Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
Both villages were razed; all men and boys over the age of 16 were shot, and all but a handful of the women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps. ==Early life== Reinhard Tristan Eugen 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 Heydrich (née Krantz).
The latter claim earned him the nickname "Moses Handel." 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.
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. ==Naval career== In 1922, Heydrich joined the German Navy (Reichsmarine), taking advantage of the security, structure, and pension it offered.
On 1 April 1924 he was promoted to senior midshipman (Oberfähnrich zur See) and sent to officer training at the Naval Academy Mürwik.
In 1926 he advanced to the rank of ensign (Leutnant zur See) and was assigned as a signals officer on the battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein, the flagship of Germany's North Sea Fleet.
He was promoted on 1 July 1928 to the rank of sub-lieutenant (Oberleutnant zur See).
Lina was already a Nazi Party follower; she had attended her first rally in 1929.
In December 1930 he attended a rowing-club ball and met Lina von Osten.
As his power and influence grew throughout the 1930s, his wealth grew commensurately; in 1935 he received a base salary of 8,400 Reichsmarks () and an allowance of 12,000 Reichsmarks () and by 1938 his income increased to 17,371 Reichsmarks (), annually.
Early in 1931 Heydrich was charged with "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" for a breach of promise, having been engaged to marry another woman he had known for six months before the Lina von Osten engagement.
Heydrich married Lina in December 1931. ==Career in the SS== On 30 May 1931, Heydrich's discharge from the navy became legally binding, and either the following day or on 1 June he joined the Nazi Party in Hamburg.
Heydrich's date of enlistment in 1931 was early enough to quell suspicion that he had joined only to further his career, but was not early enough for him to be considered an Old Fighter. In 1931, Heinrich Himmler began setting up a counterintelligence division of the SS.
Heydrich later received a Totenkopfring from Himmler for his SS service. On 1 August 1931, Heydrich began his job as chief of the new 'Ic Service' (intelligence service).
His service record also gives him credit as a Navy Reserve Lieutenant, but in 1931 he was dismissed for conduct unbecoming an officer with loss of rank, and during World War II he had no contact with the Navy Reserve. Heydrich received a number of Nazi and military awards.
At first he had to share an office and typewriter with a colleague, but by 1932 Heydrich was earning 290 Reichsmarks a month (), a salary he described as "comfortable".
To mark the occasion of Heydrich's December wedding, Himmler promoted him to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major). In 1932, rumours were spread by Heydrich's enemies of his alleged Jewish ancestry.
Those who joined the Party after Hitler's seizure of power in January 1933 faced suspicions from the Alte Kämpfer (Old Fighters; the earliest party members) that they had joined for reasons of career advancement rather than a true commitment to the Nazi program.
In 1933, Heydrich gathered some of his men from the SD and together they stormed police headquarters in Munich and took over the organisation 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.
The couple had four children: Klaus, born in 1933, killed in a traffic accident in 1943; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942.
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, Rudolf Hess declared the SD the official Nazi intelligence service. ===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.
On 30 June 1934 the SS and Gestapo acted in coordinated mass arrests that continued for two days.
The couple had four children: Klaus, born in 1933, killed in a traffic accident in 1943; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942.
As his power and influence grew throughout the 1930s, his wealth grew commensurately; in 1935 he received a base salary of 8,400 Reichsmarks () and an allowance of 12,000 Reichsmarks () and by 1938 his income increased to 17,371 Reichsmarks (), annually.
The Gestapo Law, passed in 1936, gave police the right to act extra-legally.
In early 1936, Heydrich left the Catholic Church in favour of the Gottgläubig movement.
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. ===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.
Heinrich Müller was the Gestapo's operations chief. Heydrich was assigned to help organise the 1936 Summer Olympics in 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.
For his part in the games' success, Heydrich was awarded the Deutsches Olympiaehrenzeichen or German Olympic Games Decoration (First Class). In January 1937, Heydrich directed the SD to secretly begin collecting and analysing public opinion and report back its findings.
He helped organise Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.
As his power and influence grew throughout the 1930s, his wealth grew commensurately; in 1935 he received a base salary of 8,400 Reichsmarks () and an allowance of 12,000 Reichsmarks () and by 1938 his income increased to 17,371 Reichsmarks (), annually.
In February 1938 when the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg resisted Hitler's proposed merger with Germany, Heydrich intensified the pressure on Austria by organising Nazi demonstrations and distributing propaganda in Vienna emphasising the common Germanic blood of the two countries.
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 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.
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 Criminal Police, or Kripo – were folded into the new Reich Main Security Office or Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), which was placed under Heydrich's control.
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. 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.
On 21 September 1939, Heydrich sent out a teleprinter message on the "Jewish question in the occupied territory" to the chiefs of all Einsatzgruppen with instructions to round up Jewish people for placement into ghettos, called for the formation of Judenräte (Jewish councils), ordered a census, and promoted Aryanization plans for Jewish-owned businesses and farms, among other measures.
The couple had four children: Klaus, born in 1933, killed in a traffic accident in 1943; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942.
The Wannsee Villa, which the Stiftung Nordhav acquired in November 1940, was the site of the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942).
Heydrich became the president of the International Criminal Police Commission (later known as Interpol) on 24 August 1940, and its headquarters were transferred to Berlin.
Soviet military prosecutors did not use SD forged documents against the generals in their secret trial; they instead relied on false confessions extorted or beaten out of the defendants. ===Night-and-Fog decree=== By late 1940, German armies had invaded most of Western Europe.
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.
By December 1941, Czechs could be called to work anywhere within the Reich.
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. By 3 October 1941, Czechoslovak military intelligence in London had made the decision to kill Heydrich. ==Role in the Holocaust== Historians regard Heydrich as the most fearsome member of the Nazi elite.
Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and related auxiliary troops killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.
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 co-operate in murdering Soviet Jews. On 10 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.
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. Earlier on 31 July 1941, Hermann Göring gave written authorisation to Heydrich to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of a "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in territories under German control.
They returned to the Protectorate, parachuting from a Handley Page Halifax on 28 December 1941, where they lived in hiding, preparing for the mission. On 27 May 1942, Heydrich planned to meet Hitler in Berlin.
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.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, later known as Interpol) and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe. Many historians regard Heydrich as the darkest figure within the Nazi regime; Adolf Hitler described him as "the man with the iron heart".
He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing, including 1.3 million Jews. Heydrich was critically wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of Operation Anthropoid.
The Wannsee Villa, which the Stiftung Nordhav acquired in November 1940, was the site of the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942).
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 February 1942.
He was later executed in retaliation for Heydrich's assassination. In March 1942, further sweeps against Czech cultural and patriotic organisations, the military, and the intelligentsia resulted in the practical paralysis of the London-based Czech resistance.
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.
On 20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired a meeting, now called the Wannsee Conference, to discuss the implementation of the plan. ==Death== In London, the Czechoslovak government-in-exile resolved to kill Heydrich.
They returned to the Protectorate, parachuting from a Handley Page Halifax on 28 December 1941, where they lived in hiding, preparing for the mission. On 27 May 1942, Heydrich planned to meet Hitler in Berlin.
He was 38 years old. ===Funeral=== 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.
The couple had four children: Klaus, born in 1933, killed in a traffic accident in 1943; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942.
Overall, at least 1,300 Czechs, including 200 women, were killed in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination. 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.
The couple had four children: Klaus, born in 1933, killed in a traffic accident in 1943; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942.
Overall, at least 1,300 Czechs, including 200 women, were killed in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination. 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.
Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and related auxiliary troops killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.
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.
On 16 December 2019, the BBC reported that Heydrich's unmarked grave had been opened by unknown persons, without anything being taken. Heydrich's widow Lina won the right to a pension following a series of court cases against the West German government in 1956 and 1959.
On 16 December 2019, the BBC reported that Heydrich's unmarked grave had been opened by unknown persons, without anything being taken. Heydrich's widow Lina won the right to a pension following a series of court cases against the West German government in 1956 and 1959.
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. ===Aftermath=== Heydrich's assailants hid in safe houses and eventually took refuge in Ss.
On 16 December 2019, the BBC reported that Heydrich's unmarked grave had been opened by unknown persons, without anything being taken. Heydrich's widow Lina won the right to a pension following a series of court cases against the West German government in 1956 and 1959.
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