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The Hangman and His Wife: The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich
An astonishing journey into the heart of Nazi evil; a portrait of one of the darkest figures of Hitler’s Nazi elite, the designer and executor of the Holocaust, chief of the Reich Main Security, including the Gestapo; interwoven with commentary by Heydrich’s wife, from the author's in-depth interviews.
He was called the Hangman of the Gestapo, the "butcher of Prague," with a reputation as a ruthlessly efficient killer. He was the head of the SS, and the Gestapo, second in command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac.
In The Hangman and His Wife, Nancy Dougherty, and, following her death, Christopher Lehman-Haupt, masterfully explore who Reinhard Heydrich was and how he came to be, and how he came to do what he did. We see Heydrich from his rarified musical family origins and his ugly-duckling childhood and adolescence, to his sudden flameout as a promising Naval officer (he was forced to resign his Naval commission after dishonoring the office corps by having sex with the unmarried daughter of a shipyard director and refusing to marry her). Dougherty writes of his seemingly hopeless job prospects as an untrained civilian during Germany’s hyperinflation and unemployment, and his joining the Nazi party through the attraction to Nazism of his fiancée, Lina von Osten, and her father, along with the rumor shadowing him of a strain of Jewishness inherited from his father’s side. And we follow Heydrich’s meteoric rise through the Nazi high command--from SS Major, to Colonel to Brigadier General, before he was 30, deputy to Heinrich Himmler, expanding the SS, the Gestapo, and developing the Reich's plans for "the Jewish solution".
And throughout, we hear the voice of Lina Heydrich, who was by his side until his death at the age of 38, living inside the Nazi inner circles as she waltzed with Rudolf Hess, feuded with Hermann Göring, and drank vintage wine with Albert Speer.
He was called the Hangman of the Gestapo, the "butcher of Prague," with a reputation as a ruthlessly efficient killer. He was the head of the SS, and the Gestapo, second in command to Heinrich Himmler. His orders set in motion the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 and, as the lead planner of Hitler's Final Solution, he chaired the Wannsee Conference at which details of the murder of millions of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe were toasted with cognac.
In The Hangman and His Wife, Nancy Dougherty, and, following her death, Christopher Lehman-Haupt, masterfully explore who Reinhard Heydrich was and how he came to be, and how he came to do what he did. We see Heydrich from his rarified musical family origins and his ugly-duckling childhood and adolescence, to his sudden flameout as a promising Naval officer (he was forced to resign his Naval commission after dishonoring the office corps by having sex with the unmarried daughter of a shipyard director and refusing to marry her). Dougherty writes of his seemingly hopeless job prospects as an untrained civilian during Germany’s hyperinflation and unemployment, and his joining the Nazi party through the attraction to Nazism of his fiancée, Lina von Osten, and her father, along with the rumor shadowing him of a strain of Jewishness inherited from his father’s side. And we follow Heydrich’s meteoric rise through the Nazi high command--from SS Major, to Colonel to Brigadier General, before he was 30, deputy to Heinrich Himmler, expanding the SS, the Gestapo, and developing the Reich's plans for "the Jewish solution".
And throughout, we hear the voice of Lina Heydrich, who was by his side until his death at the age of 38, living inside the Nazi inner circles as she waltzed with Rudolf Hess, feuded with Hermann Göring, and drank vintage wine with Albert Speer.
656 pages, Hardcover
First published May 24, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
June 2, 2022
It's so sad that Nancy Dougherty passed away before finishing this book, which was then polished up a tad for publication by her husband almost a decade later. He did as good a job he could, but this book still does show the need for its original writer's final touches, corrections, editions, elaborations, and to fill in the gaps left. I guess it can't be faulted for that, one can't control such unexpected tragedies as dying in the midst of writing, so I'm mentioning this for the benefit of those who might feel like the book is rough-edged and lacks things the author simply wasn't there anymore to smooth out and fix.
Dougherty tells the story of the Heydrichs, man and wife and not just the man as in other books about Himmler's right hand man, from an intimate vantage point: she interviewed Lina, and also got some of the other Heydrich relatives to tell their impressions of him. This is what sets this apart from other biographies. You get the story right from the participants' mouth, well, one of the participants, with whom Dougherty even had shouting matches during in-person talks. Not exactly "objective" for a historian, you'd think, but very human. And once you read what the Hangman's wife has to say, you might even see why the heated exchanges took place.
Whilst Reinhard Heydrich is a very interesting person, not necessarily for the best reasons (he presided over the Wannsee conference where the Final Solution was decided, after all), Lina von Osten Heydrich isn't. A typical hausfrau, she falls somewhere between the ideological fanaticism of Martha Goebbels and the loyal I-only-wanna-support-my-man aloofness of Eva Braun, and isn't exactly a woman you would call the brightest butterfly in the Nazi social circles in spite of her husband's high rank. Her take, her thoughts, and remembrances of her husband and their family in Czechoslovakia are interesting for historical purposes, and that's it. I wouldn't say you will come out of reading this book thinking her a fascinating woman, as without Heydrich she is practically a nobody. Her valuable input is valuable because of who he was and what he did, so if you're the kind of reader with an interest in history that wonders what Eva Braun would've said of Adolf had they not offed themselves, you might want to read this book. I honestly didn't gain any new knowledge or insight, it was, to me, more of the same excuses and mental gymnastics other relatives of Hitler's top officials engaged in to cope with the fact that they lived, loved, and slept with some of the biggest war criminals in history, and I enjoyed it more for Dougherty's experiences hunting down the information for this book, which was more fascinating to me personally.
Dougherty tells the story of the Heydrichs, man and wife and not just the man as in other books about Himmler's right hand man, from an intimate vantage point: she interviewed Lina, and also got some of the other Heydrich relatives to tell their impressions of him. This is what sets this apart from other biographies. You get the story right from the participants' mouth, well, one of the participants, with whom Dougherty even had shouting matches during in-person talks. Not exactly "objective" for a historian, you'd think, but very human. And once you read what the Hangman's wife has to say, you might even see why the heated exchanges took place.
Whilst Reinhard Heydrich is a very interesting person, not necessarily for the best reasons (he presided over the Wannsee conference where the Final Solution was decided, after all), Lina von Osten Heydrich isn't. A typical hausfrau, she falls somewhere between the ideological fanaticism of Martha Goebbels and the loyal I-only-wanna-support-my-man aloofness of Eva Braun, and isn't exactly a woman you would call the brightest butterfly in the Nazi social circles in spite of her husband's high rank. Her take, her thoughts, and remembrances of her husband and their family in Czechoslovakia are interesting for historical purposes, and that's it. I wouldn't say you will come out of reading this book thinking her a fascinating woman, as without Heydrich she is practically a nobody. Her valuable input is valuable because of who he was and what he did, so if you're the kind of reader with an interest in history that wonders what Eva Braun would've said of Adolf had they not offed themselves, you might want to read this book. I honestly didn't gain any new knowledge or insight, it was, to me, more of the same excuses and mental gymnastics other relatives of Hitler's top officials engaged in to cope with the fact that they lived, loved, and slept with some of the biggest war criminals in history, and I enjoyed it more for Dougherty's experiences hunting down the information for this book, which was more fascinating to me personally.
August 27, 2022
This woman is delusional. She is being interviewed freelance maybe and she laughs and cracks jokes and reminisces about her marriage with an extremely backward nazi husband , who we should all know because he was a monstrosity of a human being. This woman still lives with nazi maxims in her mind lives by live. Listening to her reminiscing about "those were the days sigh) anymore I'm going to throw something and it might really happen because I've already had one panic today so I say BRING IT ONE GET YOUR BEST BECAUSE MY RESTING BITCH FACE IS SITTING OVER HERE WAITING
July 17, 2022
I went into this book thinking that it would be similar to Gitta Sereny's biography of Albert Speer. It's not. It's not even close.
Part of that is because of Lina Heydrich, the main interviewee for this book. I can only imagine how difficult she was to talk to, because nearly every passage that quotes her ends with her denying or obfuscating the facts, all the while trying to distract Dougherty with food or more palatable memories of her husband's work. Lina Heydrich was loyal to her husband for her entire life. She seemed completely unfazed by his role in the Nazi regime of terror, and she never fails to try to minimize his status and power.
And part of it is because the book just feels unfinished to me. It is, in a way, as the author died of early-onset Alzheimer's before her manuscript was finished. I don't feel like the editor was up to the task of turning this book into a cohesive unit. There were far too many loose ends, and I found myself consulting google quite frequently to find out what had happened to numerous people mentioned in this book.
In the end, I really don't think that this book, as it stands, offers all that much new information.
Part of that is because of Lina Heydrich, the main interviewee for this book. I can only imagine how difficult she was to talk to, because nearly every passage that quotes her ends with her denying or obfuscating the facts, all the while trying to distract Dougherty with food or more palatable memories of her husband's work. Lina Heydrich was loyal to her husband for her entire life. She seemed completely unfazed by his role in the Nazi regime of terror, and she never fails to try to minimize his status and power.
And part of it is because the book just feels unfinished to me. It is, in a way, as the author died of early-onset Alzheimer's before her manuscript was finished. I don't feel like the editor was up to the task of turning this book into a cohesive unit. There were far too many loose ends, and I found myself consulting google quite frequently to find out what had happened to numerous people mentioned in this book.
In the end, I really don't think that this book, as it stands, offers all that much new information.
June 26, 2022
The portrayal of most Nazis in popular culture is of sadistic monsters who take pleasure in handing out draconian punishments to their victims, and it's true that many in the Third Reich were the kind to do such mustache-twirling in the midst of their crimes against humanity. But more often than not (and perhaps more chillingly), many in the higher ranks of Nazi Germany went about their crimes with a cold, precise attention to detail and no hint of passion or sadism flashing across their faces as they did so. Somewhere between the "banality of evil" and the sadists who tortured prisoners in the concentration camps, there lies the truth of what the Nazi killing machine was like. And no one person embodied those qualities in the public imagination quite like Reinhard Heydrich.
"The Hangman and His Wife," by Nancy Dougherty, does an invaluable service to Holocaust studies by showing not just the real man behind the public persona of the "blond beast of the SS" but in also using the words of his spouse (who outlived him by more than forty years) to show how ingrained notions of Nazism were even years after the full extent of the crimes committed in the name of "racial purity" were. Lina Heydrich, Reinhard's widow, made herself available to Dougherty in the Seventies and Eighties, as the latter was writing a book about Heydrich and stunned to learn that not only was his widow alive but willing to talk (though Lina proved elusive on many points, as the book demonstrates). Dougherty, who passed away about a decade ago, has had the project she worked on so diligently published in our current moment, when once again the specter of far-right extremism threatens not just Europe but the United States (in case you've been asleep for the past five years).
Heydrich was in many way more of an opportunist than a full-fledged Nazi; he landed in the SS after a complicated series of events led to his expulsion from the Weimar-era navy. He ended up becoming Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man, head of the internal security apparatus of the SS (the SD), and ruler of the rump state constructed out of what was then Czechoslovakia (the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia). In all of these roles, Heydrich acquired so much power that many saw him as the logical successor to Hitler, though rumors of supposed "Jewish blood" haunted Heydrich in the race-obsessed Reich. His personality was of someone driven to reach the heights of his blood-soaked society, while also observing the petty official speech of the office mandarin who never really names what it is that "forced expulsion" meant for the millions of victims of the Holocaust.
Lina's words, self-serving and often chilling, are an important aspect of this work, for women in the Nazi state were never to be heard and only to be seen as mothers and house workers. Lina was never cut out for that, and often emerges as someone who got herself into trouble (and Reinhard in turn) by her inability to keep her peace, often in rivalry with Himmler's wife and the wives of other higher-up Nazi officials. There are glimpses of her domestic life, her refusal to consider that her husband was a war criminal (had he lived past 1942, when he was assassinated by Czech agents, there is no doubt that he would've been tried and convicted at Nuremberg), as well as her own potential guilt as someone who saw the evils of the regime and did nothing. Dougherty makes sure to include Lina's voice when she can, and the Heydrich marriage really is a sort of fun-house mirror of Nazi ideology where Lina is far from the passive wife preferred but dares not challenge what it is that her husband does in the name of "national security."
Reinhard Heydrich was a monster, but he was a very human monster; he was a man with many contradictions, all of which went into his service to the greatest evil known to man. It's important to show that, to not hide behind the cliche of the desk-bound killer nor of the savage, blood-soaked beast of the concentration camps. Heydrich and others were far more sinister because they never saw themselves as the villains (and Lina never acknowledged in her many talks with the author that the Holocaust or other Nazi crimes were unprecedented). "The Hangman and His Wife" is a disturbing but necessary look at the ways in which evil can take on the appearance of legal right, and how absolute power can make monsters of us all.
"The Hangman and His Wife," by Nancy Dougherty, does an invaluable service to Holocaust studies by showing not just the real man behind the public persona of the "blond beast of the SS" but in also using the words of his spouse (who outlived him by more than forty years) to show how ingrained notions of Nazism were even years after the full extent of the crimes committed in the name of "racial purity" were. Lina Heydrich, Reinhard's widow, made herself available to Dougherty in the Seventies and Eighties, as the latter was writing a book about Heydrich and stunned to learn that not only was his widow alive but willing to talk (though Lina proved elusive on many points, as the book demonstrates). Dougherty, who passed away about a decade ago, has had the project she worked on so diligently published in our current moment, when once again the specter of far-right extremism threatens not just Europe but the United States (in case you've been asleep for the past five years).
Heydrich was in many way more of an opportunist than a full-fledged Nazi; he landed in the SS after a complicated series of events led to his expulsion from the Weimar-era navy. He ended up becoming Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man, head of the internal security apparatus of the SS (the SD), and ruler of the rump state constructed out of what was then Czechoslovakia (the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia). In all of these roles, Heydrich acquired so much power that many saw him as the logical successor to Hitler, though rumors of supposed "Jewish blood" haunted Heydrich in the race-obsessed Reich. His personality was of someone driven to reach the heights of his blood-soaked society, while also observing the petty official speech of the office mandarin who never really names what it is that "forced expulsion" meant for the millions of victims of the Holocaust.
Lina's words, self-serving and often chilling, are an important aspect of this work, for women in the Nazi state were never to be heard and only to be seen as mothers and house workers. Lina was never cut out for that, and often emerges as someone who got herself into trouble (and Reinhard in turn) by her inability to keep her peace, often in rivalry with Himmler's wife and the wives of other higher-up Nazi officials. There are glimpses of her domestic life, her refusal to consider that her husband was a war criminal (had he lived past 1942, when he was assassinated by Czech agents, there is no doubt that he would've been tried and convicted at Nuremberg), as well as her own potential guilt as someone who saw the evils of the regime and did nothing. Dougherty makes sure to include Lina's voice when she can, and the Heydrich marriage really is a sort of fun-house mirror of Nazi ideology where Lina is far from the passive wife preferred but dares not challenge what it is that her husband does in the name of "national security."
Reinhard Heydrich was a monster, but he was a very human monster; he was a man with many contradictions, all of which went into his service to the greatest evil known to man. It's important to show that, to not hide behind the cliche of the desk-bound killer nor of the savage, blood-soaked beast of the concentration camps. Heydrich and others were far more sinister because they never saw themselves as the villains (and Lina never acknowledged in her many talks with the author that the Holocaust or other Nazi crimes were unprecedented). "The Hangman and His Wife" is a disturbing but necessary look at the ways in which evil can take on the appearance of legal right, and how absolute power can make monsters of us all.
September 11, 2022
"They say Heydrich resents the title of 'The Hangman', but I don't see why. After all, he has earned it." SS Major Lanz, INGLERIUES BESTERDS
Reinhard Heydrich may be the most evil human being whom almost no one remembers. Before the war he organized Kristallnicht against the German Jews in 1938, was appointed by Hitler "Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia" after the Nazi takeover of all Czechoslovakia in 1939, and most famously, organized the Wansee Conference in Berlin in 1942 "for the Final Solution to the Jewish problem in Europe." (His deputy, Adolf Eichmann, later said during his trial in Jerusalem in 1961 "I just took notes and went out for coffee." Hitler was not present and according to his biographer Sir Ian Kershaw, "did not know the conference was going on".) Heydrich orchestrated the Judeocide less in the manner of a military campaign and more like a business enterprise, what Albert Speer later called "a colossal machinery of death." ("Latvia seems to be Judenrein but Lithuania isn't coming along too good.") Biographer Nancy Dougherty landed a real coup by getting his wife Lina, who outlived him by 43 years following his assassination by Czech partisans, to talk about her late husband, and these conversations are inserted into the biographical narrative. Frau Heydrich combines a strange pride in her late husband while also belittling his role in the Third Reich: "My husband was always portrayed in official photographs where he belonged---in the second tier....The Final Solution has been falsely attributed it to him." In fact, in photographs Heydrich looks like the archetype of the Aryan, with his blonde hair, high forehead and blue eyes; though his long nose earned him the school boy sobriquet of "Moishe". Heydrich was not banal and evil; if anything he was brilliant and evil, making the source of his evil much harder to fathom.
Reinhard Heydrich may be the most evil human being whom almost no one remembers. Before the war he organized Kristallnicht against the German Jews in 1938, was appointed by Hitler "Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia" after the Nazi takeover of all Czechoslovakia in 1939, and most famously, organized the Wansee Conference in Berlin in 1942 "for the Final Solution to the Jewish problem in Europe." (His deputy, Adolf Eichmann, later said during his trial in Jerusalem in 1961 "I just took notes and went out for coffee." Hitler was not present and according to his biographer Sir Ian Kershaw, "did not know the conference was going on".) Heydrich orchestrated the Judeocide less in the manner of a military campaign and more like a business enterprise, what Albert Speer later called "a colossal machinery of death." ("Latvia seems to be Judenrein but Lithuania isn't coming along too good.") Biographer Nancy Dougherty landed a real coup by getting his wife Lina, who outlived him by 43 years following his assassination by Czech partisans, to talk about her late husband, and these conversations are inserted into the biographical narrative. Frau Heydrich combines a strange pride in her late husband while also belittling his role in the Third Reich: "My husband was always portrayed in official photographs where he belonged---in the second tier....The Final Solution has been falsely attributed it to him." In fact, in photographs Heydrich looks like the archetype of the Aryan, with his blonde hair, high forehead and blue eyes; though his long nose earned him the school boy sobriquet of "Moishe". Heydrich was not banal and evil; if anything he was brilliant and evil, making the source of his evil much harder to fathom.
July 19, 2022
I found "The Hangman and His Wife" in my library almost immediately after finishing Gerwanth's "Hitler's Hangman." I was not all that impressed with Gerwanth's take on Reinhard Heydrich so I picked this up to see what another writer would have to say about him.
Dougherty's book is thorough and takes the effort to place Heydrich's actions in historical and cultural context which I appreciated. I haven't done all that much reading on the personal lives of the Nazi's or the internal workings of the part so I learned a lot from Dougherty's approach.
Much of this book is based around Dougherty's interviews with Lina Heydrich. While this does provide a great deal of insight I found the interviews themselves to be infuriating- Lina was not the brightest crayon in the box and the way she stubbornly defends everything Reinhard did was a bit much for me to read in one sitting.
I was unfamiliar with much of the psychology that made the Nazi's capable of commiting genocide. It is something that Dougherty does explain in detail. She does not attempt to make the horrors of the Nazi regime less than it was, but she wants the reader to know these men were, for the most part, pretty average. I appreciated that.
This is an excellent book that was well researched and very readable. It took me a minute to get through because the topic is pretty heavy.
Dougherty's book is thorough and takes the effort to place Heydrich's actions in historical and cultural context which I appreciated. I haven't done all that much reading on the personal lives of the Nazi's or the internal workings of the part so I learned a lot from Dougherty's approach.
Much of this book is based around Dougherty's interviews with Lina Heydrich. While this does provide a great deal of insight I found the interviews themselves to be infuriating- Lina was not the brightest crayon in the box and the way she stubbornly defends everything Reinhard did was a bit much for me to read in one sitting.
I was unfamiliar with much of the psychology that made the Nazi's capable of commiting genocide. It is something that Dougherty does explain in detail. She does not attempt to make the horrors of the Nazi regime less than it was, but she wants the reader to know these men were, for the most part, pretty average. I appreciated that.
This is an excellent book that was well researched and very readable. It took me a minute to get through because the topic is pretty heavy.
July 20, 2025
There is a fairly unique trajectory on the authorship of this unusual book: the work draws strongly from several interviews conducted by Dougherty, speaking with “Frau Heydrich” during the 1960s. Mm Heydrich lived until the early 1980s. Not sure what happened in the 90s and 00s but Dougherty herself got Alzheimer's and died in 2013, before completion of this book. So it was completed by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. I wonder if this back story lends a kind of double-layered authorial restraint. Dougherty making the decision to let Frau Heydrich do a good deal of the talking; CLH deciding to refrain from further packaging.
This is the story of a family. As such, the war is barely present as a narrative arc. More present are the politics of Nazi Germany, within which Heydrich was meteorically successful. It almost didn’t happen that way, but Heydrich brazened himself into meeting Himmler at a time when the latter had already decided on another person for his personal assistant. Heydrich employed a combination of physical impressiveness (very Aryan-looking, very imposing) and convincing bullshit about organizing the security services to sway Himmler to giving him the job.
What follows from that critical juncture is quite a barrage of Nazi politics, if you can call it that. Nazi machinations rewarded naked ambition and criminality. With painstaking detail, Dougherty lays out the patchwork of administrative coups that led to the unification of a multiple separate police hierarchies under the Security service, the SD. The SS, Schutzstaffel, was a paramilitary arm of the SD under Himmler. The Gestapo, the dreaded secret police, were under Heydrich. In fact, Heydrich and Himmler were implicit rivals, a situation quite typical of the Nazi regime. The Nazi management style, flowing from Hitler, was one where leaders were always looking over their shoulders. Responsibilities were rarely clear-cut and often overlapped. Policy was ultimately whatever Hitler said it was, and consequently one could never be certain of one’s ground. It takes a special kind of feral character to thrive in such conditions, and Heydrich was one and did so.
It seems he was well paired, temperamentally, with his wife Elisabeth, "Lena" her given name. She reveals herself as a wily, self-serving character whom it is impossible to pin down on any subject she finds awkward. I don’t recall any significant thing revealed by her that is relatable as an anecdote. Her telling, on the whole, is one where she dutifully served as the ideal Nazi model of womanhood: sticking strictly to her duties as a homemaker and mother, and not even aware of, let alone influential in, such unspeakable matters as the Final Solution. Yet, she was always ready with dismissive statements about how the number of deaths were exaggerated, how Reinhard had less power than is commonly supposed, and similar dissembling. She fought for, and secured, a pension, in the teeth of quite fierce public opposition and even court proceedings against her doing so.
So, an unusual book, requiring a certain patience of approach, but engagingly written and very educational about the topics I have mentioned. At one point, Dougherty posits ten rules of power in the Hitler government, and I found those to be quite interesting, as many of them force one to reflect on their present-day relevance, whether in the workplace or in the current public sphere. Certainly 7 is a big one, but also 4, 5, 6, and 8. They all benefit from expansion with examples, as Dougherty does in the book.
1. Our program is expressed in 2 words: Adolf Hitler.
2. There may be only one single rule: that is correct which is useful in itself.
3. The National Socialist theory is to make use of all forces, wherever they may come from.
4. Clarification would mean division.
5. The strongest always does the job.
6. I must always choose a weaker opponent: that is the secret of success.
7. The victor is not asked afterward whether or not he has told the truth.
8. The world can only be ruled by fear.
9. The impossible always succeeds.
10. We must never allow our differences to be bared to outsiders.
This is the story of a family. As such, the war is barely present as a narrative arc. More present are the politics of Nazi Germany, within which Heydrich was meteorically successful. It almost didn’t happen that way, but Heydrich brazened himself into meeting Himmler at a time when the latter had already decided on another person for his personal assistant. Heydrich employed a combination of physical impressiveness (very Aryan-looking, very imposing) and convincing bullshit about organizing the security services to sway Himmler to giving him the job.
What follows from that critical juncture is quite a barrage of Nazi politics, if you can call it that. Nazi machinations rewarded naked ambition and criminality. With painstaking detail, Dougherty lays out the patchwork of administrative coups that led to the unification of a multiple separate police hierarchies under the Security service, the SD. The SS, Schutzstaffel, was a paramilitary arm of the SD under Himmler. The Gestapo, the dreaded secret police, were under Heydrich. In fact, Heydrich and Himmler were implicit rivals, a situation quite typical of the Nazi regime. The Nazi management style, flowing from Hitler, was one where leaders were always looking over their shoulders. Responsibilities were rarely clear-cut and often overlapped. Policy was ultimately whatever Hitler said it was, and consequently one could never be certain of one’s ground. It takes a special kind of feral character to thrive in such conditions, and Heydrich was one and did so.
It seems he was well paired, temperamentally, with his wife Elisabeth, "Lena" her given name. She reveals herself as a wily, self-serving character whom it is impossible to pin down on any subject she finds awkward. I don’t recall any significant thing revealed by her that is relatable as an anecdote. Her telling, on the whole, is one where she dutifully served as the ideal Nazi model of womanhood: sticking strictly to her duties as a homemaker and mother, and not even aware of, let alone influential in, such unspeakable matters as the Final Solution. Yet, she was always ready with dismissive statements about how the number of deaths were exaggerated, how Reinhard had less power than is commonly supposed, and similar dissembling. She fought for, and secured, a pension, in the teeth of quite fierce public opposition and even court proceedings against her doing so.
So, an unusual book, requiring a certain patience of approach, but engagingly written and very educational about the topics I have mentioned. At one point, Dougherty posits ten rules of power in the Hitler government, and I found those to be quite interesting, as many of them force one to reflect on their present-day relevance, whether in the workplace or in the current public sphere. Certainly 7 is a big one, but also 4, 5, 6, and 8. They all benefit from expansion with examples, as Dougherty does in the book.
1. Our program is expressed in 2 words: Adolf Hitler.
2. There may be only one single rule: that is correct which is useful in itself.
3. The National Socialist theory is to make use of all forces, wherever they may come from.
4. Clarification would mean division.
5. The strongest always does the job.
6. I must always choose a weaker opponent: that is the secret of success.
7. The victor is not asked afterward whether or not he has told the truth.
8. The world can only be ruled by fear.
9. The impossible always succeeds.
10. We must never allow our differences to be bared to outsiders.
December 22, 2024
Evil fascinates. We would rather it didn’t. But it does. Same with misfortune. Nothing to prove the ghoulishness of the majority of humanity than a traffic jam caused by gawkers of the damage of an automobile accident. Evil has types of facets that are innumerable and unimaginable until they are manifested. Most of all, evil is human. In the case of Reinhard Heydrich, a relatively easy case could be made that he was the archetype of evil. He embodied the most evil incarnation of a Schreibtischtäter—a difficult to translate German word, literally: a desk perpetrator—one who uses the distance of bureaucracy escape accountability for implementing injustice and evil.
There’s a corollary to the aphorism that all is needed to stop evil are a few committed persons. We love our hero stories. On the other hand, for evil to prevail, good staff is essential; committed workers who will tend to the dirty details. It would be hard to top Heydrich. Books have been written about him, influenced by him, and mythologies have sprung up about him. In this look at interviews the author had with Heydrich’s widow, we get a closer look at the fallible man whose gift for terror and intimidation was exceptional, as was his bureaucratic attention to detail. And sometimes evil is just that. Evil. There’s no need to do a deep dive, sometimes the right (wrong?) personality it born at the right (wrong?) time and in the right (wrong?) place.
Heydrich was at the center of some of the most heinous events of Third Reich terror: organizing the SS, gathering intelligence, intimidation tactics, the governing of Prague, the architect of the Final Solution, and organizing the concentration camp infrastructure. He got things done. Had he not died after the combined effects of an assassination attempt and poor medical care, one can only speculate about how efficient the Nazi killing machine would have been under his continued leadership in the last three years of the war. Some even speculated – while Hitler was still alive – that he might one day even be the heir-apparent.
The discussions with his widow – past whose home I now know I used to pass regularly when traveling by train between Germany and Denmark – confirm how some ideas about humanity never change despite evidence to the contrary. She was unapologetic until her death; unwavering in her belief in and support for her husband. And without her, he might never have been as successful.
A note about the volume: I’m not a bibliography junky, but I do occasionally check it to get more information or verification of a quote or fact. In this case, my volume was missing about two-thirds of the bibliography. When I contacted the publisher, they graciously, seamlessly, and quickly sent me a new volume, which I really didn’t expect, was just making them aware and would have been happy with photo-copied pages. Only one problem: the volume they sent me had exactly the same omission. So if you do want to use this for research, beware!
There’s a corollary to the aphorism that all is needed to stop evil are a few committed persons. We love our hero stories. On the other hand, for evil to prevail, good staff is essential; committed workers who will tend to the dirty details. It would be hard to top Heydrich. Books have been written about him, influenced by him, and mythologies have sprung up about him. In this look at interviews the author had with Heydrich’s widow, we get a closer look at the fallible man whose gift for terror and intimidation was exceptional, as was his bureaucratic attention to detail. And sometimes evil is just that. Evil. There’s no need to do a deep dive, sometimes the right (wrong?) personality it born at the right (wrong?) time and in the right (wrong?) place.
Heydrich was at the center of some of the most heinous events of Third Reich terror: organizing the SS, gathering intelligence, intimidation tactics, the governing of Prague, the architect of the Final Solution, and organizing the concentration camp infrastructure. He got things done. Had he not died after the combined effects of an assassination attempt and poor medical care, one can only speculate about how efficient the Nazi killing machine would have been under his continued leadership in the last three years of the war. Some even speculated – while Hitler was still alive – that he might one day even be the heir-apparent.
The discussions with his widow – past whose home I now know I used to pass regularly when traveling by train between Germany and Denmark – confirm how some ideas about humanity never change despite evidence to the contrary. She was unapologetic until her death; unwavering in her belief in and support for her husband. And without her, he might never have been as successful.
A note about the volume: I’m not a bibliography junky, but I do occasionally check it to get more information or verification of a quote or fact. In this case, my volume was missing about two-thirds of the bibliography. When I contacted the publisher, they graciously, seamlessly, and quickly sent me a new volume, which I really didn’t expect, was just making them aware and would have been happy with photo-copied pages. Only one problem: the volume they sent me had exactly the same omission. So if you do want to use this for research, beware!
October 2, 2022
It does talk about the major players and events of the time so if the reader, like me, does not know much about Nazi Germany it is an overview. However, the book tends to be rambling, repetitive, and speaks in generalities with few examples, especially in the first almost half of the book. Also, be careful of using the book as a source for anything other than a general information source and be cautious of some statements. For example, the book mentions that Arthur Nebe was a member of the resistance. Other sources do not support this. He did try, with others, to assassinate Hitler late in the war as Germany was losing but that appears to be because Germany was losing not because he was helping the resistance. Also, I found the story that the Nazi salute was based on American football cheerleaders’ salutes to be very strange. I looked at a few other sources and though the history of the salute is, like many things, not exact it is unlikely the Nazis copied American football cheerleaders as the book mentions.
I did find the list of the “Rules of Hitler’s Germany” to be very helpful in understanding how this entire saga could have gone as far as it did. Note that the rules were not written down by the Nazi Party but are derived from the actions and speeches of the people involved. The author and editor admit that different authors have slightly different lists but they are similar. The list I have below does not exactly follow that of the author’s either as I found some of the items unclear. This is my list which I did have reviewed by someone I know who has studied many, many books on Nazi Germany.
The book makes me want to study the governmental structure of Germany and the structure of the Nazi party to better understand. I am curious as to where the money came from to fund many of the acts of violence conducted by the Nazi Party.
The author uses parenthesis incorrectly and I admit that is something that bugs me but is, I admit, extremely, picky. 😊
Here is my version of the Rules of Nazi Germany.
1. Nazi philosophy is primarily founded on two words: Adolf Hitler
“The longing for a single powerful ruler who can unite his subjects under the banner of a God-given mission is an ancient theme of German history.” Whether or not this is true is debatable but it was often said at that time. Historically Germany consisted of a set of principalities. However, this fit with the Nazi philosophy.
2. That is correct which is useful in itself
Although there are ten rules here, there may really be only this one. The only real conviction is lack of conviction. Example: a general complained that poor logistics were causing soldiers to die needlessly in Russia. Hitler him not to worry, that was what soldiers were for. Naziism was a form of ultimate social Darwinism the idea being that the strongest survive and deserve wealth and power because of their ability to survive. No recognition was given to the fact that teamwork and cooperation might be strategies that prove useful to survival.
3. The National Socialist theory is to make use of all forces
All imaginable means can be used in the struggle for power. Violence, terror, propaganda, bribery, blackmail, and lies, all are valid methods to obtain power for the Reich. The goal of the Reich is to control every aspect of individuals’ lives by the powerful to promote Aryanization of the population of the planet.
4. Deliberately establish conflicts
This is related to #3 above. This from the book: Deliberately Hitler made incompatible promises to different groups whose support he needed. Example: to farmers he promised price supports, to urban workers, cheap food. He would threaten to socialize German industry, that same night he would meet with industrialists and swear to hold private property sacred. He would give overlapping grants of power to two competing institutions. Another tactic was to give a job to the second in command – this prevented the first and second from working together against Hitler. “Friction produces warmth – and warmth is energy.”
5. The strongest always does the job
Through the warmth of the continual struggle for internal power (#4 above) the most courageous, resolute, and competent leaders will gradually emerge. Hitler would give two or more institutions or persons the same tasks or goals and see how they fought over completion of the tasks or goals. Hitler pushed the leaders in the direction of fanaticism and radical solutions. Swift, brutal, cruelly competitive action.
6. One must always choose a weaker opponent. That is the secret of success.
Hitler chose minions who had a flaw since this made them easier to manipulate. Sexual irregularities and addictions, were overlooked. This made the minion more devoted to the superior. In Hitler’s system it was practically impossible to attain office or remain in office without using blackmail. In the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler deliberately had strong, capable Nazi leaders, leaders who were capable of vying with Hitler for power in the Nazi party, killed. This seems to conflict with #5 however, Hitler was always fearful of being ousted from power.
7. The victor is not asked afterward whether or not he has told the truth
If one tells a “big lie” often enough, it will eventually be believed. Truth is not important. Sway the masses with simple slogans of unity, patriotism, and hate. Hitler would not take criticism. He took pride in that he was immune from advice.
8. The world can only be ruled by fear
“The rabble has to be scared shitless!” Was a favorite maxim of Dietrich Eckhardt, a crony of Hitler’s earliest Munich days and important in the young Nazi Party. The country, and eventually Europe (maybe the world?) was to be divided into a permanent servant class, a group of faithful party workers, and then a higher group of leaders who had distinguished themselves. The permanent servant class was considered a resource to be used by the other two classes, they have no other value. Government was not for the benefit of the people, people existed for the benefit of the government.
9. Nazis must never allow their differences to be bared to outsiders
In the midst of their cutthroat competition, the Nazi potentates were still expected to raise their voices in a chorus of comradely solidarity.
I did find the list of the “Rules of Hitler’s Germany” to be very helpful in understanding how this entire saga could have gone as far as it did. Note that the rules were not written down by the Nazi Party but are derived from the actions and speeches of the people involved. The author and editor admit that different authors have slightly different lists but they are similar. The list I have below does not exactly follow that of the author’s either as I found some of the items unclear. This is my list which I did have reviewed by someone I know who has studied many, many books on Nazi Germany.
The book makes me want to study the governmental structure of Germany and the structure of the Nazi party to better understand. I am curious as to where the money came from to fund many of the acts of violence conducted by the Nazi Party.
The author uses parenthesis incorrectly and I admit that is something that bugs me but is, I admit, extremely, picky. 😊
Here is my version of the Rules of Nazi Germany.
1. Nazi philosophy is primarily founded on two words: Adolf Hitler
“The longing for a single powerful ruler who can unite his subjects under the banner of a God-given mission is an ancient theme of German history.” Whether or not this is true is debatable but it was often said at that time. Historically Germany consisted of a set of principalities. However, this fit with the Nazi philosophy.
2. That is correct which is useful in itself
Although there are ten rules here, there may really be only this one. The only real conviction is lack of conviction. Example: a general complained that poor logistics were causing soldiers to die needlessly in Russia. Hitler him not to worry, that was what soldiers were for. Naziism was a form of ultimate social Darwinism the idea being that the strongest survive and deserve wealth and power because of their ability to survive. No recognition was given to the fact that teamwork and cooperation might be strategies that prove useful to survival.
3. The National Socialist theory is to make use of all forces
All imaginable means can be used in the struggle for power. Violence, terror, propaganda, bribery, blackmail, and lies, all are valid methods to obtain power for the Reich. The goal of the Reich is to control every aspect of individuals’ lives by the powerful to promote Aryanization of the population of the planet.
4. Deliberately establish conflicts
This is related to #3 above. This from the book: Deliberately Hitler made incompatible promises to different groups whose support he needed. Example: to farmers he promised price supports, to urban workers, cheap food. He would threaten to socialize German industry, that same night he would meet with industrialists and swear to hold private property sacred. He would give overlapping grants of power to two competing institutions. Another tactic was to give a job to the second in command – this prevented the first and second from working together against Hitler. “Friction produces warmth – and warmth is energy.”
5. The strongest always does the job
Through the warmth of the continual struggle for internal power (#4 above) the most courageous, resolute, and competent leaders will gradually emerge. Hitler would give two or more institutions or persons the same tasks or goals and see how they fought over completion of the tasks or goals. Hitler pushed the leaders in the direction of fanaticism and radical solutions. Swift, brutal, cruelly competitive action.
6. One must always choose a weaker opponent. That is the secret of success.
Hitler chose minions who had a flaw since this made them easier to manipulate. Sexual irregularities and addictions, were overlooked. This made the minion more devoted to the superior. In Hitler’s system it was practically impossible to attain office or remain in office without using blackmail. In the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler deliberately had strong, capable Nazi leaders, leaders who were capable of vying with Hitler for power in the Nazi party, killed. This seems to conflict with #5 however, Hitler was always fearful of being ousted from power.
7. The victor is not asked afterward whether or not he has told the truth
If one tells a “big lie” often enough, it will eventually be believed. Truth is not important. Sway the masses with simple slogans of unity, patriotism, and hate. Hitler would not take criticism. He took pride in that he was immune from advice.
8. The world can only be ruled by fear
“The rabble has to be scared shitless!” Was a favorite maxim of Dietrich Eckhardt, a crony of Hitler’s earliest Munich days and important in the young Nazi Party. The country, and eventually Europe (maybe the world?) was to be divided into a permanent servant class, a group of faithful party workers, and then a higher group of leaders who had distinguished themselves. The permanent servant class was considered a resource to be used by the other two classes, they have no other value. Government was not for the benefit of the people, people existed for the benefit of the government.
9. Nazis must never allow their differences to be bared to outsiders
In the midst of their cutthroat competition, the Nazi potentates were still expected to raise their voices in a chorus of comradely solidarity.
June 19, 2025
the writer ( I don't see her as a historian) did a good job as a storyteller but a very bad job as a historian most of her sources are Schellenberg's memoirs which are mostly lies he used to get away without punishment
there are better books about Heydrich
there are better books about Heydrich
January 3, 2023
Given that I've read a lot about WWII, Germany, The Third Reich and those men in power during that time, I have read surprisingly little about Reinhard Heydrich and for good reason. Not much has been written about him.
On the basis of thorough research in the surviving records of the police apparatus of the Third Reich and on that of several interviews with Lina Heydrich, widow of Reinhard Heydrich, architect of this monstrous organization, N. Dougherty reconstructs his career and speculates about his motivations and beliefs. In a nutshell: Heydrich seems to have been motivated primarily by ambition and not by ideology. Banality of evil indeed. As a trained sociologist, the author also makes valuable observations concerning the ethos of the Nazi movement and the functioning of the racial state. Since Dougherty was incapacitated before she could finish writing up her study, it was edited for publication by C. Lehmann-Haupt. Both of them were engaging writers and this book, despite its alarming subject matter, is a pleasure to read.
Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most efficient, organized murderers in recorded history. He also started and ran an organization that kept secret records on many of the top Nazis, mostly as a means of self-preservation. But what was his man like when he wasn’t on the job? After all, he did have a wife, Lina, and three children, Klaus, Silke, and Marte. And what did she think was going on around her?
This book tries to answer these questions, while providing a biography of Reinhard Heydrich. Dougherty covers Heydrich’s upbringing in a musical family with something of an idiosyncratic father. Heydrich learned to play the violin, was pretty good at it, and when he joined the post WWI German navy, received ridicule for it. A weakling and a bit of an ugly duckling as a child, he devoted himself to sports and transformed himself into a championship fencer. But he was a willful man and a womanizer, and these traits got him booted from the navy. After, he joined the Nazi party and the SS and courted and married Lina von Osten. Through a friend of hers he secured an interview with Heinrich Himmler, who was building a counterintelligence unit within the SS. The two hit it off, with Himmler drawn to Heydrich’s Aryan appearance. From there, Himmler and Heydrich grew the SS, eventually taking over all policing functions, as well as the operation of the concentration camps and the murder of Jews, as well as anyone else who did not conform to the Nazi political philosophy and concept of the ideal German. Dougherty recounts all of this, including the internal intrigue within the Nazi hierarchy.
Interspersed, she relates conversations she had with Lina revolving around what it was like to live with Heydrich, her knowledge of what he actually did, how he related to his family, what she knew of the affairs he conducted while married to her, including his operation of Salon Kitty used to spy on Nazi officials. Dougherty’s chapter on the second sex in the Third Reich should be of particular interest to readers.
Lina, as she did in her own book Life with a Criminal, proves herself to be an unreliable witness to history and to the activities of her husband. In doing so, however, she says a lot about the German mentality of the time.
On the basis of thorough research in the surviving records of the police apparatus of the Third Reich and on that of several interviews with Lina Heydrich, widow of Reinhard Heydrich, architect of this monstrous organization, N. Dougherty reconstructs his career and speculates about his motivations and beliefs. In a nutshell: Heydrich seems to have been motivated primarily by ambition and not by ideology. Banality of evil indeed. As a trained sociologist, the author also makes valuable observations concerning the ethos of the Nazi movement and the functioning of the racial state. Since Dougherty was incapacitated before she could finish writing up her study, it was edited for publication by C. Lehmann-Haupt. Both of them were engaging writers and this book, despite its alarming subject matter, is a pleasure to read.
Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most efficient, organized murderers in recorded history. He also started and ran an organization that kept secret records on many of the top Nazis, mostly as a means of self-preservation. But what was his man like when he wasn’t on the job? After all, he did have a wife, Lina, and three children, Klaus, Silke, and Marte. And what did she think was going on around her?
This book tries to answer these questions, while providing a biography of Reinhard Heydrich. Dougherty covers Heydrich’s upbringing in a musical family with something of an idiosyncratic father. Heydrich learned to play the violin, was pretty good at it, and when he joined the post WWI German navy, received ridicule for it. A weakling and a bit of an ugly duckling as a child, he devoted himself to sports and transformed himself into a championship fencer. But he was a willful man and a womanizer, and these traits got him booted from the navy. After, he joined the Nazi party and the SS and courted and married Lina von Osten. Through a friend of hers he secured an interview with Heinrich Himmler, who was building a counterintelligence unit within the SS. The two hit it off, with Himmler drawn to Heydrich’s Aryan appearance. From there, Himmler and Heydrich grew the SS, eventually taking over all policing functions, as well as the operation of the concentration camps and the murder of Jews, as well as anyone else who did not conform to the Nazi political philosophy and concept of the ideal German. Dougherty recounts all of this, including the internal intrigue within the Nazi hierarchy.
Interspersed, she relates conversations she had with Lina revolving around what it was like to live with Heydrich, her knowledge of what he actually did, how he related to his family, what she knew of the affairs he conducted while married to her, including his operation of Salon Kitty used to spy on Nazi officials. Dougherty’s chapter on the second sex in the Third Reich should be of particular interest to readers.
Lina, as she did in her own book Life with a Criminal, proves herself to be an unreliable witness to history and to the activities of her husband. In doing so, however, she says a lot about the German mentality of the time.
June 19, 2023
This was one of the most remarkable books I have ever read. Nancy Dougherty was an American film critic and writer who interviewed Lina Heydrich, the widow of Reinhard Heydrich, (known as one of the "evil twin, "along with his boss Heinrich Himmler, in the infamous Third Reich.) Heydrich was one of Hitler's inner circle and was responsible for much of the administrative dirty work behind The Night of the Long Knives in June, 1934, when the Fuhrer ordered the ruthless killing of his former friend and ally Ernst Rohm and the massacre of many of the leaders of Rohm's SA, a paramilitary group which had helped him attain power in Germany. Historians believe that this purge was ordered by Hitler to rid himself of the unsavory SA and curry favour with the wealthy industrialists and upper class conservative politicians he hoped would work with him in governing Germany. The killings are often considered a crucial turning point in Nazi fortunes.
More importantly, Heydrich was responsible for ordering the mass killings in Eastern Europe of Jews, Roma, Communists and other so-called undesirables in the early years of WWII. And he is most famous for delivering the main
leading speech at the Wanesee Conference, the precursor to the carrying out of the Final Solution and the Holocaust.
Sadly, Dougherty who had worked on this book for many years was unable to finish the biography as she developed dementia in the early 2000's, so it was up to her husband Jim and author Christopher Lehmann-Haupt to finish the book.
The most astounding thing about the book is that Dougherty had several up close and personal interviews with Heydrich's feisty, unrepentant wife in the 1970's and early 1980' s.
Lina, who comes across as a woman determined to deflect and evade any responsibility for what Heydrich did, saw her husband as a peacemaker and a visionary leader during the Nazi period. In other words she was in complete denial of most of the reality she lived through.
Heydrich himself remains an elusive, enigmatic character. He was the son of a successful opera singer and during much of the 1920's he served in the German navy, where he had few friends and was dogged by rumours that his grandmother may or may not have been a Jew. He was both a brilliant administrator and an awkward introvert who had a photographic memory and a talent for intrigue and deception. He was fairly cultured, played the violin and was supposedly devoted to his wife and family. Heydrich was also completely ruthless and ambitious and was known by Hitler as "the man with the iron heart."
In the early 40's Heydrich was sent to Prague to run what was left of Czechoslovakia.
He lived lavishly and his family were seconded to an estate outside the city. Heydrich spent his few free hours living it up and womanizing. Many historians believed that for some reaspn he let his guard down in Prague and was killed in an open car by two Czech patriots sent from the UK to assassinate him. His wife left Prague in 1945 fleeing the Russians who were rampaging across Eastern Europe and eventually made her way to her home on an island near Denmark.
Of course, the most compelling aspect of the story is, as always, why? Why did a clever, educated man become such a ruthless monster? Unlike Hitler, Heydrich was not motivated by personal madness. He was not particularly greedy like Goring or a pathetic sociopath like Goebbels. But somehow he found himself responsible like his collegues for the deaths of millions.
Dougherty thankfully spares us many details of the Holocaust but the most chilling chapter in the book is the one which shows us how Heydrich bullied senior Nazis into joining the killing squads in the East. Many of the leaders of these squads became hardened killers or severely mentally ill having seen and done what they could not unsee or undo.
Yet, despite Daugherty's mention of Milgram's experiments on obedience and het thorough dissection imto Heydrich's life, the reader is left with the question: why? I guess the answer lies in the idea that the veneer of civilization is often a thin one. And in the the reality that the ambitions of a tormented, driven man are not easily quenched.
More importantly, Heydrich was responsible for ordering the mass killings in Eastern Europe of Jews, Roma, Communists and other so-called undesirables in the early years of WWII. And he is most famous for delivering the main
leading speech at the Wanesee Conference, the precursor to the carrying out of the Final Solution and the Holocaust.
Sadly, Dougherty who had worked on this book for many years was unable to finish the biography as she developed dementia in the early 2000's, so it was up to her husband Jim and author Christopher Lehmann-Haupt to finish the book.
The most astounding thing about the book is that Dougherty had several up close and personal interviews with Heydrich's feisty, unrepentant wife in the 1970's and early 1980' s.
Lina, who comes across as a woman determined to deflect and evade any responsibility for what Heydrich did, saw her husband as a peacemaker and a visionary leader during the Nazi period. In other words she was in complete denial of most of the reality she lived through.
Heydrich himself remains an elusive, enigmatic character. He was the son of a successful opera singer and during much of the 1920's he served in the German navy, where he had few friends and was dogged by rumours that his grandmother may or may not have been a Jew. He was both a brilliant administrator and an awkward introvert who had a photographic memory and a talent for intrigue and deception. He was fairly cultured, played the violin and was supposedly devoted to his wife and family. Heydrich was also completely ruthless and ambitious and was known by Hitler as "the man with the iron heart."
In the early 40's Heydrich was sent to Prague to run what was left of Czechoslovakia.
He lived lavishly and his family were seconded to an estate outside the city. Heydrich spent his few free hours living it up and womanizing. Many historians believed that for some reaspn he let his guard down in Prague and was killed in an open car by two Czech patriots sent from the UK to assassinate him. His wife left Prague in 1945 fleeing the Russians who were rampaging across Eastern Europe and eventually made her way to her home on an island near Denmark.
Of course, the most compelling aspect of the story is, as always, why? Why did a clever, educated man become such a ruthless monster? Unlike Hitler, Heydrich was not motivated by personal madness. He was not particularly greedy like Goring or a pathetic sociopath like Goebbels. But somehow he found himself responsible like his collegues for the deaths of millions.
Dougherty thankfully spares us many details of the Holocaust but the most chilling chapter in the book is the one which shows us how Heydrich bullied senior Nazis into joining the killing squads in the East. Many of the leaders of these squads became hardened killers or severely mentally ill having seen and done what they could not unsee or undo.
Yet, despite Daugherty's mention of Milgram's experiments on obedience and het thorough dissection imto Heydrich's life, the reader is left with the question: why? I guess the answer lies in the idea that the veneer of civilization is often a thin one. And in the the reality that the ambitions of a tormented, driven man are not easily quenched.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 23, 2022
A Woman in Denial
Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most efficient, organized murderers in recorded history. He also started and ran an organization that kept secret records on many of the top Nazis, mostly as a means of self-preservation. But what was his man like when he wasn’t on the job? After all, he did have a wife, Lina, and three children, Klaus, Silke, and Marte. And what did she think was going on around her?
This book tries to answer these questions, while providing a biography of Reinhard Heydrich. Dougherty covers Heydrich’s upbringing in a musical family with something of an idiosyncratic father. Heydrich learned to play the violin, was pretty good at it, and when he joined the post WWI German navy, received ridicule for it. A weakling and a bit of an ugly duckling as a child, he devoted himself to sports and transformed himself into a championship fencer. But he was a willful man and a womanizer, and these traits got him booted from the navy. After, he joined the Nazi party and the SS and courted and married Lina von Osten. Through a friend of hers he secured an interview with Heinrich Himmler, who was building a counterintelligence unit within the SS. The two hit it off, with Himmler drawn to Heydrich’s Aryan appearance. From there, Himmler and Heydrich grew the SS, eventually taking over all policing functions, as well as the operation of the concentration camps and the murder of Jews, as well as anyone else who did not conform to the Nazi political philosophy and concept of the ideal German. Dougherty recounts all of this, including the internal intrigue within the Nazi hierarchy.
Interspersed, she relates conversations she had with Lina revolving around what it was like to live with Heydrich, her knowledge of what he actually did, how he related to his family, what she knew of the affairs he conducted while married to her, including his operation of Salon Kitty used to spy on Nazi officials. Dougherty’s chapter on the second sex in the Third Reich should be of particular interest to readers.
Lina, as she did in her own book Life with a Criminal, proves herself to be an unreliable witness to history and to the activities of her husband. In doing so, however, she says a lot about the German mentality of the time.
Reinhard Heydrich was one of the most efficient, organized murderers in recorded history. He also started and ran an organization that kept secret records on many of the top Nazis, mostly as a means of self-preservation. But what was his man like when he wasn’t on the job? After all, he did have a wife, Lina, and three children, Klaus, Silke, and Marte. And what did she think was going on around her?
This book tries to answer these questions, while providing a biography of Reinhard Heydrich. Dougherty covers Heydrich’s upbringing in a musical family with something of an idiosyncratic father. Heydrich learned to play the violin, was pretty good at it, and when he joined the post WWI German navy, received ridicule for it. A weakling and a bit of an ugly duckling as a child, he devoted himself to sports and transformed himself into a championship fencer. But he was a willful man and a womanizer, and these traits got him booted from the navy. After, he joined the Nazi party and the SS and courted and married Lina von Osten. Through a friend of hers he secured an interview with Heinrich Himmler, who was building a counterintelligence unit within the SS. The two hit it off, with Himmler drawn to Heydrich’s Aryan appearance. From there, Himmler and Heydrich grew the SS, eventually taking over all policing functions, as well as the operation of the concentration camps and the murder of Jews, as well as anyone else who did not conform to the Nazi political philosophy and concept of the ideal German. Dougherty recounts all of this, including the internal intrigue within the Nazi hierarchy.
Interspersed, she relates conversations she had with Lina revolving around what it was like to live with Heydrich, her knowledge of what he actually did, how he related to his family, what she knew of the affairs he conducted while married to her, including his operation of Salon Kitty used to spy on Nazi officials. Dougherty’s chapter on the second sex in the Third Reich should be of particular interest to readers.
Lina, as she did in her own book Life with a Criminal, proves herself to be an unreliable witness to history and to the activities of her husband. In doing so, however, she says a lot about the German mentality of the time.
March 24, 2025
About half way through this study, author Nancy Dougherty makes a curious observation. Over the decades that proceeded WWII, several people interviewed Lina Heydrich at her tiny inn where she acts as hostess and cook. When Lina gets nervous or becomes flustered by the interviewer’s questions or topics, she would excuse herself to go and work in the kitchen until she gets more composure. With Dougherty being the only female to conduct an interview with her, she actually went with Lena into the kitchen to continue the talk, something that none of the previous all-male questioners had done.
This is thoroughly researched with surviving records and Dougherty’s three interviews with Lina, done over a ten year span. Reinhard was the architect of many monstrous actions, known as the Blond Beast, or the Bucher of Prague. There is still gray area over what these wives knew of their husbands day to day dealings, and Dougherty, with a sociologist background weighs the Lina that she met and interviewed with the many accounts of her from her contemporaries and victims of her husband’s dealings. As a result of these interviews, the reader learns more about Reinhard’s career and speculates on his motivations and beliefs, including a cornel of doubt about Heydrich’s own ethnicity that is hinted about in his own vocal fears for his family, as well as his brothers demise shortly after.
A few interesting tack aways:
Himler scrutinized photos of prospective SS wives (preferably photos where they were in bathing suits,) to try and deserve close Arian ties, and nearly 1/3 of all marriage license were deemed inconclusive based on looks.
Also the Lebensborn homes where SS officers were encouraged to get as many women pregnant as possible before going off to the front.
This is thoroughly researched with surviving records and Dougherty’s three interviews with Lina, done over a ten year span. Reinhard was the architect of many monstrous actions, known as the Blond Beast, or the Bucher of Prague. There is still gray area over what these wives knew of their husbands day to day dealings, and Dougherty, with a sociologist background weighs the Lina that she met and interviewed with the many accounts of her from her contemporaries and victims of her husband’s dealings. As a result of these interviews, the reader learns more about Reinhard’s career and speculates on his motivations and beliefs, including a cornel of doubt about Heydrich’s own ethnicity that is hinted about in his own vocal fears for his family, as well as his brothers demise shortly after.
A few interesting tack aways:
Himler scrutinized photos of prospective SS wives (preferably photos where they were in bathing suits,) to try and deserve close Arian ties, and nearly 1/3 of all marriage license were deemed inconclusive based on looks.
Also the Lebensborn homes where SS officers were encouraged to get as many women pregnant as possible before going off to the front.
September 14, 2022
Several thoughts on this one.
There were several comments about the wife of Heydrich. She remembers things too fondly and the author didn’t press her on the horrible things her husband did.
I would add that she did marry this guy and had four children with him. It’s not surprising then that she attempts to work around all the horrible atrocities he committed. Ask any older person about their youth or events forty years ago and you’re more often than not going to get a glossed over version. Seems to be a common theme among humans. Happens with my grandma all the time.
Second some reviewers criticized the author for not pressing the wife more on details and what she knew. If I’m interviewing a controversial person and I go in with the bad cop routine, I’m probably not going to get very much information from the subject. That seems to be the case here. I thought the author’s level of pressing for information was appropriate.
All that being said, this was an interesting biography or a horrible person with the added twist of his widow’s comments mixed in for good measure. I knew the name and that he was assassinated but not all of the details of how he came to be.
Worth your time if you have an interest in nazis or the holocaust.
There were several comments about the wife of Heydrich. She remembers things too fondly and the author didn’t press her on the horrible things her husband did.
I would add that she did marry this guy and had four children with him. It’s not surprising then that she attempts to work around all the horrible atrocities he committed. Ask any older person about their youth or events forty years ago and you’re more often than not going to get a glossed over version. Seems to be a common theme among humans. Happens with my grandma all the time.
Second some reviewers criticized the author for not pressing the wife more on details and what she knew. If I’m interviewing a controversial person and I go in with the bad cop routine, I’m probably not going to get very much information from the subject. That seems to be the case here. I thought the author’s level of pressing for information was appropriate.
All that being said, this was an interesting biography or a horrible person with the added twist of his widow’s comments mixed in for good measure. I knew the name and that he was assassinated but not all of the details of how he came to be.
Worth your time if you have an interest in nazis or the holocaust.
March 16, 2023
Interesting as the main source of information was Heydrich's widow. Learned new truths about who Heydrich was and why so little is known about him; such as he ensured he didn't leave a personnel file for himself - very little was found after the war. I did find the fact that his widow acknowledge s he was a war criminal surprised me; I was expecting denial. That she applied and received a pension from the state for his military service surprised me but she was not a participant in his career. He told her nothing. He was known to be a philanderer, which did surprise me. The book was a challenging read for me as the writing style was...not what I enjoy but I was curious. Not sure how much light it shed on Heydrich except.that his widow stated that after he was was kicked out of the navy for marrying her (he had broken an engagement which was against the honor code) he just wanted a job. The economy was in ruin and he needed to feed his family. Then he became "successful" and the family had money until he was killed in Prague in 1943. Definitely an interesting lens to view to view such a person.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 25, 2023
When I first saw The hangman and his wife I wanted to read it but, I did not get around to reading it for awhile. I thought it was about Himmler and his wife. Then I realized when I was about to read it that it was about Reinhard Heydrich and his wife.
Before reading this book all I knew about Reinhard was that he was a Nazi and he was killed by a bomb.
The hangman and his wife is a long book at 570 pages. And there are a lot of words on each pages because the type is smaller so maybe its more like reading twice as many pages.
I thought the hangman and his wife was a very through biography of Reinhard Heydrich. I learned about his father Bruno who was an opera singer, his mother, brothers, his time in the Kriegsmarine, how he got started in the SD, what he did while in the SD, his time in the Gestapo, how he became Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
I thought he was killed instantly. But, he lived for several days after he was hit by the grenade. I think it was a grenade. And I learned about the Lidice Massacre which is what the Nazi's did after the assassination of Heydrich.
The book also talks about how his children have handled having had a father like him.
Before reading this book all I knew about Reinhard was that he was a Nazi and he was killed by a bomb.
The hangman and his wife is a long book at 570 pages. And there are a lot of words on each pages because the type is smaller so maybe its more like reading twice as many pages.
I thought the hangman and his wife was a very through biography of Reinhard Heydrich. I learned about his father Bruno who was an opera singer, his mother, brothers, his time in the Kriegsmarine, how he got started in the SD, what he did while in the SD, his time in the Gestapo, how he became Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
I thought he was killed instantly. But, he lived for several days after he was hit by the grenade. I think it was a grenade. And I learned about the Lidice Massacre which is what the Nazi's did after the assassination of Heydrich.
The book also talks about how his children have handled having had a father like him.
June 20, 2023
I was in Prague last month and had the opporturnity to see where Heydrich was assassinated and the church where his assassinators took refuge and ultimately lost their lives. Thus, I was interested in reading this book to learm more about the man. Unfortunately, as far as a biography goes I found this book to be disappointing. It was very disjointed. There was no chronological order. It jumped from one time period to another and from one event to another one. I found it hard to follow. The last forty or fifty pages that deal with the plot to kill Heydrich were more cohesive. Although I did find it odd that the author did not discuss what happened to the men who killed Heydrich. As mentioned in previous reviews, the author died before her work was completed so this may account for that. In many ways this book is less of a biography and more of a history of the Nazi movement. The interviews with Heydrich's wife were not enlightening. She did not provide any real insights into her husband's thoughts or into the workings of the Nazi hierarchy.
October 31, 2023
Well worth reading if you are a student of WW2, the Third Reich, or Holocaust history. What makes it stand out is that it is a biography of both Reinhard and Lina Heydrich, their marriage as well as their individual lives.
Frau Heydrich almost seems to have appreciated and enjoyed her visits with interviewer and author Nancy Dougherty. Her personality shines through and can be appreciated in spite of the backdrop of her story. The book is rich with history and intrigue as well as personal anecdotes that bring the infamous figures of history down to a human and almost understandable level.
I listened to the audiobook by Suzanne Toren, who did a masterful job of interpreting the text over 26 hours. It is a commitment, to be sure, but every moment held my attention.
Frau Heydrich almost seems to have appreciated and enjoyed her visits with interviewer and author Nancy Dougherty. Her personality shines through and can be appreciated in spite of the backdrop of her story. The book is rich with history and intrigue as well as personal anecdotes that bring the infamous figures of history down to a human and almost understandable level.
I listened to the audiobook by Suzanne Toren, who did a masterful job of interpreting the text over 26 hours. It is a commitment, to be sure, but every moment held my attention.
August 25, 2022
I walked into this book with some skepticism. The title in particular put me off, sounding like the sensationalized overwritten "Horror History" books I try to avoid. If that's what you're thinking, then I assure you - while the man and the book are both chilling to say the least, the writing is masterful.
The author's background in both sociology, German and Jewish culture is what makes this book a cut above the rest. Her conversations with Lina Heydrich (Von Osten) come off as very neutral and even friendly, so Heydrich's reactions and answers feel frank and from the hip (as opposed to coerced and interrogative.)
Her other interviews as well sound like she held her own and managed to disarm everyone, men, women, office worker and murderer alike. It all comes together to form one of the most complete portraits of one of the most illusive monsters in modern history. A very complete portrait of a man who would rather none such portraits would exist.
I do have a few niggles but they are small and mostly don't get in the way. My first is that the author often states and restates who everyone is and what their jobs are, to the point of irritation. Secondly that often when she does quote other historians she tends to quote very hysterical ones.
But other than that, one of the best history books I've ever read. Full stop.
The author's background in both sociology, German and Jewish culture is what makes this book a cut above the rest. Her conversations with Lina Heydrich (Von Osten) come off as very neutral and even friendly, so Heydrich's reactions and answers feel frank and from the hip (as opposed to coerced and interrogative.)
Her other interviews as well sound like she held her own and managed to disarm everyone, men, women, office worker and murderer alike. It all comes together to form one of the most complete portraits of one of the most illusive monsters in modern history. A very complete portrait of a man who would rather none such portraits would exist.
I do have a few niggles but they are small and mostly don't get in the way. My first is that the author often states and restates who everyone is and what their jobs are, to the point of irritation. Secondly that often when she does quote other historians she tends to quote very hysterical ones.
But other than that, one of the best history books I've ever read. Full stop.
January 14, 2023
Excellent, in-depth look at the life of Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy/Acting Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia and served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC, now known as Interpol) and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalized plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe. The author bases her story largely on in person interviews with Reinhard's widow, Lina, that take place over a number of years.
April 21, 2023
Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler't second in command, unknown to many to this day was perhaps one of the most heinous figures of WWII. Responsible for the design and execution of the Holocaust and one of the most powerful men in the Reich upper echelon, his life and death are laid open along with the inner-workings of the Reich. Through in-depth interviews with his wife we are shown how women, managed the social and day to day workings of the war from the inside and later the outcome that they were left with.
July 2, 2025
Biographies are usually dry by nature, no matter how fascinating the person in question is. To the author's credit, she manages to save some parts of this book from that curse by adding a personal element. The basis of this particular biography are the interviews she took of RH’s wife, and she even goes as far to describe Lina’s emotional state while recounting her old life, her various idiosyncrasies, and takes note of her wild, sheltered misconceptions. Surprisingly good prose too, which prevents it from becoming a multi-chaptered Wikipedia entry.
July 1, 2022
Fascinating, horrifying, and in-depth study of a Nazi war criminal and the way his widow viewed his role in WWII Germany.
August 6, 2022
Very readable and interesting analysis of both Heydrich and Nazism.
August 25, 2022
Chilling in its straightforward presentation of life with a monster.
April 8, 2023
Pretty interesting approach to a historical figure. Very curious now to explore the beliefs and psychology of Nazi wives and children, specifically in the post-war period.
September 24, 2023
interesting that its a biography that interviews his wife but I wasn't interested enough in the subject to enjoy it
January 25, 2024
Well researched and written account of a monster.
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