Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich

Patrick · Post by **Patrick** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:07 am

I was watching the movie "Conspiracy" with Kenneth Branagh playing Heydrich and got to wondering... Heydrich was assassinated by Czech agents trained by the Brits. As I think through all the other major Nazi leaders, I can't think of a single example of the Allies trying to assassinate another German political leader. (I view the attempt to kidnap Rommel in the desert as military, rather than political.)

Was there something particularly special about Heydrich that warranted his assassination or was it simply an opportunity that presented itself? Or perhaps there were attempts/plans to assassinate Goebbels, Himmler, and the like that never succeeded and therefore either failed to make the history books or were kept secret?

Does anyone know or have any ideas? Thanks.

Enrico Cernuschi · Post by **Enrico Cernuschi** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 11:12 am

Hello Gentlemen,

according the Italian Navy intelligence Heydrich was in touch with the British since early 1938. He was considered a possible candidate as Hitler successor and a much more clear-minded guy than Himmler.
If there was a chance for a separate peace between Britain and Germany after an SS coup (a danger King Victor reminded Mussolini still on 22 July 1943) this clear and present danger was much highter with Heydrich than with the irresolute and quite worste as an organizer, Himmler.
Both the diehard like Churchill (whose only political existence as a Premier, with a not too much loyal Conservative party behind him, was in a victory without compromises) and the Soviets (who needed like hell not only the second front, but the continuation of the war between the hated western powers to avoid the ruin of Rodina under the teeth of the unlashed German tiger) so had a common interest to sweep Heydrich from the chessboard. The Czech goverment-in-exile, being in partnership with Moscow much before 1938 and with Churchill too, was the perfect instrument for this task.

Bye

EC

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 8:37 am

Enrico's right in that he was seen as a Fuhrer-in-waiting more so than any of the immediate party cadre - the Himmlers, Goerings, Goebbels etc., and his performance as Himmler's deputy in MANY things apart from just his immediate duties as protector of Bohemia and Moravia showed him to be as capable a planner and manager, if not a LOT more so than Himmler - he doesn't seem to have let hiself be as distracted by all the esoteric stuff Himmler was into!

He was also at various times in the war reputed to be a closer confidant of AH than Himmler and its likely he would have been obvious as a designated heir in time.

As for target-of-opportunity - there are stories that he was about to be moved back to Germany permanently within a couple of months (his wife HATED the place LMAO), away from any outright military resistance arm.

Liam · Post by **Liam** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 4:59 pm

A very controversial assassination it was too with many Czechs (who hated Heydrich to their bones) feeling that their country would suffer serious repurcussions if it went ahead - as happened. The Czechs in exile in Britain obviously wanted Heydrich dead and it was the very likely possibility of 'getting him' that finally sealed his fate. Had he used the kind of security precautions any other Nazi leader did (his car wasn't even armour-plated) then he would almost certainly have survived.

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 5:05 pm

Does anyone know what happened to his wife and children after the war? Did they survive it? I know Himmler's daughters had a very bad time coping with it.

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:08 pm

I'd always heard the Brits sponsored the op against Heydrich because the Czech's were not resisting the occupation to Churchill's satisfaction.

Apparently Himmler sent his own personal doctor to assist with Dear Reinhard's recovery from what IRRC were not overly serious wounds - bits of the car seat embedded in his back from a grenade explosion. Naturally, that makes one suspicious because Der Truer Heinrich was not always so Truer...

i wonder how effective the final solution would have been without Heydrich? Unlike Himmler he got things done. Could that have played a role in his assasination?

If you can find it there was an excellent movie made about this back in the seventies. Called "Operation DayBreak" I believe. the guy who portrayed Heydrich was a truly chilling character. For sheer Nazi horror I've never seen anything that matched the scene in this film where Heydrich and his family attended a Nazi Christmas party and cherubic little blond children with swastika scarfs sang carols. damned creepy it was.

cheers
Reb

phylo_roadking · Post by **phylo_roadking** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 8:01 am

If you can find it there was an excellent movie made about this back in the seventies. Called "Operation DayBreak" I believe.

Yes, is available on DVD, but not in current shelf stock, though it is available on Ebay. A word of warning though - it ALWAYS goes for frighteningly high prices! I was outbid for a copy last week at £15...which is thirty dollars!!! The last ten mins shootout in the church and flooding of the crypt scenes are as good a bit of cinema as Ive seen - wisps of smoke from the shafts of stick grenades etc. A LOT of attention to detail.

regarding the event itself - I've read two different versions of events immediately after the attack, one that he was well enough to refuse an ambulance, and the other that he drove himself to hospital. Probably both are a bit dubious, but as with the Archduke Franz Ferdinand he was savvy enough to know that part of the offical reaction - and to give time to track down the killers - was to NOT let the seriousness of his wounds be visible to the general populace.

Doktor Krollspell · Post by **Doktor Krollspell** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 1:29 am

Hello Gentlemen!

Patrick asked about the reasons fo wanting to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. I have some vague memories (from books) that Heydrich had the ambition to be assigned to occupied France after his tour in Prague. He apparently visited France and met with SS and Police/Gendarmerie leaders. The goal for him was to become the SS/Police leader of France. This eventually supported by Hitler who wanted someone with a harder (eastern europe) approach of leadership in these matters.

From Churchill's point of view, having a man of Heydrich's calibre across the Channel when planning on how to attack Nazi occupied Western Europe was not an ideal situation. So this could have been one of the reasons to the assassination of Heydrich.

As I said, ít was a long time since I read about Heydrich in more detail. I'll try to find sources that (eventually/hopefully) could support this...

So, back to work,

Krollspell

Paulus II · Post by **Paulus II** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 4:49 am

Hi all,

The most common explanation for the assassination of Heydrich is that he was just too much of a butcher and the Czech government in exile wanted him removed.
That is probably a bit too simple an explanation though as you all have pointed out.

The one (conspiracy theorie) I found missing is that it may have been Himmler that was behind the attempt. It is quite certain that Himmler saw Heydrich as a threat and had him sent to Bohemia/Moravia to deny him his regular access to Hitler. Some writers take it from there and accuse Himmler of planning the whole thing.

It does seem a bit far-fetched to me but it's another theory that's out there.

As for Himmlers doctor having 'assisted' in Heydrich's death: maybe true but it is quite sure that he died from major infections and in the pre-antibiotic world it may well be that he really couldn't be saved eventhough his initial injuries were quite minor. It is suggested that the infections were mainly due to the bacteria on the horsehair stuffing of the seat of the car that ripped into his body together with the shrapnel of the grenade that exploded in the rear wheel-well.

The car itself was later used by the Gestapo and Nazi Party and after the war by the Czech Army. In the sixties (or there about) it was sold to a filmcompany and can now be seen in the 'Deutsche Technik Museum' in Berlin.

After the War his wife Lina worked as a waitress in a restaurant when she met a Finnish theatre-director and poet, Mauno Manninen, with whom she married in 1965. She died in 1985.

Heydrich's grave ended up in the 'Deathzone' of the Berlin Wall. Since that area is mostly buit-up nowadays I wonder where he is buried today. If he isn't incorporated into the cement of an underground carpark that is.

Cheers,

Paul

Enrico Cernuschi · Post by **Enrico Cernuschi** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 10:21 am

The idea of Heydrich as governor of France in 1942 is at best a debatable one.
Northern France was under military governments, not Nazi ones and the situation between B-M and France were totally different.

About the Jew extermination it's interesting to note that the large scale process, beyond the massacres of the previous year in the eastern regions, begun actually after Heydrich's death. The same mess of the so called organization of those crimes is more Himmler' style than the cold and much more effective Heydrich's one. Heydrich could be a wily brute (I have got some indignated Italian Foreign Office and Army reports from Prague dated 1942), but - being an ambitious pepole too who knew well how failures and bad organization could hamper his scheduled career- he showed always the tendency not to begun almost impossible tasks.

Bye

EC

pzrmeyer2 · Post by **pzrmeyer2** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:54 pm

Heydrich's grave ended up in the 'Deathzone' of the Berlin Wall. Since that area is mostly buit-up nowadays I wonder where he is buried today. If he isn't incorporated into the cement of an underground carpark that is.

small point of clarification: Heydrich was buried in a small mauseleum in the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin. While it is true that part of the cemetary was located directly along th path of the Wall, Heydrich's grave was not. It was located immediately next to the entrance of the cemetary, which is about 100 yards from where the Wall ran along, and about another 50 to the Landwehr canal, which marked the border. Some graves along the Wall's path were uprooted, most notably that of Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron. Interestingly, Werner Molders' and Ernst Udet's graves were left intact on the outer wall side. Heydrich's was removed simply for political reasons. I've been to the area many times--sad that Germany's Arlington National Cemetary, resting spot of Blucher and Scharnhorst, now lies largely forgotten and overgrown.

here is a link, in German: http://www.invalidenfriedhof.de/start.htm

pzrmeyer2 · Post by **pzrmeyer2** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:56 pm

The most common explanation for the assassination of Heydrich is that he was just too much of a butcher and the Czech government in exile wanted him removed.

Quite the contrary. While he certainly had no tolerance for resistance, and was arguably more strict than his predecessor, if memory serves me right, he was somewhat benevolent to the Czechs, offering incentives and extra benefits to industrial workers, which stands to reason more why an out-of-touch government safe in exile in faraway London would want someone who might have turned the Czechs into partners or at least loyal subjects removed. His moniker "The Butcher of Prague" was more a propaganda slur than an apt descriptor. He certainly wasn't a butcher of Czechs....

pzrmeyer2 · Post by **pzrmeyer2** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:02 pm

Now here's an interesting epilogue perhaps someone can verify: I recall that the initial story regarding Heydrich's driver, SS Sergeant Wolfgang Klein, was that he was killed some hours later while in pursuit of the gunmen. But Later reports suggest that he was only wounded and survived the war to live in relative anonymity. So it came as a shock when I had heard that he was actually tracked down and murdered, allegedly by RAF-types, in Hamburg in the early 1990s. I recall being in Germany around that time, but now cannot find any references to verify this.

John W. Howard · Post by **John W. Howard** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:43 pm

Hello PzM2:
Three great posts; very interesting. I too had heard that Heydrich, although strict, was assassinated for being an all too successful administrator in Czechoslovakia. I too would like to know if Klein was murdered by the Red Army Faction; it would not surprise me. Best wishes.

Reb · Post by **Reb** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 6:27 am

Liddell Hart had some controversial comments about the Brits stirring up resistance everywhere. I was a kid when I first read it and was surprised since I'd never heard a contrary opinion about the resistance.

He felt it was a terrible mistake to stirr up and arm civilians - not just from the moral standpoint (causes reprisals) but from the practical standpoint too. He noted that armed gangs were easier to create than to put back in the box and thought much of the communist terrorist problem of postwar Europe was blowback.

I agree. I have strong missgivings about partisan war, mixed with hypocrisy since I would myself resist any invader.

The Brits were up against a wall however, and put survival ahead of everything. Adios Heydrich. Adios Lidice.

cheers
Reb