Heydrich, Henchman of Death

Reinhard Heydrich is said to have relished his reputation as "the most dangerous man in Germany." Joining the SS in 1931 after being expelled from the Navy for a romantic indiscretion, he had achieved the high rank of Obergruppenf hrer (lieutenant general) in only three years. Holding a succession of police posts, he became supreme commander of all Reich security forces in 1939. In this capacity Heydrich helped fabricate the incidents that led to the German invasion of Poland, including dressing concentration-camp inmates as Polish "invaders" and gunning them down in front of German border posts. A man of boundless energy, he became acting governor of the conquered Czech provinces of Bohemia-Moravia, while carrying out his numerous other duties, which included planning the early stages of the Final Solution. On May 27, 1942 he was mortally wounded in Prague by Czech agents acting under British orders. The bare details of Heydrich's career only hint at the contradictions of his character and the unsolved mysteries surrounding his death. He was a patron of the Berlin cabarets other Nazis denounced as decadent. He could take time out from sending thousands to their deaths to issue a set of stamps commemorating Mozart's association with Prague. The son of a composer and music teacher, his last official act on the night before his assassination was attending a concert of his father's music. The greatest mystery surrounding Heydrich involves his assassination by British agents. Why did this governor of a province in central Europe far-removed from the English Channel become the only leader of the Third Reich targeted for assassination by Great Britain? British officials in Spain had been approached by the German resistance in regard to the assassination of numerous Third Reich officials, and had summarily rejected all such proposals. As a further puzzle, why was Heydrich's wife, largely at British insistance, recognized as "the widow of a German general who died in the line of duty" and given a government pension for the rest of her life? Charles Whiting, internationally renowned World War II researcher, has previously unraveled mysteries surrounding Martin Bormann (The Hunt for Martin Bormann) and Otto Skorzeny and the Churchill-Mussolini connection (Skorzeny). Now Whiting marshals his resources and unequaled circle of international contacts to resolve the unanswered questions surrounding the deadliest figure of the Third Reich.