Reinhard heydrich children

Anatomy of a Monster: Reinhard Heydrich

In Sean Ellis’ ANTHROPOID, Czechoslovakian resistance fighters Jan Kubiš (Jamie Dornan) and Jozef Gabčík (Cillian Murphy) risk everything to take out SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. Never before had such an audacious act of resistance against the Nazis been undertaken. No one involved knew what the consequences of their actions would be, or what devastating repercussions might occur. What the Czechoslovakian people did know, however, was the dark shadow Heydrich had already cast over Europe. Although he’d been appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia only a year before in September , Heydrich’s reputation for machinelike efficiency and unflinching cruelty preceded him. Not only had he put together one of the most brutal policing organizations in modern history, he had also masterminded several of the Nazi’s most insidious acts of aggression, including laying out the blueprint for the Final Solution. To provide a fuller picture of what made Kubišand Gabčík’s mission so essential, we outline Heydrich’s short, sinister life here.

As with many monsters, it’s often hard to see the evil they would inflict in the childhood they lived. The son of musical parents who owned and ran a popular conservancy in the town of Halle, Heydrich grew up in material comfort and high social standing. Deeply patriotic and anti-Semitic from at an early age, Heydrich was not, however, overtly ideological. Even his membership into the Nazi party had less to do with politics than pragmatism. In order to interview with Heinrich Himmler for a position with his newly formed Schutzstaffel paramilitary group (or SS) in , Heydrich needed to be a Nazi party member. The fact that he was granted an interview in the first place occurred only because a friend of his family misrepresented Heydrich’s experience in the Navy as having to do with intelligence, rather than simply being a communications officer.

Himmler,

  • Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich

    • Grave of top Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich opened in Berlin

    Getty Images

    Berlin police are trying to find out who opened the unmarked grave of SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi killed by Czechoslovak agents in

    An employee at the Invalids' Cemetery in central Berlin found on Thursday that the grave had been opened.

    No bones were removed, police say.

    Heydrich was a key organiser of Nazi Germany's mass murder of European Jews. He chaired the Wannsee Conference in January , where Hitler's genocidal "Final Solution" was planned.

    Tampering with a grave can be prosecuted under a German law against "grave defilement".

    The Allied occupation forces at the end of World War Two decreed that the graves of prominent Nazis should not be marked, to prevent Nazi sympathisers turning them into shrines.

    Whoever violated Heydrich's grave is thought to have had inside knowledge of its location.

    AFP

    A similar incident happened at Berlin's Nikolai Cemetery in , when a left-wing group opened what they claimed was the grave of Horst Wessel, a Nazi stormtrooper murdered in , who was turned into a martyr and honoured with a Nazi anthem.

    The group claimed to have thrown Wessel's skull into the River Spree, but police denied that, saying the grave was that of Wessel's father and no bones had been removed.

    Heydrich, nicknamed "the Butcher", headed the Reich Main Security Office under SS leader Heinrich Himmler. Adolf Hitler called Heydrich "the Man with the Iron Heart".

    He ruled over Bohemia and Moravia until May , when British-trained Czechoslovak agents attacked his limousine, and he died later of his injuries.

    In retaliation, the Nazis destroyed Lidice village, murdering all the men and adolescent boys and deporting the women and children to concentration camps.

  • Lina Mathilde Manninen was

    • Reinhard Heydrich

    High ranking Nazi official (–)

    "Heydrich" redirects here. For other people with the surname, see Heydrich (surname).

    Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (HY-drik, German:[ˈʁaɪnhaʁtˈtʁɪstanˈʔɔʏɡ(ɘ)n̩ˈhaɪdʁɪç]; 7 March &#;– 4 June ) was a German high-ranking SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust. He held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei. Many historians regard Heydrich as one of the darkest figures within the Nazi regime, and Adolf Hitler described him as "the man with the iron heart."

    Heydrich was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy/Acting Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. He served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, now known as Interpol) and chaired the January Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.

    He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November The attacks were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians and presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing including &#;million Jews.

    Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May as a resul

    Lina Heydrich

    Wife of Reinhard Heydrich (–)

    Lina Mathilde Manninen (née von Osten, formerly Heydrich; 14 June – 14 August ) was the wife of Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office and a central figure in Nazi Germany. The daughter of a minor German aristocrat (he worked as a village schoolteacher), she joined the Nazi Party in and met Reinhard Heydrich in December The two wed on 26 December and had four children. She published a memoir in She defended the reputation of her first husband (Heydrich) until her death at age 74 in August in Fehmarn.

    Nazi Party membership

    Lina's older brother Hans had joined the Nazi Party and was a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA). He spoke highly of the movement to Lina and she attended a Party rally in where Adolf Hitler spoke. Shortly thereafter, Lina von Osten joined the Nazi Party with party membership number 1,,

    On 6 December , aged 19, she attended a rowing-club ball in Kiel and met then Naval Lieutenant Heydrich there. They became romantically involved and soon announced their engagement on 18 December

    In , he was charged with "conduct unbecoming to an officer and gentleman" for breaking an engagement promise to a woman he had known for six months before the engagement to Lina. Admiral Erich Raeder dismissed Heydrich from the navy that April. The dismissal devastated Heydrich, who found himself without career prospects.

    Lina persuaded Heydrich to look into the recently formed Schutzstaffel (SS) as a career option. During , SS Leader Heinrich Himmler began setting up a counterintelligence division of the SS. Acting on the advice of his associate Karl von Eberstein, a friend of the Heydrich family, Himmler agreed to interview Heydrich, but cancelled their appointment at the last minute. Lina ignored this message, packed Reinhard's suitcase, and sent him to Munich.

    Eberstein met Heydrich at the train station and took him to see Himmler. Himmler asked Heydrich to convey his ideas for dev