Hitler's Hangman (31 page)

of her birth: ‘He was a proper father to his daughter. It didn’t matter

whether an official meeting was going on in the house or whether there

was a visitor, his daughter Silke was brought to him at 6 p.m. for her

goodnight kiss.’ From now on, Reinhard returned more frequently to the

family home in Berlin-Schlachtensee.114

Although not directly involved in educating his own children due to his

heavy and ever-increasing workload, Heydrich had very clear ideas on

how children should be educated. In a meeting with Hitler Youth girls, he

stressed that education and politics were inseparable. Whereas during the

Weimar Republic, ‘the youths were pretty superficial, addicted to enter-

tainment, and completely indifferent to the challenges of the future of
Volk

and Reich’, education in the Third Reich was guided by clear ideological

principles: ‘The main tenets of our educational ideal are the uncompro-

mising preservation of German blood, the endeavour to demonstrate an

uncompromising clarity of character, to cherish truth, modesty and pride

without arrogance, to inculcate a healthy ambition that demands highest

achievements without being egoistic, and, last but not least, a constant

endeavour to achieve the highest professional standards.’ But Heydrich

clearly distinguished between the education of girls and that of boys,

the future political soldiers of the Third Reich. He insisted that girls

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‘despite all necessary self-restraint and self-control . . . must never become

militarized and hardened. The most attractive thing about a woman is her

femininity, which in itself makes a woman beautiful. Whatever you do,

always preserve your femininity.’115

Heydrich’s stereotypical ideas about the preservation of femininity and

softness reflected propagandistic Nazi gender images of women as

mothers, carers and creators of homes in which their warrior husbands

could find rest and regain strength. In point of fact, the reality in Nazi

Germany looked very different and the number of women in permanent

employment rose constantly, from 1.2 million in 1933 to 1.85 million in

1938. But female employment was not the main issue. Heydrich’s ideas for

educating young women, which he reiterated in his testament of 1939,

were directed against a certain mentality, encapsulated by the despised

image of the ‘New Woman’ – modern, short-haired, emancipated and

smoking – propagated by left-wing intellectuals and avant-garde women’s

journals such as the German
Vogue
of the 1920s. The New Woman, a

central feature of the perceived decadence of modernity, was to disappear

once and for all.116

Heydrich’s marital life was not the only family problem that concerned

him in the later 1930s. His sister Maria insisted on several occasions that

Reinhard should use his contacts to secure a job for his brother-in-law.

Heydrich grudgingly complied and repeatedly found employment for

Wolfgang Heindorf first in the Propaganda Ministry, and then in the

Volkswagen factory and the German Labour Front. His brother-in-law

was sacked from each of these jobs within six months. As a raging alco-

holic who tended to submit falsified expense claims, brag about his influ-

ential brother-in-law and ‘borrow’ money from subordinates, Heindorf

remained a constant source of embarrassment for Heydrich.117

By June 1939, Heydrich was at the end of his tether and ordered

Heindorf to come to his office. During the meeting, he furiously attacked

his brother-in-law for his inability to hold down a job, for his constant

accumulation of debts and for his visible alcoholism, which he held

partially responsible for the economic collapse of his family’s Conservatory

in Halle. Heindorf and his wife, Heydrich insisted, led an overly extrava-

gant lifestyle. In the future they would have to make do with less.118

Heydrich’s accusations must have infuriated Maria, for she wrote an

angry letter to her brother on 30 June, complaining about the elevated

moral tone that he was taking towards her and her husband:

Due to your high position, you have lost your ability to appreciate our

circumstances . . . to the extent that, if you are honest, you can no longer

really understand and judge the abilities and shortcomings of an average

F I G H T I N G T H E E N E M I E S O F T H E R E I C H

115

citizen any more from your lofty vantage point. To be able to do that,

and to think and feel like we do, you would have to live with us again

for a few weeks! Excuse my radical openness, but you also tell us the

truth and how you think, and I am not writing today to the SS

Gruppenführer and Chief of Police Heydrich, but to my own flesh and

blood, my brother . . . Reinhard, tell me – what do you gain by wanting

to kick me and my family down with such relish?! You don’t count us

among your relatives any more anyway, so if you don’t help us, at least

leave us in peace and do not put any further obstacles in our path . . .119

Three weeks later, on 19 July, Maria received a brief response from Kurt

Pomme, Heydrich’s police adjutant since November 1934: ‘The

Gruppenführer refuses to have any further direct contact with you and

your husband (even through letters) because he does not wish to be

insulted.’ Through Pomme, Heydrich further instructed Maria to leave

their mother out of the dispute and ordered Gestapo surveillance of

Heindorf, insisting that every incident involving his brother-in-law

should be brought to his immediate attention. As the same time, he

informed Heindorf ’s new employer that his brother-in-law required

‘strong guidance’ in fulfilling his tasks. Heydrich’s suspicions were quickly

confirmed when he received Gestapo reports that Heindorf had fallen

back into ‘old habits’, incurring debts, arriving drunk at work and boasting

about being Heydrich’s relative. Heydrich gave his brother-in-law only

one option: to volunteer for the Wehrmacht and to ‘prove his worth in

battle’ – a scenario that was becoming increasingly likely as Nazi Germany

prepared to go to war in the late 1930s.120

C H A P T ER V

✦

Rehearsals for War

The Fritsch–Blomberg Affair

In late 1937, Hitler instigated a radical reversal in the foreign

policy of the Third Reich. On 5 November, the Führer gave a speech in

the presence of the supreme commanders of the army, air force and navy,

in which he emphasized the need to procure, through violent expansion if

necessary, the
Lebensraum
(living space) Germany required to secure its

future as a great nation. The concerns and criticisms of some of his

listeners reinforced Hitler’s view that he would achieve his foreign policy

objectives only if he replaced with more willing helpers some of the senior

conservative figures who continued to occupy key positions in the govern-

ment apparatus.1

Just a few months later, a fortuitous opportunity arose to introduce such

a comprehensive change of personnel: the scandal surrounding the Reich

War Minister, Werner von Blomberg. In January 1938, in the presence of

Hitler, Göring, Heydrich and other Nazi dignitaries, Blomberg had

married a considerably younger woman who turned out to be a prostitute

known to the police. The affair led to Blomberg’s dismissal. In late January

1938, Göring, who regarded himself as Blomberg’s natural successor,

unexpectedly presented incriminating Gestapo material against his

strongest competitor for the job: the army’s commander-in-chief, Werner

von Fritsch. According to Gestapo evidence, conveniently placed at

Göring’s disposal, Fritsch was a homosexual – a major criminal offence in

Nazi Germany.2

Heydrich was hardly surprised by the allegations. Already in 1936, his

Gestapo apparatus had gathered incriminating material on Fritsch and

passed it on to Hitler. Back then, the Führer had chosen to ignore the

allegations against Fritsch, and ordered the SS to destroy the police file.

Heydrich had, however, ignored that order and kept a copy of the file for

R E H E A R S A L S F O R W A R

117

future reference. When Hitler and Göring tried to rid themselves of the

conservative generals, he remembered the file. The allegations against

Fritsch rested on thin evidence: the key witness in the case was a notorious

criminal, Otto Schmidt, whose Berlin-based gang had specialized in

blackmailing prominent homosexuals since 1929. Despite his youth,

Schmidt had already served many years in prison for theft, forgery,

corruption and blackmail, and he was currently imprisoned in a concen-

tration camp in Emsland. According to his testimony, he had witnessed

Fritsch and a Berlin rentboy, Martin Weingärtner, engage in sexual activ-

ities near Wannsee railway station. He further alleged that, when

confronted, Fritsch had offered him money for his silence.3

Heydrich resubmitted this ‘evidence’ to the Führer and on 26 January

Fritsch was ordered to the Reich Chancellery, where, in the presence of

Hitler and Göring, he was confronted with Schmidt. Although Fritsch

denied ever having met Schmidt or having engaged in homosexual prac-

tices, Hitler relieved him of his duties, along with twelve other politically

undesirable conservative generals. Another forty-four generals were trans-

ferred to politically irrelevant posts. Hitler’s cabinet, too, was reorganized

and cleansed of potential critics: the conservative Foreign Minister,

Konstantin von Neurath, was replaced by a committed Nazi, Joachim von

Ribbentrop, and the Economics Minister, Hjalmar Schacht, was succeeded

by the former State Secretary in Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, Walther

Funk. The Ministry of War was dissolved and replaced by the High

Command of the Wehrmacht (as the Reichswehr was called after March

1935) under the obedient and ideologically reliable Wilhelm Keitel.4

While Hitler readjusted German policy and assumed supreme command

of the Wehrmacht, Heydrich’s Gestapo continued its investigations into

the Fritsch case. Heydrich felt the pressure to prove Fritsch’s guilt, for it

was his apparatus that had raised the allegations in the first place and thus

created the pretext for the restructuring of the army leadership, whose

relationship with the Gestapo had now reached rock bottom. For several

weeks, Gestapo agents investigated every garrison town Fritsch had ever

lived in, while Heydrich’s ‘expert’ in the fight against homosexuality, Josef

Meisinger, travelled to Egypt, where Fritsch had spent his holidays in

1937, in search of incriminating evidence. None of these investigations

delivered any concrete leads. Despite these setbacks, Himmler and

Heydrich nonetheless assumed that Fritsch would not be rehabilitated as

long as Schmidt’s testimony stood.5

In March, Fritsch appeared before the military tribunal charged with

the investigation of the case. The hearing ended with a disastrous turn of

events for Heydrich and the Gestapo: under pressure from Fritsch’s legal

counsel, the sole prosecution witness, Otto Schmidt, admitted that he had

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confused General von Fritsch with a retired cavalry officer called Captain

von Frisch, who confirmed that he had been blackmailed by Schmidt.

Even worse for Heydrich, the court learned that the cavalry officer had

admitted his ‘guilt’ to the Gestapo several months before, thus leaving the

impression that Heydrich’s apparatus had persecuted General von Fritsch

despite its knowledge of the confused identity. The court concluded that

Schmidt’s testimony to the Gestapo was the result of ‘the most extreme

pressure’ placed on him by investigators. Fritsch was duly acquitted and

rehabilitated, but not reinstated as the army’s commander-in-chief.6

The affair was a political disaster for the SS and particularly embar-

rassing for Heydrich, whose Gestapo had led the investigation. Heydrich’s

deputy, Werner Best, who had personal y interrogated Fritsch, spoke of a

severe public ‘disgrace’. Others went further: Fritsch himself contemplated

chal enging Himmler to a duel, while the Chief of the General Staff,

General Ludwig Beck, cal ed for the immediate dismissal of Heydrich and

other senior investigators. Even before the conclusion of the Fritsch trial,

Heydrich began to fear and anticipate a serious response from the army

leadership, possibly even a military putsch and an army raid of the Gestapo

headquarters.7 Such plans indeed existed, and a group of senior officers

surrounding General Beck and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris contemplated

the arrest of the entire SS leadership. Canaris’s relationship with Heydrich