Original subtitles

(suspenseful music)

(stormtroopers marching) (crowd cheering)

- [Narrator] Germany's so-called elite,

the Fuhrer's guard,

a black order.

The end result is a crime

the likes of which the world has never seen.

(suspenseful music continues)

Berlin, June 9th, 1942,

Nazi VIPs at the funeral

of the late SS General Reinhard Heydrich,

(Hitler speaking in German)

- [Narrator] For Heydrich's enemies on the other hand,

he is the blonde beast, or the butcher of Prague

Barely two weeks earlier, in Prague,

Heydrich, Hitler's governor in Czechoslovakia,

is driving to work.

On the way, gunmen ambush him.

- There was a very sharp curve

and the Mercedes that he was driving would need to slow down

so they could take him down with a machine gun.

- [Narrator] The attackers stop the car,

prepare to shoot,

but their gun has jammed.

- [Interpreter] At first, it looks like the assassination

is going wrong.

- [Narrator] Instead of fleeing,

Heydrich wants to confront the assassins.

The second man throws a hand grenade.

(grenade explodes)

(suspenseful music continues)

The attackers flee.

Heydrich remains seriously injured at the scene.

Hitler demands bloody revenge.

- This was an incredibly traumatic moment.

Big parts of Czech intelligence are arrested,

they were executed,

and their names would be read out aloud

on the main street.

(bomb exploding)

- [Narrator] Two whole villages

are wiped out by the Germans.

The inhabitants have nothing to do with the attack.

The Czechs call the reprisal action

(narrator speaks in foreign language).

More than 1,000 innocent people are murdered.

What the assassins do not know

is that they are not only killing

the Nazi governor of Prague,

but the organizer of a crime that has taken its course

throughout Europe, the Holocaust,

the architect of the secret plan

to eliminate the European Jews.

(suspenseful music)

Kiel, headquarters of the German Baltic fleet.

In January, 1931,

a young officer has to answer to a court of honor

of the Reichsmarine.

His name is Reinhard Heydrich.

(dramatic music)

The 26-year-old lieutenant is accused

of promising marriage to a young lady,

but then getting engaged to another,

just a trifle, really.

In court, Heydrich denies any guilt

and makes counter-accusations.

The womanizer miscalculates.

Heydrich is dishonorably discharged from the Navy,

the shock of his life.

(Robert speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] His discharge from the Navy

was a key event in his life

so there's quite a bit to compensate for,

and he does that by wanting to be the best in everything.

(jaunty music)

- [Narrator] The new fiance stands by him

after Heydrich's release.

Her name is Lina von Osten.

Lina lives on the coast in Holstein.

Her family is of service gentry, but impoverished,

for Reinhard, who until then, had been apolitical.

it is a new world,

especially because the von Ostens are ardent Nazis,

daughter Lina too.

She persuades him to apply for a job in the SS.

(dramatic music)

In the summer of 1931, Heydrich travels to Munich

to see a Nazi official.

At that time, Heinrich Himmler is the head of a small force

called the Schutzstaffel.

The SS is the personal bodyguard of the Fuhrer,

Nazi bodyguards.

But their boss, the ambitious Himmler, wants more.

For this, he needs men like young Heydrich.

- Reinhard Heydrich was in a way

the stereotypical Nazi officer, tall, blonde, blue-eyed,

the quintessential master-race figure.

- [Narrator] Himmler thinks Heydrich

is an intelligence officer.

He actually only has radio training,

but he keeps that to himself.

- He was put in charge of the SD,

the security service of the SS, by Himmler.

He was felt to be unsentimental, cold,

calculating, ruthless,

and completely convinced of his own rectitude

and his own rightness.

- [Narrator] Heydrich moved into a small villa in Munich

with his wife, Lina.

He takes his SD with him. They are still only 33 men.

The ex-naval officer has big plans.

(crowd cheering)

When the Nazis come to power in 1933,

the opportunity arises.

In Bavaria, the SS takes over the police.

Heydrich becomes head of the political department,

a decisive step.

(Hitler speaking in German)

putting Nazi goals into practice

with the help of state authority, a unique opportunity.

Heydrich is only 30 and is already allowed

to direct his own authority in Munich.

The following year,

he also becomes head of the secret state police in Prussia.

Heydrich's merging of party and state, of SD and police,

is the starting point for his unusually steep rise.

- [Interpreter] In the hands of the National Socialists,

the police became oriented

toward National Socialist ideology and toward racist ideas.

And thus, a unique instrument of terror is created.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] Fear and violence.

Heydrich relies on proven means to secure Hitler's rule.

Those who dare to resist must expect serious consequences.

Heydrich cultivates a system with two sides.

on one side, the facade of law and order,

behind it, an abyss of arbitrariness and violence.

The regime critic, Hermann Laupsien,

secretly distributes leaflets.

(Hermann speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] I said to myself,

of course, you can't defeat the Nazis with this,

but you can reach a few people

who might no longer be caught up in the poison.

- [Narrator] Laupsien is arrested and gets to know the SS.

(Hermann speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Then we went down into the cellar and, well,

when I got there, I thought "No one can hear you here.

You can scream as much as you want."

Then two SS men came down into the cellar.

They had riding whips and they started beating me.

So I thought to myself, "You'll have to endure this.

They'll get tired."

And they got tired, but then two others came down

and then it started all over again.

(suspenseful music continues)

- [Interpreter] Heydrich has no scruples,

neither in the fight against political opponents,

nor in the ongoing power struggles within the party.

Cold efficiency and unquestioning obedience.

Heydrich's apparatus prepares the assassination

of the SA leadership in the so-called Rohm Putsch.

(Sturmabteilung singing in German)

Thanks to his death lists, from 1934 onwards,

it was no longer the brown shirts of the SA,

but the black uniforms of the SS

that stood for power in the Nazi state.

At the Reich Party Congress in September, 1934,

the SS underlines its claims with Himmler and Heydrich.

It's a triumph, especially for Heydrich.

- [Interpreter] Heydrich is driven.

He was not an early fighter or supporter of Adolf Hitler.

In this respect,

there's certainly something compensatory involved.

So, the radicalism of the late convert.

(Robert speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] A careerist,

especially ambitious to make up for the taint

of being kicked out of the Navy.

Heydrich becomes more and more powerful, fanatical, radical.

(suspenseful music continues)

- Heydrich didn't seem to be someone who relaxed at all,

didn't tell jokes, wasn't easy to approach.

Some people felt he was a technician of power,

but the ideology, certainly,

if you read the things that he wrote,

was very, very extreme and very dogmatic.

- [Interpreter] Heydrich writes,

"To prove the correctness of our principles,

we must become the best in all fields,"

a motto he lives by throughout his life,

for example, in sports.

Heydrich is an avid fencer,

but also a sailor, horseman, and modern pentathlete.

This puts him squarely in line with the Nazis.

The SS paper "Schwarze Korps" celebrates Heydrich

as a model athlete,

a star of the Nazi era,

admired by some far beyond the end of the war.

(Franz speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] With sports,

he was able to toughen himself up

so that he became resilient.

(Franz speaking in German)

If he hadn't done that, and had been effeminate

like some of the other party greats were,

well then, nothing would've come of all this.

- [Narrator] The supposed showcase athlete

is feared by opponents as a sore loser.

(gentle music)

In private, the ice-cold killer can be quite soft.

In 1933, Lina gives him a son.

Three more children follow,

moments of happiness for a self-appointed member

of the master race.

In 1937, Heydrich buys a small house with a view of the lake

not far from Schlachtenzee in Berlin.

He earns 16,000 Reichsmarks a year,

the equivalent of about 110,000 euros today,

without allowances.

It pays to belong to Hitler's elite.

(suspenseful music)

With some ladies, it was plain sailing for Heydrich.

(Franz speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] He was the secret type.

Women adored him.

He was a charmer. He was fantastic at entertaining company.

He was very well-read.

He represented a lot to a young person and they said,

"We want to be like that, too."

(jazzy music)

- [Interpreter] What the admirers do not suspect,

the cool strategist Heydrich regularly lets himself go.

After the war,

SS accomplices reported on nightly drinking bouts, affairs,

and visits to brothels.

And this, despite the fact that prostitution

was strictly regulated in the Third Reich.

Heydrich doesn't care.

He puts a high-class Berlin brothel, the Salon Kitty,

at the service of his network of informers.

Incriminating material is collected

against lonely state guests from abroad.

Kitty's salon on the third floor is bugged by the SD.

(jazzy music continues)

While the girls are supposed to use the casual atmosphere

to eavesdrop on their guests,

SD specialists sit in the basement

and eavesdrop on the goings-on further up,

even though the effort hardly seems to have paid off.

(suspenseful music)

- [Interpreter] The intelligence service

is rather an amateurish event.

Basically, they're clearly inferior

to the British intelligence service,

but also to the American intelligence service

in terms of professionalism.

- [Narrator] As was so often the case in the Third Reich,

Heydrich's actions were more appearance than reality.

(militaristic music) (crowd cheering)

September, 1938, the next Party Congress in Nuremberg,

the regime is firmly in the saddle.

The SS has cleared all enemies out of the way.

(suspenseful music)

Heydrich rose from an untersturmfuhrer

to the rank of general in just a few years,

including an SS sword of honor,

which is only awarded on Himmler's orders.

After consolidating power at home,

Heydrich needs a new enemy image,

above all, so that Hitler and Himmler

would continue to depend on him.

Since the mid-1930s,

he's been focusing on a subject that was new to him,

Judaism and its supposed world conspiracy,

the most popular and consequential conspiracy theory

of the 20th century.

(Moshe speaking in Hebrew)

- [Interpreter] Conspiracy theories are so effective

precisely because of their paradoxes.

One wants to understand why the Jews are successful.

How can it be explained that the Jews

managed to look like a threat only by connecting everything,

by saying that capitalism and Bolshevism

are two sides of the same coin?

And that coin is called Judaism.

- [Narrator] Nazi propaganda floods Germany with hatred.

Words are soon to become deeds.

(suspenseful music continues)

All Jews were a danger to the German people,

the press and Nazi cinema agitated,

even the conformist, non-religious Jews

who had lived in Germany for generations.

(newsreader speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Instinctless peoples are deceived

by this mimicry and actually regard them as their equals.

Therein lies the tremendous danger,

for even these assimilated Jews always remain foreign bodies

in the organism of their host people,

however much they may outwardly resemble it.

- [Narrator] The delusion of hostile races of people

allows only one conclusion from the Nazi point of view:

all Jews must get out of Germany.

Heydrich wants to act.

He forces the Jewish immigration also to Palestine.

"As a National Socialist, I am a Zionist," he claims.

(Moshe speaking in Hebrew)

- [Interpreter] Those who don't like Zionist would say

the Nazi's are Zionists, you have to be careful here.

What Heydrich meant by that is this,

"When I talk to Jews, I prefer the Zionists,

because the Zionists believe in a Jewish people,

and are ready to accept the solution

of immigration to Palestine."

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The antisemites of the SS

maintain discrete contacts with Jewish activists.

At the instigation of Heydrich,

SS man Adolph Eichmann is to travel to Palestine

and negotiate with representatives of the Haganah,

a Jewish underground organization.

The common goal: more immigration to Palestine.

But the British Mandate refused Eichmann entry.

The explosive meeting is moved to Cairo.

(dramatic music continues)

Negotiations are underway for cooperation

on the departure of German Jews for Palestine.

But what raises expectations on both sides comes to nothing.

- I think what it shows is Heydrich and his organization

didn't really care what means were used

to get the Jews out of Germany

or didn't care who they talked to or who helped them.

The aim was to reduce the Jewish population by any means.

(SS troopers marching) (crowd cheering)

- [Narrator] Heydrich's antisemitism

is soon needed elsewhere.

In March, 1938, Hitler annexes his native country, Austria.

(crowd cheering)

Many Austrians are enthusiastic

about the so-called Anschluss,

the annexation of their country to Germany.

The SS arrives with the first German troops.

Himmler and Heydrich lose no time.

Heydrich has wanted lists drawn up.

Political opponents are arrested.

Austria's Jews become the target of repression.

In many places, there are pogrom-like attacks.

This goes too far for Heydrich.

He doesn't mind antisemitic violence,

but preferably in secret, not before the eyes of the world.

He sends Eichmann to Vienna to clarify the Jewish question.

Eichmann comes up with a new strategy.

The Jews are to be persuaded to emigrate

and pay for their forced departure themselves.

(Robert speaks in German)

- [Interpreter] The biggest problem

from the perspective of the SS

is that many states abroad have already introduced quotas.

And of course, these states don't want mass immigration

of impoverished German Jews.

(suspenseful music continues)

- [Narrator] The problem is discussed in Berlin.

At a meeting in Goering's Reich Aviation Ministry

on November 12th, 1938, Heydrich presents his plan.

The goal was to accelerate the immigration

of all Jews in Germany and to cover the costs.

Goering, the second man in the state, is enthusiastic.

Heydrich becomes the leading figure

of Jewish policy in the Nazi regime.

(suspenseful music continues)

As a new capacity of racial issues,

he brings another idea into play,

marking all Jews with a special badge.

The idea will become reality in a few years.

Under Heydrich's leadership,

the SS becomes the driving force

behind the forced emigration of the Jews.

By the beginning of the war,

about 350,000 Jews are expropriated and expatriated.

From the Nazi's point of view, a success.

On duty, a ruthless aggressor,

off duty, Heydrich poses as a cultural man and a beau,

nothing unusual in Nazi Germany.

(triumphant music)

- Reinhardt Heydrich, like many of the top Nazis,

absolutely loved German culture.

They listened to music.

They loved the music of Beethoven and Bach.

Heydrich played the violin quite well.

And same day they could give the order to murder

50 or 100 or 1,000 people.

They're not in contradiction for the top Nazis, for the SS.

This is something that was simply par for the course

for someone like Heydrich.

(wistful violin music)

- [Narrator] Heydrich comes from a musical family

and is a virtuoso violinist.

As a young cadet, he had to play for his superiors

in the evenings on board.

He remains faithful to music

and impresses his comrades in the SS with it.

(Franz speaks in German)

- [Interpreter] I think that in many ways,

because of the weight of the work he had to do,

he almost called the violin a friend,

because if he ever had any kind of problem,

he would take the violin and play.

(jaunty music)

- [Narrator] The weight of his work,

specifically terror and persecution,

also allows him to cultivate

his second great passion, sports.

Heydrich is regularly drawn to the mountains,

For example, to the Greater German Alpine Ski Championships,

where the SD boss likes to have his picture taken

with the winners.

(artillery blasting)

(newsreader speaking in German)

- Gdansk, September 1st, 1939,

the invasion of Poland marked a turning point

in Heydrich's career.

Hitler triumphs and brings Dansig home to the Reich,

as the propaganda puts it.

But in truth, this war is about something else,

lebensraum or living space.

Reinhard Heydrich, who travels to Poland

in Hitler's entourage, is well aware of this.

- When Hitler's planning,

when he's telling Himmler his plans,

when he's talking to Heydrich, he makes it very clear,

he doesn't care how many Poles have to die.

He has absolutely no empathy, no sympathy for them at all.

- [Narrator] Behind the fighting troops,

Heydrich sends so-called Einsatzgruppen to Poland,

their mission, to wipe out the elites.

Heydrich once again draws up death lists.

- Heydrich was a brutal killer.

He was a coldblooded mass murderer,

and he had absolutely no problem

putting these thousands of names out there

and telling his Einsatzgruppen to go and find these people

and murder them.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] In order to coordinate

the mass murders in the east,

a new authority is founded in Berlin

at the end of September, 1939, under Heydrich's leadership,

the Reich Security Main Office.

The new super agency of the SS

are pulling the strings for terror at home and abroad.

Heydrich regularly sends his people into action,

mostly for murder campaigns.

The department under Adolph Eichmann,

responsible for Jewish affairs, become notorious.

An important element for the reorganization in the east

is the control over the Jewish population.

On Heydrich's initiative,

the first ghettos are established in Poland.

Soon after, the residents of the ghettos

must wear an arm band with the star of David.

- Heydrich wanted to be able to control

the Jewish population,

he wanted to know exactly where they were,

then if it should come the time,

then you have put this first massive element of control,

of domination, in place already.

So in other words, the ghettoization was a crucial step

on the road toward the Holocaust.

(soldiers marching)

- [Narrator] The war continues in the west.

Germany defeats France.

Heydrich continues to concentrate

on the solution of the Jewish question.

With the conquest of Poland,

the number of Jews in the German sphere of power

has multiplied.

What is to be done with them?

One proposal is the deportation of all Jews to Madagascar,

a French colony.

After the victory over France,

this plan suddenly seems realistic.

The choice falls on Madagascar,

because the island is far away, because it is isolated,

and because of its notorious climate.

Even after their expulsion,

the life of the Jews should still be a life of hardships.

It is an idea that has long been haunting antisemitic minds.

Heydrich has concrete plans developed

in close consultation with the foreign office.

(Isabel speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Quickly you realize

you don't have enough ships, you're war with England.

So the idea is off the stove

as quickly as it seemed appealing in the short term.

Even if it promised a quick solution to the problem,

what do we do with the European Jews?

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] The decision is postponed.

While Hitler plans the war against the Soviet Union,

Heydrich receives the order to work out a final solution.

In a border police school,

he instructs his Einsatzgruppen

shortly before the attack on the Soviet Union.

There's talk of the fight against Bolshevism and Jewry,

but there are no concrete orders.

Heydrich trusts in the initiative of his men.

(suspenseful music continues)

June 22nd, 1941, Operation Barbarossa starts.

From the beginning,

this campaign is planned as a war of extermination.

Heydrich wants to fight too, as a fighter pilot.

After all, his uniform still doesn't bear

any real war medals.

(Franz speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] He was a representative with great powers

and he stood there with a medal-free chest.

So being a healthy person,

he could not prove to the broad mass of the population

that he'd also done service at the front,

which bothered him beyond measure.

(aircraft roaring)

- [Narrator] The desire for recognition

makes Heydrich forgets all the dangers.

(anti-aircraft guns blasting)

His plane is caught in Soviet anti-aircraft fire

over the Eastern front on July 22nd, 1941.

(aircraft roaring)

His Messerschmidt is hit.

Heydrich has to make an emergency landing

between the fronts.

A German scouting party finds him.

For his crash landing,

he receives the Iron Cross First Class,

which he wears proudly on his uniform from now on,

the vanity of a mass murderer.

Meanwhile, Heydrich's Einsatzgruppen

go on a manhunt in the east.

Math shootings take place from the first day.

At first, the victims are mainly Jewish men.

- Heydrich doesn't have to be constantly telling them

what to do, they're reporting back to him.

So, in a sense, they're working towards Heydrich.

They are reporting back how well they are doing

to fulfill his expectations.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] In August, 1941,

the Wehrmacht advances into the Baltic states.

There is no escape for the Jews.

In the port city of Libau

lived 16-year-old Fanny Segal, daughter of a tailor.

- [Interpreter] We didn't feel much antisemitism.

Nevertheless, we lived in a house

with many non-Jews and Christians around,

also many ethnic Germans lived in Libau.

- [Narrator] But after the German invasion, things change.

Everywhere, Jews are rounded up by uniformed Germans

and civilians who willingly helped.

- [Interviewer] And one day my father came home

and told my mother that they dig graves by the sea, he said,

and I think that the graves are for us.

(Fanny speaking in German)

- [Narrator] At first Fanny's father

is forced to work for the Germans,

but this does not protect him.

(Fanny speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] We were a few hundred people

and suddenly an order came out, "All men out!"

My father started to cry.

He kissed me, gave me his watch.

He knew that this was the end.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] Onlookers watch the action.

Although filming is strictly forbidden,

a soldier films a mass shooting in Lavia.

Soon, women and children are also murdered.

- You have this horrific mass wave of crime,

called Holocaust by bullets.

So it becomes just a wave of mass murder,

primarily against the Jews,

but there are many other victims.

- [Narrator] Himmler and Heydrich follow the results.

They worry about the discipline of the perpetrators,

and about there being too many witnesses.

(suspenseful music)

A network of SD and Gestapo officers

is systematically spun across Europe.

No one is to escape the grasp of the SS.

The goal is now clearly defined.

All of Europe is to be free of Jews.

No Jew is to survive the war.

(suspenseful music continues)

January, 1942.

Heydrich summons top representatives of the Reich

to a conference at Wannsee in Berlin.

He wants to clarify the further steps

for the final solution of the Jewish question.

(Isabel speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Heydrich is clearly the one

who is pulling the strings here.

He cannot, of course,

be detached from Hitler nor from Himmler

as the inspirers and supporters of this policy,

that he's the one who takes

the decisive steps of radicalization.

- [Narrator] At the conference,

Heydrich finally officially announces

what everyone present has long known.

(Stefan speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] It is a working lunch.

You have breakfast together,

then you basically agree on self-evident things.

As the minutes show,

nobody has any fundamental objections, but they're informed.

These are the Jews here, millions, millions,

millions in the different countries,

and we will deport them all.

And so now you know it,

and then everybody sits there and says,

"Yeah, we're not surprised."

- [Narrator] The number of Jews

to be sent from Europe to the east is carefully recorded.

Forced labor until death or immediate murder awaits them.

Even countries that have not yet been conquered

are planned for.

According to the Wannsee Protocol,

a total of 11 million Jews were to disappear from Europe.

(dramatic music) (man speaking in German)

Heydrich has the lead in the so-called final solution

of the Jewish question.

That is not enough for him.

In 1941,

He becomes deputy Reich protector of Bohemia and Moravia.

Heydrich takes up his new posts at Prague Castle

in September, 1941.

Bohemia and Moravia, as the Germans called Czechoslovakia,

has armaments factories,

and is therefore vital to the war effort.

In the face of burgeoning resistance,

Heydrich is expected to tighten the reins

on the protectorate.

Just one day after taking up his post,

he declares a state of emergency.

- [Interpreter] As soon as he arrived in Prague,

he killed hundreds and hundreds of Czechs,

which wasn't necessary at all.

Not even Hitler sent him to Prague to do so.

(suspenseful music continues)

- [Narrator] Heydrich wants to use fear and terror

to drive the industrial workers in the armaments factories

to perform better.

- Heydrich implemented the forced armament industry

to be completely squeezed out.

And it was Skoda Works in Plzen

that produced lots of the important armament industry

that supported the Wehrmacht until April, 1945.

He also implemented much of the anti-Jewish policies

and it was under his watch that Theresienstadt was set up.

- [Narrator] Meanwhile, the final solution

of the Jewish question

has become just as important as the final victory

for the Nazi leadership.

The former Austrian fortress, Theresienstadt,

has been used as a Gestapo prison since 1939.

Critics of the regime are imprisoned

and silenced here by Heydrich's police.

(solemn music)

Since 1941, the whole city has turned into a large ghetto.

Presented by the propaganda

as a quiet retirement home for Jews,

it's actually a transit camp for the Holocaust.

The fortress Theresienstadt itself

also becomes a death camp.

Over 30,000 inmates die here and are burned to death.

(suspenseful music)

In the meantime, the Heydrich family settles in

for an extended stay in Czechoslovakia.

They move into a luxurious country chateau

20 kilometers outside of Prague.

It used to belong to a Jewish sugar factory owner,

now a murderer of Jews leads a pleasant life

in the 30-room mansion.

Heydrich's wife Lina wants a swimming pool

in the 70-hectare garden.

It is built by forced laborers

from the Theresienstadt ghetto.

(suspenseful music)

The governor of Bohemia and Moravia

does not miss the opportunity to present Hitler

with a whole hospital train for his birthday

in the name of the Czech people.

Furthermore, he enjoys supplying the Fuhrer

with success stories from Czechoslovakia,

most of which are exaggerated.

The contact between Hitler and Heydrich

almost always goes through Himmler.

With Heydrich's new office as Reichs protector,

he hopes for direct proximity to the dictator.

(Robert speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Heydrich and Hitler met

perhaps 10 times in person,

so I wouldn't describe the relationship as close.

However, Hitler is, of course,

very aware of Heydrich as a person,

and Heydrich is also repeatedly involved

in central discussions when it comes to the Jewish question.

- [Narrator] He doesn't lose sight of that question

in Czechoslovakia either.

- [Interpreter] Heydrich is also involved

when it's about setting up extermination camps in the east.

We're talking about an industrial system of extermination,

no longer about manual shootings,

but an industrial murdering, mostly with gas.

(Hitler speaking in German) (crowd cheering)

- [Narrator] Belzec, near Lublin.

Here in March, 1942,

a new type of camp is put into operation.

Today, the place is a memorial.

(Stefan speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Belzec has six hectares,

that's only three or four soccer fields,

so actually nothing.

And in fact, on that site,

the only building made of bricks is the gas chamber.

Everything else was really just wooden barracks,

and there's a railroad track.

This is essentially an extermination camp

with a railroad track, or rather,

a railroad track with an extermination camp.

- [Narrator] New arrivals are ordered to take a bath

before the alleged work assignment.

They must undress, hand over valuables,

and the women's heads are shaved.

Then they pass through a barbed wire entanglement

to the gas chambers disguised as baths.

After being murdered by exhaust fumes,

the bodies are burnt on large grates

and buried in mass graves.

One of the first reports of the new form of mass murder

came from an SS officer, Kurt Gerstein.

In August, 1942, Gerstein travels from Poland

back to the Reich.

By chance, he meets a Swedish diplomat on the train

to whom he reports about Belzec.

(suspenseful music)

The unsuspecting Jews would be herded into gas chambers

adored with the Star of David

and disguised as the Hackenhalt Foundation.

Hackenhalt is the name of the SS man

who operates the engine of the gas chamber.

Gerstein reports that on the day of his visit,

the engine went on strike,

which must have been very embarrassing for the men.

It took almost three hours before it finally started.

The crammed dead was still standing upright in the chamber.

Completely distraught, Gerstein tells the diplomat

about his experience.

Up to 1,500 people per shift

were murdered in Belzec in this way.

(solemn music)

- [Interpreter] So this diplomat, as diplomats normally do,

listens to all of this, nods his head politely, and says,

"Okay, I'll report back."

But he doesn't know what to make of it.

So in retrospect,

we know that Gerstein wasn't talking nonsense here at all,

but the diplomat listens to it and says,

"Yeah, but it all sounds very strange."

(train whistle whistling)

- [Narrator] The diplomat forwards a report.

After that, nothing happens.

The Germans can continue to murder almost undisturbed.

In Prague, Heydrich is already making new plans.

(suspenseful music)

The SS general reflects on Europe

after the final victory under German leadership.

(Heydrich speaking in German)

(audience applauding)

- Heydrich planned to kind of create essential Europe,

kind of this old Germanic blend

in which Germans would have a domination.

And the local Slavic people at best

would be a little bit like slaves who can count up to 500,

can spell, write their own names, but not much more.

So he had all of these Germanization policies

that basically Czechs would slowly either be assimilated

or would be serving the German master people.

(grave music)

- Heydrich wants to make his protectorate

the prototype of Germanization for all of Europe.

The reorganization of the protectorate

is part of the monstrous master plan of the Nazis.

The east is to be settled by people with Germanic blood.

A Germanic people is to be created

in the new lebensraum through breeding.

This new breed should be able to assert itself

in the struggle for world domination,

the so-called General Plan East, a nightmare.

- The Generalplan Ost was a plan to destroy

not only the peoples of central Eastern Europe,

but also any legacy of their culture

and their history as well.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] In December, 1941,

Heydrich receives Hitler's favorite architect in Prague,

Albert Speer.

They make plans for the reconstruction of Prague

in a postwar period.

The Germanized city is to be surrounded by a ring road

directly connected to the German highway network.

A new German government district, a German university,

and a German opera house are to give Prague

a Germanic character and make it the Nazis showcase city

in the new Europe.

Heydrich is interested in Bohemian history.

He has the keys of the crown treasure handed over to him.

He seems to be particularly fascinated

by the medieval Wenceslas Crown.

An old legend says that it's cursed.

Anyone who puts it on illegally

dies in the course of a year.

Whether Heydrich really put the crown on his head

is disputed.

(suspenseful music)

In May, 1942, the Prague Music Weeks

are held at Palac Wallenstein.

Snapshot, Mr. and Mrs. Heydrich

on the evening of the 26th of May,

the last photo showing Heydrich alive.

The next morning, he plans to leave for Berlin and Paris.

At 10:00 AM, he says goodbye to the family.

Heydrich leaves without an escort.

(birds chirping)

(suspenseful music continues)

(Robert speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Heydrich was convinced

that no one would dare to make an attempt on his life,

if only because, of course,

the leaders of the national resistance knew perfectly well

that it would result in an immense punitive expedition.

- A Czechoslovakian army-in-exile

is trained in Great Britain.

Volunteers train for special operations in Hitler's Europe.

(soldiers marching)

Two of them are the soldiers Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik.

In a hair pin bend, they're able to stop Heydrich's car

and detonate a grenade.

(grenade explodes)

- [Jaroslav] One of the guys called me-

- [Interpreter] One of the guys called me

and said there was an attack

against a high SS officer in Liben,

and he was severely wounded and they didn't dare,

I don't know why, to tell me who it was,

but it was easy for me to guess.

- [Narrator] An entire district is cordoned off

and combed by the police.

There is no trace of the perpetrators.

- [Interpreter] Standing there, seeing the car,

I saw everything, blood all over Prague,

and not only over Prague,

but over the entire protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

- [Narrator] Heydrich is rushed to the hospital.

At first, he seems to recover,

but then after a week, he dies.

- He didn't die of the wound, he died of sepsis,

and Nazi Germany didn't have antibiotics,

They had sulfonamides, and they were just not strong enough

to fight the infection.

So he died a very painful death.

- [Narrator] In Prague, the crowd pays its last respects

to Hitler's governor.

Many ethnic Germans pay their respects,

even Czechs come to his grave.

Some probably hope to appease the Nazis thirst for revenge,

(bomb exploding)

in vain.

The village of Lidice, not far from Prague,

is razed to the ground.

- There was a very thin link to the resistance,

but mostly it was done to drive the point home

that Czech resistance will be met

by absolutely brutal annihilation.

- [Narrator] Lidice is a Czech trauma.

173 men are shot on the spot.

80 more women and men are murdered later.

A few of the children of the village are Germanized.

(somber music)

The others perish in gas chambers.

The German search for the assassins for three weeks.

They receive the decisive clue.

They are hiding in a church in Prague.

(Robert speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] Once their whereabouts had been identified,

the SS relatively quickly began to seal off

and surround the church.

- [Narrator] A large contingent of police and SS

storm the church.

Three resistance fighters

entrench themselves in the gallery.

(suspenseful music)

Traces of bullets and hand grenades

are still visible in the church today.

The three fighters are mortally wounded.

Then it turns out that some men are also entrenched

in the crypt of the church.

The Germans call in Prague's fire department.

They use gas and water to drive the Heydrich bombers

out of their hiding place.

It is the end.

(Robert speaking in German)

- [Interpreter] The moment the water level rose, of course,

the assassins knew that the only way

for them to avoid torture and interrogation

was to kill themselves.

- [Narrator] The men retreat

to the old burial chambers of the crypt.

There, they shoot themselves.

For a brief moment, the SS triumphed,

but in the collective memory of the Czech people,

the assassins have a firm place, until today.

- The assassination of Heydrich

is one of the foundational myths

of Czech national memory of the 20th century.

Yes, many people were killed and tortured

or sent to concentration camps in the aftermath,

but it was also a moment when the Czech history,

which usually is fairly passive, should know more.

And we are going to fight back and we are going to be brave.

- [Narrator] The widow Heydrich stayed at her castle

with her children until shortly before the end of the war.

She never renounced National Socialism.

After the war, she receives the widow's pension

of a general killed in action in the Federal Republic.

Because Heydrich dies before the end of the war,

he's not convicted as a war criminal, not even today.

(suspenseful music)

A memorial in Prague commemorates the place

where the architect of the Holocaust meets his end,

Hitler's most efficient executioner,

the cold prototype of the technocratic perpetrator

driven by hatred, career ambition,

and a thirst for recognition.

(suspenseful music continues)