Horrible Crimes of Reinhard Heydrich – Brutal Murderer & NAZI Ruler of Czech People -Lidice Massacre

Reinhard Heydrich was born on 7 March 1904, in Halle an der Saale, then part of the German Empire. His father, Bruno Heydrich, was an opera singer and the director of the music conservatory in Halle, which he had founded in 1901.
Reinhard, who was baptized a Roman Catholic, was an altar boy, attending evening prayers and Mass every week with his mother as part of the Catholic minority in Halle.
A talented athlete, Reinhard became an expert swimmer and fencer. He was shy, insecure, and was frequently bullied for his high-pitched voice and rumoured Jewish ancestry. However, the family maintained cordial relations with the Jewish community and many Jewish students also attended his father’s Halle Conservatory.

During World War I and its aftermath, due to economies imposed by the war, few townspeople in Halle could afford a musical education at Bruno Heydrich’s conservatory which led to a financial crisis for his family.
As they struggled economically, Heydrich, still in his teens, was attracted to racist nationalism and watched demonstrations, strikes, and street battles in his hometown during the last year of the war and the revolutionary chaos that followed.

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The 15th of March 1939. Six months after the  annexation of the Sudetenland, Nazi Germany,   in flagrant violation of the Munich Agreement,  invades and occupies the Czech provinces of   Bohemia and Moravia. Adolf Hitler himself  arrives in Prague and on the 16th of March,  

By a proclamation from Prague Castle, establishes  the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.   Konstantin von Neurath, former Foreign Minister  of Nazi Germany, becomes its Reich Protector but   because the Führer feels that his rule is too  lenient and his “soft approach” to the Czechs  

Has promoted anti-German sentiment and encouraged  anti-German resistance via strikes and sabotage,   in September 1941 he dismisses von Neurath and  appoints a new acting Reich Protector who for   his brutality will be nicknamed “ the Butcher  of Prague”. His name is Reinhard Heydrich.

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born on  7 March 1904, in Halle an der Saale, then   part of the German Empire. His father,  Bruno Heydrich, was an opera singer and   the director of the music conservatory  in Halle, which he had founded in 1901. 

Reinhard, who was baptized a Roman Catholic,  was an altar boy, attending evening prayers   and Mass every week with his mother as  part of the Catholic minority in Halle.  A talented athlete, Reinhard became an expert  swimmer and fencer. He was shy, insecure,  

And was frequently bullied for his high-pitched  voice and rumoured Jewish ancestry. However,   the family maintained cordial relations  with the Jewish community and many Jewish   students also attended his  father’s Halle Conservatory. During World War I and its aftermath,  due to economies imposed by the war,  

Few townspeople in Halle could afford a musical  education at Bruno Heydrich’s conservatory   which led to a financial crisis for his family. As they struggled economically, Heydrich, still   in his teens, was attracted to racist nationalism  and watched demonstrations, strikes, and street  

Battles in his hometown during the last year of  the war and the revolutionary chaos that followed. In the spring of 1922, Reinhard Heydrich  earned his high school diploma and instead of   fulfilling his father’s hopes that he would make  a career in music, Reinhard, a gifted violinist,  

Enlisted in the German navy on March 30, 1922,  less than a month after his 18th birthday.   This provided Reinhard, who became a naval  cadet at Kiel, Germany’s primary naval base,   with much needed income and financial  security. Because of his bleating laugh,   naval cadets took delight in calling  Heydrich the “Goat”. In addition,  

Many of his fellow cadets falsely regarded  him as Jewish and to counteract these rumours,   Heydrich told them he had joined several  antisemitic and nationalist organizations. As a naval officer, Reinhard Heydrich specialized  in signals and communications and was known as  

Ambitious, arrogant, and having a passion for  women. Because he left the daughter of a senior   naval officer to whom he had promised marriage  for another woman, a military court of honor,   scandalized by his disrespectful behavior during  his hearing, found him to have dishonored the  

Officer corps of the Reich Navy and compelled  him to resign his commission in April 1931. In   addition, he received severance pay of 200  Reichsmarks a month for the next two years.  Heydrich’s new bride, Lina von Osten was a  fanatical Nazi party follower and antisemite,  

Whom he married in December 1931.  The marriage produced 4 children. In June and July of 1931, Heydrich joined the Nazi  Party and the SS. At that time, Heinrich Himmler,   chief of the SS, was seeking to create an internal  intelligence service for the Nazi Party. Himmler  

Agreed to interview Heydrich, but cancelled their  appointment at the last minute. Nevertheless,   Lina ignored this message, packed Heydrich’s  suitcase, and sent him to Munich. Heinrich Himmler   was immediately impressed with Heydrich  who, with his blond hair and blue eyes,  

Had a look of a perfect Aryan. Himmler brought  him into the SS in August 1931 and tasked him   with developing the Security Service, the  SD. By January 1933, the SD under Heydrich’s   leadership had become the most significant  intelligence agency within the Nazi Party.

On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was  appointed Chancellor of Germany by   President Paul von Hindenburg. Soon  after their assumption of power,   Nazi leaders began to make good on  their pledge to persecute German Jews. When Himmler was appointed commander of the  Bavarian political police detective force on  

April 1, 1933, he appointed Heydrich his deputy.  Himmler and Heydrich centralized the political   police departments of Germany into the Gestapo,  which was the secret state police. When Himmler’s   SS became independent of the SA after the purge  of SA chief of staff Ernst Röhm and the top SA  

Leadership on June 30-July 2, 1934, Heydrich  took command of the Gestapo while remaining   chief of the SD. Nine days after his appointment  as Reichsführer SS and Chief of German Police on   June 17, 1936, Himmler appointed Heydrich chief  of the newly established Security Police Main  

Office which brought together into one agency  the Gestapo and the Criminal Police detective   forces. With this appointment by Hitler,  Himmler and his de facto deputy, Heydrich,   became two of the most powerful men in  the internal administration of Germany. For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler’s  Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist,  

Militaristic character while hosting the Summer  Olympics. Softpedaling its antisemitic agenda and   plans for territorial expansion, the regime  exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign   spectators and journalists with an image of  a peaceful, tolerant Germany as anti-Jewish   violence was forbidden for the duration. Heydrich  was assigned to help organise the 1936 Summer  

Olympics in Berlin and for his part in the games’  success, he was awarded the German Olympic Games   Decoration First Class. With the conclusion  of the Games, Persecution of Jews resumed. On the night of the 9 – 10th of November 1938,  the Nazi SA, SS, Hitler Youth and German civilians  

Destroyed Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues,  hospitals and schools throughout Germany, annexed   Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in  Czechoslovakia, which had recently been occupied   by German troops. 91 Jews were murdered and the  German SS and police sent almost 30,000 Jewish  

Males to concentration camps, primarily Dachau,  in the hopes that a stay in concentration camp   would accelerate their decision to emigrate and  make leaving assets behind seem less significant.  This event came to be called the Kristallnacht  pogrom or The Night of Broken Glass because of  

The shattered glass that littered the streets  afterwards, but the euphemism does not convey   the full brutality of the event. Immediately after the Kristallnacht,   Nazi officials claimed that the Jews  themselves were to blame for the riots,   and a fine of one billion reichsmarks, about  $400 million at 1938 rates, was imposed on  

The German Jewish community. Kristallnacht was a  turning point in the history of the Third Reich,   marking the shift from antisemitic rhetoric  and legislation to the violent, aggressive   anti-Jewish measures that would culminate with  the Holocaust. One of the main organizers of the  

Kristallnacht porgrom was Reinhard Heydrich and  the orders he sent to headquarters and stations   of the State Police and to SA leaders in their  various districts, also indicated that police   officials should arrest as many Jews as local  jails could hold, preferably young, healthy men.

In 1939 Heydrich decided to convert  Salon Kitty – a high-class brothel   situated in a wealthy district in Berlin – into an  establishment with hidden cameras and microphones   throughout the house. The plan was to seduce  top German dignitaries and foreign visitors,  

As well as diplomats, with alcohol and women  so they would disclose secrets or express   their honest opinions on Nazi-related  topics and individuals. For this job,   Heydrich needed to hire some top-notch  prostitutes who would be smart, beautiful,   speak multiple languages, love men and love the  Nazis. Next to the ordinary Berlin prostitutes,  

The women who entertained members of the Nazi  elite were respected ladies of Berlin’s high   society who were given no allowances for their  “contributions” and were nearly all married to men   of good financial means. The women were trained  not only to satisfy even the discerning customers,  

But also to recognize military uniforms, and  to glean secrets from innocuous conversation.  One of the customers was Galeazzo Ciano,  son-in-law of Italian dictator Benito   Mussolini and Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy,  whose forthright opinions about the Führer were   not particularly positive. Another visitor,  SS General Sepp Dietrich, wanted all 20 of  

The special girls for an all-night orgy, but he  revealed no secrets. Additionally, propaganda   minister Joseph Goebbels had been marked as a  client who enjoyed “lesbian displays” that were   otherwise considered anti-social acts outside of  that context. Reinhard Heydrich himself also made  

A number of “inspection tours”, although all the  microphones were turned off on those occasions.  Though 25,000 conversations were recorded for  analyzing in Salon Kitty, most of them were   lost after the Second World War, which began on 1  September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

Whenever Nazi Germany’s army marched  into a country, the Einsatzgruppen which   were units of the Security Police and SD,  immediately followed to secure newly seized   territory. Their tasks included identifying and  neutralizing potential enemies of German rule,   seizing important sites and preventing  sabotage, and recruiting collaborators  

And establishing intelligence networks. When  Germany attacked Poland in September 1939,   the Einsatzgruppen, often referred to as “  mobile killing squads”, also killed civilians   perceived as enemies. Together with units of the  Waffen SS, Order Police, and local collaborators,   they shot thousands of Jews and tens of  thousands of members of the Polish elites.

With the start of Hitler’s “war of annihilation”  against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the scale   of Einsatzgruppen mass murder operations vastly  increased. The main targets were Communist Party   and Soviet state officials, the Roma, and  above all Jews of any age or gender. Under  

The cover of war and using the pretext of military  necessity, the Einsatzgruppen organized and helped   to carry out the shooting of more than half a  million people, the vast majority of them Jews,   in the first nine months of the war. At least  1.5 million and possibly more than 2 million  

Holocaust victims died in mass shootings or  gas vans in Soviet territory. The person who   created the Einsatzgruppen and was directly  responsible for them, was Reinhard Heydrich. From September 1939, Heydrich had been  chief of the Reich Security Main Office   which was a new agency created by Heinrich  Himmler, shortly after the German invasion  

Of Poland. This SS and police agency was an  ideologically radical and brutal institution   responsible for coordinating and perpetrating  many aspects of the Holocaust. Though it did   not directly control all aspects of  the mass murder of Europe’s Jews,   the organization was very important for  planning and organizing Nazi policy.

Impressed by Heydrich’s dynamic leadership in  “solving” the “Jewish Question,” Hermann Göring,   the recognized deputy of Hitler in this matter,  authorized Heydrich on July 31, 1941 to coordinate   the resources of the Reich “for a total solution  of the Jewish Question in the area of German  

Influence in Europe.” To this end, Heydrich was to  submit a draft measures proposed “to implement the   desired final solution of the Jewish Question.” 6 months later on January 20, 1942, Heydrich   invited key officials from various Reich  Ministries to a conference at a villa on the  

Wannsee, on the southwestern edge of Berlin. At  this Wannsee Conference Heydrich presented plans,   authorized by Hitler himself, to coordinate  a European-wide “Final Solution of the Jewish   Question.” He informed the participants  that Hitler had both authorized the physical   annihilation of the European Jews and had  designated the SS—specifically the Reich  

Security Main Office – under Heydrich—to  coordinate “Final Solution policy.” None   of the officials present at the meeting objected  to the “Final Solution” that Heydrich announced,   but instead discussed the implementation of  a policy decision that had already been made   at the highest level of the Nazi regime. At the time of the Wannsee Conference,  

Most participants were already aware that the  Nazi regime had engaged in mass murder of Jews   and other civilians in the German-occupied  areas of the Soviet Union and in Serbia. Some   had learned of the actions of the Einsatzgruppen  and other police and military units, which were  

Already slaughtering tens of thousands of Jews  in the German-occupied Soviet Union. Others were   aware that units of the German Army and the  SS and police were killing Jews in Serbia. On 22 July 1941, one month after the  German invasion of the Soviet Union,  

Heydrich, who had undertaken fighter pilot  training in 1939, was flying in a borrowed   Bf 109 when his aircraft was hit by Soviet  flak in action near the Dniester river.   Though Heydrich had to land the plane in  enemy territory, he avoided capture and  

Returned to Berlin after being rescued by  a patrol. It was his final combat mission. After the invasion of the Soviet Union  spurred a previously dormant communist   resistance movement in the Protectorate of  Bohemia and Moravia into acts of sabotage,  

Hitler dismissed Reich Protector Konstantin von  Neurath, who was sent on “ leave “ because of   his “soft approach” to the Czechs, and appointed  Heydrich as acting Reich Protector in September   1941. When Heydrich arrived in Prague, he told  his staff: “We will Germanize the Czech vermin.” 

Heydrich first ordered a narrow wave  of terror targeting real and perceived   leaders of opposition in the Czech  lands. In October and November 1941,   Protectorate special courts sentenced 342 people  to death and turned 1,289 “over to the Gestapo.   Heydrich also established the Theresienstadt  ghetto which existed for three and a half years,  

Between November 24, 1941 and May 9, 1945.  Theresienstadt served as a transit camp for   Jews en route to extermination camps  and it was also presented as a “model   Jewish settlement” for propaganda purposes. Of the approximately 140,000 Jews transferred   to Theresienstadt, nearly 90,000 were deported  to points further east and almost certain death.  

Roughly 33,000 died in Theresienstadt itself.  Out of fifteen thousand children who passed   through Theresienstadt, approximately  90 percent perished in killing centers. As acting Reich Protector Heydrich courted  Czech industrial workers and farmers,   whose productive capacity was  necessary to the German war effort,  

With wages and benefits packages equivalent to  those of their German counterparts. The result   of his policies was a 73% reduction in acts of  sabotage within six months. By spring of 1942,   the German authorities could boast of  a pacification of the Protectorate. Heydrich was so confident that his  pacification program had succeeded  

That he flagrantly disregarded measures for  his own security and traveled around Prague   in an open vehicle. On the 27th of May 1942,  Heydrich was in his convertible Mercedes when   the Czechoslovak paratroopers Jozef Gabčík and  Jan Kubiš succeeded in rolling a hand grenade  

Under Heydrich’s transport vehicle and wounded  the Nazi architect of the Holocaust. Soon after,   with his face pale and screaming in pain, Heydrich  was taken to the emergency room at hospital.  One of the doctors brought in by Heinrich Himmler  to treat the badly-wounded SS man was Theodor  

Morell, Adolf Hitler’s doctor who would inject  his Fuhrer up to 20 times per day with drugs,   tonics, vitamins and administer to  him substances which included heroin,   cocaine and adrenaline. Probably due to Morel’s  bad reputation among the high-ranking Nazis,   his recommendation to treat Heydrich with  sulfonamide, which was an early antibiotic,  

Was ignored. Instead, Karl Gebhardt,  Heinrich Himmler’s chief doctor,   treated Heydrich without antibiotic  therapy. Heydrich developed a fever   and wound drainage, and he was in great pain. Though not mortally wounded by the blast itself,   the grenade splinters in his leg and lower back  led to an infection that killed 38 year old  

Heydrich him on June 4, 1942. Hitler privately  blamed Heydrich for his own death and said:  “Since it is opportunity which makes not only the  thief but also the assassin, such heroic gestures   as driving in an open, unarmoured vehicle or  walking about the streets unguarded are just  

Damned stupidity, which serves the Fatherland not  one whit. That a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich   should expose himself to unnecessary danger,  I can only condemn as stupid and idiotic.” An outraged Hitler demanded the murder of up to  10,000 Czechs as revenge for the attack. Karl  

Hermann Frank, the Higher SS and Police Leader of  the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, flew from   Prague to Berlin to dissuade Hitler from taking  such drastic measures. Frank argued that this   type of reprisal might interfere with long-term  economic and political plans for the region.

Reinhard Heydrich’s funeral in Berlin was attended  by all the high-ranking Nazi officials including   his superior Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler  himself who spoke at the funeral and promised   revenge. On June 9, the day of Heydrich’s  state funeral in Berlin, Hitler ordered the  

Annihilation of Lidice, the town which had been  named in a love letter found during the first days   of the SS and police investigations into the  attack on Heydrich. Though there was no real   evidence connecting the people of the town with  the assassins, the Nazis used even the smallest  

Pretext to take revenge for Heydrich’s death and  singled out Lidice as the site of retaliation.  The following destruction of the village and  the execution of its citizens occurred on   June 9, 1942, on Hitler’s direct order. In total 340 inhabitants of Lidice were  

Slaughtered – 192 men, 60 women and 88 children.  All the men and boys were shot and buried in one   common grave and children were murdered in  gas vans at the Chełmno extermination camp. 4   pregnant women were forced to undergo abortions  in the same hospital where Heydrich died.

In recognition of her husband’s service to  the Nazi cause, Hitler gave Heydrich’s widow   the castle in Panenské Břežany, located  north of Prague. In the castle grounds,   she set up a miniature labour and concentration  camp, where around 150 prisoners from the   Theresienstadt ghetto and the Flossenbürg  concentration camp lived and worked for Lina  

Heydrich in poor conditions. Witnesses said that  she physically abused them. On 24 October 1943,   Klaus, one of Heydrich’s four children, died  as a result of a traffic accident when he was   cycling with his brother Heider in the courtyard  of the Castle Panenské Břežany. Seeing that the  

Gate to the street was open, Klaus rode out onto  the street where he was struck by a small truck   coming down the road. Klaus died from his injuries  later that afternoon and his body was buried in   the garden of the estate. Lina wanted to  have the driver and all passengers shot,  

But the investigation found the driver not guilty. The family lived in the castle until April 1945   when they, along with many other Germans left  the area to flee the advancing Soviet Red Army. The Reich Security Main Office that Heydrich  led and the “Final Solution” policy that he  

Initiated would be dreadfully effective  after his death. Between 1941 and 1945   the Germans and their Axis partners killed  six million Jews. 1.7 million of them were   killed in three killing centers – Belzec,  Sobibor and Treblinka – under the operation  

Which was named in “honor” of this most ruthless  practitioner of mass murder: Operation Reinhard. There were no teras shed for Reinhard Heydrich. thanks for watching the World History  Channel be sure to like And subscribe   and click the Bell notification icon so you don’t  

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