9 – Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich might not be as well known a name as the likes of Julius Caesar, Benito Mussolini, Maximilien Robespierre – or any of our Kings or Tsars or Emperors for that matter – but he might be the single figure responsible for the most deaths of any of the tyrants on our list. Bear that in mind when reading this, and then factor in that the reason he was a tyrant has very little to do with all the deaths that he was a large part of causing. That should give you a measure of the kind of bad guy that Reinhard Heydrich was. And if it makes you feel better, remember that this is a list of people who got what was coming to them, and what is coming to Reinhard Heydrich is a bullet to the skull followed by a week of agonizing pain.
Heydrich was, as you might have guessed from the Teutonic name, a German, and a fervent Nazi to boot. He was raised in Halle, in the east of the country, by a father who was a composer and staunch German nationalist and the young Reinhard was raised in a comfortable home. At the age of just 15, he joined the Freikorps, an anti-communist group that fought leftists in the aftermath of the First World War, before moving into the Navy. He was promoted often, but destroyed his reputation and lost his commission after an affair with an unmarried woman, Lina van Osten, in 1931. She was already a member of the Nazi Party and, unemployed and now married to Lina, Reinhard joined the SS.
Again, Heydrich moved swiftly through the ranks. He began in counterintelligence, being made a Major by Himmler within a year, before being named as head of the new party intelligence service, the SD in 1932 and then, when the Nazis took power, being put in charge of the Gestapo in 1934. Thus, Heydrich was at the forefront of the creation of the concentration camps and, after purging a large part of the Nazi Party, he was only second to Himmler in terms of the internal security forces of Germany. When war broke out in 1939, Heydrich could comfortably be seated at the very top table of Nazis and was regarded internally as the most fierce and cold-blooded.
It is here that we must mention the death toll. A rabid anti-Semite, Heydrich signed the orders that resulted in the Kristallnacht, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Jews and kick-started the Holocaust. He planned the operation that triggered the invasion of Poland and the start of the Second World War. On top of this, he was the man who chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was decided upon, and subsequently, was the man tasked by Himmler with the logistics and implementation of the extermination of the Jews, over which Heydrich wanted and received total control. His actions killed an estimated 2 million people.
His personal tyranny, and eventually comeuppance, would come in Czechoslovakia. Heydrich had been seconded to Prague as the head of the German occupying forces and was ruthless in his treatment of the Czechs. Alongside deporting thousands of Jews, he attempted to “Germanise” the local population, executing anyone who crossed him and suppressing all Czech culture. Nearly a hundred people were summarily executed within his first three days as “Protector” of Bohemia and Moravia, while his general conduct would earn him the nickname “The Butcher of Prague”.
His confidence was supreme and would prove his downfall. Though most internal opposition had been quashed, the British had been covertly training Czech and Slovak exile soldiers in assassination techniques. Heydrich, so confident that he had the population under his thumb, would regularly drive around Prague in an open-topped limousine. On May 27, 1942, two British-trained airmen, Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis, ambushed Heydrich as he was driving to work, throwing a grenade at his car and critically wounding him. It took the Butcher of Prague over a week to die from his shrapnel wounds.
The reprisals against the Czechs were swift. 13,000 people were arrested, 5,000 of whom were sent to concentration camps and hundreds were summarily executed. Two entire villages, Lidice and Lezaky, were razed to the ground after inaccurate intelligence linked them to the assassins. Gabcik and Kubis themselves stayed on the run for three weeks, before holing up in a church in central Prague, where they made their last stand. They were both killed but not before they had taken down several SS troops as well.
Heydrich’s demise was as hubristic as any on our list. If there is anyone who could surpass him, however, in surprise at the way in which their world came falling apart, it might be our next subject. For him, we have to travel to the next great period of revolutions and to Romania, where the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu is about to dramatically end.