Reinhard Heydrich

Reinhard Heydrich ín 1940

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (7 March 1904, Halle – 4 June 1942, Prague) was a high-ranking Nazi officer in World War II.

In 1922 he joined the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy. In 1931 he was expelled and got a job with the Nazis.

Heydrich became German SS-Obergruppenführer (General) of the Sicherheitsdienst. He was the head of the RSHA, which included the police and the Gestapo. He was one of those responsible for the Holocaust.

In 1941 Hermann Göring gave Heydrich the order to arrange the "Final Solution". Heydrich was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by two Czech and Slovak soldiers trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). They had been sent (with a small support team) by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile. Heydrich died a week later in hospital from sepsis caused by the injuries he sustained. Afterwards the Germans killed the male population of the village Lidice, because the Germans accused that the people in the village helped the assasins.