The Butcher of Prague

Reinhard Heydrich is perhaps the man most demonized for what has been described as his role in planning and executing the Holocaust. Yet there are parts of his history that are not generally mentioned.Was this man responsible for the deaths of millions, or has he been unjustly vilified for being an intelligent and competent member of the Nazi elite? An incisive look at the history of the Czech lands during the Second World War shows not Heydrich the Hangman, but Heydrich the social reformer and popular leader of Bohemia and Moravia.
Heydrich was chief of the Reich Main Security Office (which included the Gestapo and Kripo), and he also served as President of Interpol from 1940 to 1942. Heydrich is mainly known for his actions as the Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the part of the Czech lands that was incorporated into the Reich.
Heydrich was born into a family with substantialmusical talent. His maternal grandfather Professor Eugen Krantz had been the director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory. Heydrich was a skilled violin player for the whole of his life.

Heydrich at Obersalzberg in May 1939.
To his right is Himmler and to his
left is Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff.
The man in the front is an
unidentified assistant.

Heydrich had four children: Klaus, born in 1933; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father’s death in 1942. Heydrich’s son Klaus was killed in a tragic accident. The boy was cycling on the grounds of the Heydrich residence and  suddenly cycled out on the road through the gate, which was open. A truck hit him and he died soon after. Heydrich’s wife Lina understandably started behaving crazily; she went about threatening everyone, including the SS guards of the palace. The driver of the truck was arrested but was later released by German investigators who concluded that it was nothing more than an accident.

Hitler and Heydrich in Vienna, 1938.
To Hitler's right is Arthur Seyss-Inquart,
Chancellor of Austria.

Heydrich was methodical in his assessment of how to deal with enemies of the Reich. Soon after his arrival in Prague, he had this to say:
“To be able to make a decision as to who is suited to be Germanized, I need their racial inventory. We have all kinds of people here, some of them are showing racial quality and good judgment. It’s going to be simple to work on them – we can Germanize them. On the other hand, we have racially inferior elements and, what’s worse, they demonstrate wrong judgment. These we must get out. There is a lot of space eastwards. Between these two extremes, there are those in the middlethat we have to examine thoroughly. We have racially inferior people but with good judgment, then we haveracially unacceptable people with bad judgment. As to the first kind, we must resettle them in the Reich or somewhere else, but we have to make sure they no longer breed, because we don’t care to develop them in this area. One group remains, though, these people are racially acceptable but hostile in their thinking – that is the most dangerous group, because it is a racially pure class of leaders. We have to think through carefully what to do with them. We can relocate some of them into the Reich, put them in a purely German environment, and then Germanize and re-educate them. If this cannot be done, we must put them against the wall.”
The Protectorate brought blessings for the Czechs. Since the army was dissolved, Czech men no more had to face conscription. The economy was stabilized and unemployment disappeared. Heydrich implemented the first-ever social security and pension schemes the Czechs had experienced. Factory workers were given extra rations of food and sugar as rewards for extra work. He ordered the distribution of thousands of free cinema, theater, and football tickets to Czech workers. Amicable agreements were reached with the trade unions on minimum wages, pensions, insurance cover, and holiday entitlements. Heydrich often toured factories and told the workers what an inspiration they were, even to the Germans. He gave away 200,000 pairs of shoes for free to the needy. The black market was ruthlessly crushed, thereby earning Heydrich the loyalty of thousands of poor Czechs. Within months of assuming power, Heydrich lifted martial law, and the ordinary Czech could live a normal life again. As a result of Heydrich’s policies, the Czech Lands became one of the more prosperous regions in wartime Europe. In fact, by this time over half a million Czech citizens were formally claiming that they were of full orpartial German descent.
When the cortege carrying Heydrich’s body was being moved to the trainthat would carry it to Berlin, the crowds in Prague that were hailinghim and crying at his death numbered some six to ten thousand. To thedismay of the British, a few days later more than two hundred thousand Czechs gathered in a mass demonstration in Prague to mourn Heydrich’s death. Not unexpectedly, the British press called the obsequies “a gangster funeral in the pompous Chicago style.”

Heydrich's family after the war

Lina Heydrich's grave. The location is not

being mentioned because of the danger of

vandalism by desecrators.

After the war, Lina Heydrich went to live in Fehmarn, which is an island in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein. She ran a hotel there and married a Finnish theater-manager named Mauno Manninen.  
She died sometime either in the late seventies or early eighties. Her daughter Marte Beyer still lives in Fehmarn and runs a fashion shop in the city of Burg. Heider Heydrich is a retired engineer in the Bavarian town of Wörthsee.Nothing is known of the present whereabouts of Silke. As mentioned above, Klaus died in childhood.

A video tribute to Reinhard Heydrich, the savior of the Czech Lands.

 

Reinhard Heydrich from Shankar Nandi on Vimeo.