HEINRICH HIMMLER By Peter Longerich. Translated by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe, Illustrated. 1,031 pp. Oxford University Press. $34.95.
HITLER’S HANGMAN: The Life of Heydrich By Robert Gerwarth. Illustrated. 393 pp. Yale University Press. $35.
Posted on 01/09/2012 6:57:50 PM PST by iowamark
In June 1942, Thomas Mann, who was living in exile in California, delivered a commentary on a German-language BBC radio program that decried the sanguinary actions of the Third Reich in avenging the assassination of the leading SS official Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. After Heydrich’s elaborate funeral ceremony at the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Hitler screamed at the Czech president, Emil Hacha, “Nothing can prevent me from deporting millions of Czechs if they do not wish for peaceful coexistence.” It wasn’t an idle threat. “Since the violent death of Heydrich,” Mann lamented, “terror is raging everywhere, in a more sickly, unrestrained fashion than ever before. . . . An entire town, that supposedly sheltered the perpetrators, is massacred and razed.” Indeed, to honor Heydrich and help create what Hitler referred to as “Germany’s Garden of Eden” in the East, the Nazis chose the code name “Aktion Reinhard” for the extermination of two million people, most of whom were Jewish, in the General Government of Poland by the end of 1943.
None of Hitler’s paladins did more to realize the Final Solution than Heydrich and his superior Heinrich Himmler, who ran the SS and the Gestapo. This pair worked assiduously to expand their influence from modest beginnings to the establishment of the most powerful and fearsome security apparatus in the Nazi empire. Now two supremely enlightening biographies, Peter Longerich’s “Heinrich Himmler” and Robert Gerwarth’s “Hitler’s Hangman,” show how they did it. Longerich is a professor of history at the University of London and the author of several books on the Holocaust. Gerwarth is the director of the Center for War Studies at University College Dublin...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
HEINRICH HIMMLER By Peter Longerich. Translated by Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe, Illustrated. 1,031 pp. Oxford University Press. $34.95.
HITLER’S HANGMAN: The Life of Heydrich By Robert Gerwarth. Illustrated. 393 pp. Yale University Press. $35.
They blowed out Heydrich’s lamp in Prague,,, served him right.
Himmler didn’t miss Heydrich, he always was suspicious that Heydrich had Jewish blood.
ping
The New York Times pimping for Nazis again. They love all things National Socialist.
And the reason Himmler dispatched his personal physician to Heydrichs care may have been to ensure Heydrich did not recover.
The Wild Chase by Franz von Stuck, painted 1889 (year of Hitler's birth)source:
The Psychopathic God: Adolph Hitler
by Robert Waite
Hardcover
Mass Market Paperback
Unknown Binding
I’ve heard those rumors, the only thing that kept Heydrich in his position was that Hitler loved the guy, even thought the rumors of his Jewish blood would motivate him to be even more ruthless, to in Hitler’s words, “kill the Jew inside of him.”
That wasn’t the only reason Himmler didn’t trust Heydrich. In the multi-layered Nazi apparatus of terror Heydrich was head of the “Sicherhienstdienst’’(SD) or “SS Central Security Office. He kept the goods on EVERYBODY, even Hitler. Everybody in the Nazi hierarchy was nervous around him . It was felt he knew too much about Nazi bigwigs, things that might compromise them and they knew Heydrich was not above using blackmail to eliminate rivals. He ran a brothel called “Salon Kitty’’ and had it rigged for sound, lest some tidbit be given away by some Party member in a moment of passion. The were many who believed Himmler might have even set him up to be killed. Heydrich was a ruthless SS bastard.
I had also heard that on his deathbed, Heydrich was expressing remorse for what he had done, even going so far to request a priest to confess his crimes, even though he had left the Church years before.
Heinrich Himmler's Remarkable Admiration For Islam: "It Promises Beautiful Women In Heaven"
That's an interesting one. I hadn't heard that. Perhaps he never fully bought into the Valhalla thing.
Hope his soul was wearing the flame suit just in case.
I would suppose that had Heydrich survived the war and had been captured by the western allies, he would have gotten 20 years, maybe life, later commuted to perhaps 8 years or so due to “ill health”. If you look at many mid-level Nazis, you'll find that was often the case.
Of course, if the Soviets had captured him, that would have been a different story. Likewise if the Mossad had caught up with him.
We ordered this and watched it and it was pretty interesting and amazing.
Heydrich was targeted by the Brits and trained a team of Czech assassins to do the job. If I recall two were caught and killed, the third after threatening to wipe out the home town from where the assassins came from unless hr surrendered did ....After which the NAZIS destroyed the town and murdered all its inhabitants in retaliation...
BTW Who liberated Prague ? It was the White Russian Wheremacht Vasoffs Army ... What was left of 1 million Russians fighting on the German side furnished by Himmler who defeated the SS troops assigned to destroy Prague.... The town fathers in appreciation turned them over to the Russians where most were executed
The “SS Central Security Office” didn’t exist. what i think you’re referring to is the Reichs Main Security Office [Reichssicherheithauptamt], or RSHA, which didn’t come into existence until 1939, and was composed of the Sicherpolizei [Gestapo and Criminal Police], and the SD [SS Security Service]. Heydrich founded the SD shortly after he joined the SS in 1931. He was also in charge of the RSHA, and when he died, he was the Reichs Protector of Bohemia-Moravia [Czechoslavakia].
Heydrich would have hanged, if he’d been tried at Nurenburg. His successor at RSHA, Ernst Kaltenbrunner did, and he had nowhere near the blood on his hands Heydrich did.
As for mid level Nazis, I’d suggest you take a look at the Einsatzgruppen trials. They hanged just about all those guys they caught, including Otto Ohlendorf and Paul Blobnel. In a similar vein, they did a real good job on the camp commanders: Josef Kramer. Rudolf Hoess and a bunch of others.
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