Hitler's Hangman (15 page)

met Lina, the party had achieved electoral successes of which Hitler, not

even a German citizen at this point, could hardly have dreamed. In the

general elections of September 1930 – barely three months before

Reinhard and Lina first met – the Nazi Party had secured nearly

6.5 million votes, establishing itself as the second largest party in the

German national parliament, the Reichstag.116

The influence of Lina and her family on Heydrich’s political awakening

is difficult to overestimate, but it was only in the following year, triggered

by the greatest personal disaster in his life, that his complete conversion to

Nazism would begin. For the time being, he was glad that he had passed

the initial test of meeting Lina’s parents: Jürgen von Osten could find

no fault with Heydrich, not even when his future son-in-law confessed

that no financial riches were to be expected from the once flourishing

music conservatories in Halle and Dresden. A smart, ambitious naval

officer with a seemingly secure pension and an apparently bright career

ahead of him was more than the Ostens might have expected and it suited

YO U N G R E I N H A R D

43

Jürgen von Osten’s image of a prospective son-in-law. An official engage-

ment followed at Christmas, which Reinhard and Lina celebrated with her

parents.117

Back at work after his first visit to Lütjenbrode, Reinhard wrote to his

parents-in-law on 3 January 1931:

Dear parents-in-law! Back in service and hard at work, I would like to

thank you once more with all my heart for having received me so kindly

and like a son in your house. I will never forget my first days in Lina’s

childhood home. I am so grateful to you for your consent to our engage-

ment. I realize more and more every day that it was the right thing to

do. Lina does not have to resort to secrecy in Kiel and we can be

together often and get to know each other better and better without

having to pay attention to the gossip of others. – Regarding our wedding

date: please, please allow us to marry in September (17.!) . . . There is

nothing worse than uncertainty. I would be very, very grateful to you if

you could agree on September – my parents, too, will be available then.

Accept my sincere thanks, Your Reinhard.118

What Heydrich had conveniently omitted to mention to his future bride

was that she was not the only woman in his life at the time – a detail that

would shake the very foundations of his life.

Dismissal and Crisis

The young couple’s happiness was short lived. Heydrich sent the newspaper

announcement of his engagement to several friends and acquaintances.

One of the recipients was a young woman from Berlin, whom Heydrich

had met and befriended more than half a year earlier at a bal organized

by the Colonial Women’s School in Rendsburg. Since the two had enjoyed

a sexual relationship over the fol owing months and had visited each

other in Berlin and Kiel, the young woman had assumed that she was

herself engaged to Heydrich. Reinhard, who continued to cultivate the

relationship even after he had met Lina, invited her to Kiel and, despite her

request for a separate room in a hotel, encouraged her to spend the night

in his living quarters. Further rapprochements probably occurred on this

occasion. In any case, the young woman saw herself as compromised and

reacted to the receipt of Heydrich’s engagement notice with a nervous

breakdown.119

Ever since the end of the Second World War, there has been much

speculation about the identity of the young woman in question, but al that

can be said with certainty is that her father must have had close connections

44

HITLER’S HANGMAN

to the navy’s senior officer staff. In response to his daughter’s breakdown, he

lodged an official complaint against Heydrich with the Commander-in-

Chief of the German navy, Admiral Erich Raeder. The complaint had

serious consequences for Heydrich: in early January 1931, he was summoned

before a military court of honour under the chairmanship of Admiral

Gottfried Hansen, Commander of the Baltic Fleet, and invited to explain

himself.120 A broken engagement promise was a clear violation of the officer

corps’ code of conduct, but it was not a major offence automatical y

warranting the immediate dismissal of the officer in question. The embar-

rassing episode could have ended in little more than a reprimand for

what was, after al , a ‘girl’s story’, but Heydrich’s arrogant attitude got him

into trouble with the three members of the court: Admiral Hansen, his

training officer Gustav Kleikamp and the senior member of Heydrich’s

crew, Hubertus von Wangenheim. Instead of accepting responsibility and

settling for a minor punishment, Heydrich insisted that the woman had

herself initiated their sexual relationship. He also denied ever having

promised her marriage in return, describing their liaison in dismissive

terms that annoyed the members of the court. Although no records of

the court hearing have survived, having possibly been destroyed by the

Gestapo in the 1930s, the proceedings were reconstructed by fel ow

officers after the Second World War. Heydrich’s roommate in Kiel,

Heinrich Beucke, recal ed that ‘Heydrich sought to wash his hands of the

matter and to implicate [the girl in question]. His attitude before the court

of honour, his lacking the guts to tel the truth, to accept the blame and to

defend the woman, that was what led to his dismissal, not the actual offence

itself.’121

One of the members of the court of honour, Gustav Kleikamp,

confirmed this version and testified that Heydrich’s ‘proven insincerity,

aimed at whitewashing himself ’, irritated the court more than the actual

offence. The most junior member of the court, Hubertus von Wangenheim,

apparently pressed for Heydrich’s dismissal, arguing that his behaviour

had dishonoured the German officer corps.122

The court concluded its deliberations by asking whether it was ‘possible

for an officer guilty of such unforgivable behaviour to remain in the navy’,

although it avoided making any recommendation itself. The matter was

passed on to Admiral Raeder, who decided that Heydrich was ‘unworthy’

of being an officer and should be dismissed immediately. Kleikamp added

emphatically: ‘It was a decision which – if harsh – was recognized by all

as impartial and correct and to which there was no alternative for anybody

familiar with the facts.’123

On 30 April 1931 Heydrich’s promising naval career came to an abrupt

and unexpected end. ‘Discharge from the navy’, Lina recalled after the

YO U N G R E I N H A R D

45

war, ‘was the heaviest blow of his life . . . It was not the lost earning

capacity which weighed on him, but the fact that with every fibre of

his being he had clung on to his career as an officer.’124 At first he

hoped for reinstatement, but an official appeal against the dismissal

submitted to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg was turned down.

Heydrich was suddenly confronted by the grim reality of being unem-

ployed in 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression. Ejected from

the navy less than a year before he would have secured his entitlement

to a pension, his future looked gloomy, even though he continued to

receive a severance payment of 200 Reichsmarks a month for the next

two years. He locked himself in his room and cried for days in rage and

self-pity.125

Heydrich’s dismissal indeed occurred at the worst possible moment.

Following the crash of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street on

29 October 1929, the German economic situation had deteriorated

dramatically. Millions of jobless workers were plunged into terrible

suffering, while German industry and trade experienced dramatic drops in

turnover. The economic crisis was further exacerbated by the collapse of

the last Weimar coalition government and its replacement by a minority

cabinet under the authoritarian Centre Party politician Heinrich Brüning.

Brüning’s deflationary policies, designed to demonstrate Germany’s

inability to pay further reparations to the Western Allies, exacerbated the

already grim situation. By the spring of 1931, there were over 4.5 million

Germans unemployed, a figure that would to rise to more than 6 million

by February 1932.126

Shortly after his discharge Heydrich and his fiancée travelled to Halle

in order to inform his family of his dismissal and ask for their financial

support. But bad news awaited him there as well: the Conservatory, already

under serious strain since the post-war hyperinflation and the invention of

modern forms of musical entertainment such as radios and gramophones,

was facing bankruptcy. Bruno Heydrich, who had suffered a debilitating

stroke earlier that year, was no longer able to involve himself in the running

of the family business and now left most of the teaching to his wife and

daughter.127 Heydrich’s parents were thus no longer in a position to

support the couple. Elisabeth Heydrich, who until recently had been

able to afford a maid, had to do the housework herself when not teaching

the piano. Besides her husband, she now had to feed her daughter

Maria and her unemployed son-in-law Wolfgang Heindorf, as well as

her youngest son Heinz Siegfried, who had abandoned his studies in

Dresden and his fiancée, Gertrud Werther. The failed navy career of their

eldest son added to their own problems and Reinhard’s parents accused

him of foolishly ruining his future. In desperation Elisabeth argued

46

HITLER’S HANGMAN

endlessly with her brothers, Hans and Kurt, about selling the increasingly

improfitable Dresden Conservatory, which her father, Eugen Krantz, had

bequeathed to his three children. After the war, Lina vividly remembered

the depressing atmosphere in the Heydrich home, where the daily worries

about bills contrasted sharply with the remnants of the old furniture,

expensive china and silver cutlery that testified to past affluence and social

prestige.128

Worse was to come. In May 1931, Bruno Heydrich was informed

that, after a series of complaints about falling teaching standards, his

Conservatory was to be examined by a government commission. The

report submitted by the commission revealed that the Conservatory no

longer provided the necessary teaching level required for state certification

and that his pupils had demonstrated insufficient knowledge of their craft.

Physically incapacitated, financially ruined and professionally a broken

man, Heydrich responded to the school authorities by admitting ‘that my

seminar organization and training, which I have tested for thirty years, no

longer fulfils today’s expectations’. He voluntarily renounced state recog-

nition for his teaching seminar.129

Economic hardship also called into question Reinhard’s marriage to

Lina. Reinhard’s mother blamed Lina for his dismissal and her own

parents, too, had second thoughts about the relationship. Marrying an

unemployed ex-naval officer was a far less attractive prospect than a son-

in-law with high social standing and a dependable salary and pension.

Although Lina refused to break the engagement, marriage was impossible

until Reinhard found another job. Day after day, Lina urged her fiancé to

find an appropriate career that could sustain their future life as a family.130

Over the following four weeks, Heydrich considered and dismissed

different career options and sent his surprisingly positive certificate of

discharge from the navy to various potential employers:

All superior officers state that Heydrich is a conscientious and reliable

officer with a serious approach to duty . . . who has undertaken zealously

all duties required of him. Towards his superior officers he conducted

himself openly and in a proper military manner and is well liked

by fellow officers. He has treated the soldiers under his command well

and justly. Heydrich is physically very fit and he is a good fencer and

sailor.131

Heydrich did indeed receive several job offers, despite the economic

crisis. A friend from Kiel, Werner Mohr, offered him an opportunity to

work as a sailing instructor at the Hanseatic Yachting School in the town

of Neustadt on the Baltic coast of Holstein.132 Despite the relatively

YO U N G R E I N H A R D

47

handsome monthly salary of 380 Reichsmarks, Heydrich rejected the offer

from Neustadt, as well as similar offers from Kiel and Ratzeburg; he