Hitler's Hangman (12 page)

fired from the crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle. The inci-

dent radicalized an already tense atmosphere, fuelled by atrocity stories

that emanated from other parts of Germany, most notably from Berlin

where conservative papers suggested that Communist insurgents had

killed or wounded government troops and civilian hostages. Most of the

atrocity rumours were subsequently found to be untrue or exaggerated,

but they exerted a powerful influence on the public imagination, including

that of young Reinhard Heydrich, who frequently cited the events of

1918–19 during his career in the Third Reich.56

Maercker’s troops invaded the city the following morning. For several

days, the troops barricaded themselves in Halle’s main post office while

the insurgents took over the City Theatre, just a few blocks away from

the Heydrich family home. Over the following two days, Reinhard and

his parents witnessed the government troops attacking the City Theatre

with heavy weapons, including artillery, before finally storming the

building. Maercker’s troops then proceeded to crush the rebellion with

30

HITLER’S HANGMAN

utter ruthlessness, killing a total of twenty-nine people and wounding

sixty-seven, many of them civilian bystanders. More than 200 people were

arrested. Maercker’s own troops suffered seven deaths.

On Monday, 3 March, Maercker ordered the systematic occupation of

the city and declared martial law. Two days later, he set up a voluntary

civil defence force from among the citizens and university students of

Halle. Its primary purpose was to protect private property and maintain

order in the unlikely event of further civil unrest. The formation soon

counted 400 members.57 One of the new recruits was Reinhard Heydrich,

now fifteen years old and still a pupil at the
Reformgymnasium
.58 Very

little is known about his role in the volunteer force, but given his age

and inexperience it is unlikely that his involvement amounted to more

than a symbolic gesture – a somewhat pathetic attempt to compensate

for his lack of fighting experience in the war by joining a paramilitary

organization unlikely to witness real fighting. For many of the young

volunteers like him, who had come of age in a bellicose atmosphere satu-

rated with tales of heroic bloodshed but had missed out on a first-hand

experience of the ‘storms of steel’, the militias offered a welcome opportu-

nity to live a romanticized warrior existence without any real danger of

getting killed.59

In the light of his subsequent career and the popular characterization of

the Freikorps as a vanguard of Nazism, it is easy to overestimate the impact

of Heydrich’s involvement in paramilitary activities after the Great War.60

For some of the future protagonists of the Third Reich, including Heinrich

Himmler and Heydrich’s future deputy, Dr Werner Best, the experience of

defeat and revolution was indeed the moment of political awakening. As

the eighteen-year-old Himmler noted in his diary during the revolution in

his native Bavaria, the ‘treason’ of the home front cal ed for a violent

response and he accordingly joined the Freikorps ‘Oberland’, which

participated in the bloody crushing of the short-lived Bavarian Council

Republic in the spring of 1919.61 Heydrich’s response was less radical and

indeed more representative of the war youth generation as a whole.

Although unquestionably outraged by the German defeat and the outbreak

of revolution, Heydrich did not become a proto-Nazi in the immediate

aftermath of the Great War. Like many of his friends from school, who

also joined the Hal e civil defence force, he was primarily motivated by

youthful adventurism and the promise of a bloodless war game against

Communists who had long been defeated. His actual involvement in

paramilitary activity was therefore largely confined to showing off his

over-sized steel helmet and uniform to his teenage friends.62

Barely a year later, when Heydrich was stil enlisted in the civil defence

force, Hal e was once more the site of bloody streetfighting. In March 1920,

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

31

several Freikorps marched on Berlin to protest against their impending

dissolution by the republican government and managed temporarily to

instal an authoritarian government under the leadership of Wolfgang

Kapp, a prominent founding member of the far-right German Fatherland

Party. The putsch was quickly defeated by an impressive general strike that

in turn prompted the radical left in the industrial heartlands of Germany to

undertake a second attempt at bringing about a Bolshevik revolution. Hal e,

with its sizeable industrial working class, was one of the cities affected by

the uprising. For several days, the retreating Freikorps fought Communist

sympathizers in prolonged street battles resulting in the deaths of dozens of

men on both sides. On 23 March, government troops intervened and

restored public order in Hal e.63

Once again, there is no evidence to suggest that Heydrich actively

participated in any of the fighting. There is little doubt that defeat and

revolution had a politicizing effect on him, but it remains unclear just how

far that politicization went. According to the post-war testimony of his

childhood friend, the later SA officer Karl von Eberstein, Heydrich had

already developed an ‘extremely
völkisch
’ attitude during the war – an atti-

tude in which the interests of the
Volk
or German people took precedence

over all other political or ethical considerations – reading radical nation-

alist pamphlets and history books and seeking entry into several of the

now rapidly emerging racist leagues and societies in Halle.64 Heydrich

himself later claimed to have been a member of the Halle branch of the

German Nationalist Protection and Defiance League (Deutschvölkischer

Schutz- und Trutzbund) between 1920 and 1922. With 25,000 members

in 1920, the League was the largest and most active of the countless anti-

Semitic associations that sprang up in Germany after the defeat of 1918,

but it was banned after the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther

Rathenau in 1922.65

It is possible and indeed likely that Heydrich merely claimed member-

ship in the organization after 1933 in order to prove his early commit-

ment to right-wing politics.66 The only existing document that supports

his claim of early involvement in right-wing organizations is an undated

postcard that has survived in his personal papers. The postcard’s front

bears an advertising text for the Teutonic Order, one of the countless tiny

fringe-groups of the extreme right that blossomed in post-war Germany.

On the back, an anonymous author enquires about Heydrich’s commit-

ment to the nationalist cause: ‘We look forward to hearing from you again

very soon. It is high time that the racially conscious and pure-blooded

Germans pulled themselves together for the final deed. Are you one of

us?!’ The most likely explanation for this mysterious postcard is that

Heydrich indeed attended a meeting of the Teutonic Order in Halle, but

32

HITLER’S HANGMAN

that he never went back, thus prompting the written enquiry. For all we

know, he never responded to it.67

Although Heydrich hardly became a proto-Nazi or mass murderer in

waiting as a result of the events of 1918–19, he most certainly subscribed

to ideas that were shared by many young Germans attending school in the

immediate post-war period: anti-Bolshevism, a strong rejection of the

Versailles Peace accords and a refusal to accept the Reich’s ‘bleeding fron-

tier’ with Poland. While these ideas were something on which most

Germans – from the moderate left to the radical right – could agree,

Heydrich’s personal experiences of the upheavals of 1918–19 also made

him susceptible to an idea that would soon form an integral part of Nazi

ideology: the conviction that life was a permanent and violent struggle.

From 1919 onwards – first in Halle, then in the navy and finally in the

SS – Heydrich was surrounded by a political milieu in which the willing-

ness to use violence against a whole range of enemies increasingly formed

a common denominator.

Reinhard shared his generation’s sense of living through a crisis of epic

proportions, characterized by military defeat and its political conse-

quences, as well as by the increasing pauperization of the middle classes.

Germany had lost over 2 million men in action and more than 4.1 million

soldiers were wounded out of an overall population of 65 million. The

country had spent the equivalent of some 40 billion dollars on the war,

most of which it had borrowed from its citizens. In the Treaty of Versailles,

Germany lost 13 per cent of its territory and was required to pay 33 billion

dollars as a war indemnity to the victors. The post-war economic crisis

went hand in hand with price inflation of a dimension unprecedented in

German history. To a large extent, this inflation had domestic origins,

most notably heavy borrowing during the war and an accumulation of

debt that could be repaid only in the event of military victory. The finan-

cial and economic crisis that climaxed in the infamous 1923 hyperinfla-

tion when half a kilo of butter cost 13,000 Reichsmarks shook the middle

classes’ economic foundations and virtually wiped out the Heydrichs’ cash

assets. The currency reform of 1923 did little to alter this state of affairs.

It became more and more difficult for Bruno Heydrich to support his

family, and indeed to support his mother who continued to receive

payments from her son until her death in January 1923.68

The inflation and the destruction of many Germans’ life savings signif-

icantly reduced the ability of Halle’s citizens to finance their children’s

musical education. The Conservatory still had 200 pupils in 1921, and the

Heydrichs still managed to pay for their children’s leisure actitivies, such

as visits to silent films and operas or attendance at dancing lessons.69 But

by 1922 their financial crisis became apparent: in a lengthy letter to the

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

33

Halle magistrate, Bruno Heydrich begged for a state subsidy of 10,000

Reichsmarks and a reduced rate for coal, gas and electricity in order to

keep the Conservatory afloat. Bruno was forced to admit that ‘as a result

of excessive price increases, the reduced income, and the ever-increasing

attrition of our private property’ his family was ‘at the end of its tether’. If

the war and the subsequent revolution had already undermined the

economic viability of his business, the inflation deprived him of the means

to subsidize the Conservatory with his family’s savings. The existence of

the Conservatory, the city’s premier music teacher training college, was

‘seriously’ under threat. Bruno’s letter expressed deep resentment of the

rise of commercial entertainment, the advent of radio and the onslaught

of ‘modern times’ more generally, times in which ‘the general public

prefers to eat
Bratwurst
than to receive a musical education’.70

Bruno Heydrich’s request for state subsidies was turned down. At the

age of sixty, he faced professional ruin and his life’s work appeared

doomed. Even if the stabilization of the German economy in early 1924

provided the Conservatory with a certain amount of relief, fear of radical

economic and social decline would remain constant companions of the

Heydrich family for the next decade.

In the Navy

After obtaining his
Abitur
leaving certificate with high marks in the late

spring of 1922, Reinhard decided to pursue a career as a naval officer.

Becoming a professional musician and taking over as director of the Halle

Conservatory, a logical step considering his family background and his

own musical talents, was no longer an attractive option in light of the

business’s steady economic decline. He also decided against studying

chemistry, a subject that had particularly interested him at school.71

What exactly drove Reinhard Heydrich to join the German navy

remains highly speculative. His wife suggested after the war that the young

Heydrich became obsessed with the navy during his childhood holidays on

the Baltic coast where he could observe the manoeuvres of the Imperial

High Seas Fleet.72 Others have emphasized the personal influence of

Count Felix von Luckner, the old family friend and naval hero of the First

World War whose autobiography,
Seeteufel
(Devil of the Sea), with its

exciting descriptions of his adventurous voyages between 1914 and 1918,