HHhH

stories.

So, in the end, maybe I can do without this overpriced book.

All the same, there is one thing about the meeting of the two lovebirds that intrigued me: the name of the dark-haired officer who accompanied Heydrich was Manstein. First of all, I wondered if it was the same Manstein who would later direct the Ardennes offensive during the French campaign, who we would find afterward as an army general on the Russian front—in Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Kursk—and who would lead Operation Citadel in 1943, when the Wehrmacht’s task was to deal with, as best they could, the Red Army counterattack. The same Manstein too who, to justify the work of Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen on the Russian front, would declare in 1941: “The soldier must appreciate the necessity for the harsh punishment of Jews, who are the spiritual bearers of the Bolshevik terror. This is also necessary in order to nip in the bud all uprisings, which are mostly plotted by Jews.” The same, finally, who would die in 1973—meaning that, for one year, I lived on the same planet as him. In truth, it’s unlikely: the dark-haired officer is portrayed as a young man, whereas Manstein, in 1930, was already forty- three. Perhaps someone from the same family, a nephew or a distant cousin.

At eighteen Lina was, as far as we know, already a firm believer in Nazism. According to her, she was the one who converted Heydrich. Yet certain clues lead us to believe that even before 1930 Heydrich was politically well to the right of most soldiers, and strongly attracted by National Socialism. But obviously the “woman behind the famous man” version is always more appealing…

26

It’s risky to try to determine the moments when a person’s life is changed forever. I don’t even know if such moments exist. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt wrote a book, La Part de l’autre, in which he imagines that Hitler passes his art diploma. From that instant, his destiny and the world’s are completely altered: he has a string of affairs, becomes a promiscuous playboy, marries a Jewish woman with whom he has two or three children, joins the Surrealists in Paris, and ends up a famous painter. At the same time, Germany fights a small war with Poland and that’s all. No Second World War, no genocide, and a Hitler who is nothing like the real one.

Fictional gimmicks aside, I doubt whether one man’s destiny can determine a nation’s, never mind the whole world’s. Then again, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone else as utterly evil as Hitler. And the art exam probably was a decisive factor in his personal destiny, since after this failure Hitler ended up a tramp in Munich—a period during which he would develop a fatal resentment toward society.

If you wanted to find a key moment of this kind in Heydrich’s life, it would undoubtedly occur the day in 1931 when he took home what he believed was just another girl. Without her, everything would have been very different—for Heydrich, for Gabcik, Kubis, and Valcik, as well as for thousands of Czechs and, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of Jews. I won’t go so far as to suggest that without Heydrich the Jews would have been spared. But the incredible efficiency he demonstrated throughout his Nazi career allows us to think that Hitler and Himmler would have had trouble coping without him.

In 1931 Heydrich is a navy lieutenant with the promise of a brilliant military career. He is engaged to a young aristocrat and his future is bright. But he is also an inveterate pussy hound, making endless sexual conquests and visits to brothels. One evening he brings home a young girl he’d met at a ball in Potsdam and who’d come to Kiel to pay him a visit. I don’t know for sure if she became pregnant, but in any case her parents demanded that he do his duty by her. Heydrich didn’t deign to respond, given that he was already engaged to Lina von Osten—whose pedigree was more suitable, and with whom, unlike the other one, he seemed genuinely in love. Unfortunately for him, the father of this young girl was Admiral Raeder himself, commander in chief of the navy. Raeder kicked up a huge fuss. Heydrich got bogged down in murky explanations that allowed him to exonerate himself in the eyes of his fiancee, but not of the military. He was court-martialed, disgraced, and finally booted out of the armed services.

So in 1931, at the height of the economic crisis devastating Germany, the young officer with the brilliant future finds himself unemployed—one man among five million without work.

Luckily for him, his fiancee hasn’t dropped him. A rabid anti-Semite, she pushes him to get in touch with a Nazi who is quite highly placed in a new elite organization with a growing reputation: the SS.

April 30, 1931, the day Heydrich is ignominiously dumped from the navy—is this the day that seals the fate of Heydrich and his future victims? We can’t really be sure, not least since at the 1930 elections Heydrich declared: “Now old Hindenburg will have no choice but to name Hitler the chancellor. And then our time will come.” Leaving aside the fact that he was wrong by three years on Hitler’s nomination, we see here Heydrich’s political opinions in 1930, and can therefore suppose that even if he’d remained a navy officer, he would have ended up making a good career with the Nazis. Only perhaps not quite so monstrous.

27

Meanwhile, he goes back to his parents’ house and, we’re told, cries like a child for several days.

Then he enrolls in the SS. But in 1931 being a foot soldier in the SS does not pay much. It’s practically voluntary work, in fact. Unless you climb the ladder.

28

There would be something comic in this face-to-face meeting were it not that it led to the deaths of millions. On one side, the tall blond in black uniform: horsey face, high-pitched voice, well-polished boots. On the other, a little hamster in glasses: dark brown hair, mustache, not very Aryan at all. It’s in this pathetic willingness to ape his master Adolf Hitler by growing a mustache that we see the physical link between Heinrich Himmler and Nazism, otherwise not immediately apparent—unless you count the various uniforms already put at his disposal.

Against all racial logic, it’s the hamster who’s in charge. He is already a big wheel in a party poised to win the elections. Sitting across from this rodent-faced but increasingly influential little man, Heydrich tries to appear simultaneously respectful and self-assured. It’s the first time he’s met Himmler, the supreme leader of the organization to which he belongs. Heydrich has been recommended by a friend of his mother’s. He is applying to be chief of the intelligence service that Himmler wishes to create within the organization. Himmler hesitates. He prefers another candidate. He is unaware that this other candidate is an agent of the Republic sent to infiltrate the Nazi machine. So convinced is he by this man’s suitability for the job that he wanted to cancel his meeting with Heydrich. But when she discovered this, Lina put her husband on the first train to Munich. Thus it is that he turns up at the house of the ex–chicken farmer and future Reichsfuhrer Himmler—the man who Hitler will soon refer to only as “my faithful Heinrich.”

So Heydrich forces his presence on Himmler, who is consequently in rather a bad mood. And if Heydrich does not want to continue teaching rich sailors in Kiel’s yacht club, it’s in his interests to make a good impression very quickly.

On the other hand, he does hold a trump card: Himmler’s remarkable incompetence in the domain of intelligence.

In German, Nachrichtenoffizier means “transmission officer,” while Nachrichtendienstoffizier means “intelligence officer.” It’s because Himmler, notoriously ignorant about all things military, makes no distinction between these two terms that Heydrich—who used to be a transmission officer in the navy—is sitting opposite him today. In fact, Heydrich has practically no experience of intelligence. And what Himmler is asking him to do is nothing less than to create within the SS an espionage service that can compete with the Abwehr of Admiral Canaris, Heydrich’s old navy boss. Now that he’s here, Himmler expects him to outline his vision for the project. “You have twenty minutes.”

Heydrich does not want to be a sailing instructor all his life. So he concentrates hard and gathers together