Reinhard Heydrich is a well-known political and statesman of fascist Germany, who headed the General Directorate of Imperial Security at the beginning of the war. He was one of the initiators of the so-called "final solution of the Jewish question", coordinated activities to combat and destroy the internal enemies of the Third Reich.
Childhood and youth
Reinhard Heydrich was born in the small town of Halle in the German Empire in 1904. His mother was from a wealthy family of the director of the conservatory in Dresden. The father of the hero of our article, Bruno Heydrich, was a composer and opera singer.
From an early age, Reinhard Heydrich was fond of politics. In particular, his parents studied the work of Houston Chamberlain, who studied the issues of "struggle of races." During the First World War he was still a child (in 1914 he was only ten years old), while he constantly watched the demonstrations and protests that took place in Galle.
In 1919, joined the paramilitary nationalist union under the name "Georg Ludwig Rudolf Merker". During this period, he brings up consciousness, is actively involved in sports.
At the same time, he takes part in the Pan-German Youth Association. However, this organization seems too moderate for Reinhard Heydrich, so he leaves it to join the German People's Union of Defense and Offensive in 1920.
He penetrates the ideas of youth patriotic movements into the "Lucix" division, which is part of the volunteer groups that exist on the territory of Halle.
In 1921 he created his own organization, which he called the "German People’s Youth Squad."
Military service
Heydrich's father owned a music school, which was on the verge of ruin due to the economic crisis. Reinhardt himself played the violin well, but there was no future for this craft. At school, he dreamed of becoming a chemist, but when he grew up, and this prospect began to seem doubtful to him.
As a result, Reinhard Heydrich, whose photo is in this article, decides to go to serve in the army. In 1922, he became a cadet of the naval school in the territory of Kiel. Here he is confronted with a tough code of honor, which he sees as worthy of imitation. He became a graduate of the school in 1926 with the rank of lieutenant. He is sent to serve in the intelligence of the fleet.
The promotion of Reinhard Heydrich, whose biography is described in this article, up the career ladder is facilitated by the head of the Abwehr Wilhelm Canaris, who at that time is a senior officer on the cruiser Berlin. They were friends, Heydrich often visited Canaris.
Personal life
At the same time, relations with other colleagues did not work out. He, like his father, was hindered by rumors that there were Jews among his ancestors. In addition, he gained a reputation for red tape. About Reinhard Heydrich and women constantly went new stories.
In 1930, he meets his future wife at one of the balls. His chosen one was the rural teacher Lina von Osten, at the end of the 31st they got married. There is a more romantic version of the beginning of their relationship. If you believe her, Reinhard was rolling with a friend on the lake when he saw an overturned boat. One of those saved was Lina.
Before that, Heydrich had an affair with the daughter of the head of the naval shipyard in Kiel. He decided to part with his beloved in an original way, sending her a newspaper clipping by mail about his engagement with Lina. According to the code of honor of the navy, which he valued so much, Reinhard did a low deed while meeting with two girls at the same time. A court of honor was held, chaired by Admiral Raeder. In April 1931, he was dismissed with the wording for "misconduct."
According to some reports, he was fired due to the seduction of the young daughter of the commander of the cruiser "Berlin", who became pregnant from him. In fact, it can be called a sexual maniac of Reinhard Heydrich.
Joining the SS
In the summer of the same year, Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, as his full name sounds, enters the National Socialist German Labor Party, as well as its paramilitary SS formation. Together with the militants, he takes part in actions directed against the communists and socialists.
At that time, Himmler was engaged in the transformation of the SS, working to ensure that the organization could monitor political opponents and participate more actively in power actions. For this, an intelligence service was needed.
Heydrich through his friend starts a relationship with Himmler, formulates his vision for the organization of intelligence services, which are highly appreciated. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich is tasked with the formation of the security service, which later becomes known as the SD. At first, the main task of this structure is to collect incriminating materials on political opponents, who occupy a prominent position in society and the government, and the SD also conducts targeted actions to discredit them.
In a short time, Heydrich manages to gain respect in the Nazi party. In December, he received the title of SS ObersturmbanfĂĽhrer, and in the summer of the 32nd StandartenfĂĽhrer.
Reprisal against the opposition
In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power. This means the Nazis came to power, they begin a tough fight against the opposition.
At the same time, the tense situation remains inside the party. SA attack aircraft, which largely ensured Hitler's rise to power, are dissatisfied with the insufficient number of powers that they have been given. In addition, a confrontation is planned between Hitler himself, who was inclined towards national politics, and Gregor Strasser, who believed that the socialist program should become the main task of the party.
Among stormtroopers, the idea of ​​a second revolution, which should be a truly socialist article, is becoming more and more popular. In this setting, Heydrich's SD collects incriminating evidence on Ernst Rem, who led the SA. Everything indicates that a coup is being prepared within the party. During the famous "Night of the Long Knives", SS fighters smash the SA, Rem himself is killed. For a brilliantly conducted operation in the SS, Reinhard Heydrich receives the rank of gruppenfuhrer.
In the future, the SD takes part in the hardware struggle between the Wehrmacht and the SS. Heydrich’s wards play a decisive role in the removal of Colonel General von Fritsch, Minister of Defense von Blomberg, from command of the army. It was possible to start incriminating cases on both of them, which destroyed their reputation. In particular, the wife of von Blomberg in the past turned out to be a prostitute. For this, Hitler fired him. Fritsch was dismissed on false charges of homosexuality. Together with them, lost their posts or were reduced a few dozen disloyal military.
Heydrich waged a fierce struggle against military intelligence. Moreover, the Abwehr was led by his old friend Canaris. In public, they were friendly, even met every morning for a walk, and behind the scenes they tried to remove each other from a high post.
In the internal security manual
In 1936, Reinhardt became not only the head of the SD, but also led the security police, which combined the criminal and secret state police. In the hands of Heydrich is a tool with which he deals with the enemies of the regime.
Its agents monitor communists, Jews, liberals, and members of religious minorities. There are approximately 3,000 agents in the state of diabetes, plus about 100,000 informants throughout the country. After the Anschluss, Himmler and Heydrich organize terror in Austria aimed at opponents of the regime. Near Linz, a Mauthausen concentration camp is created for them .
In the year the war began, zipo, SD and the Gestapo are united in the General Directorate of Imperial Security. This is the most powerful organization for suppressing the opposition, collecting and analyzing information. The head of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security is Reinhard Heydrich.
War
One of the reasons for the attack on Poland and the outbreak of war is the so-called Gleivitsky incident. This is a staging of Poland’s attack on a German radio station in Silesia by the SS. The development and implementation of this plan was carried out by Heydrich.
SS fighters dressed in Polish uniforms attacked a German radio transmitter in Gleivitz. The world media presented the bodies of the dead "Poles." In reality, these were prisoners held in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Germany appreciated the incident as an excuse to attack Poland. Heydrich's subordinates in the occupied territory began to destroy the Communists, local intelligentsia and Jews.
It is noteworthy that during the war years he was engaged not only in organizational work, but also participated in combat missions as a radio gunner and then attack aircraft in Norway, France and the USSR. This fully corresponded to what the SS officer should have been, according to Heydrich. That is, not only to lead from your own office, but also to directly participate in hostilities.
In 1941, he was shot down near the Berezina River. He was rescued by German soldiers. After that, Himmler forbade him to go on combat missions himself.
Jewish question
Heydrich is considered one of the main initiators of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. It was he who sought to implement the plan of the genocide of Jews in Germany itself and in the occupied territories.
Following their ideology, Jews were the main force of the communist movement. Together with the gypsies, blacks, eastern Slavs and other non-Aryan peoples, they were declared "subhuman." Reinhard Heydrich about Russians and Jews always spoke sharply and unambiguously.
Information about Jews in the SD was collected before the war. When a Polish Jew was found guilty of attempting an assassination of a German diplomat in Paris, Heydrich’s wards staged mass riots in various cities of the country, which went down in history as “Kristallnacht”.
It was Reinhard who was the coordinator of these actions, who gave orders to regional units. A few days later he submitted to Goering proposals for a further solution of the Jewish question. Heydrich insisted on the development of Nuremberg laws aimed at strengthening the discriminatory measures that forced Jews to emigrate. It was also proposed, by analogy with the Austrian Jewish Emigration Bureau, which was led by Eichmann, to create a similar structure in Berlin. These measures have been taken and implemented in the coming months.
When Poland was occupied, Heydrich ordered the Jews to be sent to ghettos organized in large cities. “Jewish councils” were also formed, with the help of which Heydrich forced the Jews themselves to participate in the destruction of their people. At the end of 1939, he appointed Eichmann to lead a special unit for Jewish affairs, with the help of which they began mass sending from Austria and Germany to the Polish ghettos. This was an intermediate stage. In the end, he sought to achieve the complete annihilation of the Jewish population throughout Europe.
In the occupied Soviet territories, a large number of Jews were in the hands of the Germans. Special shooting teams were created that engaged in extermination on a national basis. But even they could not cope with the tasks of destroying so many people.
At the end of 1940, Hitler ordered him to develop a plan for the final solution of the Jewish question. Heydrich’s developments were not preserved, but it is known that he sent his proposals to the Führer in January 1941.
In the summer, Hitler officially issued an order on a "universal solution to the Jewish question." Its text also has not been preserved, but its existence is known, thanks to the testimony of the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. In January 1942, the Wannsee Conference was held, at which the plan to exterminate Jews throughout Europe was just discussed.
As part of the Heydrich project, it was supposed to send Jews to forced labor. It was assumed that most would die from exorbitant physical activity and unstable nutrition. The survivors were planned to be destroyed physically. According to rough estimates, it was planned to eliminate about 11 million people. It was Heydrich who formulated the theses of the "final solution of the Jewish question."
In Bohemia and Moravia
After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the regions of Moravia and Bohemia came under German control. There appeared the post of imperial tread. At first it was Konstantin von Neurath, who previously held the former Minister of Foreign Affairs. Soon he was removed due to insufficient rigidity and the constant confrontation between the authorities and party structures and special services in these areas. It was Heydrich’s agents who prepared a report for Hitler criticizing the work of Neurath.
In September of the 41st, the FĂĽhrer decides to appoint Heydrich as Deputy Protector. Neurath disagrees with this decision and resigns. Reinhardt gains all power in the region. Having retained his previous position, he actually becomes an imperial protector. Soon he was in his residence in Hradchany, here he was transporting his family. He settles in the Lower Palace 15 kilometers from Prasha, which was confiscated from the Jewish sugar industry Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. In total there were four children with Reinhard Heydrich. These were the sons of Hyder and Klaus, the daughters of Zilka and Martha, who had not yet been born.
A week after his appointment, he organized the overthrow of the Czech Prime Minister Alois Elias, as soon as he was suspected of having ties to the Resistance. The trial was swift; within four hours the Czech politician was sentenced to death.
Also, one of his first decrees in Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich ordered the closure of all synagogues on the territory of the protectorate, and already in November 1941 the concentration camp Theresienstadt was created, which was intended for Czech Jews who were waiting for their departure to death camps.
In parallel, he carried out reforms to pacify the local population. In particular, he turned the social security system upside down, increased food standards for workers and wages.
Murder
As a result, Prague butcher Reinhard Heydrich, he received such a nickname for the fierce struggle against the Czech Resistance, was the victim of an assassination attempt. Thanks to ruthless measures, he managed to calm down the country that was in occupation literally in two weeks.
The attempt on his life was developed by the Czech government in exile, which was led by Edward Benes, with the help of British intelligence. One of the goals was to raise the prestige of the Resistance in the eyes of ordinary Czechs. Of course, the organizers of the assassination understood that punitive actions would follow this murder, but they hoped that this would only increase the hatred of the population for the Nazis.
The operation to eliminate the Prague butcher Reinhard Heydrich received the secret definition of "Anthropoid." The direct performers were Jan Kubis and Josef Gabczyk, who were trained by the British.
On the morning of May 27, 1942, Heydrich was driving a car from his country residence to the center of Prague. The car was open-top, it contained only the driver, since Reinhard himself always preferred to move around without security. At 10.32, on a bend in the Prague suburb, Liben Gabczyk took out a STEN submachine gun and was about to shoot at the target, but his weapon jammed. Then the self-confident Heydrich ordered to stop, took out a gun, but did not have time to shoot. Kubish threw a bomb at him. However, the Czech missed, she fell and exploded near the right rear wheel of the car.
Heydrich was injured. He had a broken rib and shrapnel wound to his spleen, and a piece of seat upholstery and a metal fragment of a car fell into it. Reinhard fell next to the car. He was urgently hospitalized, having been taken to a hospital in Bulovka by a passing truck.
By noon, Heydrich was operated on, the damaged spleen was removed. On the same day, Himmler's personal doctor, named Karl Gebhardt, arrived at the hospital. He prescribed morphine to the patient and left. On June 3, information was circulated that Heydrich’s condition had improved markedly; he was recovering. But in the evening he fell into a coma, died the next day. In the medical record, the cause of death was organ septic insufficiency. It is noteworthy that the final diagnosis has not yet been made, in 1972, researchers, on the basis of medical documents, came to the conclusion that Heydrich could die from anemic shock.
After the assassination of Heydrich, which was assessed by the German command as a terrorist act, numerous condolences began to be sent to Himmler from the leaders of the Reich, military leaders, representatives of satellite countries, in particular, from the Bulgarian and Italian police. Farewell to the body took place in Prague, it lasted two days. After that, the coffin was delivered to Berlin. A funeral was held on June 9 in the German capital. The leaders of the country took part in farewell to Heydrich, a speech over the grave was made by Adolf Hitler, who described Heydrich as a man with an iron heart.
Himmler later repeatedly emphasized that the deceased made a huge contribution to the struggle for the freedom of the German people. Heydrich was posthumously awarded the "German Order", a decree on this was signed by the FĂĽhrer himself. This is a rare award, which was intended for the highest party functionaries, as a rule, was always awarded posthumously.
Opponents of Germany were not at all enthusiastic about the figure of Heydrich. The influential London newspaper The Times released a stinging article in which it noted that one of the most dangerous people from the leadership of the Third Reich organized a "gangster funeral."
After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler himself headed the RSHA, but in January 1943 he handed over the reins to Kaltenbrunner. The post of the imperial projector was transferred to Kurt Daluge.
Heydrich’s grave is in the Berlin cemetery. After the defeat of the Nazis, so that this place does not become a point of attraction for their modern followers. Currently, the exact burial place of Heydrich remains unknown. At the same time, on the first anniversary of his death, a bust was installed on the grave, which was destroyed after the liberation of Prague. In 2009, a monument was opened in the Czech capital to representatives of the Resistance, who organized the destruction of Heydrich.
After a successful assassination attempt on a high-ranking Nazi leader in Czechoslovakia, a punitive retaliation operation was expected to begin. The assassination made a strong impression on the Nazi leaders, the campaign of mass terror aimed at the Czech population began already on the day of Heydrich’s death. In particular, it was officially announced that anyone who knows the whereabouts of the killers, but does not extradite them, will be executed along with all close relatives. Mass searches were carried out in Prague, during these operations many members of the Resistance, who took refuge in the underground, as well as communists, Jews and other categories of citizens, were found. In total, 1,331 Czechs were shot, among whom 201 were women.
On the day of Heydrich’s funeral, the Czech village of Lidice was destroyed. All men over 16 years of age were shot, in total there were 172 people. 195 women were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and the children were transferred to the Central Office for Migrants in Litzmannstadt. Later they were transferred to German families, it is not possible to establish their future fate today.
The Gestapo, in the end, managed to establish a place where the agents were hiding. They were in the dungeons of the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague. They were betrayed by a member of the Resistance, paratrooper Karel Churda.
A massive assault was organized on June 18, during which all agents were killed or committed suicide, realizing that further resistance was futile. Later, the Germans were shot: the bishop of Prague Gorazd, the priests of this cathedral and some other clergy. After this incident, the Czech Orthodox Church was officially banned.
The deceased remained in the memory of historians as one of the active participants in the Nazi party. According to contemporaries, the character of Reinhard Heydrich was ruthless, he knew how to make decisions quickly, he keenly perceived the human, moral, political and professional weaknesses of the people around him.
You can find out about his personality by a large number of art and research works dedicated to the leader of diabetes. Moreover, it is not always evaluated in a negative way. In 2017, a study entitled “Reinhard Heydrich. Final Rehabilitation” was published in Ukraine, in which he is presented in a positive way. Tried to justify him and his wife, who in the 70s wrote a memoir "Life with the war criminals."
There are many films about Reinhard Heydrich. Already in 1943, the American painting "The Executioners Die Also" was released. The film about Reinhard Heydrich was shot in Czechoslovakia. Jiri Sekvens's military drama "Attempt" was released in 1964.
Mentioned Reinhard Heydrich in the film "17 Moments of Spring." Although events take place after his murder, there are documentary shots of the funeral in the film.
Anime character
In the anime, Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich is called one of the characters in the Dies Irae universe. He is the commander in chief who created the 13th Order of the Spear of Doom.
In the anime, Reinhard Heydrich is a 40-year-old sports man. He has golden eyes and hair. Reinhard Heydrich in the anime "Day of Anger" plays a key role.