Hitler's Hangman (3 page)

16 Heydrich and Göring at the latter’s birthday reception in January 1941. Göring and Heydrich

had a troubled relationship at first, but became close collaborators on Nazi anti-Semitic policies

after Kristallnacht. It was Göring who authorised Heydrich to prepare a ‘total solution of the

Jewish question’.

17 Rudolf Hess, Himmler (first and second left) and Heydrich (centre) listen attentively as

Professor Konrad Meyer explains his plans for German settlement in the East, March 1941.

Meyer’s General Plan East was designed to provide a road-map for the ethnic reordering of Eastern

and Central Europe and played a major role in Heydrich’s thinking on Germanization policies.

18 Heydrich saltues the SS flag as it is raised over Prague Castle on his arrival in September 1941.

As acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich successfully suppressed the Czech

opposition through rigorous persecution and instigated racial policies designed to Germanize the

Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia

19 Heydrich greets his former adjutant, Carl Albrecht Oberg, on his arrival in Paris where he

installs him as the new higher SS and police leader in France, May 1942. Oberg was the first

higher SS leader in France, marking a major breakthrough for the SS whose power had previously

been largely confined to Germany and the occupied East. This was Heydrich’s last journey. One

month later, he was dead.

20 An emotional Himmler speaks at Heydrich’s funeral in Berlin. It was the largest state funeral

held in Nazi Germany during the war and attended by Hitler and virtually every influential figure

in the Third Reich.

Preface

How does one write the biography of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the key

players in the most murderous genocide of history, a historial figure the

Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann famously referred to as Hitler’s ‘hangman’?

This is the question I have been asking myself from the moment I first

decided to embark on this book project. It was always clear to me that

the writing of a Nazi biography would pose a specific set of challenges,

ranging from the need to master the vast and ever-growing body of

literature on Hitler’s dictatorship to the peculiar problem of having to

penetrate so the mind of a person whose mentality and ideological

universe seem repellent and strangely distant, even though the Nazi dicta-

torship ended less than seventy years ago. But the major challenge lay

elsewhere: namely, in the fact that any kind of life-writing requires a

certain degree of empathy with the book’s subject, even if that subject is

Reinhard Heydrich.

Biographers often use the contrasting images of autopsy and portrait

to describe their work: while the autopsy offers a detached, forensic

examination of a life, the portrait relies on the biographer’s empathy

with his subject. I have chosen to combine both of these approaches in a

third way best described as ‘cold empathy’: an attempt to reconstruct

Heydrich’s life with critical distance, but without reading history back-

wards or succumbing to the danger of confusing the role of the historian

with that of a state prosecutor at a war criminal’s trial. Since historians

ought to be primarily in the business of explanation and contextualization,

not condemnation, I have tried to avoid the sensationalism and judge-

mental tone that tend to characterize earlier accounts of Heydrich’s

life. Heydrich’s actions, language and behaviour speak for themselves, and

wherever possible I have tried to give space to his own characteristic voice

and choice of expressions.

P R E FAC E

xi

Personal records, however, are scarce in Heydrich’s case. I have searched

the relevant archives in Germany, Britain, the United States, Russia, Israel

and the Czech Republic and that search has revealed many more sources on

Heydrich’s life than are often assumed to exist. Yet unlike Joseph Goebbels

or the young Heinrich Himmler, Heydrich did not keep a personal diary

and only fragments of his private correspondence have survived the Second

World War. However there exists a remarkably large body of official docu-

ments, speeches and letters, which al ow us to reconstruct his daily routines

and decision-making processes in great detail.

In identifying the widely dispersed source material on which this book

is based, I frequently had to rely on the helpful advice of archivists and

librarians. I am very grateful for the expert assistance of the staff of several

archives and libraries across the globe that have given me access to their

extensive holdings and supplied me with unpublished material. These

include the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, the German Federal

Archives and its various branches in Berlin, Koblenz, Freiburg and

Ludwigsburg, the British and Czech National Archives in Kew and

Prague; the archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Holocaust

Memorial Museum in Washington DC, as well as the German Historical

Institute in Moscow which greatly facilitated my access to the Reich

Security Main Office files in the Osobyi Archive.

This book originated in Oxford and I remain deeply indebted to many

friends and former col eagues there. Martin Conway and Nicholas

Stargardt advised on this project at various stages and provided most

welcome criticism on earlier drafts of the book. Roy Foster taught me a

great deal about life-writing, has offered bril iant comments on the manu-

script and has remained a friend and inspiration beyond my time in

Oxford. Since leaving Oxford in 2007, I have become a staff member of

University Col ege Dublin, which has given me remarkable freedom to

research and to write. Among my col eagues at UCD, Wil iam Mul igan,

Stephan Malinowski and Harry White have been most helpful critical

readers and sources of encouragement. Apart from my col eagues at UCD’s

Centre for War Studies, I must also thank John Horne of Trinity Col ege

Dublin for three years of happy research col aboration and for being a

constant inspiration in his dedication to historical scholarship.

Outside Oxford and Dublin, Nikolaus Wachsmann, Chad Bryant,

Mark Cornwall and Jochen Boehler generously agreed to read drafts of

my work, as did two anonymous readers who went far beyond the call of

duty in commenting on my original ideas. Their suggestions have greatly

enhanced the final manuscript and I am immensely grateful to them.

In Prague, I was fortunate to work with Miloš HořejŠ whose ability

to translate key sections of relevant Czech literature and sources has

xii

PREFACE

allowed me to incorporate the important work on the Nazi occupation of

Bohemia and Moravia that has been published in Czech over the past two

decades. In Berlin, I had the pleasure of working with Jan Bockelmann

whose diligence in compiling vast quantities of German sources and

literature has greatly aided the timely completion of this study. He and

Wolf Beck also did an expert job in providing the two maps in this

volume, while Seumas Spark helped with the index. Heather McCallum

commissioned this book some six years ago and she and her colleagues at

Yale University Press accompanied the production process with great

enthusiasm, competence and patience. It is difficult to imagine a better

publisher.

My final thanks, as always, go to my family. During my regular archival

trips to Berlin, my parents, Michael and Evelyn Gerwarth, provided

unfailing support, love and encouragement, for which I cannot thank

them enough. Finally, my debts to my wife, Porscha, are enormous. She

has read the manuscript from start to finish, and had to live with my

periodic absences and constant distraction over the past five years.

Dedicating this book to her is a necessarily inadequate attempt to

acknowledge the depth of my love and gratitude.

Dublin, May 2011

Introduction

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great

iconic vil ains of the twentieth century, an appal ing figure even within the

context of the Nazi elite. Countless TV documentaries, spurred on by the

fascination with evil, have offered popular takes on his intriguing life, and

there is no shortage of sensationalist accounts of his 1942 assassination and

the unprecedented wave of retaliatory Nazi violence that culminated in the

vengeful destruction of the Bohemian vil age of Lidice. Arguably the most

spectacular secret service operation of the entire Second World War, the

history of Operation Anthropoid and its violent aftermath has inspired the

popular imagination ever since 1942, providing the backdrop to Heinrich

Mann’s
Lidice
(1942), Bertolt Brecht’s
Hangmen Also Die
(1943) and

Laurent Binet’s recent Prix Goncourt-winning novel
HHhH
(2010).1

The continuing popular fascination with Heydrich is easily explained.

Although merely thirty-eight years old at the time of his violent death in

Prague in June 1942, he had accumulated three key positions in Hitler’s

rapidly expanding empire. As head of the Nazis’ vast political and

criminal police apparatus, which merged with the powerful SS intelli-