Reinhard Heydrich

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Heydrich was born on 7 March 1904 in Halle an der Saale to composer and opera singer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth. His father founded the Halle Conservatory of Music, Theatre, and Teaching; Heydrich was trained in piano and violin from age six and developed a passion for the violin. He joined the German Navy in 1922, becoming a naval cadet at Kiel. He was promoted to senior midshipman in 1924 and to first lieutenant in 1928. In December 1930 he met Lina von Osten, a Nazi Party follower and antisemite; they became engaged. Early in 1931 Heydrich was charged with "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" for a breach of promise, and Admiral Erich Raeder dismissed him from the navy in April. He joined the Nazi Party on 30 May or 1 June 1931 and the SS on 14 July 1931. Heinrich Himmler interviewed Heydrich on the advice of Karl von Eberstein and was so impressed that he hired him immediately to set up an SS intelligence service. Heydrich became the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise Kristallnacht, the coordinated attacks against Jews on 9–10 November 1938. He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, special task forces that murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing, including 1.3 million Jews.

Reader's Guide

Heydrich's significance lies in his central role in planning and executing the Holocaust. Beginning in September 1939, he was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He also served as Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, where he sought to eliminate opposition by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. He chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question." Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of Operation Anthropoid, ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and trained by the British Special Operations Executive. He died from sepsis on 4 June 1942. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky; both villages were razed, the men and boys aged 14 and above were shot, and most of the women and children were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

Did You Know?

• Heydrich's forenames 'Reinhard' and 'Tristan' were musical references: 'Reinhard' came from the hero of his father's opera Amen, and 'Tristan' from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
• As a youth, Heydrich was an altar boy and attended evening prayers and Mass every week with his mother.
• Heydrich was a talented athlete who became an expert swimmer and fencer.
• He was dismissed from the German Navy in April 1931 for 'conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman' after a breach of promise involving two engagements.
• Adolf Hitler described Heydrich as 'the man with the iron heart.'