Hitler's Hangman (67 page)

Heydrich repeated this threat during a press conference in Prague on

26 May, one day before his assassination: ‘I sense and see that foreign

propaganda and defeatist anti-German rumours in this space are on the

rise again . . . Small acts of sabotage, too, which do less damage but rather

aim to demonstrate an oppositional attitude, have increased. You must

know that despite my patience I shall not hesitate to strike outrageously

hard if I should gain the impression that the Reich is considered to be

weak and that my generous concessions to you are misinterpreted as

softness.’242

Heydrich’s concerns were not unfounded. There was indeed mounting

evidence of increasing resistance activities, not only in the Protectorate

but throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. On 23 March, one of

Heydrich’s closest associates, Franz Walter Stahlecker, the commander

of
Einsatzgruppe
A, had been killed by partisans near Krasnogvardeysk

in Russia. Similar attacks on German military personnel and

installations across Europe had almost become part of the daily

routine – a problem that Heydrich believed could be resolved only by

intensifying terror and mass shootings.243

In Western Europe, too, resistance activities increased significantly and

Heydrich acknowledged that the problem here was more complex due to

the racial value of some Western European populations and the impor-

tance of their economies for the German war effort. Even in Denmark,

previously a haven of co-operative calm, illegal Communist leaflets

against German rule were distributed in ever larger numbers, prompting

Heydrich to urge Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to allow the Gestapo

to arrest anyone suspected of orchestrating the campaign and, more

generally, to ‘act firmly’ against any emerging potential unrest.244

272

HITLER’S HANGMAN

Although concerned about the impact of partisan activities on the

Wehrmacht’s ability to achieve a swift victory over the Soviet Union,

Heydrich also saw the rise in resistance as an opportunity to increase SS

influence over Western Europe by preaching the virtues of a centrally

co-ordinated approach to resistance activities. This was nowhere more

evident than in France where, until the spring of 1942, the Wehrmacht

had successfully fended off SS interference. Even in the face of growing

resistance activity, the military commander in Paris, General Otto

von Stülpnagel, argued strongly that reprisals for partisan attacks

should be calibrated so as not to jeopardize good relations with the

majority of the French population who were working on behalf of the

German war effort.245

The already tense relationship between Heydrich’s SD office in Paris

and the German military administration in France deteriorated massively

after an incident in the autumn of 1941: during the night of 2–3 October

seven synagogues in Paris were bombed and, even though the SD officially

claimed that French anti-Semitic nationalists had carried out the attacks,

it was clear who had pulled the wires. Heydrich had grown increasingly

impatient with the Wehrmacht’s ‘half-hearted’ implementation of anti-

Jewish policies and authorized the covert operation. When an investiga-

tion by the German military police revealed that Heydrich’s men in Paris

were behind the attacks, and General von Stülpnagel demanded the

immediate dismissal and trial of the SD perpetrators, Heydrich candidly

admitted full responsibility. The bombing attacks, he argued in a letter to

the army leadership, had targeted Jews ‘as the culpable incendiary in

Europe . . . which must definitely disappear from Europe’. The bombings

had therefore sent a clear signal to international Jewry ‘that the Jews are

no longer safe in their former European headquarters’.246

Heydrich’s conflict with the army in France was paralleled by renewed

tensions between the SS and the military Abwehr under Canaris. In the

winter of 1941–2 Heydrich demanded further concessions from military

intelligence in the field of foreign espionage and counter-espionage. He

insisted that the Sipo should obtain control over the Secret Military

Police (
Geheime Feldpolizei
), thereby attempting to revise the ‘Ten

Commandments’ of 1935, which had previously regulated the division of

labour between Canaris’s Abwehr and Heydrich’s Security Police appa-

ratus, in favour of the SS. Heydrich and Canaris discussed the matter over

the Christmas holidays, which, despite their mounting professional disa-

greements, they spent together at the Heydrichs’ hunting lodge in

Stolpshof near Berlin. At first, it seemed that Canaris was prepared to bow

to Heydrich’s wishes. However, the deteriorating relationship between the

SS and the Wehrmacht in France prompted him to change his mind and

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273

to argue that the Wehrmacht leadership should not concede any further

powers to the SS. On 5 February 1942, a disgruntled Heydrich wrote to

Canaris expressing his ‘deepest disappointment’ over Canaris’s change of

heart, which threatened to end a relationship that had previously been

characterized by ‘true openness and honesty in every respect’.247

Canaris responded three days later with a letter in which he maintained

that ‘the human disappointment is all mine. I had never thought that after

so many years of comradely collaboration you would be willing to end our

relationship so easily.’ At the same time, Canaris underlined his determi-

nation to end their dispute: ‘We both must be absolutely clear about one

thing: that both of us – each in his own area of responsibility – serve one

and the same cause. In that I demand the same trust in me as I place in

you. Then all questions relating to our two offices will be easy to resolve.’248

In early March, Heydrich and Canaris came to a written understanding

that largely conceded Heydrich’s demands: among other things, it

placed the Secret Military Police under Heydrich’s control – an important

step towards SS mastery over policing matters in Western Europe.

Simultaneously, the agreement announced a joint conference of some 300

senior Abwehr and Security Police officials in Prague where the first expe-

riences of the new collaboration were to be discussed.249 On 18 May,

Canaris arrived in Prague for the intelligence conference in the splendour

of Prague Castle, accompanied by his senior staff. As a gesture of goodwill

and a sign of future amicable collaboration, Canaris and his wife stayed in

the Heydrich home.250

The renewed professional tensions between Canaris and Heydrich do

not seem to have impacted on their personal friendship, as Canaris was

deeply shaken by Heydrich’s death a few weeks later. He attended the

funeral in Berlin in June 1942 ‘with tears in his eyes’ and told the SD

officer Walter Huppenkothen – who would, in April 1945, act as pros-

ecutor at the court-martial that sentenced Canaris to death for allegedly

supporting the 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life – how he had ‘respected and

admired’ Heydrich as a ‘great man’.251 To Lina Heydrich, Canaris wrote a

few days later: ‘Please be assured: I have lost a true friend.’252

The agreement between the two men of March 1942 was not the only

success for Heydrich in the spring of 1942. In early March, confronted

with a new wave of resistance activities in France, Hitler changed his mind

on occupation policy and authorized the installation of a higher SS and

police leader in Paris, a major breakthrough for the SS leadership’s

attempt to get their hands on occupied Western Europe.253 On 5 May,

Heydrich flew from Prague to Paris with the new Higher SS and Police

Leader in occupied France, his former personal adjutant Carl Albrecht

Oberg. Heydrich’s visit was not merely a symbolic gesture. As he put it in

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HITLER’S HANGMAN

a letter to Bormann, he hoped to make recommendations for combating

the French resistance and on the reorganization of the occupation system

‘on the basis of my experiences in the Protectorate’.254

By spring 1942, the RSHA was also actively pursuing the complete

deportation of all European Jews within German-controlled Europe,

including occupied France. During a conference of Heydrich’s Jewish

experts in Berlin on 4 March, Eichmann announced the immediate

deportation of 1,000 French Jews to Auschwitz and assumed that another

5,000 deportees would be transported eastwards before the end of that

year. At the same time, Heydrich announced far more extensive deporta-

tions from France for the following year.255

Against this background, the leading representatives of the German

occupation regime in France expected Heydrich to make suggestions on

how to combat the resistance and to expand on the solution of the Jewish

question in France. On 6 May he did offer some thoughts on both

subjects. Acts of retaliation for resistance attacks on German personnel in

France had to be handled differently from the situation in Eastern

Europe. The shooting of hostages, he assured a sceptical German officer

corps in the Hôtel Majestic, was inappropriate for Western Europe.256

Within a smaller circle that evening, Heydrich reported on the progress

that had been made in solving the Jewish question. After a briefing on the

results of the Wannsee Conference, he mentioned the use of gassing vans

in the East, a procedure which – much to his ‘regret’ – had proven ‘techni-

cally insufficient’ to deliver the desired results. Instead, Heydrich added

confidently, ‘bigger, more perfect and numerically more productive

solutions’ had been developed. A ‘death sentence’ had been passed on the

‘entirety of European Jews’, including those living in France whose east-

ward deportation would begin over the coming weeks.257

On a more personal note, Heydrich’s trip to Paris also meant that he

would have to meet with his former deputy in the RSHA, Dr Werner

Best, with whom he had not spoken since Best’s resignation in June 1940.

Best was fully aware that the introduction of a higher SS and police leader

in France would deprive him of control over the French police. Learning

of Heydrich’s imminent visit, he sought a personal audience with his

former boss in order to improve their strained relationship. In a letter to

Heydrich, he wrote that he had always wished to be more that his ‘closest

member of staff ’, namely a ‘true friend’. But Heydrich had ‘never wanted

that friend. You wanted a subordinate.’ Heydrich, he insisted, had misin-

terpreted his subsequent disappointment and reserve as jealous ambition

and had treated him with undue suspicion and public humiliation. While

Best had hoped ‘that our separation would have been sufficient to reduce

our past misundertandings and tensions’, he accepted that this was not the

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275

case. He therefore proposed a personal meeting in Paris to restore a rela-

tionship which had previously been distinguished by seven years of ‘posi-

tive and constructive collaboration’.258

Heydrich’s reaction was characteristic. Best’s insinuation that they were

equally to blame for their falling out seemed outrageous to him. He also

knew from his contacts in Berlin that Best had recently written an

emotional letter to Himmler’s personal adjutant, Karl Wolff, complaining

that he was denied any access to Himmler, whose impression of him had

been clouded by false reports.259 Although his name was not mentioned,

Heydrich was well aware to whom Best was referring and immediately

intervened with Himmler. He also rejected Best’s subsequent offer of

reconciliation, arguing that Best had complained to Himmler about

him.260 Best panicked. Fearing that his career in the SS was now once and

for all compromised, he wrote a series of apologetic letters to Wolff and

Heydrich, suggesting that the tone of his letter to Wolff, his ‘bitter words’,

was the result of his constant state of depression since leaving the RSHA.261

Despite Best’s humiliating attempt at reconciliation, Heydrich chose to

ignore his request. Although their professional encounters in Paris were

‘frictionless’ and Best attempted to ‘serve the interests of the SS and

Obergruppenführer Heydrich in every conceivable way’, their meetings

remained ‘without any personal touch’. Heydrich and Best would never

talk or meet again.262

Like so much else in the life of Reinhard Heydrich, his trip to Paris has

inspired the imaginations of many historians. Referring to a letter of

7 May from Heydrich to Frank’s personnel officer, Robert Gies, the histo-

rian Čestmír Amort (and, in his wake, many other Heydrich biographers)

has claimed that Hitler intended to appoint Heydrich head of the civilian