Reinhard Heydrich in 250 Facts

[RolandVT]

Many historians claim that Heydrich was Heinrich Himmler’s chief assistant and even “second in command of the SS”. In reality, neither was true. Himmler never had a “chief assistant” (he did not need one) and he was far too politically astute (he was a bureaucrat par excellence) to establish the position of his “first deputy”.

For a very simple reason – in every bureaucracy, the man in this position immediately becomes the existential threat to his boss. And Himmler would never allow that. Never.

Those who make such claims, simply do not understand what SS was and how it worked. The SS was a genuine SS-Staat, a state-within-a-state, a XX century reincarnation (neo-pagan or just secular – is still debatable) of a Teutonic order.

It was a complicated system of several key components: Waffen-SS (essentially, Himmler’s own army); the network of HSSPF (Higher SS and Police Leaders); SS-Sonderkommandos (Special Task Units) and twelve offices:

· Personal Staff of Reichsführer-SS

· SS-Hauptamt (Main Administrative Office; SS-HA)

· SS-Führungshauptamt (SS Main Operational Office; SS-FHA)

· Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office; RSHA)

· Ordnungspolizei Hauptamt (Order Police Main Office; Orpo)

· Economic and Administration Main Office (SS-WVHA)

· Hauptamt SS-Gericht (Main Office of SS Legal Matters – Internal SS Court)

· SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (SS Office of Race and Settlement; RuSHA)

· SS-Personalhauptamt (SS Personnel Main Office)

· Hauptamt Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VOMI)

· SS-Schulungsamt (SS Education Office)

· Main Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood; RKFDV)

There were also the SS Cavalry Corps, SS Medical Corps, SS-Frauenkorps, SS-Mannschaften (Auxiliary-SS) … and, yes, the (in)famous Ahnenerbe. Heydrich was in charge of RSHA only – and had zero control of any other offices (of HSSPF). Consequently, he was not “second in command” – just one of the twelve.

[RolandVT]

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born on March 7, 1904 at 10:30 AM (yes, his time of birth is important) in the city of Halle an der Saale (Halle on the River Saale) – now in the German state (land) of Saxony-Anhalt.

Halle has been known by many names throughout its history. From the 15th to the 17th century, it was called Hall in Sachsen (Hall in Saxony). From then until the beginning of the 20th century, the name Halle an der Saale was used (it still remains a more formal name for the city).

Halle’s early history is connected with the harvesting of salt. The name of the river Saale contains the Germanic root for salt, and salt-harvesting has taken place in Halle since at least the Bronze Age. In 1815 Halle became part of the Prussian Province of Saxony.

His names reflected the musical background and interests of his family: his father, Bruno Heydrich, was a composer and opera singer of some distinction who had earned nationwide recognition as the founding director of the Halle Conservatory, where his wife, Elisabeth, worked as a piano instructor.

In naming their first-born son, they took inspiration from the world of music that surrounded them: ‘Reinhard’ was the name of the tragic hero of Bruno’s first opera, Amen, which had premiered in 1895.

‘Tristan’ paid tribute to Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde; and ‘Eugen’ was the name of his late maternal grandfather, Professor Eugen Krantz, the director of one of Germany’s most acclaimed musical academies, the Royal Dresden Conservatory.

The Heydrich family was… no, they were not outcasts, of course – just religiously different. They were Roman Catholics (Elisabeth converted her husband from Protestantism) in a thoroughly Protestant environment.

Halle became a center for Pietism (Pietistic Lutheranism) – a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christian life.

All this made a profound influence on young Reinhard: he felt… different from a very young age and the Pietist influence made a significant contribution to his subsequent perfectionism – both at work and at home.

[RolandVT]

As the eldest son in the Heydrich family, Reinhard was supposed to one day inherit the Halle Conservatory (founded by his father in 1901), a professional destiny that required rigorous musical training from an early age.

Even before starting primary school in 1910, Richard had learned musical notation; he could play Czerny’s piano études perfectly and had begun violin lessons (he will eventually become a world-class violinist).

His father encouraged his musical interests and in 1910, at the age of only six, Bruno and his son attended an exceptional musical highlight in the Halle City Theatre: a staging of the Wagnerian opera Ring of the Nibelung.

The passion for romantic music in general, and for the mythical Wagnerian world in particular, would remain with Reinhard Heydrich for the rest of his life – a passion he shared with the future Führer of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.

This profound influence of Wagner on Heydrich’s life is, alas, overlooked by just about all biographers of the latter. It is a serious mistake, because this influence significantly (to put it mildly) shaped the life of Reinhard Heydrich.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was much more than just an opera composer: he created a whole “parallel world”; a whole “parallel universe”. It was under Wagner’s influence that Adolf Hitler made a commitment to building a radically different, mystical (not occult – just mystical) civilization – even romantic… in a way.

Which he did – the Third Reich was a highly unique, deeply mystical and, yes, romantic (demonically romantic) civilization. Passion for Wagnerian world made Heydrich deeply attracted to Adolf Hitler – a kindred soul – and vice versa.

This attraction was instrumental in Heydrich’s commitment to the Third Reich (the New Civilization with “German culture triumphant”) and to Adolf Hitler personally. And to Himmler’s SS – even more mystical (bordering on occult) and, yes, very romantic “civilization within civilization”: SS-Staat.

Unfortunately, this “Wagnerian passion” profoundly contributed to Heydrich’s murderous anti-Semitism (Wagner was a very public fervent anti-Semite, although to which extent it was reflected in his operas, is still hotly debated).

Wagner in his final years developed an interest in the philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, notably the belief that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between “superior” and “inferior” races… which very possibly might have contributed to Heydrich becoming a diehard racist.

[RolandVT]

For two generations, there was a tradition of religious conversion in Heydrich family: wives converted their husbands to their faith. Not surprisingly, Reinhard Heydrich continued this tradition… but he converted to a very different faith.

On his marriage to the Catholic Maria Antonie Mautsch, Reinhard’s maternal grandfather Eugen Krantz had converted from Protestantism. In the next generation, the Protestant Bruno Heydrich gave in to his wife’s demands and converted to Catholicism. This was not an easy decision in an overwhelmingly Protestant city of Halle.

Unlike his father and grandfather, Reinhard Heydrich did not convert to Catholicism: he was born, baptized and raised Roman Catholic. He converted from Catholicism – to Gottgläubig faith.

True, this conversion (it happened in early 1936) was influenced by Heydrich’s boss Heinrich Himmler (the latter began developing the notion of a Germanic religion and wanted – unsuccessfully – members of the SS to leave the church).

But it mostly happened under the influence of Heydrich’s wife Lina who converted the year before. In Nazi Germany, gottgläubig (literally ’believing in God’) was a Nazi religious term for a form of non-denominationalism and deism practiced by those German citizens who had officially left Christian churches but professed faith in some higher power or divine creator.

Such people were called Gottgläubige (“believers in God”), and the term for the movement was Gottgläubigkeit (“belief in God”); the term denotes someone who still believes in a God, but is not affiliated with any religious institution.

The 1943 Philosophical Dictionary defined gottgläubig as: “official designation for those who profess a kind of piety and morality appropriate to the German species, without being bound to a church denomination, whilst however also rejecting irreligion and godlessness (SS did not accept atheists into their ranks).

The Gottgläubigkeit was a form of deism, and was “predominantly based on creationist and deistic views”. In the 1939 census, 3.5% of the German population identified as gottgläubig. Interestingly, Adolf Hitler never officially left Catholic Church; judging by the fact that he paid the “church tax” to the Roman Catholic Church, he remained Catholic until his death.

Actually, for Reinhard Heydrich his conversion was more than a private matter – came to consider the church’s political power and influence (of both Catholic and Protestant churches) to be a danger to the German state (which was not true).

[RolandVT]

The Heydrich family’s daily life ran according to precisely determined and consistently maintained rules. Elisabeth Heydrich took both religious education and active participation in church life extremely seriously.

Hence, religion remained an important aspect of Heydrich’s early life – to put it mildly. Elisabeth, a pious Catholic, led the children in their evening prayers and on Sundays the whole family attended Mass. Reinhard (no surprise here) served as an altar boy in the local Catholic church.

Two irrefutable facts. First, Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich became in many aspects the worst serial killer (serial mass murderers, to be more precise). Second, many serial killers were born and raised by strict, domineering mothers in staunchly religious families.

H.H. Holmes had devoutly and strict religious parents, his mother would often lock her children in the attic without food as a means of punishment for even the smallest of “sins”. John Wayne Gacy was raised into a devout Catholic family, went to private Christian school, and aged 18, even thought about becoming a priest.

Jeffrey Dahmer – born into a devout family of the Stone-Campbell denomination known as the “Churches of Christ”, he was an active churchgoer until around the age of 5. Renounced his religion (possibly owing to his sexuality) but was re-baptized during his incarceration.

Many of the mission-oriented serial killers – Reinhard Heydrich was a textbook one – claimed that they were doing God’s job. Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) claimed he was “on a mission from God” to rid the streets of prostitutes.

Joseph Franklin murdered people “on behalf of God”. Samuel Little said God put him on the earth to kill people (up to 90 of them). Arthur Shawcross claimed God wanted him to kill prostitutes because they spread AIDS.

Hence, there is an existential question: to what (if any) extent did Reinhard Heydrich piously Catholic childhood contributed to him becoming a serial mass murderer of Jews? Did he believe that he was doing God’s job (serving God) by killing Jews – men, women, children and elderly?

We will never know for sure, but, yes, it is possible. Likely even (I will elaborate on this possibility in one or more next chapters).

[RolandVT]

As a child of slender and relatively small stature with a weak constitution and a susceptibility to illness, Reinhard was encouraged by his parents to take up every kind of physical exercise from an early age: swimming, running, football, sailing, horse-riding and fencing. Heydrich’s life-long passion for sport began there.

Ultimately, he became an accomplished athlete in pentathlon – he competed in it in the 1920s as a member of the Reichsmarine team and was considered a very good all-around athlete. But he particularly excelled in fencing… not to qualify for the 1936 Olympics (at 32, he was probably already too old for that) but close.

He promoted the sport within the Nazi hierarchy though and actively recruited accomplished fencers into the SS, allowing the SS fencing club to win the German championship in 1940 for all three weapons. Heydrich himself was at least good enough to serve as a last-minute substitute for the German team in an international meet against Hungary in 1941.

Heydrich’s physical fitness actually made him stand apart from other elites of the Third Reich who were far from the ideal physical specimens of the Aryan ideal. As head of RSHA, Heydrich introduced physical fitness requirements and encouraged (to put it mildly) his subordinates to participate in sports.

RSHA main office had its own exercise facilities and male members had to attend classes at least twice a week. Female employees had to attend additional fitness classes. Sport was mandatory for RSHA members from 1941 onwards – they had to choose from fencing, handball, swimming, boxing, and football.

In late 1930’s, Heydrich got involved in entirely different sport: flying (at the time, it required a lot of physical stamina). He not only qualified as a civilian pilot, but after completing Luftwaffe flight school, became a fighter pilot. Ultimately, he flew over 100 combat missions.

However, it was about much more than just sports. The by-product of his athletic achievements were the key ingredients of success in any endeavor: burning desire, unwavering determination, iron discipline, dare to do seemingly impossible and unshakable faith in himself and his ultimate success.

And, of course, a firm commitment to be the best he can be; to excel in any endeavor; to live his life to the fullest… which he did. It did not make him a “Model Nazi” (as it had nothing to do with any ideology) … just a well-balanced individual with a perfect synergy between mental and physical activities and accomplishments.

[RolandVT]

Reinhard Heydrich was very lucky – he was one of the privileged 10% boys (girls were a different matter entirely) who went to a high school after attending a primary one.

In Germany at the time, secondary schooling at the time was reserved for a small, privileged and overwhelmingly male elite. In the early 1900s, some 90 per cent of German students never went beyond primary school.

Of the fortunate 10 per cent attending all-boys secondary schools, about 66% continued their education in the humanities-oriented Gymnasien which ended with the Abitur, the school-leaving certificate qualifying them to attend university. The remaining 34% cent attended the Oberrealschule, a slightly less academic institution whose leaving certificate did not qualify its students for university.

However, when the time came for Reinhard Heydrich to go to secondary school, his parents (something tells me that it was his mother) decided to send him to the local Reformgymnasium, a relatively new (and thus modern) institution that embodied the scientific optimism of the dynamic, future-oriented German Empire.

The Reformgymnasium was designed to combine the time-tested classical Gymnasium – with its emphasis on a comprehensive education in the humanities and training in Latin and ancient Greek – with education in “hard sciences” required to excel in the science- and technology-oriented early twentieth century.

The Reformgymnasium was modern in yet another sense. While the vast majority of German schools at the time were denominational, the Reformgymnasium was not affiliated to any religious organization (or faith).

At the time, 95% of Protestant and 91% of Catholic children were educated in schools of their own confession. Reinhard Heydrich’s educational experience was therefore exceptionally modern and forward-looking in more than one sense.

I would say, exceptionally secular – and it had a far more profound influence on Reinhard Heydrich’s subsequent life. Years spent in the Reformgymnasium moved him sufficiently away from the Holy Roman Catholic Church for him to subsequently embrace National-Socialism (a quasi-religion of sorts) and then to leave Catholic Church altogether, converting to Gottgläubig faith.

In addition to the main scientific subjects taught at German high schools – chemistry, physics and mathematics – great emphasis was placed on German literature and culture as well as on modern languages.

French was taught from the first year onwards, Latin from the lower-fourth, and English was introduced in the lower-fifth. To that Reinhard Heydrich later allegedly added Russian.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, given his cultured family background, Reinhard Heydrich’s performance at school was well above average. His results in science subjects were particularly outstanding. So, not surprisingly, his career ambition as a teenager was to become a chemist.

And he became one (of sorts) – it was Reinhard Heydrich who in August of 1941 came up with the idea of “Holocaust by Gas” – murdering millions of Jews under German control by poison gas (CO and hydrogen cyanide) in mobile and stationary gas chambers.

However, not everything was rosy for him during his years in Reformgymnasium. Young Reinhard was shy, insecure, and was frequently bullied for his high-pitched voice and rumoured Jewish ancestry.

His athletic achievements took care of bullying (no one would want to mess with an accomplished fencer) … unfortunately, the rumors of his Jewish ancestry were a much bigger problem.

As many rumors, these had nothing to do with reality. Reinhard’s paternal grandmother, Ernestine Heydrich, after the sudden death of her husband Carl (he was just 37), married a Protestant locksmith, Gustav Robert Süss, who was thirteen years her junior and just nine years older than her eldest son Bruno.

In subsequent years, it was Süss’s Jewish-sounding family name that would fuel speculation about Heydrich’s non-Aryan ancestry, even though Süss himself was neither Bruno’s father nor of Jewish descent.

Total BS (pardon my French) … but, alas, perceptions are the only reality. Worse, these rumors increased after Reinhard’s maternal uncle Hans Krantz married a Hungarian Jewess named Iza Jarmy. Surprisingly, even several otherwise distinguished historians bought into this nonsense.

As it often happens (and given the generally anti-Semitic environment where he grew up), Reinhard Heydrich developed highly negative attitude towards everything and anything Jewish.

This negativity by itself did not make Reinhard Heydrich into a serial mass murderer of Jews (it took far more than that) but it did make a not insignificant contribution to this deadly transformation.

[RolandVT]

However, Reinhard Heydrich’s subsequent life was defined not by what he learned in the classroom, but by his extracurricular activities. More specifically, by what he read during his leisure time.

Simultaneously, he began to develop an insatiable appetite for crime fiction and spy novels, many of them serialized in newspapers. Detective novels from Britain and the United States – from Sherlock Holmes to Nat Pinkerton – were a huge success in Germany and they captured the imagination of the young Heydrich.

Throughout the war and the 1920s, he maintained his keen interest in the genre and put his expertise to good use when he first met Himmler in 1931. Neither of the two men had any idea of how to set up a domestic intelligence service, but Heydrich used the knowledge obtained from detective and spy novels to impress Himmler to the extent that he offered him the job of creating an SS intelligence agency: the future SD.

Which proves beyond the reasonable doubt that Reinhard Heydrich was, indeed, a genius – even at an early age (in high school!) he managed to mine knowledge from an unlikely source (fiction books!) and then use this knowledge not only to create from scratch one of the best intelligence services (SD).

But also, to successfully manage both the political police (Gestapo) that he ran directly from 1934 to 1939 and criminal police (Kripo) amalgamated first into SiPo (Security Police) and then into RSHA.

[RolandVT]

Berlin, 29 June 1941

Recipients:

Commander of Einsatzgruppe A: SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Franz Walter Stahlecker

Commander of Einsatzgruppe B: SS-Brigadeführer Arthur Nebe

Commander of Einsatzgruppe C: SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Otto Rasch

Commander of Einsatzgruppe D: SS-Standartenführer Prof. Otto Ohlendorf

With reference to my oral instructions on 17 June in Berlin, I wish to call your attention once more to the following:

1) The attempts by local anti-Communist or anti-Jewish circles to engage in cleansing activities within the territories now to be occupied should not be hindered in any way.

On the contrary, they must be implemented, and intensified, when necessary, though without leaving a trace, and directed onto the right path. But this should be done in such a manner that the local ‘self-defence circles’ cannot later refer to orders or any political assurances given.

Since for obvious reasons such a course of action is possible within the initial period of military occupation, the Einsatzgruppen and special task forces of the Security Police [SP] and Security Service [SD] must, in cooperating with the military units, strive to move in as quickly as possible (at least into the newly occupied territories) with an advance party so that they can carry out what is required.

Only those members of the SP and SD are to be selected as leaders who have the necessary degree of political tact and sensitivity.

Initially the formation of [local] self-defense units in constant operation with a central leadership should be avoided; in their stead, where expedient, local popular pogroms should be initiated, as described above.

2) In this connection, I call your attention once more to the obligation to report.

Already now I note there is an absence of such regularly submitted reports.

All reports should be sent to me personally. For that purpose, I have created a central intelligence transmission office directly subordinate to me; its duties inter alia also include the distribution of the reports to the RSHA offices concerned.

I personally reserve the right to forward a summary report to the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police. Only in the case of an express individual order has the Reichsführer-SS authorized a report by the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and Security Service to be submitted directly to him.

Head of the Security Police and Security Service

(signed) Heydrich.