Reinhard Heydrich was the second in command of the Nazi SS, or Schutzstaffel, the notorious bodyguards, policemen and soldiers of the Nazi Party. Handpicked by SS chief Heinrich Himmler after only one interview, Heydrich eventually orchestrated Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of all Jews in Europe.
Born in 1904, Heydrich grew up in a wealthy musical family, his father was an opera singer and his mother was a pianist. Heydrich himself was an experienced violinist. He was regularly bullied and beaten at school and suffered abuse from his mother in the form of whipping. As a result of these childhood traumas, as he grew older, he pushed himself to excel in both science and sports, eventually becoming a fencing champion.
After Heydrich was forced to resign from the navy in 1931 due to a sex scandal with an unmarried woman, he joined the Nazi Party and became a member of the newly formed SS. His self-confidence and Aryan features gave SS leader Chiem Leh was so impressed that Himmler then appointed him to propose to the Second Commander. He created the new SS intelligence department, which compiled files on all possible opponents of Hitler and kept detailed records of every aspect of their lives.
By 1933, the Nazis took complete control of Germany. Heydrich and Himmler ordered mass arrests of all opponents of Hitler, as well as communists, trade unionists, and Catholic politicians. Because too many people were arrested, the prisons were full. An abandoned munitions factory in Dachau was subsequently converted into a concentration camp for political prisoners.
In June 1934, during what became known as the “Night of the Long Knives,” Hitler ordered a mass purge of the SA. The SA was a paramilitary group within the NSDAP that helped bring Hitler to power. Many SA members and their families were executed overnight. After this, SA lost most of its influence and control over SS.
In 1938, things took a turn for the worse. There were raids and mass arrests throughout the Reich, and Heydrich ordered 25,000 Jews to be sent to concentration camps. With World War II looming and Germany invading Poland, Hitler wanted to destroy it as a state, and Heydrich rounded up Polish politicians, nationalists, elites, and clergy and executed them all. Polish Jews who were not directly killed were then herded into ghettos and left without food until many died of disease and starvation.
The SS then turned to the mass murder of Jews. Heydrich developed a cost- and time-efficient system for carrying out “the final solution to the Jewish problem.”
From 1941 to 1945, a wagon schedule was drawn up, gas chambers were constructed, and nearly 6 million Jews, Gypsies, priests, artists and homosexuals were executed.
Reinhard Heydrich was killed by Czech rebels in 1942. Without a doubt, he was – and is – one of the most evil men who ever lived. He is not only extremely power-hungry, but also extremely deserted.
