All language subtitles for Hitlers.Circle.of.Evil.Series.1.07of10.Rise.and.Fall.of.Reinhard.Heydrich.720p.WebRip.x264

In 1939, the Führer's declaration of war

heralds the rise of
one of the most fanatical figures

within Hitler's inner circle.

SS boss Heinrich Himmler.

[Guy] The outbreak of war gives Himmler
the opportunity to realise all his dreams,

all his twisted, racial thinking
for the future of Germany.

These can all happen, in his view.

To make his dreams a reality,

Himmler has within his SS
the most ruthless Nazi of them all.

His name is Reinhard Heydrich.

He is utterly ruthless, manipulative,
a very clever operator

and a useful man to have
if you're trying to set up a police state.

Heydrich and Himmler
make a formidable pair.

But as they push forward
their radical plans,

inner-circle rivals are already plotting
to break up the deadly partnership.

Göring will look at Himmler
and think, you know what?

Your boy's doing really well here. He's
going to be trouble for you at some point.

And, of course, Bormann
will be taking subtle credit.

It is a very, very old political game

and Bormann
is absolutely masterful at playing it.

And Heydrich's meteoric rise
will make him a target

both inside and outside
Hitler's inner circle.

This is the inside story
of Hitler's henchmen,

the power struggles,
blind ambition and fawning sycophants

that would create a monster and fuel the
most brutal horrors of the Third Reich.

September 1939.

The invasion of Poland is underway.

And for Hermann Göring,
head of the Luftwaffe,

the most powerful man within Hitler's
inner circle, everything is going to plan.

[Guy]
The Luftwaffe is incredibly successful.

It pummels Polish towns and cities,
it destroys Polish units.

It is, you know,
an essential part of the blitzkrieg,

and Göring takes full credit for it.

In this film,

penetrating pictures

give the German people

a powerful impression
of the Poland campaign

and show that
every enemy we encounter

will be struck and destroyed.

This is a complete turn around for Göring.

At the beginning of that year,
he had been openly against

Hitler's expansionist plans
for the Third Reich.

Göring is a real sceptic
of this entire enterprise,

but it goes really, really well
and it goes well very quickly.

And this gives Göring
the confidence to say,

yeah, this is a great idea.
I'm all up for it.

But there are others in the inner circle

who also realise that Poland
is their opportunity to shine.

Heinrich Himmler,
the fanatical boss of the SS,

is looking to set in motion a radical plan
to Germanise occupied Poland.

Himmler is an ideologue.

In many ways, he's kind of
more ideologically driven than Hitler,

if such a thing is possible.

He's anti anyone
who's not Aryan and Teutonic.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Himmler really is a dyed-in-the-wool
National Socialist ideologue.

You know, he's got a vision of the future
Germany and it's a frightening vision.

It's a vision that the Führer shares,

as he celebrates his victory
from the Reichstag.

His plan are clear and uncompromising.

[archive, German]

The Führer's words confirm for Himmler

that Poland is where their shared
ideological dreams can become a reality.

Himmler plans to turn a large part
of Polish territory into Lebensraum

or "living space"
for a new German master race.

He doesn't just want
to get rid of the Jews,

he wants to get rid of the Slavs as well.

He wants to get rid
of the handicapped as well.

He's got this idea, you know,
I'm going to Aryanise German society.

REPRODUCTION OF SUPERIOR PEOPLE

I'm going to Germanise
all the places that we occupy.

Himmler's goal is to expel millions of
ethnic Poles and Jews from western Poland

to make way for German settlers.

It's a radical project motivated
not only by Himmler's fanaticism

but also by his appetite for power.

Once they've all been cleared
and this has become Germanified,

and they've taken over their Lebensraum,

it is the SS that are
going to be kind of running the show.

So as they move into occupied territories,

so Himmler's own role and authority
increases in tandem.

And Himmler has his very own example
of Aryan supremacy to do the job.

Reinhard Heydrich
is Himmler's second-in-command

and head of the infamous SD,
the SS secret intelligence agency.

While Himmler fixates
on detail and doctrine,

he's the one that gets things done.

[Robert] Well, Heydrich
is a cold, pragmatic ideologue.

He's not a dreamer.

He's someone who tries to implement
that ideological vision.

[Guy] If you want to draw
the cartoon version of an evil SS man,

you're going to draw Heydrich.

Heydrich is tall, he is blond.
Certainly he's clever.

He's a brilliant fencer
and he's deeply ambitious.

Such is Heydrich's reputation,
even Himmler needs to watch his back.

Heydrich was absolutely ruthless
and really knew how to terrorise people.

He managed to put fear
both into friends and foes alike.

He could make people's blood run cold
just by being in the same room.

But when Himmler first met Heydrich,
he was a man without a future.

Back in 1931,

while Himmler was building up
his new paramilitary organisation, the SS,

Heydrich was unemployed and desperate.

[James Holland] Before Heydrich joins up
with Himmler, this is a man in disgrace.

After all, he'd lost
his officer's commission in the navy.

The cause of Heydrich's disgrace
was an embarrassing love triangle.

[Robert] He was simultaneously engaged
to two women,

and one of the women's fathers

was a very influential man with good
contacts to the senior naval command.

Heydrich made the mistake of dumping
the wrong girl...

...and her powerful father demanded
that her honour be restored.

Heydrich was dismissed as a result,

not so much of the dual engagements but
because he treated the case with contempt,

which was deemed to be unacceptable
for a German naval officer.

WAGGONBAU A.G. BERCHING, FOR RENT
OR SALE ALONG WITH VILLA AND RESIDENCE

Heydrich's timing
could not have been worse.

With the onset of the Great Depression,

he was left high and dry
with zero career prospects.

But his favoured fiancée
provided a lifeline.

The woman who he was going to marry,
Lina von Osten, had unlike him,

been a supporter of the Nazi movement
for quite some time.

It was her who introduced him
to the movement

and also who encouraged him
to seek the interview with Himmler.

Himmler was looking for someone to create

a new SD secret intelligence service
as part of his SS.

Heydrich had never worked
in professional espionage

but he didn't let that hold him back.

What experience does Heydrich have
about intelligence networks? None.

All he has done is read as a boy some
detective fiction and some spy novels.

And he uses his knowledge
of those thrillers

to impress Himmler as to how
an intelligence service would work.

Luckily for Heydrich,

Himmler, the wannabe soldier, was dazzled
by the former naval officer's swagger.

[Robert] Himmler is someone
who aspired to be a soldier

without ever having been a soldier,
and is impressed by that military bearing,

that military language,
the physical appearance,

and he decides to charge Heydrich
with the task of building up the SD.

Having successfully completed
his first act of deception,

Heydrich was now
Himmler's new spymaster.

That is the limits of his experience,
but it's enough and, as we shall see,

Heydrich learns on the job
like no one else.

In Heydrich, Himmler had found
a ruthless right-hand man

prepared to do the dirty work
others couldn't stomach.

He's sublimely efficient, Heydrich.
He's efficient because of his cruelty.

In 1934, while Himmler drank tea
with the Führer,

it was Heydrich orchestrating
a bloody purge of the SA,

the Nazi Party's
original paramilitary group.

What takes place, of course,

is one of the most infamous acts
of political violence ever known.

It's called the Night of the Long Knives
and, boy, were those knives sharp.

[gunshot]

It's believed in just three days, between
150 and 200 people were murdered.

But the principal target
was the SA leader, Ernst Röhm.

Rohm is, in fact, the godfather
to one of Heydrich's children.

So they are willing to sacrifice
a close personal friend

for their own political
and personal gains.

The Night of the Long Knives
would establish the SS

as the Nazi Party's foremost agency
of security, surveillance, and terror...

...making the diminutive figure of Himmler
Hitler's new leading henchman.

But it's Heydrich
who becomes the one to watch.

In many ways, the extraordinary success
of the SS can only be explained

because Himmler and Heydrich
worked together so well.

They have complementary talents,

one is someone who manages to cultivate

very close relations
within the Nazi leadership,

the other one is clearly a very efficient
and talented administrator of terror.

Five years after
the elimination of his SA rivals,

Heydrich is now in charge of every police
and security agency within the new Reich.

And it's as the Nazi regime's
top policeman

that he receives
a short but highly sensitive memo

from the Führer's
second-in-command, Hermann Göring.

It instructs him to begin work
on a solution...

GET RID OF JEWS

...to Hitler's so-called Jewish problem,

by means of emigration or evacuation...

THROUGH EMIGRATION OR EVACUATION

...in the most convenient way possible.

[James Holland] Heydrich in 1939
is still very much in his thirties.

He's still comparatively young.
He's a rising star.

So, when he is given an order to start
looking into the Jewish question,

of course,
that is a massive feather in his cap.

And you know that someone like Heydrich
is ambitious enough, ruthless enough,

motivated enough that he won't disappoint.

Heydrich has in effect been chosen
by the Führer himself

to make the Nazi dream
of a racially pure Germany a reality

but as the army prepares to invade Poland,

he will soon acquire
almost two million more Jews

for which there appears
to be no definitive plan.

Orders from the top,
if they're particularly strong,

they're quite often quite vague.

Hitler never says,
I want them all to be executed.

He just says,
we've got to get rid of all the Jews.

Now, what does that mean? Who knows?
You know, just sort it out.

And the interpretation of those orders
is left to Heydrich.

As German troops pour into Poland,
it is Heydrich who has been tasked

with securing and preparing
the new territory for Germanisation.

To do this, he has formed special
SS task forces or Einsatzgruppen

to terrorise the civilian population
into submission.

[Sönke] The task of the Einsatzgruppen
in the Polish campaign

was to decapitate the Polish society,
you have to kill the Polish elite,

you have to kill the priests,
you have to kill the professors,

the politicians, the economic leaders,
and kill them in the tens of thousands.

This was the task of the Einsatzgruppen.

But this is merely groundwork
for more systematic measures

to make Himmler's dream
of new German living space a reality.

Heydrich's men have new orders.

Millions of ethnic Poles are to be moved
east to make way for German settlers.

And as for Poland's Jews,
their fate is even less certain.

They are all to be corralled
and held inside urban ghettos...

DETENTION INSTITUTION

...ready for future deportation.

They are suddenly marched out
at gunpoint in the middle of the night

with every other Jewish family

with one suitcase
for all their belongings.

They're put on these long train journeys
to big centres in occupied Poland,

where they're crammed
into tiny, tiny rooms,

literally crammed into them like sardines.

It is inhumane, it's disgusting,
and it's barbaric.

By early 1940,
hundreds of thousands of Jews

have been crammed into ghettos

inside a newly created zone
known as the General Government.

Heydrich has no moral or practical
concerns for their living conditions,

partly because it is only supposed
to be a temporary measure.

But the impact
of these huge forced migrations

is upsetting other senior Nazis.

Hans Frank is the powerful new Nazi boss
of the General Government

which includes the Polish capital, Warsaw,
and its second city, Krakow.

He is not happy about Heydrich
and Himmler

using his new fiefdom
as a holding station for their Jews.

[Robert]
Frank becomes increasingly concerned

that his General Government
would become,

as he calls it, a dumping ground

for undesirables
from other occupied territories.

Frank also happens to be
an old friend of Hermann Göring,

Himmler's inner-circle rival.

Himmler will refer to Göring
as the king of the black markets,

he's always got his snout in the trough,
whereas Göring will look at Himmler

and write him off as this sort of
priggish, schoolmasterly, bourgeois,

you know, self-denying sort of shrew
of a man.

You can't get greater differences
between two individuals.

When Göring hears that SS activities

are threatening the economic viability
of the General Government,

it's the perfect opportunity
to throw his weight around,

so he calls Himmler and his old friend
to a meeting.

[Frank] The real problem was Hans Frank
had been given this job

of running the General Government
in Poland,

and, of course, Himmler was given
the task of Germanising Poland.

We have these disputes
between Frank on the one side,

who's saying, look, stop dumping
all these people on Poland,

and Himmler saying,
look, where else are they going to go?

As the Führer's number two
and Minister of the Economy,

Göring forces Himmler to agree
that no further deportations

can happen without Frank's consent.

For Himmler, it's a frustrating reminder

of who holds sway
within the inner circle.

Heydrich will have to find a new plan
for Poland's Jews.

As for Göring, his priorities
are on the frontline

as a new theatre of war is about to open.

Emboldened by his success in Poland,

Hitler decides to strike
at his enemies in the west.

It's now their turn to experience

the devastating effectiveness
of Göring's Luftwaffe.

It started in early April
with Norway and Denmark,

and then on the 10th May 1940,

the Wehrmacht attacked
the western countries

of France, Luxembourg,
Belgium and the Netherlands.

And flying combat missions
over western Europe

is none other than Reinhard Heydrich.

Unlike his boss Himmler,
the frustrated soldier,

Heydrich satisfies his craving
to see real military action.

This was an incredibly risky undertaking

for a man of his immense importance
and position within the Third Reich.

And it says a lot about his desire
to prove

he wasn't just a man who could fly a desk
but he was a man who could fly a plane,

he could take risks and he was a kind
of alpha male, as we call them today.

Once again, the Luftwaffe's
close support of the Army

is instrumental in defeating
the French and the British.

In just six weeks,

Western Europe is under Nazi control
and Göring is the man of the moment.

[Sönke]
Göring became, after the fall of France,

the highest decorated and highest rank
of all German military.

Decorated as Nazi Germany's
new Reichsmarschall,

Göring's position as the Führer's
successor appears unassailable.

The Nazi occupation of France
has also potentially provided

a somewhat far-out solution
for Heydrich's Jewish problem.

The island of Madagascar.

[Robert] Heydrich sees it
as a huge opportunity

in using the former French colony
of Madagascar

as a new Jewish home.

Heydrich's plan is to ship all of
Europe's Jews almost 13,000 kilometres

to this remote island off the east coast
of the African Continent.

It's a terrifying sign of the cruelty

Heydrich is prepared
to inflict on millions of people.

Of course, it is always assumed

that because Madagascar
has a very inhospitable climate,

particularly for Central Europeans,

that many people would die in the process
but that is part of the calculation.

But there is
one major obstacle to his plan.

The British Navy.

The plans for Madagascar
are very much dependent

on a German victory over Britain.

As long as Britain is still in the war,

the sea passage to Madagascar
cannot be guaranteed.

Göring,
flying high on his success in France

is about to take his biggest gamble yet.

He promises the Führer that he can bring
Britain to her knees by air power alone.

[Richard] Göring is very keen that
the Luftwaffe should be seen to do this.

Somehow or other, it will put

the Luftwaffe on a pedestal
above the army and the navy.

And at the same time, enhance
Göring's own reputation with Hitler.

Göring throws the full force
of his Luftwaffe against the enemy.

But his pilots meet unexpectedly
stiff and well-organised resistance.

They didn't understand
the British air defence system,

they didn't understand the radar system
and how it was organised,

so they didn't quite get
where the weak points were,

so therefore
it was an intelligence problem.

For months, Göring personally assures
Hitler that the RAF will be broken.

But as the conflict wears on, it is also
clear that the Luftwaffe was never ready

for long-range operations
over the Channel.

And of course, there was the problem

that Germans just don't have long-range
fighters and long-range bombers.

So as long as the British don't lose
their nerve, it was no chance whatsoever

for the German air force
to win air superiority over Britain.

For Göring, it's a personal disaster.

Having promised so much,

all he can deliver is Nazi Germany's
first major military failure.

It's the start of a growing distrust
between Hitler and Göring,

a growing distrust
of Göring's boastfulness.

Hitler's going to ask himself
the question,

how much longer can I put up
with Göring,

how much longer can I entrust him
with things that I thought he could do?

By October 1940,
the Battle of Britain is all but over.

For Heydrich, the Madagascar plan
is effectively shelved.

But Göring's failure will lead
to new possibilities for the SS

as Hitler focuses his attention
back towards the East.

With Britain standing defiant,
the Führer decides

that the Soviet Union now holds the key
to Nazi supremacy over Europe.

Hitler's decided if you can defeat
the Soviet Union, you have huge resources

then to turn against Britain, and anyway
if you defeat the Soviet Union,

Britain has no more hope in Europe,
so Britain will reach an agreement.

For Göring, invading the Soviet Union
while Britain is still a threat,

is strategic suicide

but since his own military failure,
his credibility is at all-time low.

For Göring, the British Empire is
really the critical enemy at the moment.

Göring makes this clear to Hitler,
but never actually pushes it.

He is at a point at which he realises if
he pushes it any further, he's in trouble.

Himmler and Heydrich, on the other hand,
have a rather different view.

On the 22nd June, 1941,
the invasion of the Soviet Union

codenamed Operation Barbarossa begins.

For Himmler and Heydrich, this is
the battle they've been waiting for,

the showdown with what they regard
as the arch-enemy of National Socialism.

What happens in the evolution of
Nazi ideology and Hitler's own ideology

is this merging of

Bolshevism and "the Jew"
together as a combined menace.

So, it becomes the Bolshevik Jew.

And antisemitism runs
absolutely at the heart of it.

Russia's' vast territory also offers
limitless living space

for their new German empire and they will
give no quarter in trying to win it.

[Robert]
This war against the Soviet Union will be

fundamentally different
from all the other wars.

Certain rules which could not be
broken quite simply do not apply

in the ideological war
that will be waged on the Eastern Front.

Himmler predicts that millions of Russian
Slavs will die through starvation alone

as the German army tears
through Soviet territory.

In its wake, the Einsatzgruppen follow.

And it's soon clear
that Heydrich has ordered

a terrifying escalation of violence
against the Jews.

[Robert] Very quickly,
Heydrich's task forces

begin killing Jewish men
of military age.

And then very quickly thereafter start
to kill Jewish women and children as well.

At this point, Heydrich is moving from

a territorial solution
to an implementation of genocide.

Heydrich is proving to be

the inner circle's most committed follower
of his Führer's creed of hate.

And just weeks after the invasion,
he visits an embattled Göring

to sign off on what would
become known as the Final Solution.

[Richard] Heydrich comes to Göring with a
document which will authorise Heydrich...

THE JEWISH QUESTION

...to undertake the "Final Solution"
to the Jewish question.

The term "Final Solution"
is deliberately vague

but what is clear is that Heydrich
wants to be in control of it.

Heydrich is looking for assurances
from the Nazi leadership,

essentially from Hitler via Göring,

that it is him, not the army,
not the civil administrators,

who is fully responsible
for finding that solution.

A solution
that is becoming bigger by the day.

Heydrich, the man who only joined the SS
because he needed a job,

is now stepping out of Himmler's shadow
as he takes responsibility for the policy

that lies at the heart of the Führer's
ideological ambitions.

But ironically, it's antisemitism that
almost ended his career before it began.

When Heydrich was only one year
into his new job,

a file claiming the young SS officer
was Jewish arrived on the Führer's desk.

It revealed that Heydrich's
paternal grandmother

had remarried a man
with a supposedly Jewish surname.

These accusations that he's tainted,
quote/unquote, with Jewish blood,

which, of course, in the Third Reich
is the worst thing that you can have,

are a serious thing.

The story had originally been used

to tarnish the reputation
of Heydrich's father, Bruno Heydrich,

a well-known musician and composer.

Even though this idea
that Heydrich has any Jewish ancestry

had been shown to be nonsense
by his father many years before,

it still dogs and haunts Heydrich.

Though Heydrich could easily show
he had no Jewish blood,

he's well aware
that inside the inner circle,

even unfounded rumours are dangerous.

Therefore Himmler's support was crucial.

[Guy] There's no doubt that Heydrich
does need Himmler's support.

You know, we see repeatedly
within the Nazi regime

how it doesn't matter whether, you know,
an accusation is true or false,

it will be used against you anyway,
because the Nazis make up their own truth.

Heydrich knows this because
he's one of the people who does that.

Now, eight years later,
armed with the Führer's authority,

Himmler's protégé is proving
that he is capable of anything.

Heydrich's Final Solution has evolved
into a campaign of mass murder,

as his task forces develop
their brutal methodology.

They would round up predominantly Jews
from a given area.

They would march them to a wood
or a nearby field

and they would get them
to dig a deep trench.

They would shoot them
in the back of the head.

[gunshot]

The next group would then
have to stand at the edge of the pit,

they would be shot and they would fall
on top... and so it would go on

until the pit was filled, and then they
would cover it over with lime and soil.

And that was repeated right across
the whole of the German front.

It's a genocide instigated
not only by fanaticism

but also a cold, calculated bid for power.

[Robert] Himmler and Heydrich
are certainly convinced

they will be rewarded for implementing
what they consider to be Hitler's will.

Tens of thousands of Jews
are now slaughtered at a time.

[gunshots]

And sites such as a ravine
near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev

would become forever synonymous
with mass murder.

The mental image that we all have
of the Holocaust

is, fundamentally, the railway tracks

which lead under that famous building
at Auschwitz.

But the Holocaust really began
with executions like Babi Yar.

Over just two days in September 1941,

more than 33,000 Jews were systematically
shot dead and thrown into the abyss.

And how the SS leadership
justify these atrocities

both to their men and themselves
is truly horrifying.

People like Himmler and Heydrich
would have rejected our western moral code

as weak and decadent,
as something of the past.

Their commitment was primarily
to the Germanic race.

So, what we consider heinous crimes,

from their point of view,
was a service to their people.

But for all of Himmler and Heydrich's
commitment to the cause,

the Führer has decided
that once Russia is defeated,

control over this vast new territory
will be given to civilians, not the SS.

Hitler is always careful not
to concentrate power into too few hands,

and even though
he is extremely grateful to them,

he is actually trying
to limit the power of the SS

and other agencies
run by Himmler and Heydrich.

But Heydrich is far from giving up.

He has already in his sights the perfect
opportunity to gain real political power.

His target, the Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia in Czechoslovakia.

For the Nazis, the Protectorate of Bohemia
-Moravia is particularly important.

In an economic sense,

there are major armament productions
in the Protectorate

and with the beginning
of Operation Barbarossa,

we see a massive increase
in resistance activities.

Czech saboteurs are severely damaging
the Nazi war effort.

For Heydrich, this is a job for the SS
but they need an ally,

someone who has the Führer's ear,
to help make their case.

[Guy] There's one man
that Heydrich has to impress

in order to take over
Bohemia and Moravia.

The man he has to impress
is Martin Bormann,

who is head of the Party Chancellery

and is basically in the shadows
behind Hitler all the time.

That's why he's called
the Brown Eminence.

I think that you have to realise

just about every member
of the inner circle's

route to Hitler is through Bormann.

Heydrich mobilises his intelligence
network to compile reports

to disparage and denigrate
the civilian administration in Prague.

What they are saying
is that the civilian administrators

in charge of these territories
are unable to control the situation.

[Guy] And he is desperate to, you know,
seize control of a place like that

and literally grab it by the neck
and strangle it

until all the people start
doing as they're told.

Bormann needs little persuading,

as Heydrich's promotion
will give the wily bureaucrat

a way to control Himmler's rising star.

[Guy] If you look at Hitler's inner circle
and you look at how Bormann behaves,

he is incredibly cunning.

He knows
that if Heydrich goes to Prague,

that means he will be reporting directly
to Hitler, but that actually means

he's reporting directly to Hitler
through him, Martin Bormann.

When Bormann presents Heydrich's
report, it has the desired effect.

Hitler is furious. The Czechs, he says,
need to be taught a lesson.

Heydrich is coming to Prague.

On his arrival,
Heydrich wastes no time getting to work.

Heydrich cracks down very hard
on the resistance

as soon as he arrives in the Protectorate.

[Guy]
Heydrich's strategy is brutally effective.

Now, the common perception is, actually,
what he just does

is he just rounds up everybody and shoots
them and that's how he takes control.

But as well as that ultimate stick,
he also offers a lot of carrot.

So he improves the rations of workers.

This is going to make people happy.

Essentially, what he wants to achieve
is a situation

in which the labourers in the armament
factories and other important industries

will no longer succumb to the propaganda
of those inciting them to go on strike.

It's an incredibly devious plan

because he is taking away with one hand
and he's giving with another.

+(not german)

Heydrich's strategy soon yields results.

The Czechs appear
to have been brought to heel

and production figures are back up.

When Heydrich returns to Berlin,
he is the man everyone is talking about.

Goebbels, the Nazi head of propaganda

and one of Führer's closest confidants,
is particularly impressed.

[Thomas] As Goebbels wrote into his diary,

he managed to play cat and mouse
with the Czechs

and really managed to get them
under his thumb.

It was really then Heydrich
was increasingly seen by other people

within the Nazi hierarchy
as a leader in his own right.

While Heydrich is personally
congratulated by the Führer,

Himmler's rivals watch with interest.

Everyone wants
a little Heydrich stardust.

It's like a kind of soap opera,
Hitler's inner circle.

They're constantly looking
at who's doing well and who's doing badly,

and Göring is watching
Heydrich's supreme efficiency.

He can sort of look at Himmler
and think, you know what?

Your boy's doing really well here.

He's going to be trouble for you
at some point.

And, of course,
Bormann will be taking subtle credit.

He's very much associating himself
with success.

It is a very, very old political game.

And Bormann
is absolutely masterful at playing it.

Himmler's inner-circle rivals

see Heydrich's success as a way
to break a formidable partnership.

[Robert] Heydrich now reports directly
to the Führer.

Some people perceive that as the beginning
of a rivalry between Himmler and Heydrich

in the sense that Heydrich
is becoming a lot more independent.

Heydrich is fast becoming
a leading member of Hitler's inner circle

in his own right.

Now is the perfect time to take
his Final Solution to the next level.

On the 20th January 1942,

the Berlin suburb of Wannsee
is the venue for a top-secret meeting

of high-ranking civil servants,

party officials
and members of the security services.

Chaired by Heydrich,

it will be one of the most infamous
gatherings in history.

Heydrich called the Wannsee conference,
really, for two reasons.

Firstly, in order to gain control
over anti-Jewish policies,

and second, in order to coordinate
other German state agencies

in the implementation
of the Final Solution.

Heydrich's Final Solution
will involve corralling and moving

up to 11 million people
across the continent.

He'll require almost dictatorial control

of numerous government agencies
to make it happen.

[Richard] Heydrich wants to make it clear

that he is number one
when it comes to this programme.

I'm in charge,
this is what's going to happen

and nobody is going to get in the way.

The meeting is shrouded
in bureaucratic detail

about how they will identify and classify
all of Europe's Jewry...

THROUGH EMIGATION OR EVACUATION

...and then move them
to their final destination.

They'd now reached a new level
with the Jewish question.

They were going to be deporting Jews
to the East.

The meeting didn't spell out
that they would then be killed,

but the implication
was that they're not coming back.

[gunshot]

With millions of Jews imprisoned
in ghettos all over Europe,

Heydrich's Final Solution
is about to evolve

into a genocide on an industrial scale.

[Richard] What Heydrich and the Gestapo
officials are attracted to

is the idea of setting up
purpose-built camps where you can kill

very large numbers of people in one day
and dispose of the bodies.

In other words, you moved from a
very violent face-to-face form of killing

to a more abstract,
industrial form of killing.

By March 17th 1942,
the first stationary gas chamber

at Bełżec in eastern Poland
is operational,

where, in just three months,
80,000 people are killed.

[Richard] And that's what happens
after the Wannsee conference.

These camps are set by March 1942

and that's where millions and millions
of Jews are murdered.

Himmler and Heydrich are planning
the systematic murder of millions

of innocent men, women and children.

Perversely, the management
of this depraved project

is the pinnacle of Heydrich's career.

As spring arrives in Prague,
Heydrich is celebrating.

As overlord of the Czechs
and architect of the Final Solution,

the days of defending
his family's racial purity are long gone.

And appropriately,
he marks his new status

with a concert of his father's work.

[Robert] This is a moment
of self-celebration through music.

Something that, of course,
throughout his career in the Third Reich

was very close to his heart.

[Guy]
Heydrich is now at the apex of his power.

He's in charge of the Protectorate
of Bohemia and Moravia.

He's in charge of all the security
apparatus within the Third Reich.

And he is effectively in charge
of another one of Hitler's pet projects,

the genocide of the Jewish people.

That evening,
the icy Heydrich for a moment

shows a new side to his personality.

He was schmoozing, he was
very gregarious, he was very sociable.

And it seems, ironically,
he now had kind of found

a kind of social confidence
that he had never really had before.

So it was a mark of the fact that
he must have felt on top of the world.

The following day, Heydrich is expected
in Berlin to meet with the Führer.

After his success in Prague,
he is hoping to take control of security

in the occupied territories
of both Eastern and Western Europe.

The SS leadership's ambition in 1941-42

is to expand their powers

to the rest of Eastern Europe
and then to Western Europe,

which is still very firmly controlled
by a military-occupation regime.

It could be a major breakthrough
for the SS.

But Heydrich's rising status
as a member of the inner circle

could also make him a target.

The next day, Heydrich takes
his customary journey

to a waiting plane
that will take him on to Berlin.

[Guy] It's a mark of Heydrich's arrogance
that he travels around in an open-top car.

Not for Heydrich, the idea of cowering
in an armoured limousine

with a whole line of tanks
and armoured cars and outriders.

No, he wants to show, you know,
I can go around

in an open-top car
and no one's going to touch me.

It's a journey Heydrich has made
many times before,

and with the hope of a new promotion,
his spirits are high.

He must have been feeling super confident

and very happy
about how everything was going.

The reports to Berlin were looking good.

The reports from Berlin were looking good,
everything looked perfect.

But as the car slows to take
a tight corner, something isn't right.

The next thing he sees is a man
step out in front of the car,

with a Sten gun, and points it at him.

Heydrich immediately goes for his gun.

The bomb thrown by a second assassin
explodes by the side of the car.

All sorts of stuff
is thrown into the Heydrich's side.

But it doesn't seem to affect him.

He continues to fire at the conspirators
as they run away.

But he then slumps back.
He's wounded.

He falls to the side of the car.

He is now in a lot of trouble.

On hearing the news of the attack,

Himmler immediately sends
his personal physician, Karl Gebhardt.

Heydrich's wounds are serious
but do not appear to be life-threatening.

Seven days after an operation
to remove debris from his spleen,

Heydrich appears to recover.

But then,
without warning, he goes into shock...

...falling into a deep coma
from which he never recovers.

[Guy] When news that Heydrich
was killed reaches Berlin,

there is enormous shock
within Hitler's inner circle.

It makes not one of those men
himself feel safe.

If this can happen to Heydrich,
then it can happen to any of them.

Himmler's investigators soon discover

that Heydrich's attackers were Czechs
trained by British secret intelligence.

But the fact that Heydrich died under
the watch of Himmler's personal physician

sparks rumours within the inner circle.

[Guy] There's a lot of conspiracy theory
attached to Hitler's inner circle.

And we even see it in the case
of Heydrich's assassination.

Did Himmler deliberately
get Heydrich's treatment wrong?

But why? The theory is that in the long
term, Heydrich could have been a threat.

Heydrich was unique.
You couldn't have had

a more ruthless and efficient
mass murderer than Heydrich.

You know, he could have easily been
the Führer, there's no doubt about it.

[James Holland]
My own view is that had he survived,

I suspect that he would have ended up
getting rid of Himmler eventually,

because I think he's probably cleverer
and better at the job than Himmler is.

Despite the rumours and speculation
at the time,

experts are sceptical that Himmler really
wanted to cut short his deputy's career.

The rumours about internal involvement
in the assassination of Heydrich

have really been around
since the day he died.

Some people, I'm pretty certain,

were relieved when he died, although
I wouldn't count Himmler among those.

Heydrich died because medical science
at that stage couldn't save him.

It's as simple as that.

You know, it's a cock-up,
it is not a conspiracy.

Himmler was absolutely mortified
that Heydrich was killed.

He needed Heydrich.
He could not replace Heydrich.

If the SS boss did have any concerns
about Heydrich's rise to power,

they are soon overshadowed by outrage.

This is the first time a leading member
of the inner circle has been assassinated.

And Himmler is not the only one
who wants revenge.

Hitler is apoplectic, you know,
he really wants the Czechs to suffer.

Heydrich was so popular and it was clear
that they have to do something.

Two villages are identified as being
connected to the resistance

but it's merely a pretext
for merciless revenge.

I mean, there was
a brutal and very fierce reaction.

They totally wiped out two villages,
Lidice and Ležáky,

and they killed nearly 500 civilians,
men, women and children.

In full view of the world,

the male inhabitants
are executed on site

while almost 300 women and children
are sent to concentration camps,

where almost half of them
would perish in the gas chambers.

While the two villages are literally
wiped from the face of the earth,

Heydrich's body is returned to Berlin
for a lavish state funeral.

In the minds of Hitler's inner circle,

Heydrich's death is a shock
but also a moment to take stock.

For Göring, isolated
over the decision to invade Russia,

it is time to get back into the fray.

Whereas Bormann will have to find new
ways to play his rivals off each other.

As for Himmler, it's horrifyingly simple,

just continue
what his fallen lieutenant had started.

Himmler begins to take more
of the, if you like, direct responsibility

for pushing the genocide on
as fast and extensively as possible.

OPERATION REINHARD

He's very keen
that Heydrich's memory stays alive,

that the Final Solution
is a final solution.

Signed off as Operation Reinhard,
Himmler will green-light

the murder of over six million men,
women and children

in what will become the single worst crime
against humanity in history.

The Holocaust.