Hitler's hangman Reinhard Heydrich adored classical music and his family

The Early Years

Richard Bruno Heydrich was director of Halle Conserv­atory of Music and Theatre which he had founded in 1901. He comp­osed and performed choral works, songs, orchest­ral works and operas a la Richard Wag­ner. Heydrich’s wife Elisabeth taught piano at the Halle Conservat­ory and Elisabeth’s father had been the director of the Dresden Roy­al Conservatory. Clearly the Heydrich family was a very culturally and financially import­ant family!

Reinhard Heydrich (1904-42) was born in Halle NW of Leipzig, son of Richard and Elisabeth. Music was an integral part of family life; the young lad dev­eloped a passion for the violin and cello. He excelled in science and athletics at the Reform-gymnasium. But he was whipped by his mother and bullied by children for his high voice and possible Jewish ancestry.

Too young to fight in WWI, Heydrich got lucky. WW1 ended with Ger­m­any's defeat in 1918. In Feb 1919, strikes and clashes between left and right-wingers took place in Halle, so a right-wing paramilitary unit was form­ed under the Def­ence Minis­t­er and ordered to control Halle. Tall, teenage Heydrich joined the Volun­t­eer Rifles.

Because of the Treaty of Versailles, hyper­inflation spread across Germany and incomes collapsed. By 1921, few townspeople in Halle could afford a musical education at Bruno Hey­drich's conservatory. As the family struggled economically, strikes and street battles in Halle meant revolut­ionary chaos surrounded young Reinhard. A relatively late convert to Nazism, he joined the anti-Semitic National German Protection & Shelter League.

But instead of fulfilling his father's dream to study music, Reinhard joined the navy in 1922. Impressed by the security, free education and pension it offered, he became a naval cadet at Kiel, Germany's primary naval base. In 1924 he was promoted and sent to officer train­ing at the Naval Acad­emy Mürwik.

Naval officer Heydrich specialised in signals and communic­ations. And he specialised in sexual affairs. In Dec 1930 he met Lina von Osten at a sports club ball. They soon announced their engagement, so he left another senior naval officer’s daughter to whom he had been engaged. A military court of honour found him to have dis­hon­oured the officer corps of the Reich Navy and forced him to resign his commission in 1931. Hey­drich’s dismissal was ter­rible; he was suddenly unemployed. In Dec 1931 he married Lina, already a convinced Nazi Party supporter, and went on to have four adorable children.

Reinhard Heydrich

Robert Gerwarth's book
published by Yale University Press, 2012

But instead of fulfilling his father's dream to study music, Reinhard joined the navy in 1922. Impressed by the security, free education and pension it offered, he became a naval cadet at Kiel, Germany's primary naval base. In 1924 he was promoted and sent to officer train­ing at the Naval Acad­emy Mürwik.

  

Naval officer Heydrich specialised in signals and communic­ations. And he specialised in sexual affairs. In Dec 1930 he met Lina von Osten at a sports club ball. They soon announced their engagement, so he left another senior naval officer’s daughter to whom he had been engaged. A military court of honour found him to have dis­hon­oured the officer corps of the Reich Navy and forced him to resign his commission in 1931. Hey­drich’s dismissal was ter­rible; he was suddenly unemployed. In Dec 1931 he married Lina, already a convinced Nazi Party supporter, and went on to have four adorable children.

THE SS 

Heydrich was introduced to SS chief Heinrich Himmler in Mun­ich. Seek­ing to create an internal intelligence service for the Nazi par­ty, Himmler was so impr­es­sed by Hey­drich's proposals and his Aryan characteristics that he brought him into the SS. By Jan 1933, the Intelligence Agency/SD under Hey­drich's leadership had become an important agency in the Nazi party.

29-year-old Heydrich played a leading role in the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, leading to further promotion within the SS. In 1934 Heydrich was given command of the Berlin Gestapo, a position that suited his very skilful brutality. Under his leadership, they compiled comp­lete details about potential spies and enemies.

The SD entered Austria after the Ansch­luss in March 1938; and then entered the Sudetenland after its annexation in Oct 1938. They quickly sec­ured intelligence and arrested Germany’s enem­ies. In Nov 1938 SD exp­erts and police provoked the violence of Krist­all­­nacht through­out Nazi Germ­any, exclusively directed against Jewish synag­ogues and homes. In the wake of this pogrom, they implemented the first roundup of c30,000 Jews.

When Ger­m­any invaded Poland in 1939, six Einsatz-gruppen Mobile Killing Units moved into Pol­and behind the front-line troops. They killed thous­ands of members of the Pol­ish nationalist and cult­ural elite.

Hitler and Himmler

comforting Heydrich's sons 

at the Berlin funeral, 1942

After Germany invad­ed Poland, Himmler formally linked the Sec­urity Police and SD by estab­lishing The Reich Main Security Office/RSHA in Sept 1939, under Heydrich's command. Like Himmler, Heydrich had to “guarantee the security and sur­vival of the German race” and they did it by suppressing all internal and ex­ternal enemies of the Nazi state: World Jewry, Marxists (Commun­ists, Social Democrats, trade unionists), churches who opp­osed the regime (eg Jehovah's Witnesses), traditional nationalists & Freemasons. The Gestapo incarcerated these groups in camps.

When the previously dormant Czech communist resistance movement started carrying out acts of sabotage, Hitler dis­missed Reich Prot­ect­or Konstantin von Neu­r­ath (Germany’s ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs). Instead he appointed Heydrich as Acting Reich Lead­er of the Prot­ectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from Sept 1941 on.

Heydrich first ordered a terror campaign against real and possible leaders of the Czech communists. In Oct-Nov 1941, German Pro­tectorate courts had 342 people executed and gave 1,289 to the Gestapo. Heydrich opened Theresienstadt camp-ghetto in Nov; under his rule 14,000 German and Austrian Jews, plus 20,000 Czech Jews, were deported from Theresienstadt. The But­cher of Prague’s role was to stamp out all Czech reb­ellion via terror and mass executions.

Nonetheless I was surprised to read that Hey­drich became known as one of the main architects of the Final Solut­ion. In Jan 1939 Herm­ann Göring au­thorised Heydrich to develop plans for a Final Solution to the Jewish Question in the German Reich. By Jan 1942 Heydrich had invited key officials from various Reich Min­istries to a con­f­er­ence at a villa on the Wannsee Lake, in SW Berl­in. At this Wannsee Con­ference he presented plans, authorised by Hitler himself, to coord­inate a European-wide Final Solution. Hey­drich and the SS had to coordinate the resources of the Reich, and submit the final plan. To guarantee success, he requested the active participation of all Ministries represented at Wannsee.

The Special Operations Executive/SOE was an espionage and reconnaissance unit created by Winston Churchill in June 1940. The BBC reported that the British SOE planned the assas­s­ina­t­ion of Heydrich in Prague. In the top-secret Operation Anth­ropoid, the SOE trained a group of Czech resist­ance members to kill Heydrich. Operation Anth­ropoid reported to Winston Churchill and to Edvard Benes, President of the Czech-government-in-exile.

Heydrich was so self-confident that he travelled around Prague in an open vehicle. In May 1942, as he was travelling to the airport to fly to Hitler's headquarters, two Czech part­is­ans rolled a hand gren­­­ade under Heydrich's car. The gren­ade splint­ers throughout his body led to an infect­ion that killed him a week later.

Hitler was so enraged by Heydrich’s assassination that he ordered murderous rep­risals against the Czech population; the SS troops cap­tured the two Czech towns of Lidice and Ležáky, executing every man and destroying every home. At Heydrich’s state funeral in Ber­l­in, both Hitler and Himmler mourned one of their best Final Sol­ution Exec­utors, a skilled killer of the Enemies of the Reich.

Bodies of  the adult male civilians of Lidice,

murdered in reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich. 1942

Conclusion 
Heydrich, the man from a cultured, educated family, oversaw Occupied Czechoslovakia and the murderous death squads. His utter brutality was high even by Nazi standards. The details of the British SOE's involvement in his assassination are still unclear.

Thanks to Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich by Robert Gerwarth and The History Place.