Reinhard Heydrich

In 1930, Reinhard Heydrich met Lina von Osten, a Nazi Party follower, and soon got engaged. They married in December 1931. They had four children—Klaus, Heider, Silke, and Marte.

After Heydrich's death, Lina finally won the right to a pension after a number of court cases in 1956 and 1959. The government had initially declined to pay the pension due to Heydrich's role in the Holocaust.

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born on March 7, 1904, in Halle an der Saale, to Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Heydrich and Richard Bruno Heydrich. His father founded the Halle Conservatory of Music, Theatre, and Teaching, and his mother taught piano there. He had two siblings.

He was named after different people and characters—Reinhard referred to the hero from his father's opera, ‘Amen,’ and Tristan comes from Richard Wagner's ‘Tristan und Isolde.’ Eugen was his maternal grandfather's forename, who was the director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory.

He loved playing the violin, and impressed listeners with his musical talent. He studied in Reformgymnasium, and was good in studies, especially in science. He was a good athlete, and was an expert swimmer. He was shy, and was often bullied for his high-pitched voice.

When Heydrich was 15, his hometown Halle witnessed civil unrest after World War I. He then joined Maercker's Volunteer Rifles, and was a part of the force that protected private property. He then joined the National German Protection and Shelter League, an anti-Semitic organization.

In 1922, Reinhard Heydrich joined the German Navy, and became a naval cadet. In 1924, he was promoted as senior midshipman, and in 1926, he was assigned as a signals officer on a battleship. In 1928, he became sub-lieutenant. However, in 1931, he was dismissed from the navy for breaking an engagement promise to a woman.

In 1931, he was hired in the security service division of the SS. He began his job as chief of the new 'Ic Service', and set up an office at the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich. He created a network of spies to obtain information to be used as blackmail for political gains. In December, he was promoted to the rank of SS-major.

In 1932, his enemies spread the rumor that he had Jewish ancestry. However, after investigation, it was proved that he was of German origin. In the same year, he was appointed chief of the security service, SD.

He turned the intelligence service into an effective machine of terror and intimidation. Heydrich and Himmler, the head of SD, controlled the political police forces of all the German states. In 1933, Heydrich, with his men from SD attacked the police headquarters in Munich, and took it over. Himmler became the Munich police chief, and Heydrich became the commander.

In 1933, Hermann Göring founded the Gestapo, the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe, and in 1934, Heydrich became the head of this instrument of terror. In the same year, SD became the official Nazi intelligence service.

Heydrich converted Gestapo into an instrument of fear. It had the authority to arrest any citizen on the suspicion that he might commit a crime, and the definition of crime was set at his discretion. In 1936, the Gestapo Law gave police the right to act extra-legally, which gave them the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings. People were arrested without warrants, sent to concentration camps, or killed.

Due to his reign of terror in Prague, Reinhard Heydrich earned the epithet "the Butcher of Prague." He executed 92 people within three days of his arrival. He closed all avenues by which Czechs expressed their culture. About 5,000 people were arrested, and thousands were sent to concentration camps. In March 1942, he swept all Czech organizations, the military, and the intelligentsia, and practically paralyzed the Czech resistance.