Who was the most horrible person in all of human history? Some might claim their mother-in-law. I’m personally crazy about mine. However, I’d like to dig a bit deeper than that today.
Tragically, the competition for that particularly dark superlative is fierce. I would say that human beings are animals, but that unfairly disparages animals. If ever you might have doubted humanity’s innate sin nature, you need look no further than any handy history text.
Contenders
Certain names naturally percolate to the top. Adolf Hitler is a perennial contestant, as is Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot. However, I would assert that these infamous personalities, vile and heartless though they might have been, enjoyed a little institutional distance. It’s likely fairly easy to sit around a conference table and foment policy that results in the extermination of millions. It’s another thing entirely to implement that policy or even pull the levers yourself. They’re all horrible, but the act becomes viscerally worse the closer you get to the actual doing.
While the competition is indeed fierce, I would like to propose one SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich for that ignoble accolade. Amidst a veritable sea of Nazi depravity, Heydrich strikes a fascinating balance between policy maker and dispassionate executioner. He’s been called the Butcher of Prague, the Hangman, Himmler’s Evil Genius, the Man With the Iron Heart, the Young Evil God of Death, or simply the Blonde Beast. He richly earned those various sobriquets.
Qualifications
Reinhard Heydrich was an officer in the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or “SS.” The SS was initially designed as Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard. They eventually morphed into, among other things, the Waffen SS (or “Armed SS”). These military formations fought alongside the Wehrmacht and were known for both their ferocity and their fanaticism.
Administration of the death camps and some of the more viscerally objectionable aspects of the Nazi machine fell to other arms of the SS. Heydrich personally helmed the Wannsee Conference that codified the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” His was the dark mind behind the Holocaust.
Heydrich was the head of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). He founded the Sicherheidsdienst or Security Service — the feared SD. These racist lunatics ruthlessly crushed opposition to Naziism in both Germany and her many occupied territories. Heydrich personally organized the Einsatzgruppen that followed the advancing German armies and institutionally slaughtered the Jews.
Heydrich’s formal title was Reichprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This made him one of the most feared and powerful men in Nazi Germany. When tasked with personally cleansing Czechoslovakia of the “Jewish menace,” Heydrich threw himself into his duties with elan.
Unlike Hitler who was dark-haired and a bit stumpy, Reinhard Heydrich was straight out of central casting. Standing six foot three and sporting both angular features and blonde hair, Heydrich willingly drank the Aryan superman Kool-Aide. A psychopath kills because he is unable to empathize with other people’s suffering. Heydrich committed mass murder because his twisted sense of reason drove him to do so. He truly believed he was doing the right thing.
For his many sins, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) determined that Heydrich must die. They titled the mission Operation Anthropoid. Anthropoid translates, “Having the form of a human.”
The Hit
27 May 1942 was a bright clear day in western Czechoslovakia. 38-year-old Reinhard Heydrich rode in his powerful green Mercedes 320 Cabriolet B convertible accompanied solely by his driver and bodyguard, SS-Oberscharfuhrer Johannes Klein. He was heading toward the Prague airport to fly to Berlin for a scheduled meeting with Adolf Hitler.
Heydrich felt he had little to fear from the locals. The top was down, and he was enjoying the Spring sunshine.
As he approached a tight turn, Klein rode the brakes to slow the big car. At the perfect moment, a pair of Czech assassins named Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik stepped out and blocked the road. Gabcik leveled his Sten gun at Heydrich and squeezed the trigger. The bolt snapped forward, but the gun failed to fire.
Little Things Become Big Things
At this point, Heydrich had a decision to make. A quick word to Klein, and he likely could have run the two young Czechs over. He would have kept his appointment with Hitler and had a spirited story to share for his trouble.
However, that’s not how the Blonde Butcher rolled. He was incensed that any of these subhumans might dare defy him. Heydrich retrieved his P.08 Luger handgun, stood up in the back seat of the moving car, and took aim at his assailants. That’s when Jan Kubis hurled an anti-tank grenade.
This thing was heavy and it fell a bit short, detonating against the fender of the Mercedes. Red-hot shrapnel and fragments of upholstery tore into Heydrich’s body, penetrating his spleen, lung, and diaphragm. Two of Heydrich’s uniform jackets that had been sitting on the back seat were later found blown over a nearby trolley wire.
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Oberscharfuhrer Klein attempted to engage Kubis with his own pistol. However, the grenade blast had rendered him momentarily confused. Klein inadvertently stroked his mag release instead of the trigger, ejecting his magazine and rendering his sidearm temporarily inert. With his breath failing, Heydrich directed Klein to pursue the attackers. He did so and caught up with Gabcik in a nearby butcher’s shop. Gabcik shot the SS man twice in the leg with his .32 ACP M1903 pistol and successfully made his escape.
The Stoppage
The British Sten gun was an excellent weapon with a most horrible magazine. The Mk II version of the gun readily broke down into four components for easy concealment. The simple manual of arms and the gun’s comatose 500 rpm rate of fire made it easy to master. However, that double-column, single-feed magazine was the Sten gun’s Achilles heel.
Tapering the round stack caused a great deal of unnecessary friction within the magazine. It also demanded a dedicated loading tool or at least a wooden dowel to get the mag loaded to capacity. I have experienced this very stoppage with a Sten gun myself. The bolt will fly forward and then lack the energy to strip the round from the magazine. On a peaceful Mississippi shooting range, that is curious. For Jozef Gabcik on a chaotic Czech road back in 1942, it was a somewhat bigger deal.
The Aftermath
Heydrich was hurt and badly. Hitler sent his personal physician, Dr. Karl Gebhardt, to tend to the man, but the damage was done. The unrepentant Nazi succumbed to sepsis on June 3, a week after the attack. He suffered mightily in the process. I’m not torn up about that.
Gabcik and Kubis escaped the immediate area but were later cornered in a church by SS troops. During the course of a vigorous gun battle, the SS eventually commandeered local firefighting equipment and used it to flood the place. The two young men committed suicide rather than face torture at the hands of the Nazis. They still killed 14 SS troopers and wounded a further 21. The Nazis murdered some 5,000 innocent Czechs in reprisals.
Operation Anthropoid seemed somehow destined to succeed. Despite the most ill-timed misfire of the Sten gun, Reinhard Heydrich, the Man With the Iron Heart, was dead as soon as that anti-tank grenade went off. It just took a few days to work out the details. Thus ended the reign of terror of one of the most horrible human beings in the history of the species.
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