Heydrich...A walk in the black forest

208 Pages·2014·2.41 MB·English

by  David Challice

“Heydrich…A Walk in the Black Forest” is the story of Reinhard Heydrich’s
rise to power through the ranks of the SS to become the most feared man in the
Third Reich and eventually heir-apparent to Adolf Hitler himself. There have
been surprisingly few publications on Heydrich, and few of them have properly
examined his ten-year rise from nowhere, from obscurity to Wannsee. To many
people he is virtually unknown.
The other biographies have been academic works… straight-forward factual
accounts of his career. “A Walk in the Black Forest” takes a very different
approach. I wanted to know more than just what he did: I wanted to know why
he did it, how he got away with it, and what happened to the people who stood in
his way. I wanted to walk around Heydrich, to view him from other angles.
“A Walk in the Black Forest” concentrates on the human element, on the
characters involved, many of them Nazis, who were there at the time and
actually knew the man. Few of them ever really understood what motivated him,
but at least they left us their memoirs, or were interviewed by journalists,
biographers and the military after the war. Using this wide-ranging material, I
have tried to write an accessible, approachable book aimed at a wide audience,
male and female, many of whom might normally cross the street to avoid
“serious” history; all without compromising on research and factual accuracy.
For the most part the quoted dialogue emanates from those present at the time,
much of it from Heydrich’s own deputy, though at times I have used a slight
element of dramatic licence and make no apologies for that.
I must also thank Len Deighton for his invaluable assistance and advice
David Challice
January 2013
“Impressive” Robert Hale
“Fast moving and mainstream. Measured and illuminating” Len Deighton
“Well researched” Cassell
“Fascinating” Transworld
David Challice lives in a cottage on the edge of Dartmoor with his partner Hilary
and their two cats. Over a long career he has run his own furniture restoration
business, contributed many journalistic articles to the Press, and is author of
“The View From Here”… the collected articles from the weekly Trago Mills
Column.
INTRODUCTION
The Wannsee was empty of pleasure boats, which was appropriate. The nation
had been at war for more than two years, driving all before it; but now the tide
was beginning to turn. Now, for the first time, people were whispering the
unthinkable: the fighting might drag on for years, perhaps for decades.
The men in SS uniforms standing on the shores of the Wannsee would have
condemned this attitude. They had risen before dawn to patrol the villa and its
grounds, manning the gates to the driveway in a biting January wind known to
every Berliner. They had grown up with that wind – a knifeblade laid across bare
flesh, sweeping in from the Russian Steppe.
SS doghandlers moved among the trees, their breath clouding the air, faces
pinched with the cold. But at least the dogs were happy, nosing through the
snow-covered undergrowth, heads down and tails up, off the lead and led by
instinct.
The Gestapo were reluctant to leave the cosy firesides of the villa at Am
Grossen, and when one of them did condescend to venture out, bustling self-
importantly down the drive in his leather overcoat and trilby hat, Heydrich’s SD
men turned their backs.
The Gestapo agent halted at the wrought-iron gates and cleared his throat. “Any
sign of them yet?”
“Nothing yet.” The SD officer rocked on his boots, flexing his toes to restore lost
circulation. He gave Gestapo the once-over, noting the unpolished shoes, the
missing button on the leather coat, the downy attempt at a blond moustache, and
the suspicion of a dewdrop forming on the tip of the nose? If this was a picture
of the future, God help them all. These kids couldn’t run a bath, even if you
inserted the plug for them first.
The young Gestapo man in the trilby hat gazed across the choppy turbulence of
the bay, and beyond to the suburbs of wartime Berlin, a city he could never love,
full of profiteers and defeatists. Christ, but it was cold. Give him the Black
Forest any day. He wiped his nose, folded away the handkerchief. In a timid
venture into authority he asked, “Your people… They are ready?”
“My ‘people’, as you call them, are ready.”
“Good.” Gestapo nodded, took three paces up the drive, half turned. “When they
do arrive…”
The SD man did not bother to turn his head. “You’ll be the first to know.”
There were similar tensions inside Villa Am Grossen 56-58, formerly the
headquarters of German Interpol. Even the waiters were on the staff, in their stiff
white jackets buttoned high at the neck. It was not easy, laying cutlery around
the bulk of Gestapo heavies. In the kitchen, SS chefs chopped their onions with
feeling.
A ripple ran through the house. Word had come: the first of the delegates were
on their way. At a series of prearranged times, separated by a few minutes, a
number of polished limousines – mainly Horchs and Mercedes – arrived at the
front gates. They were inspected, and then allowed to proceed up the drive to the
villa.
The passengers in the rear alighted, straightened themselves and, with a smile,
were welcomed into the house to meet their host: SS Obergruppenfuhrer
Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi Party’s security
service, and one of the most feared men in the entire Reich.
These gentlemen had all been invited – they would have objected to the word
‘summoned’ – to attend the Wannsee Conference, a gathering of the great if not
the good. For the most part they were senior functionaries of the Party and the
State: the head of the Gestapo, members of the Foreign Office, delegates from
the Occupied Territories in the east; representatives from industry. Technical
men, or representatives of technical men, and they had all been summoned here
by the arch technocrat himself, Heydrich, to address a question. A Jewish
question. Endoslung. The Final Solution.
Hindsight is rather like the common cold; we all suffer from it at times. But
anybody in the 1930’s who had wanted to know what Adolf Hitler was really up
to only needed to read Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography, as dictated by him
to Rudolf Hess when they shared a cell in Landsberg Prison in 1923. It is all
written there, with no attempt at concealment. Rare in a politician, Hitler laid out
his stall of basic beliefs and stayed true to them, even when Russian shells were
crashing onto his roof.
Hitler’s aims were clear and unambiguous: Germany needed to be a proud,
strong nation with lebensraum (living space) in the east. Jews and Communists –
to Hitler they were usually one and the same – would need to be expelled from
the lands of Europe.
Historians such as David Irving believe that the Holocaust was never planned,
but rolled along under its own momentum, snowballing, gathering speed, with
varying severity in different locations, for local – sometimes very specific –
reasons. Irving points to the fact that no one can produce a signed order from
Hitler telling the SS to build extermination camps.
Lucy Dawidowicz, a Jewish historian and scholar, has set up her guns on the
other side of the valley. Her view is exactly the opposite of Mr Irving’s: Hitler
had always planned to kill the Jews, right from the very outset, even before he
came to power. For Dawidowicz (here I am paraphrasing) the Jewish Question
was not ‘Should we kill the Jews?’ but, ‘How do we kill the Jews and keep it
secret?’
The Wannsee Conference, held in the civilised surroundings of the villa, with
champagne and luncheon, attended by fifteen of some of the most senior figures
in the administration, was organised to address precisely that question, and to
encourage those delegates to concentrate their minds on its practical application.
Many conferences, whether business, scientific or political, often achieve very
little; most delegates would secretly admit this. But the Wannsee, and the man
who chaired it, was very different. The decisions taken there in calm and
measured tones by men of intelligence and perception, had a fatal impact on the
lives of more than four million Jews and 100,000 Gypsies.
Heydrich, acting on orders from his Fuhrer, now proceeded to explain the
requirements of the Final Solution. He drew the delegates with him on a Walk in
the Black Forest, leading them by the nose, letting them in on the great secret,
until together, almost without realising it, they all stepped over a line. The
answer to Endoslung was: “This is how we kill the Jews and keep it a secret”.
It was at this point that the delegates must have finally realised just how high
Heydrich’s star had risen. But where had he come from? A party member for
less than ten years, here he was at the right-hand of Hitler, or at least on the
verge of it. How had he achieved such a meteoric rise?
The internal office politics of the Nazi Party were a brutal and ruthless affair,
deliberately so. It was sink or swim. Natural selection would weed out the
incompetent, the weak, the gullible. Those who succeeded to high office would
do so because they had survived and shown themselves capable of getting to the
top in one piece.
Heydrich cruised these dark waters like a barracuda, a predator of predators;
even the Fuhrer was wary of him. After their very first meeting in 1933 Hitler
confided to Himmler: “He is a man with an iron heart”.
In the west today most people beyond a certain age could identify Himmler and
Goering from their photographs. They might have vague knowledge of a few
other senior Nazis: Rudolf Hess and his nightflight to Britain to broker a secret
peace deal with Churchill; or Josef Goebbels, the propaganda expert, the Herr
Spindokter extraudinaire, with his wife –exhausted and jilted – administering
poison to their six children in Hitler’s bunker as the Red Army closed in during
the last days of the Berlin fighting.
These stories have become part of the general folklore of that war, part of
certainly my generation’s mental furniture. And yet there is little mention of
Heydrich. He is not one of those instantly recognisable figures known to
millions. It is not that he has been airbrushed from history; that would not be
true. Historians like William Shirer and Hugh Trevor-Roper certainly refer to
him, particularly when dealing with the Final Solution. But otherwise it is often
in passing, merely acknowledging his existence. Almost, in fact, a footnote.
An opportunity has been missed here. Heydrich’s input to the Nazi regime was
of fundamental importance and had far-reaching consequences, both for it and
for the rest of Europe, yet he has been overlooked. As his own deputy, Walter
Schellenberg, put it after the war: ‘Heydrich was the hidden pivot around which
the entire regime revolved’.
I would go even further and contend that Heydrich was being groomed by Hitler
as a successor, the crown in waiting, a Fuhrer in the wings. If so, it is clearly
important to ask – and to answer – some questions. How did he rise so quickly
through the ranks in ten years, from obscurity to Wannsee? And to what extent,
and how, did Heydrich shape the events around him?
The Wannsee Conference, and this question of the succession, deserves a closer
look, but first, his early life.
1
All children’s lives are very much alike,
So my advice is keep that early stuff
Down to a page or two. Don’t try to make
Nostalgia pay: we’ve all had quite enough.
What captivates and sells, and always will,
Is what we are: vain, snarled up, and sleazy.
No one is really interesting until
To love him has become no longer easy.
Vernon Scannel: a note for biographers
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born in the prosperous Saxon town of
Halle on 7 March 1904. His father, Bruno Suss-Heydrich, was a professional
composer and recital singer, a tenor, liked and respected by local society. Bruno
had something of a reputation as a social climber, but this did his career no
harm.
The Heydrichs’ was a happy, successful, upper-middle class family home; and
young Reinhard was quiet and well-behaved, with a touch of wilfulness to his
character – also a certain malicious humour: one episode involved spiking the
wine at a wedding reception, and watching with his friends as their fathers rolled
drunkenly around the dance floor.
In appearance he was the epitome of the tall, blond, blue-eyed Aryan, so beloved
of his later patron Heinrich Himmler, but the effect was marred by a rather high-
pitched nasal voice and his own very individual laugh, like a nervous billy goat
(he was nicknamed Ziege – ‘Billy Goat’ at school).
His father intended him to follow a musical career; Reinhard obeyed and took up
the violin. He was a gifted player. It was said that in later life he could reduce an
audience – and himself – to tears by the beauty of his playing.
Heydrich’s time at school was less successful. He appears to have become
isolated, possibly even rejected or bullied; and to compensate for this decided to
establish a combative reputation for himself among his peers. Whatever the
reason, he got into a lot of fights.
As the historian Charles Whiting put it: ‘If he didn’t want to be treated as a
worm for the rest of his life he would have to be tougher, crueller, bolder, more
ambitious, more powerful than all the rest’. And he was certainly to become that.
One off-key note in the Heydrich household – at least from their point of view –
was something that would dog Heydrich for much of his career: an accusation of
Jewish ancestry. In adult life he fought three court cases on this, but the rumours
persisted, probably fed by his enemies within the Party, of whom there were
legions.
The genealogical facts are that his paternal grandparents were Reinhold and
Sarah. When Reinhold died, Sarah remarried. The new husband was an Aryan
locksmith named Suss, an Evangelical Lutheran, not a Jew. The name Suss was
later added to the family surname – Suss-Heydrich. But the name Suss is
commonly regarded as Jewish, and Bruno, Heydrich’s father, was always known
in Halle as ‘Jew Suss’.
Heydrich was fourteen when the Great War, the Kaiser War, ended in victory for
Britain and defeat for Germany. Four years of slaughter in the trenches, when
the two great civilisations had mauled each other to bloody shreds, left a deep
scar in the collective consciousness of Germany. For it to have ended in the
nation’s surrender, with the army still intact and willing to fight on, led to the
creation of a national idea, the ‘stab in the back’.
For the soldiers on the front line (Adolf Hitler was one of them) the idea that
Germany had exhausted herself, had simply run out of the raw materials to wage
such a war, was beyond comprehension. Massive resentment grew against the
Socialist Weimar government in Berlin, the so-called ‘Traitors of Weimar’, who
had surrendered to the Allies and signed the Treaty of Versailles, which
committed Germany to paying vast sums of compensation to the victors.
The comfortable world of the Heydrichs’ was shattered: the economy crashed,
inflation and unemployment soared; there was revolution in the air. The troops
returning from the war were no longer the grinning naïve youths who had
embarked four years earlier. They were battle-hardened veterans with attitude,
who still had their guns and refused to give them up.
They formed the Free Corps, a group of free-booters who roamed Germany
seeking out the Bolshevists, whom they blamed for the surrender and felt were
plotting to overthrow the State and replace it with Communism. The Free Corps
later developed into the armed wing of the Nazi Party, and much of their hatred
of the Jews stemmed from this period: the ‘stab in the back’ and the attempts at
Communist revolution. Heydrich later claimed that at fifteen he had been a
runner in one of these Free Corps, and around the same time ‘turned into a
fanatic about pure race’. His reason for joining, he later told a fellow naval
cadet, was because his father was called ‘Jew Suss’ in his hometown, which
offended his pride and honour. If he joined an anti-Semitic group, his reasoning
went, the talk in Halle would be silenced. How could the elder Heydrich really
be a Jew when his son was so active against them?
Heydrich joined the German Navy as an officer cadet in 1922. He had a good ear
for foreign languages, passing exams in French, English and Russian. He also
had a passion for active sports: tennis, sailing, swimming and fencing. He
excelled at the latter and seriously considered representing Germany at the 1936
Olympics.
On the training cruiser Berlin his First Officer was the future admiral, Wilhem
Canaris. The two men would meet again in 1935, but in vastly different
circumstances.
Heydrich appeared to be the perfect officer, with a good career ahead of him.
Already he had reached the rank of Oberleitnant in the signals section, with the
potential to rise to the very top. But he had one weakness and he would carry it
with him throughout his life: the girls. He was an inveterate philanderer and it
didn’t matter if they were street prostitutes or respectable young ladies from
good families – all were fair game.
In 1930 Heydrich became engaged to Lina von Osten, the nineteen-year-old
daughter of a schoolmaster from the Baltic Island of Fehmarn. The story goes
that when her rowboat overturned in the harbour, Heydrich stripped off his
jacket and dived in to rescue her, later appearing beneath her bedroom window,
playing Mozart on his violin. She said later: “If it hadn`t been for that violin, I
would probably never have got married”.
But despite his engagement to Lina, Heydrich did not let up on his pursuit of
other women, and when one of them announced that she was pregnant with his
child his response was – to say the least – unsympathetic. He told her “Any
woman who gives herself to a man before they are married is unworthy of
becoming my wife”. Few would expect a German naval officer from the 1930’s
to be an ardent campaigner for women’s rights, but even by the standards of the
day this was extreme, and Heydrich paid for it: this time he’d chosen the wrong
girl. Her father was a senior naval engineer and a close friend of the head of the
German Navy – Admiral Raeder himself.
The denouement was never in doubt: Heydrich was summoned to a Naval Court
of Honour, presided over by four admirals including Raeder. After a stormy
session – in which Heydrich’s attitude was effectively ‘I don’t see the problem?’
– he was dismissed from the service for conduct unbecoming a naval officer.