28.09.2007 14:48
A sentimental musician, a romantic sailor, a cunning and cruel chief of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA), an excellent swordsman, a collector of women, an exemplary father, a graceful horseman and a fearless fighter pilot - all this is one person, whose name is Reinhard Heydrich . Heydrich was, without a doubt, one of the most odious figures of the Third Reich, whose outstanding intellect was recognized by everyone, even his enemies. Everything in his thoughts was subordinated to the seizure and targeted use of power.
Childhood, adolescence and young adulthood
Reinhard Heydrich was born on March 7, 1904 in Halle an der Saale (Saxony) in the family of the director of the conservatory, former opera singer Bruno Heydrich. His mother is a former actress. He was the second son in the family and received the name Reinhard Tristan - in honor of the hero of the opera "Tristan and Isolde", and had two brothers.
At school, little Reinhard was distinguished by his stubbornness and desire to somehow stand out from the rest of the students. So, one day during a school break, he climbed onto the roof of a three-story building and, in full view of everyone, walked along its edge (if he fell, he was in danger of imminent death). Having gone to Switzerland as a student exchange, he climbed onto the roof of a hotel building at night and hung a German flag with Swatika.
At school, as indeed in life in general, he had no friends, since he preferred to be alone.
In high school, Heydrich was called “Izya” (a Jewish name), since for some reason the townspeople unfairly considered his father, Bruno, to be a Jew. What added fuel to the fire was the fact that his mother, after the death of her husband,she married a second time to a certain Suess (the surname is clearly Jewish), who, again, was not a Jew. Already when Heydrich reaches power, he will be accused of Jewish roots, but these accusations will be groundless. There was indeed a legend, told by one of the SS men, that Heydrich, having had too much to drink, staggered into the bath and saw his image in the mirror. He pulled out a pistol and fired twice, shouting: " I finally got you, you bastard!"
At school, Reinhard showed outstanding musical abilities, and he learned to play the violin masterfully.
His youth was spent in post-war Republican Geriania. After graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, haunted by post-war poverty and inflation, Reinhard entered Mercker's volunteer corps (frekorps). Returning home, he already knew who he would become - an officer. Heydrich chose naval service, believing that it could satisfy his thirst for adventure and provide a comfortable existence.
In 1922, he ended up in Kiel, where he put on a naval cadet uniform. Aboard the training cruiser Berlin, commanded by his future rival, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Heydrich excelled in mathematics and navigation.
Ambition and the desire to be the first in everything led him to take up fencing, soon turning into a fencer for whom even masters of sports were no competitors. Subsequently, he also took up equestrian sports, in which he also reached the forefront.
By the age of 24-25, his appearance met Aryan standards: blond (“blond beast”), tall, narrow elongated face, very high forehead and blue eyes (though small and of the Mongoloid type, with a certain bestial squint), athletic build . His figure, however, was given a certain angularity by his too wide feminine hips.
His service was successful: in 1926 he received the rank of lieutenant, in 1928 - chief lieutenant, as he was considered a promising officer. After completing the course, he was appointed communications officer on the flagship Schleswig-Holstein.
However, he did not enjoy love or respect from his colleagues. The sailors simply hated him for his arrogance.
It seemed to Heydrich that his career was already assured. But there was one "but". By that time, he becomes a pathological collector of women, has connections with walking girls, girls from ordinary families and even from high strata of society. This is where he got burned.
One evening in 1930, with one of his comrades, he went for a walk in the sea on a kayak. Soon they saw a capsized boat and two drowning girls. The guys, of course, jumped into the water and saved them.
One of the girls turned out to be Lina von Osten, the daughter of a school teacher from the island of Fehmarn. Acquaintance with her turned into a relationship that ended with an engagement in December of the same year.
And then one of his old acquaintances appeared and made her demands on him. When conversations yielded nothing, her father found an opportunity to approach the fleet commander, Admiral Raeder. The command recommended that Heydrich break up with Lina and marry the girl who was expecting a child from him. Since Reinhard refused, the matter was referred to the officers' court of honor.
With his arrogant behavior, attempts to shift all the blame onto the complaining girl and the statement that he himself knew better what an officer should do, Heydrich turned the court against himself. For "misconduct and violation of the officer's code," Admiral Raeder summarily fired him.
The career of a career officer and a naval career were over for Heydrich. From the heights of the ultra-conservative fleet, he was thrown into the very bottom - an army of six million unemployed.
Career in the SS
Left without a livelihood, Heydrich considered serving in the merchant navy. However, his wife Lina, who was crazy about the Fuhrer, believed that Reinhard should find his calling in National Socialism, and invited him to join the SS. And one of Heydrich's childhood comrades helped him by introducing him to Heinrich Himmler.
He was just looking for a person for the planned security service (SD). Having explained his intention, Himmler invited Reinhard to put in writing his thoughts on the structure of the SD. The Reichsführer SS liked Heydrich's proposals. In addition, he was impressed by the fact that the young officer was “thrown overboard by the reactionary admiralty for his sympathies for the National Socialists” - this is how Heydrich explained his departure from the fleet, and Himmler, according to Heydrich, generally perceived his position as a liaison officer as an intelligence one.
A few days later, having arrived in Munich and received the rank of SS Sturmführer (which corresponded to an army lieutenant), Heydrich began work. After that, he walked up the career ladder easily and quickly, jumping over steps:
1931 - Hauptsturmführer (captain)
1932 - Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel)
1933 - Oberführer (Colonel)
1938 - Gruppenführer (Major General)
1941 - Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General)
This is not surprising, since Himmler encouraged all his endeavors, feeling that chance had brought to him a “born counterintelligence officer” with a sound mind, who knew all the threads and understood which of them should be pulled.
He was like a wild animal, constantly on guard, feeling unsafe and suspicious of everything and everyone. Possessing a certain sixth sense, coupled with an outstanding intellect, Heydrich was able to unravel the most subtle moves of his opponents.
Heydrich took part in the development of SS symbols, and then proposed a plan according to which the SS, with the Nazis coming to power, would establish control over the entire police system of the state, as a result of which they would gain real power. He also came up with the idea of transforming the SS into the elite of the Third Reich, implementing the progressive development of the SS and turning the SS into a “state within a state.”
It was Heydrich who revealed to Himmler the possibilities that the position of Reichsführer of the SS contained. Yes, in fact, Heydrich elevated Himmler to the pinnacle of power, making him what he became. He knew how to present his thoughts to Himmer in a form that was supposed to make Himmler believe that he himself, the Reichsführer SS, was the creator of these ideas. From the very beginning of their cooperation, Heydrich began to harbor the idea of promoting this inconspicuous, timid and shy man with mediocre intelligence to the very top, so that later, after waiting for an opportune moment, he could be pushed out and take his place. Heydrich was always irritated by Himmler's constant chatter, as his delusional racist and other fantasies agitated the SS apparatus. Tipsy, Reinhard repeatedly told his wife: " Look at his, Himmler's, face, at his nose - typically Jewish, a real Jewish soldering iron".
Heydrich structured his reports to his boss masterfully, first giving a brief description of the person or the issue under consideration, then giving arguments in ascending order of importance, after which he drew a conclusion and made a proposal from which it was difficult to get away. In fact, Heydrich controlled Himmr like a doll.
Heydrich began his activities in the SD with the development of not only a plan for the secret service, but also for the secret police. Himmler immediately agreed with his proposal. If until now the police intervened only when a real danger arose and were limited to detaining state criminals following fresh leads, then according to Heydrich’s plan, the political police had to grope out the enemies of the state even before they themselves realized their opposition, not to mention manifestations real resistance. The activities of the police thus became unlimited and extended to all spheres of the life of the nation.
The culmination of Heydrich's activities was the creation in September 1939 of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA), of which he himself became the head.
Heydrich's moves
Heydrich took part in many events that took place in the Third Reich. Let's look at just a few of them.
1) Night of the Long Knives
In 1934, the head of the SA stormtroopers, Ernst Rehm, quarreled with almost all the power groups of the regime: the Reichwehr, Himmler, Goering, and the party. If it were liquidated, many would get rid of a dangerous competitor and breathe easier.
This is where Heydrich got involved. To overcome Hitler's indecision (Rehm was his old friend), he began to collect and prepare materials that were supposed to prove the anti-state essence of Rehm's plans. Heydrich did not hesitate to fabricate documents; one of his tricks was sending out fabricated orders from Rem, and outright lies. At the same time, he came up with the idea of simultaneously eliminating all opponents of the regime and his own enemies. These lists were subsequently received by all those who carried out the operation, even Goering himself. The operation went off like clockwork thanks to Heydrich’s clear script, in which Himmler, Goering and the SS units played their roles perfectly. As a result, Heydrich killed several birds with one stone.
The day of July 30, 1934 left a deep mark on the history of the Third Reich. The action accelerated the formation of Hitler's sole power and founded the Goering-Himmler axis, which determined the position in the party hierarchy until the beginning of the Second World War.
2) Work in the SD
At the beginning of 1935, Heydrich reorganized the SD, dividing it into two parts, while simultaneously inviting a whole group of young intellectuals into his structure. The first was to become an instrument for uniting the bureaucracy with the SS. The second had to be done" intelligence organization - an organ of sensations and feelings on the body of the people, seeing and hearing everything that happens to the enemy in all areas of life"Heydrich provided the intelligence SD with an unlimited field of action, declaring that it should turn into a kind of "Intelligence Service."
From now on, each head of provincial SD institutions was supposed to have several trusted persons in all localities and a network of informants who were not supposed to know that they were working for the SD. It was recommended to involve " people who have general knowledge and are able to think logically and in a business manner".
From individual information, memos were compiled for Himmler and Hitler, which, unlike propaganda materials, did not embellish the state of affairs, but gave an objective assessment of reality and drew conclusions about phenomena that required correction.
An establishment called “Kitty’s Salon” was also organized, where foreign guests were invited. For their amusement there was a society of ladies there - in the hope that they would become more accommodating and blurt out some useful information and secrets. For this good purpose, SD rented a large house in a fashionable part of Berlin, rebuilt in such a way that microphones and listening equipment were installed everywhere. Ladies of the demimonde who spoke languages and had “other knowledge” were summoned from large European cities. Some ladies from the upper strata of Nazi society were also ready to serve their fatherland. Thanks to this salon, Heydrich obtained a lot of valuable information and even recruited people useful to himself. Among those who fell for his bait was, in particular, the Italian Foreign Minister Ciano.
3) Scam with Tukhachevsky
At the end of 1936, Heydrich received information that Tukhachevsky intended to take power into his own hands with the help of the army and get rid of Stalin. And he considered it expedient to use this chance to weaken the Soviet system.
Today it is difficult to say with complete confidence whether this information was true. In any case, Heydrich made it even more truthful. In April 1937, letters were prepared in a secret Gestapo laboratory for producing fakes that Tukhachevsky allegedly exchanged with German generals. They specifically talked about the support that Tukhachevsky requested from the Wehrmacht during his planned putsch against Stalin. To create an appearance of authenticity, the letters had marks from German generals.
At the beginning of May, the voluminous dossier was presented to Hitler for review. Hitler liked the prepared materials and he agreed to their delivery to the Soviet secret service.
Soon Tukhachevsky and his associates were arrested. The trial took only one day. The verdict was discussed for only five minutes and read: death penalty. The insignia and awards were torn from the accused right in the courtroom, and twelve hours later they were shot. This process became the signal for a large-scale purge of Red Army officers, as a result of which it lost many capable people.
Heydrich was proud of the results of his work and until his death he was convinced of the importance of what he had done.
4) Attempt on Hitler
On November 8, 1939, an explosion occurred in the huge basement of a beer hall in Munich. And it happened thirteen minutes after Hitler left there. The evidence discovered showed that the assassination attempt had been prepared for a long time, and the criminal used an infernal machine weighing no more than 10 kg. Why was the Munich police leadership unable to detect the bomb in advance and prevent the explosion? The answer is simple.
The author of the assassination attempt, Elser, did not even know that he was playing a role in a play written by Heydrich. Yes, Elser really planned to rid his people of Hitler. However, during the preparation he was noticed by one of the Gestapo officers. Heydrich became aware of this. He knew from reports from the SD that the German people were gradually losing faith in their Fuhrer. Therefore, Heydrich came up with an ingenious combination with the goal of increasing the morale of the people and restoring their faith in Hitler's abilities. So, Heydrich decided to take advantage of Elser’s gift and ordered to ensure that he was not interfered with and that Hitler left the site of the upcoming explosion in time. The fact that the explosion would take the lives of quite a few distinguished party members did not play any role for Heydrich. He was not even particularly worried about the fact that the bomb could explode ahead of schedule, or that the Fuhrer could be delayed, as a result of which he would be killed. Whoever succeeded Hitler, Heydrich was quite confident that his own power would only grow.
The explosion killed six “old soldiers” and a waiter, and sixteen were seriously injured. Heydrich turned everything around in such a way that the German people believed in the Fuhrer’s miraculous salvation from the machinations of the hated British, hated these “Tommies” even more fiercely and did not lose faith in their leader.
5) Fake currency scam
At the end of 1939, British aircraft began dropping counterfeit food and manufactured goods cards over German cities in order to disrupt the supply of these goods to the Reich population. As a response, Heydrich came up with the idea of undermining the British economy by scattering counterfeit pounds sterling over its territory.
Although the task was not easy, already in 1940 the task of producing high-quality counterfeits was completed, and in this same year Heydrich decided to use the currency for his own financing, since the RSHA received insignificant amounts of money from the Ministry of Finance, especially in foreign currency.
Despite Heydrich's death in 1942, the machine he launched gained momentum, and by 1943 counterfeit banknotes were produced of such high quality that all banks in the world accepted them. The Bank of England alone was able to identify the counterfeits. In total, £250 million worth of fakes were produced. At the beginning of 1945, the production of high-quality American dollars began, but their volume was small due to the imminent end of the war. In early May 1945, manufactured unsold banknotes, equipment and printed circuit boards were destroyed.
6) Secret dossiers
Heydrich did not value friendship and camaraderie; he did not respect the corporate spirit, considering only the presence of secrets to be a reliable link. He believed that knowledge of the hidden everyday weaknesses and other shortcomings of the leadership of the Reich would help him establish power over his environment and allow him to exercise control over political problems.
Many Reich leaders knew that Heydrich was collecting incriminating materials, including on them. Because of this, he was hated and feared, since no one knew exactly what he knew about them specifically.
The most important thing for Heydrich was to always know more about everything than others, and about each individual more completely than anyone else knew about him. Even Hitler was no exception. Heydrich was the first researcher of the Fuhrer, trying to find any, even the smallest details of his past. Heydrich also knew the Fuhrer’s personal life thoroughly. For example, he understood the subtleties of the diagnoses that doctors gave Hitler.
In addition to the above events, Heydrich played a leading role in the annexation of Czechoslovakia, the Anschluss of Austria, and the outbreak of war against Poland (Operation Venlo). and, of course, in the final solution of the Jewish question.
Heydrich's final task
The next task that Heydrich set for himself was to take the chair of the Reich Minister of the Interior. Having received Hitler's promise, he nevertheless wanted to show his administrative abilities in solving public problems by taking the post of Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. And he presented Hitler with a memo in which he outlined his thoughts that it was difficult for Reich Protector Baron von Neurath to carry out his duties alone and he needed a vacation. The Fuhrer easily agreed with him.
In September 1941, Heydrich was appointed Deputy Imperial Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, where he became virtually the sole master of the situation. On the day of his arrival in Prague, Heydrich declared a state of emergency in the protectorate, followed by a wave of terror. In just two or three weeks, the Czech resistance was almost completely eliminated. Having completed the first part of his plan, Heydrich stopped the terror and abolished the courts, presenting himself as a new protector-benefactor. He announced the end of political persecution, began courting Czech workers and peasants, pitting them against the bourgeois intelligentsia, in whom he saw the core of the resistance, and abolished a number of restrictions.
Heydrich increased the fat standard for 2 million Czech workers, allocated 200 thousand pairs of shoes for people employed in the war industry, increased the ration of cigarettes and food, requisitioned hotels and boarding houses at resorts and reorganized them into holiday homes for Czech workers, reorganized the social security system, increased the salary, which was already possible buy something, achieved public recognition of workers and peasants, eliminated the black market.
The Czech Republic was inaccessible to British aviation, so a number of military factories from Germany were transferred there. Local industry was also operating at full speed. As a result, at the end of 1941, the Wehrmacht received a third of its tanks, a quarter of its trucks and 40% of its small arms. The Czechs obediently worked for Germany until the very end. Agricultural production in the Czech Republic was no lower than in the Reich. The labor productivity of industrial workers was on par with that of German workers. (If they rebelled, it happened when German troops began to withdraw from Bohemia and Moravia.)
In general, as can be seen, Heydrich pursued a very smart and cunning policy, entrusting the implementation of unpopular decisions to the Czech government, while leaving popular ones for himself. The appearance of reconciliation of the Czechs with German domination was created, which simply shocked Eduard Benes, who headed the Czech government in exile in London. The graveyard calm in the protectorate and the passivity of the population negatively affected the positions of the émigré government in negotiations with the allies, and its influence in Czechoslovakia itself also declined. The British also desperately needed a big, spectacular action as an apology to the Russians for not opening a second front. It was decided to eliminate Heydrich, who pursued a successful flexible occupation policy in the protectorate. Both the British and the Czechs in exile knew perfectly well that in response the Germans would flood the entire country with blood, and in the process thousands of innocent Czechs would die. But for these people, their political interests were more important.
Death of Heydrich
Everyone knew that Heydrich was a brave man. The last time he proved this was when he flew as a fighter pilot over the coast of Norway, shooting down 7 British planes. And this was done by one of the most powerful people in the Reich! In Prague, the fearless Heydrich always traveled along the same route in an open Mercedes without an escort. Besides him, the only person in the car was usually his personal, experienced driver, Willie. But on the tragic morning of June 27, another person was driving Heydrich’s car - Oberscharführer Klein.
The assassination attempt took place at a slow turn. A running man blocked the path of Heydrich's car. An experienced Willie would have immediately noticed the danger and put his foot on the gas pedal. But Klein is driving. He slows down, despite Heydrich's cry: " Press full"The pedestrian throws off his raincoat and points the muzzle of the machine gun at the car, pulls the trigger, but the machine gun is jammed. But then a second man runs up and throws a grenade under the Mercedes. The explosion breaks out the windows in nearby houses. The criminals begin to run away, but they are being chased. Who will take part in it? The unwounded Oberscharführer Klein runs after the first, but does not run for long - soon he will be lying on the sidewalk with two bullets in his chest. Behind the second, the one who threw the grenade, the wounded Reinhard Heydrich himself runs with a heavy "Parabellum" at the ready, shoots on the move and falls exhausted, having managed to wound his killer in the back." Report to the City", the lying protector wheezes to the first of those who dared to approach him. These were the last words of Reinhard Heydrich, who was then only 38 years old. About a week later, on July 4, 1942, Heydrich died in one of the Prague hospitals, several operations were performed on him They didn’t help - he died from blood poisoning without regaining consciousness.
Revenge for this vile crime was not long in coming. In search of the killers, the Germans drenched Czechoslovakia in blood and, with the help of a Czech traitor, reached the killers.
Finishing touches
Heydrich did not recognize any ethical values, had a cold intellect and a cold soul, was calculating and ambitious, having the spectacular appearance of a fallen angel.
Not the state, but power - his personal power was his god. He did not bother himself with moral values. Truth and virtue had no meaning for him. He viewed them as a tool for acquiring even greater power. Everything that served this cause was right and good. Politics, too, was for him nothing more than a step on the path to power. He considered it stupid to think about the legality of this or that action and did not even ask such questions.
His entire service in the ranks of the SS was a continuous chain of murders. In the struggle for power, he destroyed people whom he disliked, rivals who were in opposition to him, and those whom he did not trust. Human life had no value in his eyes. His actions were dictated by the most precise calculation, which was not influenced in any way by emotional impulses or remorse. No wonder Hitler called Heydrich “a man with an iron heart.”
His actions were not carried out in the name of a great cause, but in personal interests. The empire was of little interest to him; he only needed power in it. What was Heydrich's main goal? He did not talk about this even with the people closest to him. Only after getting tipsy, he once mentioned that he aspired to become an outstanding personality in the Third Reich, well, he succeeded. He also expressed at one time the idea of the need to separate the positions of the Fuhrer and Chancellor, and the Fuhrer should be given a representative role as the president of the country. The chancellor was supposed to be a person with real power. It was in this position that Heydrich intended to work hard. And he, no doubt, would have succeeded if he had lived a couple more years.
Heydrich was not a fruitless dreamer, but moved systematically from one task to another, carefully developing them. He considered the most important step towards the post of Chancellor to be the Minister of the Interior, uniting the security police and the general police under his control.
Heydrich did not have unconditional faith in Hitler. He could well imagine Germany without Hitler, but not without himself. A number of his employees were of the opinion that, had Heydrich been alive, he could well have been among the conspirators against the Fuhrer. Back in 1941, he expressed the opinion that the SS would be among the first to neutralize Hitler if he did something stupid.
A good ending to this article would be a list of Reinhard Heydrich’s awards:
German Order (posthumous)
Order of the Blood (posthumous)
Wound badge in gold (posthumous)
Iron Cross 1st class
Iron Cross II class
Frontline Pilot Buckle for Day Fighter Pilot in Silver
Frontline pilot buckle for daytime fighter pilot in bronze
Pilot and Observer Badge
Honorary gold badge of the NSDAP
Medal in memory of March 13, 1938
Medal in memory of October 1, 1938
Buckle “Prague Castle”
Medal to commemorate the return of Memel
Danzig Cross 1st class
Danzig Cross II class
German honorary badge for the construction of a defensive rampart
Honorary Badge for Social Work I Class
German honorary Olympic badge 1st class
SA sports badge in gold
State sports badge in silver
German cavalry badge in silver
Imperial Athletic Association badge for sporting achievements
NSDAP Long Service Award in bronze
Police Long Service Award in Silver
Honorary sword of the RFSS
SS ring “Death's Head”
One day, the ship on which Heydrich served paid a friendly visit to the port of Barcelona. That same evening, at the Friends of Germany Club, where the Germans who lived in this Spanish city usually gathered, a reception was to be held in honor of the officers of the German fleet. Having received the invitations, Heydrich and his comrades went ashore in the evening and went to a social event. Everything went well, nothing foreshadowed a conflict. And suddenly - a flash. Having met a young Spanish woman, Heydrich invited her to take a walk in the orange orchard that surrounded the club. The girl agreed. Left alone, he began to openly pester her, and she hit him in the face with a glove. Blushing with anger, he responded by hitting her twice, so much so that the senorita’s entire face was covered in blood. When the senorita ran into the hall in tears and lamentations, the fun stopped instantly. Heydrich calmly returned to the ship, not at all regretting what he had done. Later, a young Spanish woman wrote a report to the captain of the ship, asking him to roughly punish the presumptuous officer. But, knowing about Admiral Raeder’s disposition towards Heydrich, he limited himself to verbal suggestion. However, the incident became known to the high command. The case was hushed up, Admiral Raeder personally asked not to appoint a court of honor for Heydrich. Calling his subordinate to him, he very sternly reminded him of the rules of conduct accepted in the navy and advised him to get married as soon as possible. The admiral seriously hoped that the presence of his young wife next to Heydrich would make his ward much more restrained and balanced. Soon a bride was found. Canaris's wife, Frau Erika, introduced Heydrich to Fraulein Lina von Osten, the daughter of her friend. Lina's father ran a private school on the island of Fermanagh in the Baltic Sea. The family had an impeccable Aryan ancestry and could boast of deep aristocratic roots. By the time she met Heydrich, Lina had completed higher teaching courses and was teaching French in one of the private boarding houses in Kiel. A cold, ambitious beauty, Lina realized on the very first date that she should not be particularly persistent - even the day before, Frau Erika had explained in detail what brilliant prospects were opening up for the young naval officer vying for her heart. Knowing full well that even in the time of the great King Frederick her ancestors were close to the court, Lina was deeply worried about the situation in which her family found itself after the defeat of the eighteenth year. The von Ostens lost virtually all of their wealth as the businesses they owned went bankrupt. Accustomed to a comfortable, luxurious life, they were forced to be content with modest teaching salaries, while the insolent nouveau riche, who profited from the war, swam in wealth. Lina really hoped that a marriage with a promising young man, who, according to Frau Erika, would undoubtedly rise to the highest positions, would return her family to prestige and their former high position in society. Therefore, without excessive affectation, having gone to dances and movies with her gentleman only twice, Lina agreed to become Heydrich’s wife. At Christmas 1930, she brought her fiancé to Fermanagh Island to meet her parents. They received Heydrich very friendly, and already in January 1931, an engagement was announced at the officers' meeting in Kiel. Heydrich was congratulated, Admiral Raeder expressed satisfaction with the choice of the bride and promised to be present at the wedding in person. And then the unpredictable happened. More precisely, the event that happened turned out to be unpredictable and stunning rather for Lina and the entire secular society of Kiel, but Heydrich was not at all surprised by such a turn, he knew that this could happen, he knew that he was playing with fire - and he played. While courting Lina, he had no intention of remaining faithful to her. At the same time, he was dating another girl, the daughter of one of the senior officers serving in the Kiel Arsenal, whom he met at a reception after the next Kiel regatta. Promising to marry the girl, Heydrich persuaded her to come to a hotel room he had rented in advance, got her drunk there and, despite the young lady’s complete disagreement, forcefully achieved physical intimacy with her. Afterwards, leaving the girl in a depressing state, he ran away from the room. When the girl came to her senses a little, she discovered that, among other things, her money and jewelry were missing. While Heydrich remained free, the girl remained silent, hoping that he would fulfill his promise to marry her. She tried her best to meet him, although he avoided her. But as soon as it became known about Heydrich’s engagement to Lina, there was no longer any point in remaining silent - the offended girl wrote a letter to Admiral Raeder. The matter was complicated by the fact that the girl’s father had been friends with the admiral since his student days. Rumors of the scandal spread with incredible speed throughout Kiel. It was no longer possible to hush up the incident. Despite all the sympathy he felt for Heydrich, Admiral Raeder ordered a court of honor to be assembled. At the trial, Heydrich diligently proved that, although he invited the girl to drink a Martini glass in his room, he did not even touch her. And certainly in no case can he be involved in theft. “If you like,” he said fervently, “search my house. You won’t find a single thing there that belonged to the maids of honor.” To be honest, he was not lying about the latter. It was really not he who robbed the girl, and subsequently the police caught the real criminal, who served as an elevator operator at the hotel. Since Heydrich was completely innocent of one of the charges, he equally confidently denied the others. Perhaps fortune would have smiled on him again and he would have gotten away with the whole business, as before, especially since Admiral Raeder, who personally headed the court, did not believe that Heydrich could commit theft. And one doubt gives rise to others. The court was inclined to acquit Heydrich, but still he was unlucky. The old friendship with the girl’s father, who did not want to hear about a compromise, outweighed the admiral’s affection for Heydrich. Not without regret - but what can you do - he signed a court decision in which the behavior of Lieutenant Heydrich was recognized as unworthy of a naval officer and he was recommended to resign in order to avoid larger troubles. So in April 1931, the brilliant naval officer Reinhardt Heydrich found himself thrown onto the street and joined the five million army of German unemployed.
It was a disaster. You could go crazy from everything that happened. Returning home to Halle, he locked himself in his room and did not leave it for almost two months. With every fiber of his soul, with his whole being, he was connected with the fleet and could not imagine any other life for himself. Parents added wood to the fire. Inconsolable from the catastrophe, they tirelessly blamed their son for destroying all their hopes for old age, and almost drove him to suicide. Only Lina remained calm. Although Heydrich’s mother did not accept her - of course, some doll would now turn her around as a boy - she still came to Halle and wrote letters to the groom every day, begging to meet. Going against the will of her father, who, after his resignation, did not at all consider Heydrich a promising husband for his daughter, she refused to break the engagement and begged permission to wait until Reinhardt, perhaps, could find a use for himself in civilian life. She fell in love with him and never wanted to leave him. Lina's devotion gave Heydrich strength. Pulling himself together, he tried to get a job in the merchant navy, but was not accepted due to corporate solidarity. Then he went to work as an instructor at the Hanseatic Yacht School with a very decent salary, but this activity weighed on him - it was not the right scale, it was too small. Teaching the children of the rich nouveau riche - was this the kind of future he dreamed of? He did not feel a calling to civil life and dreamed of returning to service. Canaris extended a helping hand. Having long communicated with politicians close to the Nazi party, he told Heydrich about the organization of special security detachments, the SS, an elite organization built on the strictest military discipline and subordination. Canaris knew the leader of the SS, a certain Heinrich Himmler, the twenty-nine-year-old son of a schoolteacher from Munich, who was now called the pompous title of “Reichsführer SS.” Himmler had many opponents not only outside the party, but within it, and first of all, Goering, the famous ace of the First World War. So the Reichsführer seriously thought about establishing within his organization an intelligence service similar to the army, which would help him fight for supremacy in the party with cynicism and ruthless cruelty. But no matter how hard Himmler himself tried, having no training, he could not cope with such a task: all his operations smacked of amateurism, and Goering, who had extensive connections in military circles, only mocked him. Himmler needed a loyal, capable, professional person who knew the rules of the game in intelligence. Heydrich turned out to be exactly like that. When Canaris, with the consent of Heydrich, presented Himmler with a dossier on the retired lieutenant, he was struck by his ideal Aryan appearance, and his service record also looked quite impressive. The Reichsführer SS asked Canaris to arrange a meeting with the candidate. The future head of the Abwehr immediately sent a telegram to Halle, and, having received it, that same evening Heydrich and Lina got ready for Munich. Himmler received them outside the city, on his poultry farm. He had caught a cold and was wheezing slightly, but the matter was more important. In addition to Heydrich, Himmler considered another candidate for the post of his assistant; it was about the former army captain Horninger, but this man did not inspire confidence in the Reichsfuehrer. Suspicious of everything, Himmler, perhaps not without reason, believed that Goering could well have set him up for him. In any case, he had reasons to subsequently convert him. This is how they met for the first time, Heydrich and Himmler. Upon closer acquaintance, the Reichsführer SS did not at all give the impression of the leader of a terrifying order of death, whose emblem depicts a skull and crossbones. However, at that time, mid-1931, there was nothing frightening in the SS yet; the organization was just being created, and few people had heard of it even in Germany, not to mention other European countries. Dressed at home, with slippers on his bare feet, Himmler, in a soft, even slightly ingratiating tone, invited Heydrich to go into the living room of his house and, looking attentively at him through his glasses, listened to the proposed plan for organizing the intelligence service, never interrupting with a question. Then he calmly asked about his family, about his fiancée Lina, about his interests in sports, and sent me off to the hotel. Never making hasty decisions, even being sure that they would be successful, Himmler decided to take a break and conduct the last test for Heydrich - for strength of character. Is he patient, can he wait? If Heydrich had been alone in Munich, he might have lost his temper. The experiences that befell him completely exhausted his nerves, and he probably, unable to resist, would have disturbed the Reichsfuehrer without waiting for him to remember about him. But Lina was with him. Intuitively, she felt that she had to be patient, that luck could not be frightened away, and she kept Heydrich from his hysterical outbursts by all means. She guessed right. It turned out that Captain Horinger, Heydrich's rival, was not an agent of Goering at all, but of the Bavarian police, and Himmler's decision regarding Heydrich became final. Ten days after his arrival in Munich, Heydrich was appointed head of the newly formed Security Service (SD) and received the rank of SS Standartenführer. At Christmas 1931, he married Lina. A brilliant future awaited him, which he could not even dream of in the navy. Happiness smiled on Heydrich again. He cut off all relations with relatives in order to hide even hints of possible Jewish roots. I left only photographs - this is quite enough, at least the photographs are silent, and they can be put away on the table at any time. Now it’s just him, Lina and SS – that’s it. Having achieved power and having received access to all archives, including naval ones, after Hitler came to power, he tried to destroy traces of his unpleasant history. The minutes of the officer's court meeting disappeared, as if it had never existed. And many participants in that tribunal soon had to resign themselves, including Admiral Raeder. So Heydrich settled accounts with all his offenders, leaving them out of work, and also giving some of them a good beating in prisons, in science and others.
Himmler was a mystic, but a mystic with a practical bent. Just for the sake of broadening his horizons, he would not study books on magic. And the point is not only that he firmly believed that it was possible to impose a curse or predict the future, but that he most of all wanted to control fate, and not only his own. With Hitler's rise to power, there was immediately a distinct smell of war. The SS Order was not yet ready for war. It was only in its formation stage. The ideas were already clearly shining through, but the application of the ideas was at the search level.
At the beginning of the SS, Hitler rejoiced at the vigorous activity Himmler developed for him. Then I began to wonder what this Himmler was creating. And in the end he just grabbed his head.
According to Speer, “Hitler often spoke disparagingly about the myth created by Himmler around the SS: “What nonsense!” The time has just come, throwing away all mysticism, and please - he starts all over again! So then it’s better to stay in the bosom of the church. At least she has traditions. What is the thought of making me a “saint of the SS” one day! Just think about it! I’ll be rolling over in my grave!”
Himmler, by the way, was completely sincere. Saint Hitler fit well into the ideology of the Order. And while Hitler was turning weak Germany into the Thousand-Year Reich, Himmler was turning the guard of the leader of the nation entrusted to him into an irresistible force called upon to restore order in this great Reich. He began by subordinating the police, which Goering had previously controlled, to the SS. The police, in his understanding, were a wonderful link between the Order and ordinary Germans. According to Himmler, his police were supposed to inspire a mixed feeling of respect and fear in citizens. “I know that in Germany there are some people who feel bad when they see our black uniform, we understand this and do not expect to be loved,” he said. Well, people in black uniforms were indeed afraid, and not only thieves, bandits or child molesters were afraid, but also completely law-abiding people. Himmler kept a strong hand over the ordinary criminal police, but supplemented it with a political secret police (Gestapo) and the SS security service (SD). And in 1939, the Gestapo and SD entered the Main Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA). The criminal police, in fact, were doing their usual job - catching criminals. But the SD and the Gestapo were busy with much more important things. The SD maintained the purity of its own ranks of the SS, and the Gestapo neutralized political opponents and cut off any dissent in the bud. The entire internal life of Germany was in the hands of Himmler.
Heinrich Müller
With the beginning of the period of hostilities, the power of the Gestapo and SD extended to all territories annexed to the Reich. This year Heinrich Müller became the head of the Gestapo, and Reinhard Heydrich had already headed the SD (after the creation of the RSHA, he became the head of imperial security, and Kaltenbrunner took over the leadership of the SD). It was thanks to his works and skillfully executed forgeries that Rem was eliminated, and the stormtroopers lost strength and power in the emerging Reich. Thanks to his efforts, an assassination attempt on von Rath was planned.
Reinhard Heydrich was an amazing person. Tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, with a strong-willed face and a very high forehead, he gave the impression of a real Aryan. If there was a genius in the SS, it was undoubtedly Heydrich. He came from the family of the director of a conservatory in the small Saxon town of Hall an der Saale, the mother of the future SS man was an actress in her youth, that is, Reinhard came from a very artistic environment. Even the second name he was given at birth sounded like Tristan - his mother was crazy about Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde.”
Even in childhood, his extraordinary abilities for music were discovered - Reinhard was considered a child prodigy and a virtuoso violinist; he retained this love of music until his death. But he chose not a musical, but a military career. Proud, brave, enterprising, he dreamed of free seas and the uniform of a naval officer. In the cadet corps, where he entered, his extraordinary abilities in navigation and mathematics were immediately discovered. In the latter area he was simply brilliant. In addition to intelligence, young Heydrich also possessed all the qualities of an excellent athlete - he took up equestrianism and became a fencer, whom it is impossible to defeat. Heydrich knew no fear, was unusually dexterous and had the gift of intuition.
It seemed that Heydrich's future fate would be excellent. In 1926, he received the rank of lieutenant, two years later - chief lieutenant, then was assigned to the flagship Schleswig-Holstein.
That's when everything fell apart.
Reinhard Heydrich - Hitler's favorite, who organized the “exposure” of Tukhachevsky
Young Heydrich was very partial to the female sex, given his external attractiveness, he had many fans. This attraction ruined his career. One day, while kayaking, Reinhard saw drowning girls: they went out for a boat ride, and the boat capsized. Like a true knight, Heydrich immediately rushed to the rescue. He really liked one of the rescued girls, and they began dating, and a couple of months later, Heydrich announced their engagement. And as soon as he announced, a certain girl immediately appeared and complained to the command that... she was expecting a child from Reinhard. The officer was advised to break off the engagement and fulfill his duty, that is, marry someone else. Heydrich refused. Then he was subjected to a court of honor, found guilty and dismissed without the right to reinstatement in the navy. It was the collapse of all hopes. Heydrich found himself without a job, but he nevertheless registered his marriage with Lina von Osten.
Heydrich's wife turned out to be a passionate supporter of the Fuhrer and advised Reinhard to connect his future fate with the SS. Reinhard himself dreamed more about the merchant fleet; he was attracted by the sea. But he heeded his wife’s advice and through a school friend met Himmler. Unexpectedly, Himmler offered the young officer not only membership in the SS, but also wonderful prospects for the future. In his new acquaintance, he quickly discerned a sober and tenacious mind (the Reiche Fuhrer SS knew how to find talent). Himmler invited Reinhard to take the post of head of the SD. It turned out that Heydrich possesses all the necessary qualities of a counterintelligence officer. He was passionate about cryptography and developed all those measures that helped Himmler’s department take a leading position in the emerging Reich. On his advice, Himmler “mastered” the police structures and turned the SS into a real military elite.
At the same time, Heydrich himself preferred to keep a low profile: brave in moments of danger, in life he was shy and modest, and did not like to highlight his own merits. This could not help but attract Himmler. All the credit for the party was given not to the timid Reinhard, but to the imperious Heinrich. However, Heydrich did not seek to reap glory; he was carried away by his work. It was like solving riddles, and he loved riddles.
Heydrich laughed at Himmler's magical orientation and his adherence to racial theory. About the appearance of the Reichsführer himself, he once expressed himself in these words: “... if you look at his nose, it’s so typically Jewish, a real Jewish soldering iron.” However, Reinhard himself did not escape the accusation of unclean blood: his enemies tried for a long time and unsuccessfully to convince Himmler that there was something wrong with the latter’s origins.
Spiteful critics were confused by his mother’s surname - Suess, which was completely Jewish, but it was the surname from her second marriage, and not Jewish. Heydrich was not an anti-Semite in the sense that he was not infected with racial nonsense; on the contrary, he tried with all his might to avoid needless blood. But if it was necessary to carry out some operation important for the party and the state, the best target was, of course, the Jews. That is, he knew how to masterfully use other people's anti-Semitism if it was necessary for the sake of business.
That’s how he turned out to be the developer of the Grinshpan plan, that is, he organized the murder of a German embassy employee, von Rath, in Paris. By this time, his SD had already been divided into two wings: the first performed normal functions within the state, and the second became something like the English “Intelligence Service”. Not only did Heydrich manage to create a remarkable network of agents, under the guise of a fashionable brothel in Berlin, he opened a kind of salon for obtaining information. High-ranking officials and officers of the Reich willingly went to this salon. Heydrich literally stocked the salon with all kinds of eavesdropping equipment, so that the secret statements of the salon's clients immediately became known to him. The salon was famous for its girls; there was no end to clients.
By studying the eavesdropping data, Heydrich was able to identify not only dangerous secrets, but also recruited agents for himself. Even the Italian minister Ciano did not escape this fate. The SD managed to carry out its actions both within the country and abroad, directing and pushing the actions of hostile political leaders.
In 1936, Heydrich's department cleverly organized the exposure of Tukhachevsky. The operation was based on rumors that Tukhachevsky was going to overthrow the power of Stalin in the USSR. Heydrich himself believed little in the rumors, but it was a wonderful chance to overthrow Tukhachevsky himself, and knowing Stalin’s manic mind, even the top military leadership of the Soviet country.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
The weakening of the enemy immediately interested Hitler. So Heydrich instructed his specialists to compile a voluminous dossier on the Soviet general, consisting of supposedly authentic correspondence between Tukhachevsky and his German comrades. The dossier was slipped to a Soviet intelligence officer, who immediately informed those who should. Stalin’s answer was not long in coming: heads rolled in the USSR, and a great purge began in the army.
He also skillfully organized Kristallnacht. To implement the plan, he decided to arrange the murder of Ernst von Rath, an employee of the German embassy in France.
The diplomat was known in special circles: he was a homosexual, which made the task easier. As a performer, Heydrich's people selected a young Polish Jew, Grynszpan, who had a love affair with the German. At the same time, Grynszpan's family was "arranged" so that it was caught up in the Polish-German dispute over the Jews and ended up in a displaced persons camp on Polish territory.
At the right time, Grynszpan received a short postcard from his father: “Dear Gershl, we found ourselves broke in Poland, without a penny of money. Could you send some? Thanks in advance. Father". By that time, Grynszpan’s own life had also fallen into ruin: the German diplomat broke off relations with him. Heydrich's people urgently prepared a new letter from Grynszpan's father, in which the father complained about the Germans and wrote about their atrocities (which did not happen). The letter was given to the young man by an SD employee who introduced himself as a friend of his father. He himself shared stories of such atrocities that the impressionable young man’s hair stood on end.
The skillful conversation of Heydrich’s employees did its job: the young man bought a pistol and went to settle scores with von Rath, in whom he now saw not only the lover who had abandoned him, but the enemy of the Jewish people. The embassy security was ordered to let Grinshpan through in advance, and the ambassador was not there.
Grynszpan, who demanded an immediate meeting with the German ambassador, was allowed to see von Rath, who had replaced him in his absence. He didn’t even have time to understand anything when his former lover shot the entire clip at him. Seriously wounded, von Rath was taken to a Paris hospital, and Grynszpan was arrested and sent to prison.
In the arrested man’s pocket, the police found an unsent letter to his father: “My dears! I could not do otherwise - my heart has been bleeding since the moment I learned about the suffering of 12 thousand of my fellow believers. May God forgive me, and I hope you forgive me. Gershl." According to Heydrich's plan, von Rath should have died on the spot, but the shooter was inept, and the bullets only slightly grazed the diplomat's shoulder and hit him in the stomach.
Von Rath was lucky: a timely operation guaranteed his recovery. This is what Heydrich could not allow. Under a plausible pretext, a team of German doctors was sent to Paris. The blood that was transfused to von Rath was, by chance, of the wrong group. The poor fellow died by the evening of November 9th.
The newspapers had already been in a state of hysteria for two days on Heydrich’s instructions.
They called Jews to account, and anti-Semitic sentiments grew greatly.
The death of von Rath acted as a trigger: the people were ready to show their anger. The SS special forces were given the command to ensure maximum expression of anger, but not to allow unnecessary casualties and looting. It was especially stressed that anger could get out of control and cause harm to the Aryan population. There were actually few casualties, but the damage was colossal.
Heydrich was not against material damage: by that time, the Reich was pursuing a policy of squeezing Jews out of the economy and from the country in general, which will be discussed a little later. This also prepared the ground for complications in Polish-German relations and was supposed to cause Polish provocations, which Hitler was looking forward to.
Another secret matter of the SD was the organization of an allegedly unsuccessful attempt on the Fuhrer's life. Heydrich never even dreamed of organizing the assassination attempt himself, but when he received information about a terrorist attack that was actually being prepared, he made great use of it, allowing events to flow in the direction planned by the conspirators with a slight amendment.
On November 8, 1939, Hitler visited a beer hall in Munich, where he gave a speech to old party cadres. To the surprise of those gathered, his speech was short, and he left the pub early. You probably shouldn’t be surprised: I think he was notified of the time of the explosion. 15 minutes after he left, the explosives planted by Elser exploded, killing six old party members and a waiter, and injuring more than 10 people. But the task of the SD was completed: the people perceived the unsuccessful assassination attempt as a miraculous salvation of their Fuhrer. The newspapers were choking with delight, which was what was required - not everyone liked the beginning of World War II. After the assassination attempt, the nation rallied. She was convinced that the assassination attempt was organized by the damned British!
Sometimes good decisions were made by Heydrich completely spontaneously.
With the outbreak of the war, the British decided to destroy the Reich economy in a very unique way: they began dropping counterfeit cards for food and consumer goods from airplanes. Immediately, a plan was born in Heydrich’s head: to organize the creation of counterfeit money and scatter it over England. SD specialists worked for a whole year to create banknotes that could pass the most serious checks. Counterfeiters kept in prisons were even brought in for this purpose.
By 1940, the SD was already producing such counterfeits that they were happily accepted at any bank. But by this time the plan to undermine the English economy had already faded into the background. Heydrich began to use counterfeits for their intended purpose: to maintain the RHSA. The department had a lot of expenses, but little money was allocated from the budget. Almost all RHSA agents received their fees with fakes.
But Heydrich's most important activity was the collection of secret dossiers. The head of the RHSA had incriminating evidence on everyone, not excluding Hitler himself. After the death of Reinhard, these documents came to Müller and Kaltenbrunner. The Kompromat kept all high-ranking officials of the Reich in fear of the RHSA. But Heydrich increasingly dreamed of a higher post. He wanted to extend his influence over the entire internal policy of the Reich and take the post of Minister of the Interior. Hitler doubted Heydrich's organizational abilities and offered him the post of Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia to begin with.
In September 1941 he was sent to assist Baron von Neurath. Neurath, indeed, could not do anything about the opposition to the German regime. Arriving on the spot on the very first day, Heydrich declared a state of emergency in order to lure all dissatisfied people out of hiding. And the dissatisfied took the bait: resistance began. All dissidents immediately ended up in prisons and camps, and a couple of weeks later the state of emergency was lifted, and life returned to its own shores.
However, Heydrich knew that in addition to the communist and nationalist Czech underground, there was also a hidden opposition (he saw it in the Czech intelligentsia). Therefore, he chose workers and peasants as his support. All the policies he pursued were aimed at improving the lives of ordinary people: he introduced an increased food standard for those employed in production, allocated shoes and industrial goods for the same category of the population, increased wages, requisitioned buildings in Czech resorts, creating a network of holiday homes, destroyed speculation in goods. And this policy justified itself: Czech workers supplied the German army with military equipment throughout the war. They lived even better than the workers in Germany itself. There was no talk of any resistance. But then British intelligence and the Czech government, which was in exile, intervened. Benesh could not come to terms with the idea that his country was not even trying to oppose the Germans. Thus was born the decision to send Czech saboteurs if the people preferred not to quarrel with the Germans.
The conspirators took advantage of Heydrich's well-known quality - unusual courage. He drove around the city without any security and in an open car, with only his driver next to him. Reinhard's route was well known to the residents of Prague: he did not change it. So committing a terrorist attack was not a problem.
On the morning of June 27, 1942, Heydrich was driving through the city as usual. But behind the wheel - what a coincidence! - it was not the old and experienced driver Willy, but another driver - Klein. Willie knew well how to act in unusual situations. Klein didn't know. And when the car began to make a turn, a man in a raincoat jumped out onto the road. Heydrich understood everything instantly.
"Press on the gas!" - he shouted to the newcomer, but he was confused... and slowed down.
This short moment was enough for the man to throw away his cloak and pull out his machine gun. But the machine refused! Then a grenade flew onto the road. She was abandoned by the second terrorist. The explosion crippled the car and knocked out windows from the surrounding houses. The conspirators decided to flee, but both wounded men rushed after them - both the driver Klein and Heydrich himself. The driver immediately received two fatal shots to the head. Heydrich managed to wound the saboteur, but this was the last thing he could do. He fell to the ground and lost consciousness. He never came to his senses: he died of blood poisoning on July 4th.
The German response to Heydrich's death was terrible: the recently pacified Czech Republic was subjected to unprecedented terror. They were looking for Heydrich's killer. Some Czech turned him in for a reward. Heydrich was posthumously awarded the Order of Blood and the German Order.
Unlike many leaders of the Reich, Heydrich, although cruel (it was not for nothing that Hitler called him a man with an iron heart), was quite a reasonable person. He did not shed blood in vain and did not cause unnecessary indignation among the people. In a limited area, he even tried to create some semblance of a normal life for the Jews, although by this time the policy towards them had become significantly tougher.
This is how Theresienstadt appeared - a closed Jewish city with Jewish governance. Himmler took credit for its creation. In fact, this was done by Heydrich and Gestapo chief Müller, or rather, not Müller himself, but his subordinate Eichmann. When the Reich began to be accused of atrocities against Jews, representatives of the Red Cross were even brought to Theresienstadt. Now, the guides showed, you say that we are exterminating Jews, putting them behind barbed wire, but where do you see the wire and the atrocities? Look at these happy faces! A musical group was exhibited especially for the guests, and the guests listened with pleasure to the Jews of Theresienstadt playing Mozart or Beethoven. After which the Red Cross could no longer say that it had seen atrocities.
Of course, it was all fake. And life in Theresienstadt was not sweet, but the fact that the children refused humanitarian condensed milk, they would have tried not to refuse! Fear was present in everything. But compared to Polish ghettos or camps, there were no atrocities here. Heydrich himself saw the Jews as a threat not because they were Jews, but because they were susceptible to the “red infection.” It was not for nothing that he was so outraged by the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that he even turned to his boss Himmler with a report on the growing communist danger.
Theresienstadt - "village of Jews"
“The fact,” he reported, “that on the territory of the Reich, the security police (SD) discovered many terrorist and sabotage groups created by order of the Comintern, is indicative of the position taken by the Soviet Union in relation to the Reich. Preparation of acts of sabotage against objects of military significance, bridges, explosions of important sections of the railway, destruction and shutdown of important industrial enterprises and installations were the goals of these groups, which consisted entirely of communists, who did not hesitate to carry out their tasks even before killings. In addition to tasks related to the commission of acts of sabotage, group members also received instructions to commit assassination attempts on the leaders of the Reich. Although it might have been expected that the series of crimes committed or being prepared by the Comintern would cease after the signing of the non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, as a result of extensive investigations carried out especially in the territories occupied by Germany, evidence was obtained that the Comintern did not intend stop your criminal activities against the Reich...
The activities of the Soviet Union directed against National Socialist Germany ... testify to the colossal scale of underground subversive work, sabotage, terror and espionage in order to prepare for the war being waged in the fields of politics, economics and defense.”
Heydrich had nothing against ordinary Jews, but suspected them of being hidden communists. He was much more negatively opposed to rich Jews; in them he saw a global conspiracy against Germany - a conspiracy of financiers and industrialists. It was not his plan to destroy these citizens, but getting rid of them would be a good thing. If the Reich is to be built as a national state of Germans, then it must first be cleared of internal threats. This position was held by both Müller and Himmler himself. They did not have the pathological hatred of Jews that filled Hitler.
Expelling the Jews was considered the best solution by the SS. With the outbreak of the war this became a necessity. The Reich could not afford to harbor an internal enemy, and during the six years of the Reich's existence, the majority of Jews were opposed to the National Socialists. Even before this war, Germany was constantly negotiating the transfer of Jews to the lands of Palestine, but the result was disappointing - the quotas were exhausted. The attempt to send Jews to civilized countries was also unsuccessful: individual Jews could be accepted, but a whole wave of immigrants could not be accepted. There was another stumbling block: the mass of Jews did not have the means to resettle. And Himmler developed a special plan: the resettlement of poor Jews at the expense of the rich. Rich Jews flatly refused to pay for the poor. Then it was decided to expel the Jews with deprivation of property - in this case, the rich could pay for the transportation of the poor, in any case they lost their money. But rich Jews refused to leave anti-Semitic Germany, hoping to preserve both property and life even in such a bad country. There was no way to milk the Jews until the end and deport them.
Realizing that he was completely confused with the solution to the Jewish question, Himmler pushed him onto Heydrich. Heydrich entrusted it to Müller. Müller created a division within his department that dealt exclusively with the Jewish issue. The quiet and efficient young SS man Alfred Eichmann was assigned to carry out the instructions of the management. This “Nazi criminal” was guilty only of following orders clearly and meticulously. However, he ended his life very badly. After the defeat of the Reich, he managed to escape, change his last name, and settle in a foreign country. And many years later, the old Eichmann was kidnapped by the Israeli MOSSAD, and the Israeli court staged a show trial and sentenced him to death. If the interrogation reports of this man show anything, it is only how a completely normal German and not a sadist, who does not feel any hatred for Jews, tries to do what is best for them, and as a result it turns out that he committed a crime against humanity.
Adlf Eichmann
Eichmann was very unlucky in this regard: he was assigned to deal with the Jewish question when there could only be one solution - camps and extermination. He didn't understand this. Probably, in those years, many Germans did not understand this in any way, since the camp system was closed and they could not see with their own eyes the results of their “labor.” And Eichmann, who was just a cog in a huge machine, saw only his part of the mechanism, for which he was sentenced to death.
In his department, Eichmann was assigned to the most unpleasant and tedious paperwork, so when the opportunity arose to move somewhere else, he immediately agreed. So the future hanged man ended up in the SD. He told the investigator about his activities as follows:
“In the “Jews” department I encountered a completely new area of tasks.
Untersturmführer von Mildenstein was a very sociable, friendly person; An Austrian by birth, it seems he has traveled a lot around the world. He did not have this callousness, rudeness, like most of the bosses of that time, with whom they were afraid to speak. We became close to him very quickly. One of the first cases he assigned me was related to the book “The Jewish State” by Theodor Herzl.
Herzl advocated the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine and thereby brought to life the Zionist movement; it soon gained many supporters, mainly in Eastern Europe. Von Mildenstein told me to read it. This is what I did intensively in the following days. The book interested me, until then I had never heard of anything like this... It made an impression on me - perhaps it was my romanticism, my love for nature, for mountains and forests... I delved into its contents, a lot I remember. I didn’t know what would happen next. When I finished the book, I was ordered to make an outline, a certificate; it was supposed to be distributed as an official circular for SS employees and for internal use in the SD, the security service... It was then printed in the form of a notebook, a circular for the SS. There I outlined the structure of the world Zionist organization, the goals of Zionism, its basis and difficulties. His demands were emphasized; they answered our own intentions - in the sense that Zionism sought a political solution: they wanted a land on which their people could finally settle and live in peace. This largely coincided with the programmatic setting of National Socialism.
At the same time, I became involved with the neo-Zionists. I also wrote a certificate about them, but I don’t know if it was published in the form of a circular. During this time, I got to know Untersturmführer von Mildenstein well as a man seeking political solutions, rejecting the methods preached by the magazine "Stormtrooper" ... I was entrusted with a range of issues - international Zionism, modern Zionism, Orthodox Judaism. Another employee was in charge of organizations engaged in assimilation.
We had nothing else! Around this time, Mildenstein’s acquaintance began to visit us; his name was Ernst von Bolschwing. For a long time he was engaged in commerce in Palestine, together with a certain Mr. Bormann, who sent from there - every year, if I am not mistaken - a ship with a cargo of onions to one of the Scandinavian countries. This Mr. von Bolypwing often came to our services and talked about Palestine.
He gave such a complete overview - the Zionist program, the current situation, the situation in Palestine and the spread of Zionism throughout the world - that I gradually became an expert on Zionism. I also received newspapers, including Haint. I couldn’t read their icons and letters, so I bought a book by Samuel Kaleko - a Hebrew textbook. I began to learn printed letters. Words too, but mainly I just wanted to learn how to read the printed text of the newspaper. Haynt", it was printed in Yiddish, but in Hebrew letters.
And at the beginning of 1936, changes occurred. Herr von Mildenstein moved to the Reich Road Construction Office, the "Todt Organization", and he was sent to North America to study the construction of highways... A new man became my boss, namely Dieter Wieslicen...
Gradually I became familiar with the so-called incoming correspondence, until then I had not seen it at all. Messages came from local SD branches, from some central authorities, but most often these were messages about conferences of the organization of world Jewry itself. Sometimes these were scientific materials, supposedly scientific materials, found somewhere during confiscation, and since the Gestapo did not know what to do with them, they were handed over to the SD. There were also reports from nationalist organizations and reports from police services...
Task number one was to ensure that reports came from the lower branches of the SD to the higher departments, and from these higher ones to the Main Directorate; so that local departments have instructions on what they should report on and what interests us; in turn, they must communicate this to their grassroots branches and through them further - right up to the intelligence network. As for the collection of reports, as far as this applies to my sector, the preliminary work has already been carried out - through a circular letter from the SS. I just had to refer to this circular: this is what we need! The government wants them to leave; everything that contributes to this should be done, nothing should hinder it. Everything revolved around this.
Of course, I should have had information about the number of people emigrating. I also learned then that the business was poorly organized. This is the first time I have heard about the difficulties in obtaining a tax payment certificate. The same thing with deadlines, because the expiration date of some documents was too short, we had to get them again. I learned about the difficulties that arose because some police department, out of ignorance or stupidity, liquidated a Jewish organization, sealed the premises, arrested functionaries, which caused delays. I heard about complications arising from the fact that the authorities of the Mandatory Territory in Palestine allocated insufficient quotas for emigration. I heard about the difficulties caused by other countries that accepted emigrants. But I was powerless, because the Main Directorate of the SD was a purely informational organization; it should have simply transmitted what it learned to higher services.
My job was to send as large a contingent of Jews as possible to Palestine. I was interested in any possibility of emigrating overseas. But all this is only theoretical. I could only explain in my reports what could be done, what was desirable. But it was very difficult to achieve a political solution, which meant abandoning the methods of the Sturmovik. Probably, this concept suited someone as propaganda. But it did not bring us one step closer to a solution.”
So, after studying the “Palestinian question” and traveling to Palestine, Eichmann realized that nothing would come of it. And after Kristallnacht, it became clear that it was absolutely impossible to delay the solution of the Jewish question. But all the attempts of the SD to somehow resolve the situation ended in nothing. Then the Second World War began, which only made the situation worse. A plan was born in Heydrich’s head to create a “Jewish protectorate” on the lands of Poland, they even found a place for it - in the Radomir Voivodeship. But nothing came of this either.
Then the top management came up with another idea: to resettle the Jews on the island of Magadascar. This idea was expressed by Guido von List, but as a theoretical one. But Eichmann, who had already risen to become the head of the Jewish department, had to test the theory with practice. The Madagascar plan envisaged taking the designated island from the French, relocating all the French from it, establishing a naval base and then populating the remaining lands with the Jews of the Reich.
“Since Madagascar will only be under German mandate,” said Radimacher’s project, “its Jewish population will not receive German citizenship. At the time of transport, the Jews would be stripped of their European citizenship and would instead become citizens of the Mandate of Madagascar. Such a situation will not allow them to create their own state in Palestine, similar to the Vatican, and use the symbolic significance of Jerusalem in the eyes of Christian and Muslim society for their own purposes. In addition, the Jews would remain hostages in the hands of Germany, which would ensure future good behavior from their kinsmen in North America.
For propaganda purposes, you can use the slogan about Germany's generosity, giving cultural, economic, administrative and legal independence to Jews. It must be emphasized that the sense of responsibility inherent in us Germans will not allow us to immediately grant an independent state existence to a race that has not had independence for thousands of years. To do this, she will have to pass a history exam.” They were going to introduce autonomy on the island: “... its own city mayors, police, post office, railway administration and others.”
Funds for the project were supposed to be taken from a specially created bank, which automatically received the value of the property of Jews in Europe. Eichmann was assigned to implement the project in practice. He delved deeply into the task assigned to him: he studied the climatic features of the island, read fundamental studies about the nature of the island and its economy... but the project stalled. On the one hand, the Jews themselves did not want to go there, on the other hand, numerous German departments created obstacles.
“And when the plan finally became completely clear,” he stated, “and none of the central departments had any wishes left, then it was already too late. German troops had been in Paris for a long time, but we could not reach Madagascar. When the French fleet left and Germany occupied the hitherto unoccupied part of France all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, Madagascar was out of the question. That’s where the matter ended, it collapsed.”
True, Eichmann never understood why the Jews abandoned Madagascar and why the project was slowed down in every possible way. The first were embarrassed by the climate and the fact that the island was too small for global resettlement. The departments slowed down the project, since Hitler did not intend to resettle anyone. He already had another project. Here Himmler somewhat underestimated the Fuhrer's anti-Semitism.
And when the war with the USSR began, neither Himmler nor Heydrich could do anything: no one in the Reich would dare to act against the order of the Fuhrer.
One day in the summer of 1941, Eichmann was summoned by Heydrich. “I showed up. And he told me: “The Fuhrer, well, with this emigration...” But first, very briefly: “The Fuhrer ordered the physical extermination of the Jews.” He told me this phrase. And contrary to his custom, he fell silent for a long time, as if he wanted to test the effect of his words. I still remember this today. At first, I didn’t even try to imagine the scale of this action, because he chose his words carefully. But then I realized what they were talking about, and I didn’t say anything to it, because I couldn’t say anything anymore. Because I never thought about such... about such things, about a violent solution.”
Obviously, Heydrich didn’t think about it either; he was no less shocked by the order. He had no experience in such matters. So the only thing he could offer was to send Eichmann to learn from someone else’s experience. And there was such a person in the Reich. He pathologically hated Jews, but he loved Jewish gold very much. Many considered him a disgrace to the National Socialist Party. The bastard's name was Odilo Globocnik, he served as chief of police of the city of Lublin.
“And then he (Heydrich) told me: “Eichmann, go to Globocnik in Lublin. Go to Globocnik. The Reichsführer had already given him the appropriate instructions. Look how things went for him. What is he using there to exterminate the Jews,” Eichmann continues. “As ordered, I went to Lublin, found the office of the SS and police chief Globocnik, came to the Gruppenführer and told him that Heydrich sent me because the Fuhrer gave an order for physical extermination of the Jews. Globocnik then called a certain Sturmbannführer Höfle, probably from his headquarters.
We drove from Lublin, now I don’t remember what this place is called, I confuse them, I can’t say for sure whether it was Treblinka or something else. There is a wooded area, a rare forest, and through it there is a dirt road, a Polish road. And to the right of the road there was a house, an ordinary building in which the people who work there live. We were greeted by the captain, an ordinary police officer. There were also workers there, several people. And the captain was without a uniform, which surprised me greatly, he had his sleeves rolled up, he probably worked with them. They built wooden houses there, two or three. The size is maybe the size of a country house, two or three rooms.
Höfle told the police captain to explain to me what they were building. And he started. It was a man with such, you know... such a hoarse voice. Maybe he was drinking. He spoke some kind of dialect, probably like in the south-west of Germany, and began to tell me that he had already sealed all the seams, because the engine from a Russian submarine would work here, and the exhaust gases of the engine would be brought here and they would poison the Jews with them "
Returning from a business trip, Eichmann reported what he had seen to Heydrich, who remained silent, and for several months the head of the Jewish department was not disturbed. But in the fall, Müller sent him with a similar task, now to Chelmno.
“This is what I saw there: the room, if I remember correctly, is five times larger than where we are; there were Jews inside. They had to undress, and then a closed truck, a van, drove up to the door.
She came very close. And the naked Jews had to go into the back. Then they were locked there and the car drove away. ...I followed that car - and saw the most terrible thing I had ever seen in my life before. The van pulled up to a long pit. The body was opened, and the corpses were thrown out. As if they were alive, they were still bending. They threw me into a hole. I see in front of me how some man in civilian clothes was pulling out his teeth with pliers. In Berlin I reported to Gruppenführer Müller. I told him the same thing I’m saying now. I told him: this is terrifying, this is hell. I can not. This... I can't do this! - I told him. I was sent to such places: these two, then Auschwitz, and then I was sent to Treblinka. And to Minsk too. Minsk, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Minsk, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Minsk..."
What he saw in Minsk almost drove Eichmann crazy: “When I arrived, I only saw how young soldiers, I think they had a skull and crossbones on their buttonholes, were shooting into a hole, the size of which was, say, four or five times bigger than this room. Maybe even much more, six or seven times. I... I'm there... no matter what I say... I just saw it, I didn't even think, I didn't expect this. And I saw, nothing more! They shot from top to bottom, I also saw a woman with her hands behind her back, and my legs gave way, I felt bad!
I went from there to the car, got in and drove away. I went to Lvov. I remember now - I had no order to go to Lvov. Somehow I get to Lvov, I come to the head of the Gestapo and tell him: “It’s terrible what’s happening there,” I say. “After all, young people there are being trained into sadists!” I told Müller exactly the same thing. And Ponter too said. I told everyone this. I told everyone. And I said to that SS Fuhrer in Lvov: “How can you just shoot at a woman and children like that? How is this possible?” I said. “It’s impossible... People will either get off.” Our own people will go crazy or become sadists." And he tells me: “They do the same thing here, they shoot too.” Do you want to watch?” I said: “No, I don’t want to watch anything.” And he says: “We’ll go by anyway.” There was also a hole there, but it was already buried, and there was blood coming out of it, like... how can I say this? Blood was flowing from there. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m fed up with such a task!
I went to Berlin and reported to Gruppenführer Müller. I told him: “This is not a solution to the Jewish question. In addition, we are raising sadists out of our people. And we shouldn’t be surprised, we shouldn’t be surprised if it’s all criminals, all criminals.” I still remember how Müller looked at me and the expression on his face said: “Eichmann, you’re right; this is not a solution.” But of course he couldn't do anything either. Mueller could do nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing! Who ordered all this? Ordered, precisely ordered, of course, by the chief of the security police and SD, i.e. Heydrich. But he had to receive instructions from the Reichsführer SS, that is, from Himmler; he couldn’t do this on his own, he could never do this. And Himmler had to have a categorical order from Hitler; If Hitler hadn’t ordered it, he would have been sent to the front somewhere for this, under bombs and shells...”
Eichmann did not understand at all: what he called the education of sadism was the practice of killing in a person everything that binds him to the human world. The soldiers who carried out such tasks had to perform them without feeling either pleasure or pain. This was precisely the main condition in the upbringing of an SS man - to abandon everything that connects him with the animal nature in man. During his training, the SS man went through many tests. These were both purely physical tests that required exertion of strength, courage, the ability to quickly make decisions, withstand high loads, and be prepared for anything dangerous and unexpected, as well as moral ones - associated with bringing pain to another person, humiliating pride, this also included training in unquestioning subordination and instilling loyalty to one's Fuhrer.
The most common test of the courage and endurance of an SS soldier was as follows: the candidate was placed in ice water for an hour or more, often hungry shepherd dogs were set on him, which he had to strangle with his bare hands, he could be shot at, he was asked to walk between the blades of daggers, he it was proposed to kill the animal with one’s own hands so as not to damage its body, and then remove the skin without damaging the eyes.
The smart, well-read Himmler borrowed these rites of initiation for newcomers and the method of their further training from the practice of the Jesuits and other secret orders, about which he knew a lot. And after the Tibetan expeditions, he learned something about the purely local technique of “waiparita”, developed by the Bon Po priests.
This technique, Tibetan in origin, says that in order to completely improve the spirit, harden it, give it the “Golden Glow”, that is, the forces of Fire that defeat Ice, you need to go through disgust and perceive it as pleasure. To do this, the technique teaches us to eat inedible and unpleasant elements - blood, sperm, urine, feces, saliva, etc. Then, at another stage, a person learns to contemplate ominous pictures without disgust, but on the contrary, with understanding and a feeling of pleasure - death, injuries, physiological manifestations of life. And then learns to perceive what brings pain as pleasure.
The end result of such a learning process was supposed to be complete perfection, and this perfection is considered, according to Tibetan concepts, to be the magical basis of immortality. Eichmann did not belong to the SS elite. Before being called to the SD, he was engaged in gluing labels, that is, clerical routine. It is unlikely that he underwent the appropriate training, like real SS soldiers. After training, the latter had to remain calm in any situation - not to get angry, not to shout, not to cry, not to be afraid, not to feel disgust. Himmler dreamed of creating a new man. Unlike Hitler, he actually created it.
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"Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (German: Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich; March 7, 1904, Halle, Saxony, German Empire - June 4, 1942, Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Third Reich) - statesman and political figure of Nazi Germany, head of the Main Directorate of the Imperial Security (1939-1942), Deputy (Acting) Imperial Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (1941-1942), SS Obergruppenführer and General of Police (from 1941).
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Reinhard Heydrich's mother Elisabeth, née Kranz, came from a wealthy family: her father directed the royal conservatory in Dresden. Reinhard's father, Bruno Heydrich, was an opera singer and composer. Operas by Bruno Heydrich were staged in theaters in Cologne and Leipzig. In 1899 he founded a music school for middle-class children in Halle, but he was never able to enter the city's high society. For the townspeople, he remained a stranger, which was facilitated by rumors about his Jewish origin.
On March 7, 1904, Reinhard Heydrich was born in the city of Halle an der Saale.
From an early age, Reinhard was interested in politics. His parents read the works of racial theorist Huston Chamberlain, devoted to the issues of the “struggle of races.” When World War I began, Heydrich was 10 years old. At the end of the war, Heydrich was able to observe demonstrations and street clashes in Halle.
In the summer of 1904, Heydrich's family moved to a four-story conservatory building in Halle, where his father, as director, was entitled to housing
In 1919, at the age of 15, Heydrich, still a schoolboy, began to get involved in politics and joined the Georg Ludwig Rudolf Merker Freikorps, a paramilitary nationalist organization. Heydrich begins to actively engage in sports, cultivating a competitive spirit.
On October 6, 1904, Reinhard Heydrich was baptized in the Catholic Church of St. Francis and Elisabeth in Halle
In 1918-1919 he was a member of the National Association of Pan-German Youth - the "German National Youth League" in Halle. This organization seemed too moderate to Reinhard, and in 1920 he joined the “German People's Union for Defense and Offensive” (German: Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund). In the same year, eager to participate more actively in the political life that was seething around him, Heydrich became a liaison officer in the Lucius division, part of the volunteer detachments in Halle, where he became interested in the ideas of youth militaristic pro-patriotic movements. In 1921 he created a new association - the “German People's Youth Detachment”
1908 In the photograph, four-year-old Reinhard Heydrich with his brothers and sisters in Halle near the house where the Bruno Heydrich Conservatory was located
The economic crisis that hit post-war Germany brought Father Heydrich's music school to the brink of ruin. The musician's career now did not promise any success, although Reinhard Heydrich played the violin well. The career of a chemist, which he dreamed of, also seemed financially unpromising to Heydrich.
Reinhard Heydrich as a child with his sister Maria.
On March 30, 1922, Heydrich entered the naval school in Kiel. The navy, with its strict code of honor, seemed to the young Heydrich to be the elite of the nation. In 1926, after graduating from college and receiving the rank of lieutenant, Heydrich was sent to serve in naval intelligence. His career began to be promoted by the future head of the Abwehr and the future admiral Wilhelm Canaris, at that time the senior officer on the cruiser Berlin. The Canaris family's relationship with Heydrich was very close - for example, Heydrich often played in a string quartet with Canaris's wife
Fencing school in Halle. Here Reinhard Heydrich studied fencing
However, Heydrich's relations with his colleagues were not particularly good. Like his father in his time, he was disturbed by rumors about his Jewish ancestors. While serving in the navy, Heydrich became even more active in sports, in particular pentathlon.
Admiral Felix Count von Lackner, who awakened Reinhard Heydrich's interest in navigation
Heydrich's reputation for red tape spread. In December 1930, at one of the balls, Heydrich met his future wife, rural teacher Lina von Osten, whom he married the following December. According to another, more romantic version, Reinhard and a friend were boating and saw a boat with two girls capsize nearby. Of course, young people heroically came to the rescue. One of the rescued girls was Lina von Osten
March 1922. Reinhard Heydrich enlisted in the navy as a midshipman.
Previously, Heydrich developed an affair with another woman, the daughter of the head of the naval shipyard in Kiel (according to other sources, the daughter of the owner of the largest metallurgical holding IG Fabernim). Heydrich broke this connection by mailing an announcement cut from a newspaper about his engagement to Lina. The girl's father turned to the head of the Navy, Admiral Erich Raeder, with a request to influence Heydrich. According to the Navy code of honor, Heydrich committed a serious offense by having two affairs at the same time. The behavior of the young lieutenant was examined at the court of honor, which for some reason was headed by Raeder himself. At a meeting of the court of honor, Raeder noted that the daughter of “such a man” was more worthy than a “village simpleton,” but Heydrich responded with a request not to interfere in his choice. In April 1931, Admiral Raeder dismissed Heydrich for "misconduct"
On April 1, 1924, Reinhard Heydrich, ensign, entered the Naval Academy, where he remained until March 1925
In June 1931, Reinhard Heydrich joined the NSDAP, receiving party card No. 544,916, and the SS (ticket No. 10,120). Together with militants from the SA, Heydrich took part in battles with socialists and communists.
At the same time, Heinrich Himmler began to streamline the activities of the SS. For better coordination of SS actions, as well as for spying on political opponents and participating in SS force actions, a trained intelligence service was required. Through his friend Karl von Eberstein, Heydrich met Himmler and expressed to him his proposals for the creation of an SS intelligence service; Himmler liked them, and he instructed Heydrich to create a security service, which became known as the SD. The main task of the SD at first was the collection of compromising materials on people occupying prominent positions in society, as well as conducting information campaigns to discredit political opponents.
Heydrich soon became an important person for the Nazi party, and his career quickly took off. In December 1931 he received the rank of SS Obersturmbannführer, and in July 1932 - SS Standartenführer. At the same time, Heydrich changed the spelling of his name from Reinhardt to Reinhardt.
1924 Reinhard Heydrich midshipman.
The appointment of Adolf Hitler in 1933 to the post of Reich Chancellor meant for the SA and SS the coming to power and the beginning of reprisals against the opposition. The officials who held their posts under the Weimar Republic were largely replaced by people from the SA and SS.
1929 Reinhard Heydrich with the rank of lieutenant
Meanwhile, the SA stormtroopers, under the leadership of Ernst Röhm, caused Hitler more and more concern. The officers and privates of the SA, who largely ensured Hitler's rise to power, were dissatisfied with the fact that, in their opinion, the SA received insufficient powers. The situation was aggravated by the presence of two wings within the National Socialist Party - one leaning more toward national politics (Adolf Hitler) and the other, who believed that the party should primarily implement a socialist program (Gregor Strasser). Among the stormtroopers there was increasingly talk about the need for a second, truly socialist revolution. At this time, it was Heydrich’s SD that collected incriminating material on Röhm and his closest associates. The materials collected by Heydrich pointed to an inevitable putsch being prepared in the bowels of the SA. After the SA forces were defeated by the SS during the so-called “Night of the Long Knives” and Röhm himself was killed, on June 30, 1934, Heydrich received the rank of SS Gruppenführer.
December 26, 1931. Wedding of Reinhard Heydrich and Lina.
As part of the apparatus struggle between the two power departments - the SS and the Wehrmacht - Heydrich's SD took a serious part in the removal from power of the Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Colonel General Werner von Fritsch and the Minister of Defense Werner von Blomberg. A compromising dossier was collected on both military men. Von Blomberg's young wife was a former prostitute, a scandal broke out, and Hitler dismissed him. Fritsch, based on false evidence, was accused of homosexual relations and was also removed from his post. At the same time, several dozen more senior military officials were removed or demoted.
Lina and Reinhard Heydrich shortly after their wedding in 1931.
Serious tensions also existed between Heydrich's SD and military intelligence - the Abwehr, which was led by Heydrich's former patron Wilhelm Canaris. In public, both leaders remained friendly and even met every morning for a walk. However, behind the scenes, each tried to take the other out of the game: Heydrich gave orders to carry out secret searches in the office premises of Canaris, and he diligently looked for evidence of Heydrich's Jewish origin.
SD branch in Munich. Here Reinhard Heydrich was hired as head of the department
In 1934, the SD became part of the secret police (Gestapo). In 1936, Himmler became chief of the German police, and Heydrich became chief of the Security Police (“Sipo”, German: Sicherheitspolizei, Sipo), which united the criminal and political police. With the help of this instrument of violence, Heydrich was given the opportunity to deal with both the enemies of the regime and his personal enemies. Security police agents also conducted surveillance of Jews, communists, liberals, and religious minorities. The SD staff included about 3,000 agents, and up to 100,000 people were part-time informants. After the Anschluss, Heydrich, together with Himmler, organized terror in Austria against opponents of the regime, and also created the Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz.
In 1939, the SD, Zipo and Gestapo were transferred to the subordination of the newly created department of the RSHA - the Main Directorate of Imperial Security (German: Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), headed by Heydrich. RSHA became a powerful organization for collecting and analyzing information, as well as suppressing the opposition.
In 1933, Reinhard Heydrich in his office at the Wittelsbach Palace in Munich.
It was Heydrich who developed the plan to stage a border incident, called the Gleiwitz Incident. The purpose of the dramatization was to show that the German attack on Poland was only a German response to acts of violence against German residents committed by the Polish side. In August 1939, SS men dressed in Polish uniforms attacked a German radio transmitter in the city of Gleiwitz. The corpses of the “Poles” were presented to the world media. In fact, the dead prisoners of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp acted as the killed Poles. On September 1, 1939, German troops attacked Poland, and World War II began. During the occupation of Poland, the SS Einsatzgruppen, subordinate to Heydrich, exterminated the Polish intelligentsia, communists and Jews
August 7, 1934. Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich oversee preparations for President Hindenburg's funeral
In the first years of World War II, Heydrich was engaged in more than just organizational work. As an Air Force reserve officer, Heydrich took part in German air combat missions (first as a bomber gunner-radio operator, then as an attack aircraft pilot) during the campaigns against France, Norway and the USSR. This corresponded to Heydrich’s ideas about the ideal SS officer, who not only sits at his desk, but also participates in hostilities. After Heydrich’s plane was shot down east of the Berezina River in 1941 and Heydrich was saved only by German soldiers who arrived in time, Himmler personally forbade him to participate in hostilities
Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich in 1934.
After the occupation of Poland, Heydrich gave the order to create special compact settlement areas for Jews in large cities, ghettos, where Jews from the countryside, as well as from Germany itself, were to be resettled, and also to form “Jewish councils” from the local Jewish population to deal with Jewish affairs ( German: Judenräte). Thus, Heydrich managed to force the Jews themselves to participate in the policy of their own destruction. In December 1939, Heydrich appointed Eichmann as head of the RSHA's special unit for Jewish affairs and then with his help carried out mass deportations of Jews from Germany and Austria to the Polish ghettos.
Reinhard Heydrich greets the leaders in Nuremberg. 1935
After German troops occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, replacing the government there, the post of Imperial Protector was created for the regions of Bohemia and Moravia, which came under German protectorate, and took up residence in the Hradcany district of Prague. At first, former German Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath was appointed to this position. His tenure was accompanied by rivalry between bodies loyal to the protector, intelligence services and party structures, caused by the overlapping competence of different branches of government. This, as well as Neurath's lack of toughness in suppressing the Czech resistance, led to his actual removal from office. The intelligence services, with the participation of Heydrich, prepared a report for Hitler on the Czech resistance criticizing Neurath
June 18, 1936. Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick delivers a speech on the occasion of the appointment of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler as chief of the German police. On the right is Reinhard Heydrich
At the end of September 1941, A. Hitler summoned the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Constantin von Neurath, and said that he had decided to appoint Heydrich as his deputy. Von Neurath did not agree with this decision and announced his resignation from this post. Then Hitler sent von Neurath on “indefinite leave.” His duties were transferred to Heydrich, as "acting Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia" (German: "Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor von Böhmen und Mähren").
July 2, 1936. Celebrating the memory of the German king Henry I the Birdcatcher (876-936), revered as the founder of the empire and fighter against the Slavs
Thus, Heydrich became the de facto imperial protector (von Neurath never returned to fulfill his duties), retaining his position as head of the Main Directorate of the RSHA. On September 27, 1941, Heydrich took up residence in Hradcany. Heydrich set up his country residence, to which he moved his family, in the so-called “Lower Palace” that he inherited after the resignation of K. von Neurath in the town of Panenské Břežany, 15 km north of Prague, confiscated from the Jewish sugar manufacturer Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer
Reinhard Heydrich (left in civilian clothes) during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
January 2, 1937 Heydrich at Hermann Goering's birthday party
January 29, 1937. At a family holiday, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Praschnow, Lina Heydrich, Brigadier Karl Wolf, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.
Reinhard Heydrich with his wife Lina and son Klaus.
A week after his appointment, Heydrich initiated proceedings against the Czech Prime Minister Alois Elias, who was suspected of having ties to the resistance. The trial, chaired by Otto Thirak, took place in four hours, and Elias was sentenced to death (which was carried out after Heydrich’s death). One of Heydrich’s first actions after the appointment was the order to close all synagogues in the protectorate, and in November 1941, on his orders, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was created, intended to hold Czech Jews before being sent to death camps. At the same time, Heydrich began to take measures to pacify the population: he reorganized the social security system, increased wages and food standards for workers.
September 1937. Reinhard Heydrich and his wife Lina during Benito Mussolini's visit to Germany
Heydrich had many stereotypically Nordic qualities: a tall, thin, blond man with an icy calm. Contrary to this image, Heydrich had a very high voice, for which he received the nickname “goat” from his friends. This is probably why few recordings of his speeches have survived. Heydrich was a keen athlete and a gifted musician.
Reinhard Heydrich at his desk in 1937
He was able to become a good assistant for his boss Himmler (Heydrich held leadership positions in the SD from the age of 29, and headed the RSHA at the age of 35). For example, he did almost all the work of integrating the political police into the party apparatus. A joke is attributed to Hermann Goering: German. HHHH, Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich, “H. H.H.H. - Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich.”
January 9, 1938. Reinhard Heydrich in the Imperial Hall of the Landwehr Casino after a fencing competition
From his youth, Heydrich was surrounded by rumors about his Jewish origin, and this information was subsequently used by his political enemies to fight him. One argument was that Heydrich's father, Bruno Heydrich, appeared in the 1916 Riemann Encyclopedia of Music as "Bruno Heydrich, real name Suess."
February 23, 1938. Reinhard Heydrich congratulates Scherer on his victory
In 1932, one of the leaders of the NSDAP, Gregor Strasser, ordered party genealogist Achim Gerke to investigate information about a possible admixture of Jewish blood. Gehrke came to the conclusion that the information in Riemann's Musical Encyclopedia was erroneous, and that the surname Suess was the second husband of Heydrich's grandmother (Bruno Heydrich was born from his first marriage). After the war, the hypothesis about Heydrich's Jewish origin was the subject of serious scientific research.
March 12, 1938. Reinhard Heydrich with Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler after the Anschluss of Austria at the entrance to the Metropol Hotel in Vienna
Israeli historian Shlomo Aronson, while working on his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Heydrich and the period of formation of the Gestapo and SD” (published in 1966), built a family tree of Heydrich on his father’s side until 1738, and on his mother’s side until 1688 and did not find it among his ancestors Jews
July 2, 1938. Laying a wreath at the tomb of the German king Henry I the Birdcatcher (876-936) in the crypt of Quedlinburg Cathedral.
August 20, 1938. The delegation congratulates the Fuhrer on his birthday. From left to right, General Daluege, SS General Karl Wolf, Reinhard Heydrich, August Hessmeier and Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler
January 30, 1939 Holiday at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Berlin. At the table are Reinhard Heydrich, Kurt Daluege, secretary, Mrs. Frick, Heinrich Himmler and others
Franz Josef Huber, Arthur Nebe, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller.1939
March 15, 1939. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Wolf in the courtyard of Prague Castle
Reinhard Heydrich describes the organization of the Reich Security Main Office during the visit of a Spanish police delegation
April 9, 1939. Birthday of Reinhard Heydrich's daughter Silk.
Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich on the way to the Imperial Chancellery.
September 1939. Polish company. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler receives a progress report from Reinhard Heydrich
During the war, Reinhard Heydrich flew missions as a fighter pilot and was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class.
November 1940. The funeral of the Italian police chief Senator Boccini in Rome. In the photo are Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler
Reinhard Heydrich with his family. 1941
1941 Visit of Gauleiter Karl Hanke. Welcome to Prague Castle.
September 28, 1941. Reinhard Heydrich during the ceremonial raising of the national flag in the courtyard of Prague Castle.
October 29, 1941. Karl Hermann Frank, Heinrich Himmler, Karl Wolf and Reinhard Heydrich at Prague Castle
In December 1941, a meeting of the Association of South-East Europe was held in Prague in the Spanish Hall of Prague Castle.
April 20, 1942 The President of the Protectorate, Dr. Emil Haha, shows Reinhard Heydrich a fully equipped ambulance train for the Fuhrer's birthday.
September 27, 1941. SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich on Inauguration Day in Prague
Reinhard Heydrich viewing the crown of St. Wenceslas in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral
Opening of the Imperial Police and Security School in Prague. Reinhard Heydrich speaks to Bruno Strechenbach
Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Hermann Frank meet with a delegation of Czech farmers
Reinhard Heydrich and Minister of Education Moravec at a meeting in Prague
May 26, 1942. The last photograph of Heydrich during his lifetime. Musical evening at Wallenstein Palace.
The assassination attempt on Heydrich was planned by the Czechoslovak “government in exile” of Edward Benes with the participation of the British Special Operations Executive. The assassination of Heydrich was planned to simultaneously raise the prestige of the Resistance and provoke punitive actions by the Germans, which, in turn, would push the local population to actively resist the occupiers. The direct executors of the operation, called “Anthropoid,” were British-trained agents Josef Gabcsik and Jan Kubis.
May 27, 1942. Mercedes of Reinhard Heydrich.
The delivery of Gabčík and Kubiš took place on the night of December 28–29, 1941. The RAF Handley Page Halifax took off from Sussex at 10pm and dropped off Gabčík and Kubiš at 2:12am. Due to a navigation error, the saboteurs were landed not near Pilsen, as planned, but in the Prague suburb of Negvizdy. Then two more groups of Czech saboteurs were dropped, three and two people respectively. Gabcik and Kubis were equipped with Colt revolvers, Mills hand grenades, bombs of various types and forged documents. The saboteurs hid their equipment and, following the instructions received before departure, reached Pilsen, where they stayed in predetermined apartments with resistance members Vaclav Kral and Vaclav Stelik. Subsequently, they established contacts with many other active underground figures.
Josef Gabcik
The assassination attempt took place on the morning of May 27, 1942, at a turn in the Prague suburb of Liben on the way from Heydrich’s country residence Jungfern Breshan to the center of Prague. When Heydrich in an open-top car (besides the SS-Obergruppenführer himself there was only a driver - Heydrich preferred to drive without any security at all) was passing a turn at 10:32, Gabchik pulled out a STEN submachine gun and tried to shoot Heydrich at point-blank range, but the cartridge stuck. Heydrich ordered the driver to stop the car and pulled out his service pistol.
Mercedes of Reinhard Heydrich. after the assassination attempt on May 27, 1942
At that moment, Kubis threw a bomb, but missed, so the bomb exploded behind the right rear wheel of the car.
Jan Kubis
Heydrich, who suffered a broken rib and a shrapnel wound to the spleen, which was hit by metal parts of the car's upholstery and a piece of his uniform, got out of the car, but immediately fell nearby. He was taken to the Bulovka hospital in a truck, which was stopped by a Czech policeman who happened to be at the scene of the assassination attempt.
Crime scene with damaged car.
Around noon Heydrich was operated on. The surgeon removed the damaged spleen. On May 27, Himmler’s personal physician, Karl Gebhardt, arrived at the hospital. He prescribed large doses of morphine to the patient. On the morning of June 3, Heydrich's condition improved, but around noon he fell into a coma and died the next day. The cause of death was stated to be infection of internal organs weakened due to the removal of the spleen.
Until the late evening of June 5, 1942, the coffin with the body of Reinhard Heydrich was in a guarded room at the Bulovka hospital.
Immediately after Heydrich’s death, Himmler received a huge number of telegrams of condolences, both from the leading officials of the Reich and military leaders from the Soviet-German front, and from representatives of satellite countries (including Italian and Bulgarian police officers) and even from Ukrainian nationalists .
On the night of June 5-6, 1942, the coffin was transported on a gun carriage from the Bulovka Hospital to Prague Castle.
In Prague, national flags were flown at half-mast after the death of Reinhard Heydrich
After a two-day farewell to the body in Prague, the coffin was delivered to Berlin.
On June 7, 1942, from the very early morning, tens of thousands of Germans and Czechs came to the courtyard of Prague Castle to say goodbye to the deceased
June 7, 1942. Removal of the coffin from Prague Castle
June 7, 1942. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, family members and leading government officials
June 7, 1942. Heinrich Himmler with two sons at the coffin in the courtyard of Prague Castle
June 7, 1942. Funeral procession marches through Prague to the train station
June 7, 1942. From the Prague railway station, the coffin with the deceased was loaded onto a special train to Berlin. The next day, June 8, 1942, the train arrived at 12.00 o'clock at the Berlin station
The funeral took place on June 9. The entire top of the country took part in the burial ceremony. Adolf Hitler himself gave a farewell speech, calling Heydrich “a man with an iron heart.”
June 9, 1942. The Fuhrer says goodbye to the body of the late Reinhard Heydrich
June 9, 1942. The Fuhrer speaks words of consolation to the sons of Reinhard Heydrich
Himmler later called Heydrich a “shining great man” and emphasized that he “made a sacrificial contribution to the struggle for freedom” of the German people, “felt the worldview of Adolf Hitler in the depths of his heart and his blood, understood it and implemented it.” The London Times newspaper quipped that one of the most dangerous men of the Third Reich was given a “gangster funeral.” Hitler posthumously awarded Heydrich the "German Order", a rare award reserved for senior party functionaries (most awards of this order were also posthumous). The Ahnenerbe Society issued a mourning booklet in memory of Heydrich.
June 9, 1942. The Fuhrer posthumously awarded Heydrich the "German Order"
After the death of Heydrich, the leadership of the RSHA was initially assumed personally by Himmler, but on January 30, 1943, he transferred it to Ernst Kaltenbrunner. The post of Imperial Protector of Bohemia and Moravia was given to SS Oberstgruppenführer, Colonel General of Police Kurt Daluge.
June 9, 1942. The coffin with Heydrich's body in the courtyard of the New Reich Chancellery after the official ceremony
Honor guard on Wilhelmstrasse in front of the New Imperial Chancellery.
The coffin with the body of the deceased is loaded onto a carriage
June 9, 1942. Funeral procession in the courtyard of the New Reich Chancellery after the official ceremony
June 9, 1942. A funeral procession led by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler marches through Berlin.
Heydrich's grave is located in the Berlin Invalidenfriedhof cemetery, approximately in the center of zone "A". After the end of the war, the tombstone was destroyed to prevent the grave from becoming a place of worship for neo-Nazis, and now the exact location of the burial is unknown.
June 9, 1942. Cemetery of the Invalids. Funeral guard on both sides of the grave.
June 9, 1942. Cemetery of the Invalids. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler throws flowers on the coffin.
June 9, 1942. Cemetery of the Invalids. Heinrich Himmler pays his last respects to the deceased
June 9, 1942. Cemetery of the Invalids. Reinhard Heydrich's coffin strewn with flowers.
Model of Heydrich's Tomb. The tomb was supposed to become a monument in honor of those who fell for Germany
On the first anniversary of Heydrich’s death, his bust was erected at the site of the assassination attempt, which was destroyed by the Soviet troops that liberated Prague. On May 27, 2009, in Prague, at the site of the assassination attempt, a monument to the heroes of the Resistance who executed Heydrich was unveiled.
A bust of Reinhard Heydrich was erected at the murder site in Prague
From his marriage to Lina von Osten, Heydrich had four children: sons Klaus and Haider, daughters Silke and Martha (Martha was born on July 23, 1942, almost two months after her father’s death). Lina, who inherited a castle in the Czech Republic after her husband, tried to play an independent political role and developed plans in the 1940s to create a National Socialist land-cultivating commune, which, however, did not meet with the support of Himmler, who was the author of this idea. In the 1970s, she wrote an interesting memoir, published under the title “Life with a War Criminal,” which contains important information about her husband’s relationship with Himmler and Canaris.
Lina Heydrich as a representative of the Imperial Department at the ceremony conferring the title of honorary citizen of Brno on Reinhard Heydrich. September 21, 1942
Lina Heydrich in 1943 with her children, Klaus Haider, Silke and Martha
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(All material taken from
On to the morning question. Which is this one:
By twelve o'clock the next day, a rumor spread throughout the Reichssicherheitshauptamt that the Obergruppenführer had locked himself with some visitor in his palm room and for three hours had not responded either to Lina von Osten's knock or to calls on the internal telephone. RSHA employees were at a loss. They were accustomed to Heydrich being led arm in arm in the corridors all day, seated on window sills or dragged under the stairs, where all matters were decided. There was even an assumption that the chief of Imperial Security had broken away from the category of workers who had “just left” and joined the influential group of “recluses” who usually get into their offices early in the morning, lock themselves in there, turn off the phone and, thus isolating themselves from everything world, compose a wide variety of reports.
Meanwhile, the work went on, papers required signatures, answers and resolutions. Lina von Osten dissatisfiedly approached Heydrich’s door and listened. At the same time, light pearl balls swayed in her large ears.
A fact without precedent,” Lina said thoughtfully.
But who, who is it sitting with him? - asked Heinrich Müller, from whom there was a mixed smell of cologne and cutlets. - Maybe someone from the Reich Chancellery?
No, I’m telling you, an ordinary visitor.
And Heydrich has been sitting with him for three hours?
A fact without precedent,” repeated Lina von Osten.
Where is the way out of this outcome? - Muller got excited. - I urgently need Heydrich's resolution. I have a detailed report on the unsuitability of the Spandau prison premises for the working conditions of the "Reichssicherheitshauptamt". I can't do without a resolution.
Lina von Osten was besieged by employees from all sides. They all held large and small papers in their hands. After waiting another hour, during which the noise outside the door did not subside, she sat down at her table and meekly said:
Okay, Cameran. Come with your papers.
She took from the closet a long wooden stand on which thirty-six stamps with thick lacquer heads were swinging, and, quickly removing the necessary stamps from their sockets, she began to stamp them on papers that were urgent.
The RSHA chief has not signed papers with his own hand for a long time. If necessary, he would take a signet from his jacket pocket and, lovingly breathing on it, stamp a lilac facsimile against the title. He really liked this labor process and even gave him the idea that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to translate some of the most commonly used resolutions into rubber.
This is how the first rubber sayings were born:
"I don't mind. Heydrich." "Shoot. Heydrich." "To the camp! Heydrich." "Heil Hitler! Heydrich."
Having tested the new device in practice, the head of the "Reichssicherheitshauptamt" came to the conclusion that it greatly simplifies his work and needs further encouragement and development. Soon a new batch of rubber was put into operation. This time the resolutions were more verbose:
"To Mauthausen for re-education. Heydrich." "The Gestapo will sort it out. Heydrich." "To the Eastern Front! Heydrich." "Here in your Gau and command. Heydrich." "Work, not hang around Lebensborns! Heydrich."
The fight that the RSHA chief waged with the Abwehr over the premises inspired him to come up with new standard texts:
"I am not subordinate to Canaris. Heydrich." "What have they gone crazy over there? Heydrich." "They shoot us for sabotage. Heydrich." "Call the guards from the Leibstandarte. Heydrich." "Prince Albrechtstrasse belongs to us, period. Heydrich." "I know Abwehr things. Heydrich." “And I won’t give Zyklon-B to the Sonderkommando either. Heydrich.”
This series was ordered in three sets. The struggle was expected to be long, and the astute chief of the political police, not without reason, feared that he would not survive with just one set.
Then a set of resolutions was ordered for the internal needs of the RSHA.
"Ask Kaltenbrunner. Heydrich." "What kind of holidays in wartime? Heydrich." "You will rest in Totenburg. Heydrich." "Complain to Himmler, or to the Fuhrer himself! Heydrich."
The creative thought of the Obergruppenführer was not limited, of course, exclusively to the administrative side of the matter. As a man of broad views, he could not ignore the issues of current politics. And he ordered a wonderful universal stamp, the text of which he worked on for several days. It was a marvelous rubber idea that Reinhard Heydrich could adapt to any occasion in life. In addition to the fact that it made it possible to immediately respond to events, it also freed him from the need to think painfully every time. The stamp was constructed so conveniently that it was enough just to fill the gap left in it to get a topical resolution:
In response to................
We, the soldiers of the Fuhrer and the employees of the RSHA, as one person, will answer:
A) improving the quality of the final solution to the Jewish question,
B) increasing the productivity of labor camp prisoners,
C) strengthening the fight against Bolshevism, Judaism, plutocracy and racial inferiority,
D) elimination of absenteeism and name days,
D) reducing overhead costs for calendars and portraits,
E) the general growth of National Socialist consciousness,
G) refusal to celebrate Christmas, Easter, Trinity, Annunciation, Baptism in favor of Yule, Labor Day, Oktoberfest and the Fuhrer's Birthday.
H) a merciless fight against bungling, hooliganism, drunkenness, impersonality, spinelessness, as well as Removism and Strasserism,
I) universal entry into the ranks of the society “Down with routine from the opera stage”,
K) a universal transition to strudel,
K) the complete transfer of office work to the runic alphabet, as well as everything that will be needed in the future.
Heydrich filled the dotted gap personally, as needed, in accordance with the requirements of the current moment.
Gradually, the Obergruppenführer became angry and began to use his universal resolution more and more often. It got to the point that he responded with it to the attacks, intrigues, attacks and outrages of his own employees.
For example: “In response to the brazen outrage of Brigadeführer Schellenberg, who demanded payment of overtime to him, we will answer...” Or: “In response to the vile machinations and vile attacks of the head of the 3rd department, Otto Ohlendorf, who demanded that Sturmbannführer Reinholz be presented to the “German Order”, we will answer..." - and so on.
And all this had to be immediately responded to with promotion, increase, strengthening, destruction, reduction, general growth, abandonment, merciless struggle, general entry, general transfer, general transfer, as well as everything that will be needed in the future.
And only after reprimanding Schellenberg and Ohlendorf in this way, the boss used a short rubber band:
“A reprimand along the party line. Heydrich,” or: “You want to go into the trenches? Heydrich.”
When first introduced to the rubber resolution, some RSHA employees were saddened. They were frightened by the abundance of points. Particularly confusing was the point about the runic alphabet and about universal entry into the society “Down with routine from the opera stage!” However, everything turned out peacefully. Adolf Eichmann, however, swung himself and organized, in addition to the named society, also a circle “Down with Tannhäuser!”, but that was all the matter was limited to.