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Reinhard Heydrich was an important figure in Nazi Germany, there are many materials and legends about him, but many people may not know that the reason why he joined the SS was very close to his wife, and his wife is not well known to many people, here I will introduce Heydrich's wife Nina Mathilde Heydrich to the situation.
Nina's original name was Nina Mathilde von Austen, born on 14 June 1911 in Fermaine, Germany, to a family of teachers, and it can be seen from the word "von" in her name that her family has aristocratic ancestry, and her family maintains a good relationship with another aristocratic family, the latter nobleman had a son named Eberstein, who later became the head of the Munich police and deputy commander-in-chief of the SS, who was later Heydrich's recommendation to join the SS. (Another theory is that Eberstein's family was associated with the Heydrich family, and Eberstein's mother was Heydrich's godmother.)
Nina had an older brother who had joined the Nazi Party very early, and he often instilled Nazi ideas and ideas in his younger sister, and in 1929 she personally attended a Hitler lecture, which was so inflammatory that Nina was so excited that she immediately joined the Nazi Party and became a person with a strong Nazi conviction. Nina and Heydrich fell in love at first sight, that is, in December 1930, Nina met the young and handsome Lieutenant Reinhard Heydrich at a rowing club ball in Kiel, the two fell in love at first sight, and just a few days later, they announced their engagement. However, Heydrich ignored his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, whose father was a powerful shipbuilder, who had already had a relationship with Heydrich, but was suddenly abandoned inexplicably, and naturally could not swallow this breath, so the father and daughter together sued Heydrich to the Admiralty, the matter was very noisy, in May 1931, the Naval Court of Honor tried Heydrich's weathering case, and the final result was that the Navy expelled Heydrich for "misconduct".
Heydrich lost his job, suddenly felt depressed and even began to doubt his life, and lived every day in despair. Nina is not too calculating about Heydrich's past, she is absolutely true love for Heydrich, seeing that her fiancé has a slim future, she thinks of the Nazi Party that is currently in the limelight, in her heart, Nazis are the future of Germany, she communicates her ideas to Heydrich as much as possible, so that the arrogant Heydrich began to change his previous "orthodox" concept, began to show interest in the Nazis, agreed to participate in Nazi activities, it can be said that Nina is the enlightener of Heydrich's road to success.
Baron von Eberstein
Nina found her old friend Baron von Eberstein, who was already a red man of SS leader Himmler, and Nina thought that it was absolutely no problem to introduce Heydrich to the SS for a position to solve the job, and she did not expect that this incident would inadvertently make an important figure in the future of Germany. One day in June, Eberstein contacted Himmler, and Nina personally put the unconfident Heydrich on the train to Munich, and when he arrived in Munich, Eberstein personally greeted Heydrich at the train station and took him to the home of the chicken farmer. At this time Himmler was planning to establish an intelligence service within the SS, and Heydrich's resume as an intelligence officer in the Navy intrigued him, but he did not understand at all that Heydrich only worked in the naval signals department, and he was not an officer in the intelligence department at all. It was a coincidence that Heydrich had an innate talent for intelligence, and it took him only half an hour to put Himmler's idea of the SS Intelligence Service clearly on paper, much to the delight of Himmler, who knew nothing about intelligence work, and immediately decided to hire Heydrich to form an intelligence service (Security Service) for the SS.
In August 1931, Heydrich officially became the head of the SS Security Division, which sounded very imposing, but in fact quite a nest, his office was a rental room, the desk was an old dining table, a borrowed typewriter, a bottle of glue, plus a lot of messy documents, this was Heydrich's original job, he initially recruited some SS university students who were unemployed due to economic depression into the security office, and it was these young intellectuals from good families with personal qualities. Giving SD a unique and distinctive nature, the Security Service will later become an efficient and rigorous and terrifying institution. Nina did not dislike Heydrich's poverty, on the contrary, she has spared no effort to help her future husband, in addition to helping Heydrich at work, but also serving as a cook, often making dry vegetable soup and herring salad without herring for Heydrich and his poor subordinates.
During this time, the SS Security Service was still an illegal organization, far less beautiful than later, but it was also the day when Nina and Heydrich were like glue, and in August 1931 Heydrich excitedly said in a letter to Nina's parents: "Mr. Himmler promised to give me a monthly salary of two hundred and ninety marks after I got married, and I could start a family regardless of the political situation." At that time, Heydrich was already very satisfied with his stable income and being able to support his family, and where would he think that he would become a powerful figure in the future.
On December 26, 1931, Nina and Heydrich were married, and after the marriage Heydrich rented an apartment on the outskirts of Munich as their new home, but Nina did not like this home because it was a somewhat simple and dilapidated house. In July 1932, Heydrich was promoted to SS flag captain, and his work was recognized by the Nazi leadership, including Hitler, and he established good relations with some of the biggest members of the Nazi Party, such as Rudolf Hess and Martin Baumann. With the rise of the Nazis in Germany, Nina and Heydrich also had a good day, Nina wrote in a letter to her parents: "Don't laugh, Reinhardt has become the chief of the political police!" It seems that Nina still lacks enough awareness of her husband's "great future" in politics.
In the following years, Nina and Heydrich had three children, Klaus, Hyde and his daughter Hicker, as Heydrich became more and more powerful, he paid less and less attention to the family, and the affairs of the family were only handled by Nina alone. I was left alone to take care of and take care of everything. This made Nina feel very distressed, and the relationship between the husband and wife tended to be tense. Heydrich has almost no personal friends, does not have too many contacts with colleagues or neighbors, and for social interactions, he can push back, can hide, which makes Nina feel very uncomfortable, she once asked Heydrich why he can't interact with friends or neighbors, Heydrich replied: "I can't interact with them, because I don't know when they will be arrested."
Due to Heydrich's snub for the family and his wife, Nina often invited her good friend Schulenburg to drink tea and talk about her troubles, did not talk about Heydrich's jealousy, almost wanted the life of Shu Handsome, scared Xiao Shu enough, the couple seems to have reached the brink of divorce, but the birth of daughter Hicker saved the marriage, Heydrich liked this daughter very much, and the relationship between the two returned to temperature. After the outbreak of World War II, Nina was worried about the prospects of war with the characteristic sensitivity of a woman, so she began to purchase food like an ordinary housewife, making meat into cans and storing it, and she often returned to her hometown of Fehmarn Island in northern Germany, riding motorcycles to buy large quantities from village to village, and then driving trucks to transport potatoes, kale and various fruits to Berlin.
Heydrich's funeral.
In May 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague and died on June 4, when Nina was pregnant with her fourth child, Heydrich's death was nothing less than a collapse for her, just over a month after Heydrich's death, she gave birth to her daughter Marth, however, the bigger blow was still to come, on October 24, 1943, her two sons were playing on bicycles in the courtyard, the eldest son Klaus rode his bicycle to the street, but a truck hit him, that night, Klaus died of his wounds. In less than two years, she lost her husband and son, which was a big blow to a woman, and it goes without saying how Nina survived that period of grief that only she could understand.
In recognition of Heydrich's "contribution" to the Nazis and to comfort Nina, a dead child, Hitler gave Nina a manor house in the Bohemian countryside, where Nina sold her berlin house and holiday cottage near Norn and moved her family to Czech life until April 1945. By this time the Red Army had reached the Czech Republic, and Nina had to flee with other German refugees and return to Bavaria, where she returned to her hometown of Fehmaine after germany surrendered.
In the post-war de-Nazification process, Nina was not liquidated, and in the fifties, she also fought a lawsuit with the West German government, which refused to pay Nina a pension for Heydrich's war crimes, and the result of the lawsuit was that Nina won and won a pension for herself.
In 1965, she met Finnish director Moro Manning on vacation in Finland, and the two fell in love at first sight again, and soon got married. She then converted Heydrich's villa into a resort in Fermat until 1969, when the resort was destroyed by a fire, and it is not known whether it was accidental fire or artificial arson.
Nina also wrote a memoir about her life with Heydrich, which was published as "My Life with War Criminals", which made Nina very dissatisfied, and she constantly wrote letters to various media outlets to defend her first husband, Heydrich. Nina died in Fermat on August 14, 1985, at the age of 74.