941 Himmler named Heydrich as "responsible for implementing" the forced movement of
60,000 Jewish people from Germany and Czechoslovakia to the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto
in Poland. [18]

Most famously in this respect, on 20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired the Wannsee
Conference, at which he presented to the heads of a number of German Government
departments a plan approved by Hitler for the deportation and transporting of 11 million
Jewish people from every country in Europe to be worked to death or outright killed in the
East.[19]

[edit] Family
Heydrich and his wife Lina attending a concert in Waldstein Palace in Prague, 26 May 1942

In December 1930 Heydrich met Lina Mathilde von Osten (14 June 1911 - 14 August 1985).
She was the daughter of Jrgen von Osten, a minor German aristocrat. They were married on
26 December 1931 in Groenbrode. 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. In 1943, Klaus was killed in a traffic accident. In 1944, Lina Heydrich had Heider
removed from the Hitler Youth out of fear that he might meet the same fate as his father.
According to historian Jaroslav vanara, Heydrich had an additional child with a mistress, a
leader of the League of German Girls (BDM).[20]

Heydrich's younger brother Heinz Siegfried (29 September 1905 in Halle/S), though initially
a fanatical Nazi, gradually became disenchanted with the Party and even became involved in
obtaining false identification documents for Jews to save them from persecution. When his
activities were uncovered by the Gestapo he was given the choice of committing suicide
rather than face trial. He shot himself on November 19, 1944.[citation needed]

At the end of the war, Heydrich's widow returned to the island of Fehmarn with her surviving
children. She owned and ran a hotel and restaurant. The Finnish theatre director and poet
Mauno Manninen (1915-1969) was a frequent guest at the hotel. He took pity on the
difficulties she experienced as a result of her infamous name and offered to marry her to
enable her to change it. They married in 1965 but did not live together. She died in 1985,
claiming till the end that she had known nothing about the atrocities that her first husband had
committed and ordered.

As of 2008, Heider, Marte and Silke are reported[citation needed] to still be alive.

[edit] Summary of Career

Main article: Service record of Reinhard Heydrich

Heydrich's time in the SS, often stated by historians to be a "murderous career", is a mixture
of rapid promotions, reserve commissions in the regular armed forces, as well as front line
combat service. During his 14 years with the SS, Heydrich truly "rose from the ranks", being
appointed to every rank from private to full general. He was also a Major in the Luftwaffe,
flying nearly one hundred missions until he was shot down behind enemy lines by Soviet AA
while flying a combat sortie. After this he was ordered personally by Hitler to return to Berlin
and resume his SS duties. Furthermore, his service record gives him credit as a Reserve
Lieutenant in the Navy, although during World War II Heydrich had no contact at all with this
military branch and the entry was likely made due to his prior service.

Heydrich was also the recipient of several high ranking Nazi and military awards, including
the German Order, Blood Order, Golden Nazi Party Badge, bronze and silver combat mission
bars and the Iron Cross first and second classes.

[edit] In popular culture

[edit] Film
Poster depicting Reinhard Heydrich.

The 1943 Fritz Lang film Hangmen Also Die takes place in Prague and is based on Heydrich's
assassination. A second 1943 film Hitler's Madman, directed by Douglas Sirk, starred John
Carradine. A documentary/drama film, "SS-3 The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich,"
produced and directed by Jan and Krystyna Kaplan, was released on video in 1992.

The events of the Wannsee conference are recreated in the 1984 TV Movie Wannseekonferenz
(The Wannsee Conference)[21] directed by Heinz Schirk and starring Dietrich Mattausch as
Heydrich; It was remade in 2001 under the title Conspiracy,[22] with Kenneth Branagh playing
Heydrich. The conference was also the subject of a 1992 English language documentary film
entitled The Wannsee Conference directed by Dutch director Willy Lindwer.[23]

Anton Diffring played Heydrich in the 1975 film Operation Daybreak, about the assassination
of the Reichsprotektor. Diffring was 57 years old when he shot this movie; Heydrich died at
38.

Heydrich was portrayed by David Warner twice: in the 1978 TV miniseries Holocaust, and in
the 1985 TV movie Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil. The movie followed the career of his
subordinate Helmut Hoffmann, played by Bill Nighy.

[edit] Fiction

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 0-446-51900-6).

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 0-14-
023170-6), 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 embroiling him in the internal feuding of the Nazi High Command.

Heydrich and the events of the Wannsee conference are also the subjects of Robert Harris'
novel Fatherland. The book portrays an alternate history where Heydrich is promoted to the
rank of Reichsfhrer-SS (4-star General) after Himmler's death. For a brief three seconds at
movie's end (an ending in direct contradiction to that in the novel) he is shown standing with
two other officials while the evidence of the Holocaust is given to U.S. President Joseph P.
Kennedy.

Ji Weil's 1960 novel, Mendelssohn is On the Roof, is set in Prague in 1942, and features
Heydrich as a character and his assassination as a major plot point.

The Man in the High Castle, an alternate-history novel by science fiction writer Philip K.
Dick set in the 1960s, describes Heydrich as head of the SS and maneuvering to become
Reich Chancellor after Hitler and his immediate successor, Martin Bormann, are dead.

In the Robert Ludlum novel The Tristan Betrayal, Heydrich plays a small but pivotal role. In
this thriller, Heydrich is the master and father figure to a German assassin, Kleist, who serves
as one of the antagonists of the novel.

Heydrich also plays a pivotal role in William Harrington's novel The English Lady.

"The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich" is a short story by Jim Shepard which explores the
plot to assassinate Heydrich from the conspirators' perspective.

Harry Turtledove's novel The Man with the Iron Heart posits a world in which Heydrich
survived the assassination attempt and went on to coordinate a German resistance after World
War II.

Heavy metal band Slayer wrote a song about Heydrich's assassination on their album Divine
Intervention. The title of the song, SS-3, comes from the personalized number plate of the car
he was in when attacked and the lyrics reference the legend of the curse of the Crown of Saint
Wenceslas.

[edit] See also

List of rulers of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia
Ernst Kaltenbrunner