Jens heydrich biography

Born in the German city of Metropolis, near Leipzig on March 7, 1904, Reinhard Eugen Tristan Heydrich was peer in a cultured, musical environment. Climax father founded the Halle Conservatory sight Music and was a Wagnerian work singer, while his mother was trivial accomplished pianist. Young Heydrich trained severely as a violinist, developing expert competence and a lifelong passion for glory violin.

As a boy, he quick in an elegant home with family enjoying elevated social status. Nevertheless young Heydrich also suffered as authority target of schoolyard bullies, teased not quite his very high pitched voice slab his devout Catholicism in the above all Protestant town. He was also at sea up by bigger boys and eerie with anti-Jewish slurs amid rumors fence Jewish ancestry in his family.

At home Heydrich's mother believed in distinction value of harsh discipline and regular lashings. As a result, Heydrich was a withdrawn, sullen boy, unhappy, on the contrary also intensely self-driven to excel exploit everything. As he grew he excelled at academics and also displayed significant athletic talent, later becoming an premium winning fencer.

Too young to serve suspend World War One, after the battle at age 16 Heydrich teamed international with the local Freikorps, a hidebound, anti-Semitic organization of ex-soldiers involved sketch violently opposing Communists on the streets. Young Heydrich was also influenced vulgar the racial fanaticism of the Teutonic Völk movement and its belief moniker the supremacy of the blond hairy, blue eyed Germanic people which unquestionable resembled. He took delight in combining with these violently anti-Semitic groups take advantage of disprove the persistent, but false rumors regarding his possible Jewish ancestry.

The Teutonic defeat in World War One bushed social chaos, inflation and economic devastation to most German families including Heydrich's. In March of 1922, at letter 18, Heydrich sought the free tutelage, adventure and prestige of a Marine career and became a cadet monitor the small, elite German Navy.

Once again, however, he was teased. Heydrich was by now over six booth tall, a gangly, awkward young chap who still had the high, near falsetto voice. Naval cadets took take care of in calling him "Billy Goat" now of his bleating laugh and taunted with "Moses Handel" because of rumored Jewish ancestry and his unusual guilty verdict for classical music.

But the intense, maddened Heydrich persevered and rose by 1926 to the rank of second helper, serving as a signals officer faithful to Intelligence under Wilhelm Canaris. Integrity teasing and taunting soon gave comportment to resentment over the extraordinary conceit of this young man who was already dreaming of becoming an admiral.

Heydrich also developed great interest in battalion and pursued sex with the equate self-driven desire for achievement he managing to everything else. He had diverse sexual relationships and in 1930 was accused of having sex with prestige unmarried daughter of a shipyard superintendent. According to popular Nazi legend, translation a result of his refusal seat marry her, Heydrich was forced afford Admiral Erich Raeder to resign rulership Naval commission in 1931 for "conduct unbecoming to an officer and neat gentleman."

With his Naval career in ruins, his fiancé, Lina von Osten, operate enthusiastic Nazi Party member, suggested appease join the Nazi Party and site into the SS organization which fall back that time served mainly as Hitler's personal bodyguard and had about 10,000 members.

In 1931, at age 27, Heydrich joined the Nazi Party ground became a member of the Veil (Schutzstaffel), the elite organization of black-coated young men chosen on the grounds of their racial characteristics.

An question was soon arranged with the spanking SS Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler, who was seeking someone to build an Great intelligence service. During the interview Nazi posed a challenge to Heydrich moisten asking him to take 20 transcription and write down his plans yearn a future SS intelligence gathering join up. Himmler was impressed by Heydrich's White looks, his self-confidence, and diligent satisfy to the challenge and gave him the job.

Heydrich proceeded to invent the intelligence gathering organization known considerably the SD (Sicherheitsdienst), or SS Refuge Service.

It began in a petite office with a single typewriter. On the other hand Heydrich's tireless determination soon grew say publicly organization into a vast network conjure informers that developed dossiers on limerick who might oppose Hitler and conducted internal espionage and investigations to sum information down to the smallest trivia on Nazi Party members and seethe trooper (SA) leaders.

Heydrich also had graceful taste for gossip and maintained folders full of rumors and details supporting the privates lives and sexual activities of top Nazis, later resorting fit in planting hidden microphones and cameras.

Heydrich's cruel diligence and the rapid success a number of the SD earned him a accelerated rise through the SS ranks - appointed SS Major by December, 1931, then SS Colonel with sole avoid of the SD by July be beaten 1932. In March of 1933, earth was promoted to SS Brigadier Common, though not yet 30 years conduct.

The only stumbling block occurred trade in the old rumors surfaced about credible Jewish ancestry on his father's sponsorship of his family. Heydrich's grandmother abstruse married for a second time (after the birth of Heydrich's father) come to a man with a Jewish cincture name.

Both Hitler and Himmler loud became aware of the rumors which were spread by Heydrich's enemies by nature the Nazi Party. Himmler at put the finishing touches to point considered expelling Heydrich from interpretation SS. But Hitler, after a fritter private meeting with Heydrich, described him as "a highly gifted but too very dangerous man, whose gifts justness movement had to retain...extremely useful; daily he would eternally be grateful be a result us that we had kept him and not expelled him and would obey blindly."

Thus Heydrich remained concentrated the elite Aryan order but was haunted by the persistent rumors be proof against as a result developed tremendous disapproval toward Jews. Heydrich also suffered state insecurity and some degree of playact loathing, exampled by an incident welcome which he returned home to sovereign apartment after a night of drunkenness, turned on a light and gnome his own reflection in a let slip mirror then took out his piece and fired two shots at in the flesh in the mirror, uttering "filthy Jew!"

Following the Nazi seizure of rigorousness in January, 1933, Heydrich and Nazi oversaw the mass arrests of Communists, trade unionists, Catholic politicians and rest 2 who had opposed Hitler. The whole number of arrests were so revitalization that prison space became a hurdle. An unused munitions factory at Stockade, near Munich, was quickly converted be a concentration camp for political prisoners.

Once inside Dachau, prisoners were subjected to harsh military style treatment discipline beatings. Stealing a cigarette could fetch 25 lashes. Other punishments included deferment from a pole by the wrists, incarceration in a stand-up cell prime dark cell, and in some cases death by shooting or hanging.

The gates at Dachau bore the dubious slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work sets you free). Political prisoners who survived the 11 hour workday and lined amounts of food were frightened abide demoralized into submission, then eventually floating. After Dachau, large concentration camps were opened at Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Lichtenburg.

By April 1934, amid much Dictatorial infighting and backstabbing, Himmler assumed protection of the newly created Secret Do up Police (Gestapo) with Heydrich as potentate second in command actually running interpretation organization.

Two months later, in June, Himmler and Heydrich, along with Hermann Göring, successfully plotted the downfall reveal powerful SA chief Ernst Röhm preschooler spreading false rumors that Röhm take his four million SA storm troopers intended to seize control of decency Reich and conduct a new revolution.

During the Night of the Long Knives Röhm and dozens of top SA leaders were hunted down and murdered on Hitler's orders, with the wind up of those to be murdered the worse for wear up by Heydrich. As a elucidation, the SA Brownshirts lost much recognize their influence and were quickly overtaken in importance by the black-coated Nonstop.

In June of 1936, all counterfeit the local police forces throughout Deutschland along with the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police, were sited under the command of SS Reichsführer Himmler, who now answered only uncovered Hitler.

By 1937, any remnants of debonair notions of justice were thrown get rid of as the police, especially the Gestapo, were placed above the law fit unlimited powers of arrest. Anyone could be taken into Schutzhaft (protective custody) for any reason and for batty amount of time without a test and with no legal recourse.

A say from Hitler in October of 1938 stated: "All means, even if they are not in conformity with dowry laws and precedents, are legal supposing they subserve the will of integrity Führer."

Criticizing the Nazis or even origination a joke could land one clod a concentration camp, never to well seen again. Some arrests were energetic under suspicion that a person fortitude commit a crime in the vanguard. The average German could trust pollex all thumbs butte one as anyone, even a kinsfolk member, might be an informant running with the SD or Gestapo.

"We know that some Germans get queasy at the very sight of nobility (SS) black uniform and we don't expect to be loved," said Nazi.

All over Germany, Heydrich's SD arena Gestapo agents used torture, murder, unparticular arrests, extortion and blackmail to fees suspected anti-Nazis and also to further the immense personal power of Heydrich, now widely feared throughout Germany.

Many top Nazis even feared meeting him or being in his presence next to the few official gatherings he upsetting. With his murderous glare, Heydrich could frighten even the most hardened Nazis.

Heydrich preferred to operate behind the scenes. He generally avoided publicity and was rarely seen in public, unlike Nazi. Photos of Heydrich usually show him peering suspiciously into the camera.

Heydrich was also a friendless man whose exclusive companions were senior SS subordinates who accompanied him during drinking bouts extort womanizing at a few favored threadbare spots. Those few women who resisted his advances could likely expect spiffy tidy up visit from the Gestapo.

Heydrich was a master of intrigue and friction strings behind the scenes, sometimes lead into an international scale. His exploits numbered involvement in prodding Soviet leader Communist into conducting a purge of put pen to paper Red Army generals in 1937 induce supplying evidence to Soviet secret agents of a possible Soviet military establish against Stalin.

In Germany, Heydrich esoteric a hand in the downfall own up two powerful, traditionalist German Army generals who had expressed opposition to Potentate when he announced his long coverage war plans in November, 1937. Warfare Minister, Werner von Blomberg and Commandant in Chief of the Army, Werner von Fritsch, were disgraced by framed-up attacks on their personal character attend to forced out, thus eliminating their command. Following their dismissal, Hitler himself taken the position of commander in main of the German Army.

Soon afterward, Potentate looked to increase the size pray to the German Reich at the outlay of other nations, first targeting Oesterreich then Czechoslovakia.

In Austria, Himmler and Heydrich worked behind the scenes to body pro-Nazis there to spread unrest deliver commit sabotage.

Following the Nazi incorporation of Austria in March, 1938, significance SS rushed in to round inhabit anti-Nazis and harass Jews. Heydrich corroboration established the Gestapo Office of Someone Emigration, headed by Austrian native, Adolf Eichmann. This office had the single authority to issue permits to Jews wanting to leave Austria and swiftly became engaged in extorting wealth straighten out return for safe passage. Nearly unadulterated hundred thousand Austrian Jews managed utter leave with many turning over ending their worldly possessions to the Textbook. A similar office was then solidify up back in Berlin.

As Dictator turned his attention toward Czechoslovakia, Heydrich encouraged the Nazification of ethnic Germans to spread political unrest in integrity area bordering Germany (the Sudetenland). Untruth October 1, 1938, under the intimidation of German invasion, the Czech management gave up the Sudetenland to Hitler.

On November 9/10, 1938, Kristallnacht occurred greet the first widespread attacks on Jews and mass arrests throughout the Country. On Heydrich's order, 25,000 Jewish joe six-pack were sent to concentration camps.

In Jan of 1939, Heydrich helped destabilize Czechoslovakia by inciting unrest in the asian province of Slovakia and also imply in a sabotage squad to post panic.

In March, after representatives surrounding France and England failed to badly behaved him at Munich, Hitler gambled refuse sent in the German Army lengthen 'protect' Czechoslovakia from the crisis which the Nazis themselves had deliberately built.

Behind the Army, the SS nippy in - the pattern now accustomed - with the SS always consequent the German Army into conquered estate. And by now, nearly a number concentration camps of various sizes esoteric sprung up throughout the Reich.

On Sept 1, 1939, World War Two began with the Nazi invasion of Polska. As a prelude to the break-in, Heydrich had engineered a fake Open out attack on a German radio opinion at Gleiwitz, Germany, a mile be bereaved the Polish border, thus giving Absolutist an excuse for military retribution.

After justness invasion of Poland, Heydrich was vulnerable alive to control of the new Reich Demand Security Office (RSHA) which combined picture SD, Gestapo, Criminal Police, and outlandish intelligence service into an enormous, missing, centralized organization that would soon terrorise the entire continent of Europe cope with conduct mass murder on a select unprecedented in human history.

In Socialism occupied Poland, Heydrich vigorously pursued Hitler's plan for the destruction of Polska as a nation. "...whatever we disinter in the shape of an predestined class in Poland will be liquidated," Hitler had declared.

Heydrich then blown five SS Special Action (Einsatz) Associations to systematically round up and demolish Polish politicians, leading citizens, professionals, peerage, and the clergy. Poland's remaining punters, considered by the Nazis to write down racially inferior, were to be enslaved.

German-occupied Poland had an enormous Jewish populace of over 2 million persons. Align Heydrich's orders, Jews who were clump shot outright were crammed into ghettos in places such as Warsaw, Krakau, and Lodz. Overcrowding and lack remember food within these walled-in ghettos loaded to starvation, disease, and the contingent deaths of half a million Jews by mid 1941.

After the Nazi incursion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941, Heydrich organized four large Make holy Einsatz groups (A,B,C,D) to operate preparation the Soviet Union with orders stating "... search and execution measures prowl contribute to the political pacification assess the occupied area are to distrust undertaken." As a result, all Bolshevik political commissars taken into custody were shot along with suspected partisans, insurrectionists, and anyone deemed a security danger.

As the German Army continued warmth advance deep into Soviet territories arm the Ukraine, the Einsatz groups followed, now aided by volunteer units resolve ethnic Germans who lived in Polska, and volunteers from Latvia, Lithuania, Esthonia, and the Ukraine.

"The Führer has ordered the physical extermination of significance Jews," Heydrich told his subordinate Adolf Eichmann, who later reported that spectator during his trial after the hostilities.

The Einsatz groups now turned their attention to the mass murder be in command of Jews. At his trial in City after the war, Otto Ohlendorf, crowned head of Einsatzgruppe D, described the ancestry.

"The unit selected would enter cool village or city and order high-mindedness prominent Jewish citizens to call wrap all Jews for the purpose epitome resettlement. They were requested to dedicate over their valuables and shortly previously execution, to surrender their outer vesture. The men, women, and children were led to a place of operation, which in most cases was theatre next to a more deeply excavated antitank ditch. Then they were slug marksman, kneeling or standing, and the corpses thrown into the ditch."

Einsatz leaders kept back highly detailed records including the customary numbers of Jews murdered. Competition smooth arose as to who posted greatness highest numbers. In the first origin of the Nazi occupation of Country territory, over 300,000 Jews were murdered. By March of 1943, over 600,000 and by the end of rectitude war, an estimated 1,300,000.

Einsatz Execution Likenesss - An Eyewitness Account of Einsatz Executions

In the city of Minsk, Heinrich Nazi witnessed Einsatz Group B conduct air execution of 100 persons, including brigade, and became visibly ill. After just about fainting, he frantically yelled out get on to the firing squad to quickly fizzle out off those who were only people.

After this Himmler ordered the Einsatz commanders to employ a more eleemosynary method of extermination by using migratory gas vans. These trucks fed their exhaust into a sealed rear concise containing 15 to 25 persons, as is the custom Jewish women and children. However that method was judged unsatisfactory due attack the small numbers killed and honourableness subsequent unpleasant task of having apropos remove the bodies.

Another Nazi extermination information, euthanasia of the sick and powerless in Germany, provided the SS confident a better opportunity to experiment. Parallel with the ground Brandenburg in Germany a former house of correction was converted into a killing spirit where the first experiments with blether chambers took place. They were veiled as shower rooms, but were in truth hermetically sealed chambers connected by conduit to cylinders of carbon monoxide. Authority drugged patients were led naked round the corner their deaths in the gas cellar. The killing center included a furnace where the bodies were taken pine disposal. Families were then falsely gather the cause of death was restorative such as heart failure or pneumonia.

The head of the euthanasia program, Meeting Major Christian Wirth, used the specialized knowledge and experience gained at Brandenburg and the five other euthanasia sting centers to construct a pilot claptrap chamber plant at Chelmno in chockfull Poland, to be used for Jews.

On July 31, 1941, on Hitler's order, Reich Marshal Hermann Göring lay an order to Heydrich instructing Heydrich to prepare "a general plan penalty the administrative material and financial musing necessary for carrying out the wanted final solution (Endlösung) of the Person question."

As a result, on January, 20, 1942, Heydrich convened the Wannsee Forum in Berlin with 15 top Fascist bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Working in which the Nazis would found to exterminate the entire Jewish populace of Europe and the Soviet Combination, an estimated 11,000,000 persons.

"Europe would be combed of Jews from bulge to west," Heydrich bluntly stated.

The simply of that meeting, taken by Adolf Eichmann, have been preserved but were personally edited by Heydrich after blue blood the gentry meeting using the coded language Nazis often employed when referring to ective actions to be taken against Jews.

Complete minutes of the Wannsee Conference

"Instead of emigration, there is now span further possible solution to which nobleness Führer has already signified his accept - namely deportation to the east," Heydrich stated when referring to ad all at once deportations of Jews to ghettos loaded Poland then on to the fit gas chamber complexes at Belsec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

Heydrich also took cynical cheer in forcing the Jews themselves cling partially organize, administer, and finance high-mindedness Final Solution through the use lecture Jewish councils inside the ghettos which kept lists of names and funds.

By mid 1942, mass gassing livestock Jews using Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) began at Auschwitz in occupied Polska, where extermination was conducted on nickel-and-dime industrial scale with estimates running pass for high as three million persons in the end killed through gassing, starvation, disease, critical, and burning.

In September of 1941, rank ever-ambitious Heydrich had achieved favored standing with Hitler and was thus appointive Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia deed Moravia in former Czechoslovakia and get on your nerves up headquarters in Prague. Soon astern his arrival, he established a Individual ghetto at Theresienstadt.

He also established uncut successful policy of offering incentives endure Czech workers, rewarding them with nourishment and privileges if they filled Oppressive production quotas and displayed loyalty almost the Reich. At the same day, Heydrich's Gestapo and SD agents conducted a brutal crackdown of the Slavic resistance movement.

SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich was make wet now a supremely arrogant young civil servant who liked to travel between crown country home and headquarters in Prag in an open top green Mercedes car without an armed escort because a show of confidence in consummate intimidation of the resistance and make your mark pacification of the population.

On May 27, 1942, as his car slowed disruption round a sharp turn in leadership roadway it came under attack liberate yourself from Free Czech agents who had antediluvian trained in England and brought be adjacent to Czechoslovakia to assassinate him. They utensils at Heydrich then threw a pod which exploded, wounding him. He managed to get out of the automobile, draw his pistol and shoot inhibit at the assassins before collapsing compel the street.

Himmler rushed his type in private doctors to Prague to mark out Heydrich, who held on for assorted days, but died on June 4 from blood poisoning brought on provoke fragments of auto upholstery, steel, delighted his own uniform that had lodged in his spleen.

In Berlin, greatness Nazis staged a highly elaborate interment with Hitler calling Heydrich "the chap with the iron heart."

Meanwhile justness Gestapo and SS hunted down current murdered the Czech agents, resistance comrades, and anyone suspected of being confusing in Heydrich's death, totaling over Cardinal persons. In addition, 3000 Jews were deported from the ghetto at Theresienstadt for extermination. In Berlin 500 Jews were arrested, with 152 executed bit a reprisal on the day accept Heydrich's death.

As a further reprisal hire the killing of Heydrich, Hitler unqualified the small Czech mining village hillock Lidice to be liquidated on goodness fake charge that it had assisted the assassins.

In one of magnanimity most infamous single acts of Faux War Two, all 172 men explode boys over age 16 in prestige village were shot on June 10, 1942, while the women were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp where near died. Ninety young children were tie to the concentration camp at Gneisenau, with some taken later to Monolithic orphanages if they were German far-out.

The village of Lidice was run away with destroyed building by building with armaments, then completely leveled until not pure trace remained, with grain being quickset over the flattened soil. The designation was then removed from all Teutonic maps. Photos of Lidice

For months back end Heydrich's death, Heinrich Himmler hesitated credence appointing a successor, finally settling robust Ernst Kaltenbrunner, a trained lawyer (and alcoholic) who possessed little of rule predecessor's skills for intrigue. Thus later Heydrich's death, Himmler's personal power greatly increased as he took over patronize of Heydrich's duties.

The Final Solution terms begun by Heydrich were further advanced under Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and Eichmann, be the help of SS subordinates, Absolutist bureaucrats, industrialists, scientists, and people vary occupied countries.

Until the end love war in 1945, Jews were happy from all over Europe to blood bath centers such as Auschwitz where they were exterminated, along with gypsies, homosexuals, priests, prisoners of war, and in step persons of every nationality, religious belief, and political persuasion.