of her birth: ‘He was a proper father to his daughter. It didn’t matter
whether an official meeting was going on in the house or whether there
was a visitor, his daughter Silke was brought to him at 6 p.m. for her
goodnight kiss.’ From now on, Reinhard returned more frequently to the
family home in Berlin-Schlachtensee.114
Although not directly involved in educating his own children due to his
heavy and ever-increasing workload, Heydrich had very clear ideas on
how children should be educated. In a meeting with Hitler Youth girls, he
stressed that education and politics were inseparable. Whereas during the
Weimar Republic, ‘the youths were pretty superficial, addicted to enter-
tainment, and completely indifferent to the challenges of the future of
Volk
and Reich’, education in the Third Reich was guided by clear ideological
principles: ‘The main tenets of our educational ideal are the uncompro-
mising preservation of German blood, the endeavour to demonstrate an
uncompromising clarity of character, to cherish truth, modesty and pride
without arrogance, to inculcate a healthy ambition that demands highest
achievements without being egoistic, and, last but not least, a constant
endeavour to achieve the highest professional standards.’ But Heydrich
clearly distinguished between the education of girls and that of boys,
the future political soldiers of the Third Reich. He insisted that girls
114
HITLER’S HANGMAN
‘despite all necessary self-restraint and self-control . . . must never become
militarized and hardened. The most attractive thing about a woman is her
femininity, which in itself makes a woman beautiful. Whatever you do,
always preserve your femininity.’115
Heydrich’s stereotypical ideas about the preservation of femininity and
softness reflected propagandistic Nazi gender images of women as
mothers, carers and creators of homes in which their warrior husbands
could find rest and regain strength. In point of fact, the reality in Nazi
Germany looked very different and the number of women in permanent
employment rose constantly, from 1.2 million in 1933 to 1.85 million in
1938. But female employment was not the main issue. Heydrich’s ideas for
educating young women, which he reiterated in his testament of 1939,
were directed against a certain mentality, encapsulated by the despised
image of the ‘New Woman’ – modern, short-haired, emancipated and
smoking – propagated by left-wing intellectuals and avant-garde women’s
journals such as the German
Vogue
of the 1920s. The New Woman, a
central feature of the perceived decadence of modernity, was to disappear
once and for all.116
Heydrich’s marital life was not the only family problem that concerned
him in the later 1930s. His sister Maria insisted on several occasions that
Reinhard should use his contacts to secure a job for his brother-in-law.
Heydrich grudgingly complied and repeatedly found employment for
Wolfgang Heindorf first in the Propaganda Ministry, and then in the
Volkswagen factory and the German Labour Front. His brother-in-law
was sacked from each of these jobs within six months. As a raging alco-
holic who tended to submit falsified expense claims, brag about his influ-
ential brother-in-law and ‘borrow’ money from subordinates, Heindorf
remained a constant source of embarrassment for Heydrich.117
By June 1939, Heydrich was at the end of his tether and ordered
Heindorf to come to his office. During the meeting, he furiously attacked
his brother-in-law for his inability to hold down a job, for his constant
accumulation of debts and for his visible alcoholism, which he held
partially responsible for the economic collapse of his family’s Conservatory
in Halle. Heindorf and his wife, Heydrich insisted, led an overly extrava-
gant lifestyle. In the future they would have to make do with less.118
Heydrich’s accusations must have infuriated Maria, for she wrote an
angry letter to her brother on 30 June, complaining about the elevated
moral tone that he was taking towards her and her husband:
Due to your high position, you have lost your ability to appreciate our
circumstances . . . to the extent that, if you are honest, you can no longer
really understand and judge the abilities and shortcomings of an average
F I G H T I N G T H E E N E M I E S O F T H E R E I C H
115
citizen any more from your lofty vantage point. To be able to do that,
and to think and feel like we do, you would have to live with us again
for a few weeks! Excuse my radical openness, but you also tell us the
truth and how you think, and I am not writing today to the SS
Gruppenführer and Chief of Police Heydrich, but to my own flesh and
blood, my brother . . . Reinhard, tell me – what do you gain by wanting
to kick me and my family down with such relish?! You don’t count us
among your relatives any more anyway, so if you don’t help us, at least
leave us in peace and do not put any further obstacles in our path . . .119
Three weeks later, on 19 July, Maria received a brief response from Kurt
Pomme, Heydrich’s police adjutant since November 1934: ‘The
Gruppenführer refuses to have any further direct contact with you and
your husband (even through letters) because he does not wish to be
insulted.’ Through Pomme, Heydrich further instructed Maria to leave
their mother out of the dispute and ordered Gestapo surveillance of
Heindorf, insisting that every incident involving his brother-in-law
should be brought to his immediate attention. As the same time, he
informed Heindorf ’s new employer that his brother-in-law required
‘strong guidance’ in fulfilling his tasks. Heydrich’s suspicions were quickly
confirmed when he received Gestapo reports that Heindorf had fallen
back into ‘old habits’, incurring debts, arriving drunk at work and boasting
about being Heydrich’s relative. Heydrich gave his brother-in-law only
one option: to volunteer for the Wehrmacht and to ‘prove his worth in
battle’ – a scenario that was becoming increasingly likely as Nazi Germany
prepared to go to war in the late 1930s.120
C H A P T ER V
✦
Rehearsals for War
The Fritsch–Blomberg Affair
In late 1937, Hitler instigated a radical reversal in the foreign
policy of the Third Reich. On 5 November, the Führer gave a speech in
the presence of the supreme commanders of the army, air force and navy,
in which he emphasized the need to procure, through violent expansion if
necessary, the
Lebensraum
(living space) Germany required to secure its
future as a great nation. The concerns and criticisms of some of his
listeners reinforced Hitler’s view that he would achieve his foreign policy
objectives only if he replaced with more willing helpers some of the senior
conservative figures who continued to occupy key positions in the govern-
ment apparatus.1
Just a few months later, a fortuitous opportunity arose to introduce such
a comprehensive change of personnel: the scandal surrounding the Reich
War Minister, Werner von Blomberg. In January 1938, in the presence of
Hitler, Göring, Heydrich and other Nazi dignitaries, Blomberg had
married a considerably younger woman who turned out to be a prostitute
known to the police. The affair led to Blomberg’s dismissal. In late January
1938, Göring, who regarded himself as Blomberg’s natural successor,
unexpectedly presented incriminating Gestapo material against his
strongest competitor for the job: the army’s commander-in-chief, Werner
von Fritsch. According to Gestapo evidence, conveniently placed at
Göring’s disposal, Fritsch was a homosexual – a major criminal offence in
Nazi Germany.2
Heydrich was hardly surprised by the allegations. Already in 1936, his
Gestapo apparatus had gathered incriminating material on Fritsch and
passed it on to Hitler. Back then, the Führer had chosen to ignore the
allegations against Fritsch, and ordered the SS to destroy the police file.
Heydrich had, however, ignored that order and kept a copy of the file for
R E H E A R S A L S F O R W A R
117
future reference. When Hitler and Göring tried to rid themselves of the
conservative generals, he remembered the file. The allegations against
Fritsch rested on thin evidence: the key witness in the case was a notorious
criminal, Otto Schmidt, whose Berlin-based gang had specialized in
blackmailing prominent homosexuals since 1929. Despite his youth,
Schmidt had already served many years in prison for theft, forgery,
corruption and blackmail, and he was currently imprisoned in a concen-
tration camp in Emsland. According to his testimony, he had witnessed
Fritsch and a Berlin rentboy, Martin Weingärtner, engage in sexual activ-
ities near Wannsee railway station. He further alleged that, when
confronted, Fritsch had offered him money for his silence.3
Heydrich resubmitted this ‘evidence’ to the Führer and on 26 January
Fritsch was ordered to the Reich Chancellery, where, in the presence of
Hitler and Göring, he was confronted with Schmidt. Although Fritsch
denied ever having met Schmidt or having engaged in homosexual prac-
tices, Hitler relieved him of his duties, along with twelve other politically
undesirable conservative generals. Another forty-four generals were trans-
ferred to politically irrelevant posts. Hitler’s cabinet, too, was reorganized
and cleansed of potential critics: the conservative Foreign Minister,
Konstantin von Neurath, was replaced by a committed Nazi, Joachim von
Ribbentrop, and the Economics Minister, Hjalmar Schacht, was succeeded
by the former State Secretary in Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, Walther
Funk. The Ministry of War was dissolved and replaced by the High
Command of the Wehrmacht (as the Reichswehr was called after March
1935) under the obedient and ideologically reliable Wilhelm Keitel.4
While Hitler readjusted German policy and assumed supreme command
of the Wehrmacht, Heydrich’s Gestapo continued its investigations into
the Fritsch case. Heydrich felt the pressure to prove Fritsch’s guilt, for it
was his apparatus that had raised the allegations in the first place and thus
created the pretext for the restructuring of the army leadership, whose
relationship with the Gestapo had now reached rock bottom. For several
weeks, Gestapo agents investigated every garrison town Fritsch had ever
lived in, while Heydrich’s ‘expert’ in the fight against homosexuality, Josef
Meisinger, travelled to Egypt, where Fritsch had spent his holidays in
1937, in search of incriminating evidence. None of these investigations
delivered any concrete leads. Despite these setbacks, Himmler and
Heydrich nonetheless assumed that Fritsch would not be rehabilitated as
long as Schmidt’s testimony stood.5
In March, Fritsch appeared before the military tribunal charged with
the investigation of the case. The hearing ended with a disastrous turn of
events for Heydrich and the Gestapo: under pressure from Fritsch’s legal
counsel, the sole prosecution witness, Otto Schmidt, admitted that he had
118
HITLER’S HANGMAN
confused General von Fritsch with a retired cavalry officer called Captain
von Frisch, who confirmed that he had been blackmailed by Schmidt.
Even worse for Heydrich, the court learned that the cavalry officer had
admitted his ‘guilt’ to the Gestapo several months before, thus leaving the
impression that Heydrich’s apparatus had persecuted General von Fritsch
despite its knowledge of the confused identity. The court concluded that
Schmidt’s testimony to the Gestapo was the result of ‘the most extreme
pressure’ placed on him by investigators. Fritsch was duly acquitted and
rehabilitated, but not reinstated as the army’s commander-in-chief.6
The affair was a political disaster for the SS and particularly embar-
rassing for Heydrich, whose Gestapo had led the investigation. Heydrich’s
deputy, Werner Best, who had personal y interrogated Fritsch, spoke of a
severe public ‘disgrace’. Others went further: Fritsch himself contemplated
chal enging Himmler to a duel, while the Chief of the General Staff,
General Ludwig Beck, cal ed for the immediate dismissal of Heydrich and
other senior investigators. Even before the conclusion of the Fritsch trial,
Heydrich began to fear and anticipate a serious response from the army
leadership, possibly even a military putsch and an army raid of the Gestapo
headquarters.7 Such plans indeed existed, and a group of senior officers
surrounding General Beck and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris contemplated
the arrest of the entire SS leadership. Canaris’s relationship with Heydrich