Heydrich: The Face of Evil

The sub-title of this book is beautifully chosen. Movie actor pretty, Heydrich was one of the most evil people ever known, and this book does a good job of describing how a nominally average man but with driving ambition achieved power and prestige in the Nazi party. Heydrich was, of course, assassinated in 1942. A major part of the book describes the reprisals that followed. In return for the death of Heydrich some 15,000 Czechs were murdered. Hardly it seems like a fair trade. But then again Heydrich was one of the key people responsible for the deaths of millions. Unfortunately his death did not stop the killing. Unfortunately you have to wonder about the effectiveness of killing even someone who clearly deserves it. The book is well researched and very well written. It is too bad that the author died shortly after finishing this book. I would like to be able to read his biographies of several other Nazi's.

If you ever want to appreciate what evil is truly about, please read this book. We do not need to conjure up images of a devil with human beings like Heydrich roaming the face of the earth. Unfortunately, they still do occupy the space we all share. The man was truly ruthless and cold blooded. Read it and you will come away with a better understanding of the suffering and death that was needlessly inflicted on mankind by this horrible man.

The soldiers who worked with or for Reinhard Heydrich, who rose through the ranks of the SS to become a brigadier general, left some colorful descriptions of him. He was "an animal of prey" according to one. Another said, "His God was might." Another said he was "the most demonic personality in the National Socialist leadership." Hitler himself called Heydrich, whom he admired, "The Man with the Iron Heart". Heydrich played key roles in setting up the mechanisms by which millions of Jews lost their lives, but his name does not ring with infamy like that of Goerring or Eichmann. The main reason for this is that he did not live long enough to see the defeat of Germany and thus get brought to the judicial investigation and the trial that would have inevitably resulted in his hanging. Nonetheless, he was an essential figure within the Third Reich, and Mario R. Dederichs, a journalist who had written articles on Heydrich, was working on a book on the subject when he died in 2003. Colleagues helped finish _Heydrich: The Face of Evil_ (Greenhill Books), which has won praise in Germany, and Geoffrey Brooks translated from the German. The book helps show Heydrich as an ambitious and confident rising star of the Nazi party, but cannot keep from showing that he was some kind of monster. Heydrich was a young nationalist, acting as a teenage civic messenger in the aftermath of WWI, and joining the navy in 1922. He signed on to Heinrich Himmler's SS, and worked directly under Himmler all his career in intelligence. He was ruthless in pursuit of his own career, but seemed sincerely devoted to the principles of National Socialism, especially racial hatred. He issued guidelines for Nazi action in the Kristallnacht. He recommended in 1939 that every Jew wear a distinguishing yellow star; at this time, even Hitler thought this was a bit extreme, but a couple of years later, the rule went into effect. It was Heydrich who appointed Eichmann head of the administrative branch dealing with treatment of the Jews. It was Heydrich who convened and chaired the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, resulting in a plan for large-scale extermination of the Jews. He advanced to be _Reichsprotektor_ in the Czech puppet state in September 1941, and with overconfidence he took to being driven along Prague streets in his open car without bodyguards. He was attacked on 27 May 1942 by the resistance. Elaborate services were conducted in Prague and Berlin. Hitler knew he had lost one of the best of his henchmen, and himself placed Heydrich's military decorations on the funeral pillow. The most disconcerting part of this biography is that it is almost impossible to find anything humane about its subject. He did love his violin, true, but the rest of the portrait is bleakly evil. He was a sorry husband, using his power and manipulativeness to have countless affairs. He only intermittently showed interest in his children. In his work, he had no conscience in deali

Think 'evil' and one usually thinks of Hitler; but in fact there was another Nazi madman perhaps even worse. He was an underling of Hitler and Himmler: a cold-blooded, ambitious leader within the Nazi Party responsible for the planning of the Holocaust. His story here considers his rise to power, his personality, and the changes his life and death brought to the world. An outstanding survey of an under-covered legend. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Much better than the (few) earlier Heydrich bios, packed dense with information but still easy to read. A GREAT JOB WITH A DIFFICULT SUBJECT. If you are interested in WW II or Nazi Germany, this is a must read book. You will not be disappointed.