Hitler's Hangman (17 page)

While their relationship was hierarchical in nature, it was based not on

subordination but rather on close collaboration – on a feeling of mutual

understanding and the pursuit of a common goal. The nature of that goal

was to change over time, as Nazi policies were gradually radicalized and

escalating terror and persecution within the Reich became pan-European

genocide, but throughout their shared career path the two men always

knew that they could rely on each other. As Himmler himself phrased it

in 1942 at Heydrich’s funeral: ‘I am privileged to thank you for your

unswerving loyalty and for your wonderful friendship, which was a bond

between us in this life and which death can never put asunder!’10

Although Himmler had no official deputy, Heydrich
de facto
performed

this role from 1933 onwards. But Heydrich was more than Himmler’s

loyal paladin and vassal: he was also the man who transformed the Nazi

worldview as expressed by Hitler and Himmler into concrete policies.

While Himmler was anything but a weak leader and possessed a

pronounced strategic talent in his dealings with other senior Nazis and his

subordinates, Heydrich was his executioner – a man of deed, action and

implementation. What set Himmler apart from other Nazi leaders were

his deep ideological conviction and purposefulness as well as his astute

manoeuvring within the political intrigues that characterized the Third

B E C O M I N G H E Y D R I C H

53

Reich. Heydrich proved himself to be Himmler’s eager pupil in ideolog-

ical matters, while simultaneously exhibiting an unsurpassed drive to

realize his dystopian fantasies.

Following his successful interview with Himmler, Heydrich travelled to

Hamburg, where he joined the SS on 14 July 1931. The organization was

at that time small and relatively insignificant. The SS originally served as

Hitler’s personal bodyguard after his release from Landsberg Prison

where he had spent most of the year 1924 for his failed putsch attempt in

Munich the previous year. It was subordinate to the SA and remained a

subsidiary organization over the next several years, but it quickly devel-

oped a special awareness of itself as the Nazi Party guard of honour utterly

loyal to Hitler.11

The SS remained a miniscule organization with no more than

280 members until Himmler assumed its leadership in 1929. Driven by

political ambition and the ideological conviction that his organization

could set an example to the party by adhering strictly to the tenets of

Nazism, he designed a programme of expansion that was to develop the SS

systematical y into a racial elite within the Nazi movement. He required

every prospective new SS member to supply a photograph so that he could

personal y inspect the applicant’s racial characteristics or ‘good blood’. The

elitist character of the organization attracted a large number of young,

unemployed right-wing university graduates who had few hopes of finding

a job during the Great Depression. It also appealed to former Freikorps

officers, many of them minor aristocrats, who sought a political home after

the creation of the seemingly alien and hostile Weimar Republic. These

officers included future key players in the SS empire such as the former

Pomeranian Reichswehr officer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski and First

Lieutenant Udo von Woyrsch, a veteran of the bitter ethnic conflicts that

ensued in Upper Silesia after 1918.12 By December 1929, less than twelve

months after Himmler’s takeover, the SS had enlisted 1,000 men. By the

end of 1930 this number had risen to 2,727; and by the time Heydrich

joined, in mid-July 1931, it counted more than 10,000 members.

Nonetheless, in comparison to the SA, which by this time was nearly

100,000 strong, the SS remained a relatively smal organization.13

Unlike the SA, whose local leaders represented a variety of political

strands and personal ambitions within the Nazi movement, sometimes

directly challenging the authority of the party leadership in Munich, the

SS repeatedly demonstrated its unconditional loyalty to Hitler. In the

summer of 1930 and again in the spring of 1931, for example, the Berlin

SA group under the leadership of Walter Stennes staged an open revolt

against the head of the capital’s Nazi Party branch, Joseph Goebbels, in

order to secure more safe seats for SA members in the forthcoming

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HITLER’S HANGMAN

general elections. Goebbels turned to the SS for personal protection.

Although outnumbered by their SA adversaries, the SS stood by the party

leadership and emerged strengthened from this internal party crisis.14

Heydrich thus joined the SS at an important turning point in its

history, which partly helps to explain the organization’s appeal for him: the

SS promised a career in uniform and the opportunity for rapid advance-

ment within a still-malleable body that promoted revolutionary views for

the reordering of Germany. Even if the pay was modest, the new activity

offered Heydrich, as an ardent reader of crime fiction, a job in an elite

organization that boosted his shaken self-confidence. It also offered a

comprehensive ideological system with a clearly defined binary world of

friends and foes, and thus seemed coherently to explain an increasingly

complicated world.

Over the following two weeks, between mid-July and early August,

Heydrich served in the SS in Hamburg where he was thrust into a

political milieu of fanatical Nazis. It was here that he first met Bruno

Streckenbach, a man who was to become his close associate in future

years, running the personnel department of Heydrich’s terror apparatus

and commanding the largest SS task force during the German attack on

Poland in 1939. Born in 1902, Streckenbach had grown up in a middle-

class family in Hamburg and had been deeply politicized by the war and

the upheavals of its aftermath. Unlike Heydrich, he dropped out of school

in 1918 to fight the revolution in Hamburg. He continued his right-wing

activism throughout the 1920s while taking up temporary jobs with an

importing firm and the German Automobile Club in order to earn a

living. Following his membership in various small fringe groups of the far

right, Streckenbach joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and became a member

of the Hamburg SS in early August 1931.15

As a newcomer without street credibility, Heydrich had to prove

himself in the meeting-hall battles with Communists and Social

Democrats in the run-up to the Hamburg local elections of 27 September

1931, in which the Nazis increased the number of their city council repre-

sentatives from three to forty-three.16 On these occasions, small motor-

ized SS units attacked party gatherings of political opponents and

disappeared before the police arrived. Apparently, Heydrich quickly

aquired a certain notoriety as the leader of a shock troop unit, becoming

known in Hamburg’s Communist circles as the ‘blond beast’, whose

commando displayed impressive military discipline.17 Streckenbach had

greater experience in fighting Communists, Social Democrats and trade

unionists on the streets of Hamburg and he undoubtedly had influence on

Heydrich during his time in Hamburg. For Streckenbach, too, the

encounter proved advantageous: in November 1933 he joined Heydrich’s

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55

SD, was appointed head of the political police in Hamburg and, under

Heydrich’s patronage, rose to become SS
Brigadeführer
(brigadier) by the

beginning of the Second World War.18

In August, Heydrich returned to Munich to take up his new position

in the Nazi Party headquarters, the Brown House. Himmler entrusted

Heydrich with the development of an SS intelligence service, the future

Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service or SD), which, in 1931, bore little

resemblance to the sinister organization it was to become in subsequent

years. Its original model was Ic – the small counter-espionage department

of the German army, whose organizational structure Heydrich sought to

emulate. The initial task of the SD was twofold: to gather information on

political opponents, notably the Communist Party (KPD) and the Social

Democrat Party (SPD), and – a more delicate issue that would repeatedly

get the SD into trouble – to search for police informers and disguised

Communist spies within the rapidly growing Nazi Party.19

The SD’s beginnings were very modest: compared to the more estab-

lished SA’s own intelligence service, which operated separately under the

direction of Count Du Moulin Eckart, the SD was a one-man organiza-

tion. Heydrich was its sole staff member, setting up a basic filing system

with index cards containing the names of political enemies. Due to

limited funds, he was forced to share his office and his typewriter in the

Brown House with Richard Hildebrandt, the chief of staff of the minus-

cule SS Division South, who, during the Second World War, became SS

and police leader of Danzig-West Prussia.20

Despite this less than impressive working environment, Heydrich

began to regain his confidence and relished his new responsibilities. Only

one day after taking up his new position, he wrote a letter to Lina’s

parents, in which he sought to convince them that their doubts regarding

his marriageability were now unfounded and that he had already earned

the praise of his superiors through hard work. From 1 September 1931 he

would receive a regular salary, enabling him to support a family and to

repay money that he had borrowed from Lina’s family after his dismissal

from the navy:

My position and my work give me great pleasure. I can work independ-

ently and build up something new. Above all, regardless of the political

situation we are currently in, this position will allow me to found a

household, the goal towards which my entire work has been and

continues to be aimed. From 1 September onwards, while restricting my

own lifestyle appropriately, I will be in a position to redeem my debts

with the highest repayments possible. I have rented a cheap, very simple

room in a very good neighbourhood from an orderly old lady. My

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HITLER’S HANGMAN

working day is extremely long . . . It is likely that I will undertake

extensive official journeys throughout Germany as the Reich Leader’s

representative in the near future and hope that I will also be able to

come to Lütjenbrode. Until then, kindest regards from your Reinhard.21

Just ten days later, on 22 August, Heydrich announced to his mother-

in-law that he would pay back the entire sum he had borrowed from her

on his next visit. He himself, Heydrich emphasized with pride, had a great

deal to do now that he belonged to Himmler’s innermost staff and worked

every day, including Sundays, until late at night:

I am developing a large organization according to my own design, which

demands all of my strength. Since I naturally spend as little as possible

on myself, making only the most essential expenditures on room and

board, and as I want to be able to present you with evidence of the

highest possible savings in early September, you can imagine what

my daily routine looks like. I probably do not need to tell you that my

thoughts wander off to Lütjenbrode every free minute. Today I had

joyful news: Herr Himmler, the Reich Leader SS, assured me that upon

my marriage I will receive 290 Reichsmarks per month. – On quiet

evenings I frequently long for the sea and the north.22

Although his letter was clearly written to rebuild Mathilde von Osten’s

confidence in his ability to sustain a family, Heydrich’s description of his

frenetic work schedule was probably no exaggeration since the early

development and extension of the SD’s responsibilities was closely linked

with his vast personal ambitions. According to Himmler’s future chief

adjutant, Karl Wolff, the then still very ‘insecure youngster’ had already

delivered his first lecture on enemy tactics at a leadership meeting of

sixty-five senior SS officers in Munich on 26 August 1931, less than

two months after entering an entirely unfamiliar working environment. In

a manner that was to become characteristic, Heydrich emphasized the

importance of his own task by reminding his audience that the Nazi Party

was constantly threatened and spied upon both by the police and by other

political parties. To counter this perceived threat, he announced his desire

to build up a small group of SS men who would unmask spies within the

Nazi movement. Only a few years later, after the seizure of power,