Reinhard Heydrich (7.3.1904 Halle – 4.6.1942 Prague)

Despite his young age, Heydrich was a member of the Märker Free Corps in 1920 and joined the Reichsmarine in 1922, from which he was dishonorably discharged in April 1931. In July 1931, Heydrich joined the Nazi Party and the SS. He came into contact with Himmler through his friend and SA leader Karl Freiherr von Eberstein, who mistook him for a counterintelligence specialist and entrusted him with the establishment and management of the "Security Service" of the SS. Heydrich became Himmler's closest collaborator and in March 1933 became head of the Bavarian Political Police, later the Secret State Police Office in Berlin (1934), the Main Security Police Office (1936), and in 1939 the Reich Security Main Office, into which the Secret State Police, Criminal Investigation Department, and Security Service of the SS were merged.

Alongside Himmler, Heydrich was thus the main organizer of the Nazi terror apparatus. After the assault on the Soviet Union, he, officially empowered by Göring on July 31, 1941, advanced the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question”: The task forces of the Security Police and the SD, which he established and instructed, began the systematic mass murder of the European Jews in the summer of 1941. On September 29, 1941, Heydrich was appointed deputy "Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia". Czech resistance fighters assassinated him on May 27, 1942, and he died shortly thereafter.