(Warm reminder: this article is about 5300 words, with 18 pictures, original is not easy, thank you for your patience to read.) ）
If Operation Apes of May 27, 1942 had not succeeded, Reinhard Heydrich – the founder of the SS Security Service, the supreme leader of the Imperial Security Service, the author and executor of the "Jewish Final Settlement" plan – would have died either by committing suicide like his immediate superior, Himmler, or by whining for his life under the gallows like his successor, Kaltenbrunner. As the second most important person in the SS Black Empire after Himmler, Reinhard was called "the man of stone" by Hitler, and his shrewdness in establishing the SS intelligence system and his ruthlessness in pursuing genocidal policies led posterity to identify him as a hardcore Nazi and a fanatical follower of Hitler, but what is less known is that Reinhard had no interest in politics before joining the SS in 1931, had no in-depth knowledge of the Nazi Party, and had never even read Mein kampf. His participation in the Nazi movement was due to a number of fortuitous factors.
■ A car that was blown up at the scene of Heydrich's assassination on May 27, 1942.
Cold Door Counterattack
Among the ideological tenets espoused by the SS, "racial purity" was an extremely important one, at least in the early days, when there was a very strict family history review of candidates applying for the SS, whose genealogy dates back to 1750 to prove that they are of pure Aryan blood and untainted by other bloodlines. Reinhard had a standard Aryan appearance admired by the Nazis, tall, athletic, blonde, and even exceeded the selection criteria of the Guard Flag Corps, but there were certain specious stains on his family history, and there was no sign from his early career that he would later join the Nazi Party and create the extreme terror system of the Third Reich.
■ Standard portrait of Reinhard Heydrich, who has the physical characteristics of a standard Aryan.
Reinhard's family was by no means prominent, and his grandfather, Karl Heydrich, was a low-ranking piano maker living in Meissen, Germany, from a poor family, and his father Bruno Heydrich was the second of six siblings. Karl died of tuberculosis in 1874 at the age of 37, when Bruno was only 11. To feed the children, Reinhard's grandmother, Ernestin, remarried in 1877 to Gustav Seuss, a blacksmith 13 years younger than herself. Although Bruno's stepfather was not of Jewish descent, the Jewish-style surname caused a lot of trouble in the careers of Bruno and his eldest son Reinhard.
■ Reinhard Heydrich's parents, his father Bruno was a musician, and his mother also came from an artistic family.
Bruno's life experience is quite inspiring, he has shown a love and talent for music since he was a child, but the poor family can not afford to receive a formal music education, he can only use his spare time to teach himself, through playing and singing at rallies to earn extra money to subsidize the family, at the age of 13 he was already a singer in the Meissen Youth Orchestra. Bruno's talent and enterprising spirit were recognized by the outside world, and in 1879 he won a three-year scholarship to study composition and singing at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Dresden and graduated with the first place, thus officially entering the music scene. After years of hard work, Bruno became a well-known composer and singer, wrote at least five operas, and in 1897 married the mentor's daughter, Elizabeth Kranz, and inherited a rich inheritance, which is a winner in life.
In 1900, Halley was in a period of prosperity.
In 1898, Bruno and his new wife moved to the artistic and academic city of Halley in central Germany to open a choir school. Since unification in 1871, the Rapid Development of the German Empire, economic prosperity, and cultural prosperity have created a large number of middle-class people, and music education has become a demand for many middle-class families, and it is in this context that Bruno's career has achieved great success, and his choral school has developed into a well-equipped and well-trained Halley Conservatory in just a few years, and his family has also gained a respected social status in the local community, making friends with many streams, including the Naval hero Felix Von during world war I Earl of Lucknall. When Bruno's eldest son was born on March 7, 1904, his family lived well, with no worries about food and clothing, and belonged to the typical middle class that enjoyed the dividends of the era of the rise of empires.
Son of a musician
Bruno named his eldest son Reinhard Heydrich after the Germanic hero in his first opera Amen, and gave him rigorous musical training from an early age in the hope of inheriting the family business one day, and Reinhard did inherit the artistic genes of his parents, showing a high musical talent, and at the age of 6, he performed the famous opera "The Ring of the Nibelungen" with his father. Reinhard was frail and sickly at an early age, and in order to strengthen his body, he actively participated in sports with the encouragement of his parents, and was quite good at swimming, running, horseback riding, fencing and many other sports. Music and sports became reinhard's two major hobbies throughout his life. Influenced by his mother, Reinhard was Catholic, which was not common in Protestant German society, and when he was in high school, his parents chose a new humanistic secondary school without a religious background for Reinhard, when 90% of The German teenagers were enrolled in church schools, such religious beliefs and educational background made him quite different in the future, and his performance in school was beyond the average level.
■ Reinhard (center) with his sister Maria (right) and another girl in 1910.
Before the outbreak of World War I, Bruno's family business was thriving, and he fully enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that music brought him, but there is no evidence that he was passionate about politics. Because of Bruno's fame in music education, he was included in a famous musical dictionary, but when the book was published in 1916, it caused a storm. A student who had been expelled from Bruno, in order to ruin his reputation, revealed in the book that Bruno's surname was actually Sus and implied that he was Jewish, which made Bruno very angry and filed a defamation lawsuit, forcing the publisher to delete the text in the republishment, but rumors that bruno's family might be Jewish had spread, and Reinhard, who was still studying at the school, was also affected. Nevertheless, Bruno did not show anti-Semitic tendencies, but instead he got along well with the Jewish community in Halley, which was not enough to transform Reinhard into an extremely anti-Semitic racist, but it did put a lot of pressure on him afterwards.
■ In 1915, German troops marching to the front passed through a Serbian town, and the war changed the fate of many people.
Had there been no war, Reinhard's trajectory would have followed the path his father had planned, eventually becoming a professional musician to inherit the family business, or becoming a chemist according to his ambitions in middle school, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 changed the fate of millions of Germans, including Reinhard. At the age of 10, Reinhard could not understand the meaning of the war, but could already feel the changes in life brought about by the war, most of the senior students in his father's school joined the army, newspapers and magazines were full of reports about the war, the operation of the conservatory deteriorated, the family's living standards declined year by year, and the defeat of Germany in 1918 and the ensuing revolutionary storm completely shattered the quiet life of the Heydrich family, and the post-war hyperinflation plunged the conservatory into a financial crisis.
In 1919, members of paramilitary organizations involved in armed conflict built barricades with newspapers on the streets of Berlin, and similar situations appeared all over Germany.
In the turbulent post-war social environment, Bruno began to become politicized, joining the People's Party, a right-wing party that insisted on anti-democracy and defended the monarchy. Influenced by his father, when Halley was caught up in violent clashes between different political factions in 1919, Reinhard, a 15-year-old middle school student, signed up for the right-wing Volunteer Civil Defense Force, but he was not more involved than running errands. Although it was during that period that he later claimed that he had developed a nationalist ideology, which was probably not true, but a lie made up only to consolidate his position in the Nazi system, it is undeniable that the young Reinhard, like many of his peers, sowed in the shadow of his defeat the seeds of hatred for Bolshevism and the Treaty of Versailles, which was also the common consciousness of most Germans at that time.
Young naval officer
In the spring of 1922, Reinhard graduated from high school with honors, and while making choices about his future career, he decided to become a naval officer. Reinhard's reasons for joining the Navy were many: he had seen the majesty of the high seas fleet on a vacation with his family on the Baltic Sea as a child; the legendary experience of his father's old friend Count Lukenard commanding a sailing ship to carry out a sea raid; his childhood friend also chose to join the navy; and finally, the obsessive pursuit of sea power and a powerful navy since the accession of Wilhelm II to the throne had long made the profession of the navy highly regarded in Germany, even after defeat and revolution. It remains appealing to young people like Reinhard, who aspire to success and status. Reinhard's decision disappointed his father Bruno, but was supported by his mother.
■ Earl Lukenar (left), a close friend of the Heydrich family, commanded the attack ship Seahawk during World War I with impressive success, and his legendary deeds prompted Reinhard to choose to join the Navy, pictured on the right as a cadet in 1924 Reinhard.
On 1 April 1922, Reinhard became a naval cadet in Kiel, and for the next two years he completed his basic training on several ships, including the battleship Brunswick, the training ship Neoby, and the cruiser Berlin, and entered the Mirvik Naval Academy in April 1924 for officer education. Early in his naval career, Reinhard was described as an isolated lone wolf figure with few friends and a constant incompatibility with his surroundings, such as his penchant for playing the violin in his spare time, which was ridiculed by his colleagues, and his indifference to politics. There was a strong political atmosphere on the right, with a nostalgia for the monarchy and its former glory and hostility to the republic, but whether it was the assassination of Foreign Minister Ratnau or the armed occupation of the Ruhr by the French army, Reinhard showed indifference, and his wife Lena later claimed that Reinhard at that time "knew nothing about politics,...... Treat all political parties with arrogance, especially the Nazi Party". In addition, rumors of his Jewish ancestry resurfaced, and he was adamantly refuted by other practitioners privately referring to him as a "white Jew" or "white Moses."
■ Aerial view of the Mirvik Naval Academy located near Flensburg.
Despite some resistance, Reinhard successfully completed his officer training, earning him the rank of second lieutenant in the summer of 1926, followed by professional training in radio, and was appointed communications officer on the battleship Schleswig-Holstein, whose instructor at the Naval Communications School later recalled that Reinhard's "talent, knowledge, and ability were beyond the ordinary level." In his military life, Reinhard was still an avid sport, practicing fencing every day, and became obsessed with sailing, even winning the Baltic Sailing Championship in 1927. After becoming an officer, Reinhard's relations with other officers improved, but he was arrogant towards his subordinates and was not popular with sailors. In July 1928, Reinhard was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to the communications department of Kiel Naval Base, where he showed increasing ability and self-confidence in his work, as well as strong ambition, and one of his friends described him as "a lieutenant who had dreamed of becoming a naval admiral". No one doubted, however, that the brilliant Reinhard had a promising future in the Navy, which was ruined by his own hands in early 1931.
Peach event
After becoming a naval officer, Reinhard's life, in addition to sports and music, there was a third point of interest, that is, women. As a flesh-and-blood young officer, he became more and more concerned about the women around him, frequenting bars and brothels during voyages with the ship, and after serving on the shore, he had more leisure time to hunt around, using his straight uniform, personable demeanor and outstanding musical talents to attract women's attention in various social situations, and had an ambiguous relationship with more than one woman, and it was at a ball in Keel on December 6, 1930, that Reinhard met his future wife, Lena von Osten. She was only 19 years old at the time, and she was a beautiful blonde.
■ In December 1931, Reinhard and Lena von Austen were married.
Born into a declining Danish aristocratic family and the father of a schoolmaster, Lena attended the Kiel Girls' Vocational School as a life goal of becoming a teacher, just as ambitious as Reinhard. It is worth mentioning that the Austen family lost most of their wealth in post-war inflation, were financially strapped, and thus became nazi supporters very early, and when Reinhard met Lena, Lena's brother had been in the SA for two years, and Lena herself was a staunch Nazi admirer. However, the political stance of the Austen family did not have much influence on Reinhard at first, and he always maintained political isolation. Three days after meeting Lena, Reinhard proposed to her, and the two became secretly engaged on December 18, and their marriage was soon approved by the Austen family and they were officially engaged at Christmas.
■ In 1933, Lena and Reinhard were with their first son, Klaus.
Reinhard made the news of the engagement public in the newspapers, but he seemed to forget the debt he had owed before he met Lena, and the retribution came as scheduled. A female student living in Berlin had a nervous breakdown after learning that Reinhard was engaged, they met a year ago, maintained a long-term relationship, and even after Lena appeared, the two still met. To this day, the identity of the young woman is still unknown, but it is certain that her father was close to the top of the Navy, and a letter of complaint about Reinhard's abandonment was delivered to the desk of Admiral Raeder, the commander-in-chief of the Navy. In early January 1931, Reinhard was summoned by the Court of Military Honor to ask for an explanation for his actions. Although the incident was dishonorable, it was not serious enough to ruin Reinhard's military career, and if he confessed his mistakes, he would at most be subject to mild disciplinary punishment, but his innate arrogance in his bones led him to treat the trial with contempt, which eventually annoyed his superiors and prompted Reddell to make the decision to expel him. On April 30, 1931, Reinhard's promising naval career came to an abrupt end!
A twist of fate
For Reinhard, the career crisis occurred at its worst, when germany as a whole was hit by the Great Depression, with more than 4.5 million unemployed people, and although he could continue to receive a severance payment of 200 marks per month from the Navy for two years, this income could not support life, his father's conservatory was on the verge of bankruptcy, his fiancée's family was also unable to make ends meet, they could not afford financial assistance, and his marriage with Lena was in jeopardy. The month after his expulsion was the darkest moment of Reinhard's life, and he had to find another way to make a living. With his military seniority, he was offered several job offers, including sailing coaching in Kiel, earning a monthly salary of 380 marks, which was already quite impressive at the time, but Reinhard unexpectedly refused, claiming that he did not want to become a sailing maid for a wealthy family, and still wanted to do decent work that was comparable to that of a naval officer and could wear a uniform.
■ Reinhard Heydrich's introduction to the SS, Karl von Eberstein, received high positions in both the SA and SS.
While Reinhard was in a daze, Baroness Von Eberstein, a close friend of the Heydrich family, offered him a way out. The Baroness's son, Karl von Eberstein, joined the Nazi Party as early as the 1920s and is now the leader of the Munich STORM Troopers. Thanks to the tensions brought about by the economic crisis, the Nazi Party was growing rapidly, the number of SA troops had increased by 2.5 times in a year, and the Nazi Party was very welcome to join former military officers out of the need for street conflicts. After careful consideration, Carl recommended Reinhard to work under SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who was anxious to find the right person to set up his own intelligence organization. To increase the success rate of the recommendation, Carl specifically mentioned that Reinhard had served as an intelligence officer for three years, and although this was not the case, this false information prompted Himmler to agree to meet with Reinhard.
■ In 1932, the Nazi SA marched through the streets of Berlin, followed by the social crisis brought about by the Great Depression, and the Nazi Party grew rapidly.
Reinhard initially had reservations about the position, but with the strong support of his fiancée and mother, he decided to consider starting a new career in the SS. He had never read Mein Kampf before that, nor was he aware of the existence of the SS, and he did not defect to Himmler because of Nazi ideology, but because of the hopelessness of his military career, financial difficulties, the salvation of marriage, and the desire to return to that kind of organized life. As a precondition for seeking a new position, Reinhard joined the Nazi Party on June 1, 1931, with a 554916 membership number, although not a "veteran" who participated in the "Beer Hall Riots", but a party member who joined before the successful seizure of power in 1933, and was still regarded as a loyal member, and his SS number was 10120.
■ After meeting in June 1931, Himmler (center) and Heydrich (right) began an 11-year collaboration, with the latter long playing the role of Himmler's deputy.
On the afternoon of 14 June, Reinhard went to a chicken farm outside Munich to meet him, and his appearance with typical Aryan characteristics left a good impression on the SS leader, and even after learning that he was only a signals officer and had no experience in intelligence work, Himmler was still willing to give him the opportunity to write an outline of the establishment of an intelligence organization within 20 minutes. Taking advantage of the limited knowledge he had acquired from detective novels as a student and packaging it in military terminology, Reinhard completed the interview and won Himmler's admiration, thus obtaining a position that initially paid only 180 marks a month, which was not even as good as a skilled worker and a shop clerk, but Reinhard was confident in the prospects of this job, he established the SS Security Service from scratch, and eventually grasped the supremacy of the entire Third Reich intelligence and police organization! If Reddell had foreseen this outcome two months ago, would he have kicked the offending officer out of the Navy?
Rhinehard Heydrich, who was working at the desk in 1934, was already the head of the SS Security Service and the Bavarian Police, and had been promoted to the rank of brigade commander.