Hitler's Hangman by Robert. Gerwarth Read Free Book Online Page B

steadily and they
    were able to have a brief conversation.43 Two days later, however, an infec-
    tion in the stomach cavity set in. Had penicillin been available in Germany
    in 1942, Heydrich would have survived. Without it, his fever got worse
    and he slipped into a coma, giving rise to renewed fears in Berlin that
    he might die. On 2 June, Goebbels reflected on Heydrich’s worsening
    condition in his diary and added: ‘The loss of Heydrich . . . would be
    disastrous!’44
    A similar view prevailed in Britain: ‘If Heydrich should not survive
    the attempt or if he is invalided for some appreciable time, the loss for the
    Nazi regime would be very serious indeed. It can safely be said that next
    to Himmler, Heydrich is the soul of the terror machinery . . . The loss of
    the “master mind” will have serious consequences.’45 On 3 June Heydrich’s
    condition deteriorated further. The doctors were unable to combat his
    septicaemia, his temperature soared and he was in great pain. The
    following morning, at 9 o’clock, Heydrich succumbed to his blood infec-
    tion. Hitler’s ‘hangman’, as Thomas Mann famously called him in his BBC
    commentary the following day, was dead.46
    C H A P T ER I I
    ✦
    Young Reinhard
    The Heydrich Family
    Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born on 7 March 1904 in
    the Prussian city of Hal e on the River Saale.1 His names reflected the
    musical background and interests of his family: his father, Bruno Heydrich,
    was a composer and opera singer of some distinction who had earned nation-
    wide recognition as the founding director of the Hal e Conservatory, where
    his wife, Elisabeth, worked as a piano instructor. In naming their first-born
    son, they took inspiration from the world of music that surrounded them:
    ‘Reinhard’ was the name of the tragic hero of Bruno’s first opera, Amen ,
    which had premiered in 1895; ‘Tristan’ paid tribute to Richard Wagner’s
    opera Tristan and Isolde ; and ‘Eugen’ was the name of his late maternal
    grandfather, Professor Eugen Krantz, the director of one of Germany’s most
    acclaimed musical academies, the Royal Dresden Conservatory.2
    Reinhard’s birth coincided with a period of rapid change and boundless
    optimism in Germany. Under Bismarck and Wilhelm II, Imperial
    Germany had become the powerhouse of Europe: its economic and mili-
    tary might was pre-eminent, and its science, technology, education and
    municipal administration were the envy of the world. But the modernity
    associated with Wilhelmine Germany also had its darker sides, notably a
    widespread yearning to become a world power whose influence could
    match its economic and cultural achievements. Imperial Germany, the
    country of Heydrich’s birth, is therefore best described as Janus-faced:
    political y semi-authoritarian with a leadership prepared to enhance the
    country’s international standing through reckless foreign policy adven-
    tures, but cultural y and scientifical y hyper-modern.3
    Reinhard’s father, Bruno Heydrich, was a beneficiary of the almost
    uninterrupted economic boom that had fundamentally transformed
    Germany since 1871, the time at which the German nation-state had

    YO U N G R E I N H A R D
    15
    emerged from a diverse collection of kingdoms, grand duchies, princi-
    palities and free cities in Central Europe after three victorious wars
    against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870–1). Born in
    February 1863 into a Protestant working-class family in the Saxon village
    of Leuben, Bruno experienced austerity and economic hardship in early
    life. The path of his parents, Ernestine Wilhelmine and Carl Julius
    Reinhold Heydrich, led from Leuben, where Carl worked as an impover-
    ished apprentice cabinetmaker, to the city of Meissen, internationally
    renowned for its porcelain manufactory, where the family resided from
    1867 onwards. Upon his early death from tuberculosis in May 1874 at the
    age of just thirty-seven, Carl Julius left behind three