The Nazi Hangman

Southland Times, Issue 24760, 3 June 1942, Page 4

The Nazi Hangman

Although the full truth about the attack on Reinhard Heydrich may not be known until after the war, it seems probable that he has been seriously injured. If the report quoted by the Stockholm correspondent of The Daily Telegraph is true, his active career as a police terrorist is finished. It is not necessary to pretend that the news will be received with anything except a grim satisfaction in the enslaved countries of Europe. The man whom the Germans themselves called “der Henker” (the Hangman) had won for himself an evil reputation wherever the Gestapo extended its reign of terror. In Poland, in Czechoslovakia, even in Germany, he must have drawn upon himself a terrible volume of hate. Yet his removal (if it has indeed been accomplished) means much more than an act of revenge. Heydrich was an evil man, devoid of the faintest spark of compassion, and directly responsible for an appalling amount of human suffering. But he was also a brilliant administrator with a natural gift for the subtleties of police supervision. Many foreign observers believe that he was the dark genius of the Gestapo, the man who controlled the machinery while Himmler took the credit. A former official of the Berlin Gestapo, now a refugee in England, was reported by the American news-magazine, Time, to have made the following statement: “Without him (Heydrich), Himmler would be just a senseless dummy .. . Heydrich is young and intelligent, brutal, despotic and merciless. He uses Himmler cleverly . . Himmler shines while Heydrich works. Himmler betrays loyalties and friends. Heydrich annihilates them.” The known facts of his early record are unsavoury. He was a cashiered naval officer when he entered the Nazi movement, and he used blackmail to obtain his first post in the Munich Elite Guard. Thereafter he rose rapidly. At the time of the attempt on his life he was one of the most dangerous and most hated men in the world. His assailants may have wanted nothing more than to blot out a tyrant. If Heydrich is badly and permanently injured they may have succeeded in damaging the complex machinery of despotism at a time when the whole of Europe is seething with unrest.