Customer Reviews

Heydrich: The Face of Evil

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 dealing with his fellow military men, much less with the doomed Jews under his control. Because his crimes were never judicially investigated, and he was never convicted of any wrong-doing, modern neo-Nazis have made an idol of him. A racist in the US called him admiringly "the Naziest Nazi of them all." For anyone else, this biography will be a harrowing and sad reading experience.

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.

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.

While his face was not attractive, though many a woman found him so, it is the eyes that truly reveal Reinhard Heydrich. Piercing and cold, evil itself looks out forever in the extant photographs: Hitler's man with the iron heart, nothing seemed too much for Heydrich. He was the worst of the worst, more ruthless than all the others. And that is quite a statement.

On page 23 a partial explanation for the flaw in Heydrich may have been something biological: "To what extent the encephalitis damaged the mind and soul of the young Heydrich it is impossible to know." Could his evil truly have its roots in this such illness?

It has been some time since a biography of Heydrich has appeared and this book, finished by a friend due the author's death, is a well composed work, and an interesting, revealing study of a totally evil man, but a man of whom neither his wife or blood kin would ever say or write a bad thing. And to top it all off, though he led the group that wanted to kill all Jews, the one thing always troubling him, keeping him humbled before both Himmler and Hitler, was Hydrich's deep-seated fear that he himself had Jewish blood.

While I have Charles Whiting's study of Heydrich on my library shelf, I find this an up-to-date study and a worthy one. Even The Military Book Club chose it as selection. If you have stomach to face evil head on, then this WWII study will no doubt interest you.

Semper Fi.

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

I am a huge collector of books on the Third Reich and I found this one very interesting Heydrich definately was a complicated personality who did more harm than good for his country well mostly to the average citizen in his country, I often wonder what would have happened had he not been assassinated now thats a scary thought!! But all in all a really great book very detailed although very short and no photos in it thats why Im only giving it 3 stars, I understand that the auther died while writng it thats probably why it came out the way it did, but for those who want an intimate look into Heydrich's life this is the book to read.

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.

I am very pleased that, for once, I was able to read a book totally devoted to Heydrich. This person (Heydrich), was the most demonic character at the higher echelons of the Nazi hierarchy. He was ambitious and ruthless. The authors of this book do a good job in bringing alive this historical figure. Unfortunately, I have to say that the chapters are rather long (without sub-divisions) and some passages lack clarity. This book deserves an ample readership.

Mario Dederich traces Heydrich's life from his early years in the Nazi Party, through his views on resettlement of Jews (p. 100) which evolved into extermination of the same, his assassination by Czech partisans, the ghastly German reprisals, and postwar issues. Heydrich is described as a man who was ruthless even by Nazi standards. Certain neo-Nazis have hailed him as "the Naziest of the Nazis." (p. 177)

Was Heydrich of Jewish ancestry? Dederich shows that he was commonly regarded, in Nazi circles, in that light (p. 37, 54-55). The evidence itself is inconclusive. The ancestral list, used by the SS to prove Aryan ancestry at least as far back as 1648, was "very superficial". (p. 54). The Suss (Suess) lineage, according to the ancestral list, was Lutheran (p. 37). But does this eliminate the possibility of conversion from Judaism? Furthermore, one of Heydrich's great-great grandmothers, Johanna Birnbaum, may have been Jewish, and, significantly, her name doesn't appear in the documentation (p. 56).

Heydrich held very strong anti-Christian views (p. 72, 74-75). "As did Heydrich, [Professor Alfred] Six identified the main enemies of the Reich as being the freemasonry, the Jews, and the Churches." (p. 99). In addition, Dederich notes: "...Himmler's allegation that medieval witchcraft trials were actually an attack by Roman Catholicism on German womanhood." (p. 100). Interestingly, some modern feminists have followed in Himmler's footsteps by leveling a similar accusation against the Church and calling it gynocide.

Not only the Einsatzgruppen but also the Wehrmacht had been involved in shootings of large numbers of civilians (p. 111). Dederich puts the subsequent Wannsee conference in perspective: "The Wannsee conference was not the beginning of the genocide; Heydrich had initiated that with the Einsatzgruppen in Poland in 1939 and in the Soviet Union in 1941. The death camps...had been in existence for some time." (p. 134)

As for the postwar war-crimes trials in West Germany, Dederich discusses how Pole-killers and Jew-killers such as Werner Best and Bruno Streckenbach escaped justice through various medical-related technicalities. Furthermore, he adds: "Not a single head of the RSHA Polish Division IVD2 ever came before a court." (p. 183)

Finally, Dederich concludes: "It is clear that of all the direct Heydrich descendants, not one has ever uttered publicly a word of regret about the crimes committed by their ancestor. Never have they furnished a gesture towards the Jews, Poles, or the survivors of Lidice." (p. 189).

The caption to this comment says it all - it's a commentary on a line from another review. That Heydrich did his country "more harm than good."

Really.