Customer Reviews

Reinhard Heydrich: Assassination

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To this educated reader, the work on Heydrich will be of great interest to anyone who wants to go beyond the level of undergraduate or cable channel history on personalities of the Third Reich, and those who would give their lives to stop the spread of its ideas. It is really a testimonial to Czech patriotism, but those who know (and you should) about the Wannsee conference in January 1942 (see the DVD Conspiracy or the German video The Wannsee Conference) will be interested also in Heydrich, who was rumored to be a Mischling (half-Jew). The photos are rough, the tale is compelling.

SS-Obergruppenfuehrer (at the time of his death) Reinhard Heydrich is one of those mysteries of the Third Reich whom we are only beginning to see in some perspective. A man of dubious background (possibly a Mischling or half-Jew by the Nuremberg definitions--see Dr. Bryan Mark Rigg's "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers"), he nonetheless was seen as essential to the cause by Adolf Hitler, and participated fully in the Endloesung (Final Solution) of the Judenfrage (Jewish question). He presided over the first Wannsee conference (January 20, 1942) at which the definitions of partial Jews were discussed, as well as the "clearing" of Jews from ALL aspects of German life, including the living space of the Reich. Heydrich was evidently energetic and enthusiastic about his work. So much so, that he was eventually assassinated (shot and died from infection of his wounds) by Czech partisans airlifted into Czechosovakia (the Reichsprotektorate of Bohemia and Moravia), who were trained in Britain where there was an expatriate Czech army of resistance.

This is a dreadful work, and should be. It is amply accompanied by photos and descriptions of man's inhumanity (or is it actually humanity) to his or her fellow conspecifics. This is another is a series of works that are beginning to tell the "untold" stories of the Third Reich, and make us think more deeply about its origins--far beyond the delusions and confusion of one man, Adolf Hitler. In fact, personalities like Heydrich, loyal but somewhat creative and inventive when it came to carrying out the orders or concepts of their superiors, seem to have viewed themselves as visionaries, influenced by their own propaganda. Books such as this will bring them posthumously down to earth, but we'll understand more about the new ways of waging war that demanded entirely new concepts of crime and justice at the war's termination, to be applied to those who survived and could be found. Without doubt, Heydrich would have emerged as a complex and confounding figure, and the story of his silencing rests upon an equally convoluted and twisting series of events. This will make you wonder what may have been uncovered by the recent 100-year floodings of Prague as well!

An interesting work with many unique photographs, worth buying for that reason alone. However, I find many of the author's conclusions flawed which takes the edge off an otherwise worthwhile book.

The book describes briefly the story Heydrich assassination.
You can hardly learn something about Heydrich himself and his role in terrible events of WWII.
The book is worth only if you are looking for photo documentary.