Download or read book Heydrich Hitler s Most Evil Henchman written by Charles Wighton and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE MAN WITH THE IRON HEART Hitler called him “The man with the iron heart”—yet Reinhard Heydrich was utterly different from those other iron men who served the Führer. Gifted with intellect, charm and great courage, Heydrich used his outstanding talents to create the Nazi Security Service, the notorious SD (Sicherheitsdienst), thereby becoming one of the most powerful figures—perhaps the most evil influence of all—in Nazi Germany. Charles Wighton, through unprecedented co-operation on both sides of the Iron Curtain, has had access to top secret Nazi Party files, to official sources in East Germany, to highly secret records in Czechoslovakia—and to the frank recollections of Heydrich’s widow. The result is a fascinatingly detailed revelation of the rise of this diabolical genius. Through Heydrich’s racial campaigns, which gathered their own momentum after his death, six million Jews were murdered by 1945. And yet this son of a cultured, upper-middle-class Roman Catholic family, who became the real power behind Himmler, was himself blackmailed by the Führer for possessing non-Aryan blood. In addition to clarifying this aspect of Heydrich’s astonishing career, the author throws new light, too, on “Plan Ost”, the blueprint for the extermination of thirty million Slavs, and on the mystery surrounding Heydrich’s assassination in 1942. Here, then, is the full story of the man with the iron heart—Heydrich, Hitler’s most evil henchman.
Download or read book Heydrich written by Mario R. Dederichs and published by Greenhill Books. This book was released on 2022-06-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive biography of the Nazi mastermind behind the Holocaust and his military career, featuring interviews with his surviving family. Adolph Hitler praised Reinhard Heydrich as ‘the man with the iron heart’. He admired Heydrich so much that, despite rumors about Jewish ancestry, he considered him a potential successor. Reinhard Heydrich was undeniably one of the Führer’s most enthusiastic, brutal, and ambitious henchmen and one of the key architects of the Third Reich’s horrific genocide. He quickly rose through the ranks of the Nazi party and became one of the key architects of the Third Reich’s horrific genocide. Indeed, after his 1942 assassination, the murder of more than 2 million people at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblina was code-named ‘Action Reinhard’. In this critically acclaimed biography, which includes interviews with some of his surviving family, Mario Dederichs creates a complete and compelling portrait of Heydrich’s life. Dederichs details his short-lived naval career, to his work under the SS chief Himmler, his appointment as Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, and his assassination by Czech agents and the terrible reprisals exacted on the town of Lidice. Praise for Heydrich: The Face of Evil “A chilling study of the man who masterminded the Holocaust . . . Heydrich was inhumanely cruel, ruthless, devious, shameless, a sixteen hour a day workaholic who was feared and loathed even by his closest colleagues.” —The Daily Telegraph “An impressive mix of psychological analysis, biography and historical reporting . . . Dederichs descends into Heydrich’s personal abyss and describes it in a captivating and intelligible manner while not rejecting the scientific approach.” —Die Rheinische
Download or read book Hitler s Hangman written by Robert Gerwarth and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chilling biography of the head of Nazi Germany’s terror apparatus, a key player in the Third Reich whose full story has never before been told. Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the twentieth century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany. He shouldered a major share of responsibility for some of the worst Nazi atrocities, and up to his assassination in Prague in 1942, he was widely seen as one of the most dangerous men in Nazi Germany. Yet Heydrich has received remarkably modest attention in the extensive literature of the Third Reich. Robert Gerwarth weaves together little-known stories of Heydrich's private life with his deeds as head of the Nazi Reich Security Main Office. Fully exploring Heydrich's progression from a privileged middle-class youth to a rapacious mass murderer, Gerwarth sheds new light on the complexity of Heydrich's adult character, his motivations, the incremental steps that led to unimaginable atrocities, and the consequences of his murderous efforts toward re-creating the entire ethnic makeup of Europe. “This admirable biography makes plausible what actually happened and makes human what we might prefer to dismiss as monstrous.”—Timothy Snyder, Wall Street Journal “[A] probing biography…. Gerwarth’s fine study shows in chilling detail how genocide emerged from the practicalities of implementing a demented belief system.”—Publishers Weekly “A thoroughly documented, scholarly, and eminently readable account of this mass murderer.”—The New Republic
Download or read book The Hangman and His Wife written by Nancy Dougherty and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishing journey into the heart of Nazi evil: a portrait of one of the darkest figures of Hitler’s Nazi elite—Reinhard Heydrich, the designer and executor of the Holocaust, chief of the Reich Main Security, including the Gestapo—interwoven with commentary by his wife, Lina, from the author's in-depth interviews. He was called the Hangman of the Gestapo, the "butcher of Prague," with a reputation as a ruthlessly efficient killer. He was the head of the SS, and the Gestapo, second in command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac. In The Hangman and His Wife, Nancy Dougherty, and, following her death, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, masterfully explore who Heydrich was and how he came to be, and how he came to do what he did. We see Heydrich from his rarefied musical family origins and his ugly-duckling childhood and adolescence, to his sudden flameout as a promising Naval officer (he was forced to resign his Naval commission after dishonoring the office corps by having sex with the unmarried daughter of a shipyard director and refusing to marry her). Dougherty writes of his seemingly hopeless job prospects as an untrained civilian during Germany’s hyperinflation and unemployment, and his joining the Nazi party through the attraction to Nazism of his fiancée, Lina von Osten, and her father, along with the rumor shadowing him of a strain of Jewishness inherited from his father’s side. And we follow Heydrich’s meteoric rise through the Nazi high command—from SS major, to colonel to brigadier general, before he was thirty, deputy to Heinrich Himmler, expanding the SS, the Gestapo, and developing the Reich's plans for "the Jewish solution." And throughout, we hear the voice of Lina Heydrich, who was by his side until his death at the age of thirty-eight, living inside the Nazi inner circles as she waltzed with Rudolf Hess, feuded with Hermann Göring, and drank vintage wine with Albert Speer.
Download or read book Himmler written by Willi Frischauer and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1953, this masterly study of Heinrich Himmler is a forceful, dispassionate analysis of a man who rose from obscure beginnings as an agricultural student to a position of almost absolute power, until, in the Nazi twilight, he challenged Hitler himself. Outwardly insignificant, diffident—possessing neither the flamboyance of Goering nor the incisiveness of Goebbels—Himmler, head of the dreaded Secret Police, yet made himself the man most feared in the Nazi hierarchy—and as much by his ‘friends’ as his enemies. Only when the incredible facts about Himmler’s extraordinary hold over his colleagues became known were the full depths of the infamy to which Nazism had brought Germany revealed. Based on journalist Willi Frischauer’s unique knowledge of the background and sequence of events which gave rise to the Hitler regime, he manages to unearth the evidence, building up, stone by stone, the mosaic of Himmler’s true portrait. A fully documented and unforgettable narrative.
Download or read book Heydrich written by Charles Whiting and published by Leo Cooper Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the mysterious life and death of Reynard Heydrich, Hitler's right-hand man.
Download or read book The Holocaust and History written by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-02 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Holocaust and History examines the various disputes surrounding the Holocaust, examining why it should have come about, how different sets of people reacted to it, and what lessons should be learned for the future.
Download or read book Hitler written by George Victor and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2000 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victor's book is the first to show that implementing the Final Solution was actually the root of Hitler's most disastrous military decisions.
Download or read book Reinhard Heydrich written by United Library and published by . This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinhard Heydrich's book delves into the chilling life and legacy of one of the most sinister figures of the Nazi regime. As a high-ranking German SS and police official, Heydrich played a central role in shaping the Holocaust, earning him the infamous title of a principal architect of one of history's most horrific atrocities. Leading the Reich Security Main Office and serving as Deputy Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich's influence extended across the Nazi apparatus. His presidency of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) underscored his far-reaching impact, while his chairmanship of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 formalized the genocidal "Final Solution to the Jewish question." Adolf Hitler himself dubbed Heydrich "the man with the iron heart," reflecting the ruthlessness and brutality that characterized his tenure. As the founder of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Heydrich orchestrated the suppression of resistance through arrests, deportations, and murders, including the notorious Kristallnacht attacks. Directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, he oversaw the mass shooting and gassing of over two million people, including 1.3 million Jews. The book also explores Heydrich's demise through Operation Anthropoid, a daring mission by Czech and Slovak soldiers trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Despite his death, Heydrich's malevolent impact endured as Nazi reprisals targeted innocent villages, leaving a haunting legacy that reverberates through history.
Download or read book The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich written by Callum Macdonald and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-06-16 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary account of one of the most daring World War II missions, as told in the movie Anthropoid If anyone warranted assassination during World War II, the man to know was Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942)—chief of the security police, rabid anti-Semite, architect of the Final Solution, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and Hitler's most likely successor. In 1941, at the height of the Nazis' seeming invincibility, the Czech government-in-exile launched a desperate operation to kill Heydrich. From the assassins' training in England to their Thermopylae-like last stand in the flooded crypt of a Prague church, and the Nazis' savage reprisals (including the obliteration of two villages), The Killing of Reinhard Heydrich brilliantly recounts one of World War II's most daring and tragic missions.
Download or read book The Secret Lives of the Nazis written by Paul Roland and published by Arcturus Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While demanding that the German people made sacrifices for a war which few in Hitler's inner circle believed they could win, Nazi leaders were leading lives of incredible debauchery, privilege, and power. It was theft and murder on the grandest scale. Ex-poultry farmer Heinrich Himmler used his influence as head of the SS and Gestapo to strip the assets of millions of victims. Joseph Goebbels, the 'poison dwarf' and Hitler's cynical spin doctor, exploited his position as Propaganda Minister to bed a succession of movie starlets. Meanwhile, on Goering's orders, thousands of trains packed with looted treasure were transported back to Germany from France alone. Had the German people known the truth about the men they entrusted with their future, history might have taken a very different turn. The Secret Lives of the Nazis reveals the terrible truth behind the pernicious propaganda peddled by the Nazis and the murderous private feuds that went on behind closed doors as members of the Nazi leadership schemed and plotted to eliminate their political rivals, while accumulating incredible personal wealth and priceless possessions.
Download or read book Assassination of the Butcher of Prague written by David W. Cameron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-10-04 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 4 June 1942, one of the most powerful figurers of the Nazi Third Riech, Reinhard, Heydrich, the ‘Butcher of Prague’ and architect of the ‘Final solution’, died from wounds suffered in an assassination attempt carried out just days before. His death caused shockwaves in the Nazi State, and resulted in savage reprisals, with Hitler ordering the annihilation of two village populations thought to be involved in assisting the assassins. Thousands of others were sent to concentration camps where many were tortured and executed. The British trained Czech assassins, part of ‘Operation Anthropoid’, were eventually betrayed in their hideout in a Prague church. The initial battle to capture the Czech operatives in the choir stalls after many hours resulted in many German casualties. However, the German SS-troops and Gestapo soon realised another four operatives were in the vaults of the church, resulting in more fighting. Hitler ordered they be taken alive. This book provides a detailed and fascinating account of the assassination and subsequent events, hour by hour, and day by day.
Download or read book Totalitarian Dictatorship written by Daniela Baratieri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume takes a comparative approach, locating totalitarianism in the vastly complex web of fragmented pasts, diverse presents and differently envisaged futures to enhance our understanding of this fraught era in European history. It shows that no matter how often totalitarian societies spoke of and imagined their subjects as so many slates to be wiped clean and re-written on, older identities, familial loyalties and the enormous resilience of the individual (or groups of individuals) meant that the almost impossible demands of their regimes needed to be constantly transformed, limited and recast.
Download or read book The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich written by Charles River Editors and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-04-11 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Describes Heydrich's war career, the plot to kill him, and the aftermath of the assassination *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Since it is opportunity which makes not only the thief but also the assassin, such heroic gestures as driving in an open, unarmoured vehicle or walking about the streets unguarded are just damned stupidity, which serves the Fatherland not one whit. That a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich should expose himself to unnecessary danger, I can only condemn as stupid and idiotic." - Hitler Cloak and dagger adventure, with daring commandos parachuted deep behind enemy lines to kill a sinister mastermind, belongs chiefly to the realm of thriller novels or films. However, World War II stretched over such vast territories and affected so many hundreds of millions of people that nearly every possible human interaction, from the vilest to the noblest, and from the most pedestrian to the exotically adventurous, achieved reality at some point during the conflict. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich stands out as one of the war's most remarkable secret operations. "The man with the iron heart," as Adolf Hitler dubbed him, made a fitting target for the dramatic events which unfolded in Prague on May 27th, 1942. According to testimony by the historian Michael Freund, "He is one of the greatest criminal figures of the Third Reich. Nowhere in the histories of the Third Reich has [Heydrich] been awarded his rightful place. He is a man of outstanding significance, a criminal mind of Luciferic grandeur." (Dederichs, 2009, 17). During the early stages of the war, the Reich Protector often walked the streets of Prague alone or with just one or two escorts, and he also favored an open-topped Mercedes 320-C convertible, which left him fully exposed to snipers, bomb throwers, and the like. Though he was ordered by the Fuhrer to install armored plates inside the seat backs to limit the effect of grenades hurled into the interior of his vehicle, these armor pieces remained idle in the castle garage on the date of Heydrich's assassination. By contrast, Heydrich found time to have expensive horsehair upholstery installed in the touring car, providing a springy, comfortable ride. That would be all the good fortune a British-trained team of Czech assassins would need. Even though the assassination attempt was mostly botched (to the extent that the assassins initially assumed they had failed), shrapnel from an anti-tank grenade caused the top Nazi official severe injuries, killing him a little over a week later. Even as Heydrich lay mortally wounded, Hitler and the Nazis planned severe reprisals, and the most notorious would come at Lidice, which the Germans tenuously (and incorrectly) linked to the plot. The Nazis ultimately razed the small village to the ground and killed every male over the age of 15 in town before sending the remainder off to concentration camps. The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich chronicles the plot to kill one of the top Nazi officials and the aftermath. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the assassination of Heydrich like never before, in no time at all.
Download or read book Killing the Enemy written by Adam Leong Kok Wey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II, the British formed a secret division, the 'SOE' or Special Operations Executive, in order to support resistance organisations in occupied Europe. It also engaged in 'targeted killing' - the assassination of enemy political and military leaders. The unit is famous for equipping its agents with tools for use behind enemy lines, such as folding motorbikes, miniature submarines and suicide pills disguised as coat buttons. But its activities are now also gaining attention as a forerunner to today's 'extra-legal' killings of wartime enemies in foreign territory, for example through the use of unmanned drones. Adam Leong's work evaluates the effectiveness of political assassination in wartime using four examples: Heydrich's assassination in Prague (Operation Anthropoid); the daring kidnap of Major General Kreipe in Crete by Patrick Leigh Fermor; the failed attempt to assassinate Rommel, known as Operation Flipper; and the American assassination of General Yamamoto.
Download or read book Heydrich written by Max Williams and published by . This book was released on 2019-01-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The holocaust will remain a stain on the history of mankind in perpetuity, long after the recollection of many of the perpetrators has faded. Some names will remain, however, indelibly printed in the records and the memories of future generations. Adolf Hitler's political protestations against certain sections of twentieth-century European society developed into national policy once he achieved his grip on power. His vision of a Europe free of these 'undesirables' almost became a reality. In Heinrich Himmler, he had a loyal servant, only too willing to sell his soul to the Devil to please his master. Himmler's SS organisation was the ideal tool to execute Hitler's plans, and what better administrator than the intelligent and obedient ex-naval officer who directed the Reich security police? From an early age, Reinhard Heydrich was determined to succeed at every challenge he encountered. An ambitious sportsman, a loving family man, and a ruthless executive, Heydrich possessed all the qualities necessary to carry out Hitler's policy in Himmler's name. This book illustrates the life of the architect of genocide, his background, his upbringing, his family, and his career, which developed into engineering one of the greatest crimes in history.
Download or read book The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich written by Callum MacDonald and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 4 June 1942 one of the most powerful figures of the Nazi regime died in agony from wounds sustained during an assassination attempt in Prague. This is the story of the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, a man of extraordinary intelligence, ruthlessness and ambition who had risen from obscurity to become head of the Nazi security police and Governor of Bohemia-Moravia. Regarded by many as Hitler's most likely successor, he was feared and hated even by other high-ranking Nazi officials. Heydrich's death caused shockwaves throughout the Nazi leadership, provoking ferocious reprisals against Czechs and Jews. Those who carried out the assassination were hunted down, and, trapped like rats in the cellar of a Prague church, committed suicide rather than face the certainty of torture and execution at the hands of the SS. Based on original archive material, interviews with surviving members of the Special Operations Executive, who trained the Czech assassins in the UK, and Czech military intelligence, Callum MacDonald's book is a well-researched and gripping account of one of the most audacious assassinations of the Second World War.
