The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by Callum MacDonald

Author:Callum MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2011-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

7

Return

While Beneš’ agents were still kicking their heels in Britain the military situation changed dramatically. On 5 December the Russians launched a counter-attack in front of Moscow, forcing the Germans into a retreat which threatened for a time to become a rout. Simultaneously a major new enemy entered the struggle. On 7 December Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and four days later Hitler declared war on the United States. Denied a quick victory in the east, Germany had to mobilise new economic and human resources to knock the Russians out of the war before the Anglo-Americans could open a second front in the west. Hitler responded to the crisis by taking direct control of operations, firing senior officers left and right. From now on the generals were ‘merely postmen purveying Hitler’s orders’. The army was to be rebuilt by drafting workers from reserved occupations and replacing them with forced labour from the occupied territories. On 10 January 1942 Hitler ordered maximum production to reequip his ground forces for the decisive battles in Russia, a move which was already long overdue. In 1941 German industry produced only 200 tanks a month, 400 short of the number required to replace the losses on the voracious battlefields of the east. When the Russian campaign began in June 1941 Heydrich scoffed at doubters who questioned the possibility of a quick victory. His opinions were confirmed in October when Hitler boasted that the Soviet enemy was on the brink of defeat and would never rise again. According to Heydrich the Russians would be driven behind the Urals and their territory settled by Nazi warrior peasants. Germans must become accustomed to thinking in terms of vast space, as befitted an imperial race. By the end of November, though, it was clear that all was not well with BARBAROSSA, a view confirmed by the events of early December. While he did not abandon the SS vision of the future, he realised that it had been temporarily postponed. Well aware that his political prospects depended on impressing Hitler, Heydrich was quick to respond to the new situation. The Protectorate was to be geared up for a longer war by the complete reorganisation of the economy. This in turn required political reform. For the sake of efficiency Heydrich wanted the Czechs themselves to administer the necessary changes, allowing a reduction in the German staff of the Reichsprotektor’s office who would be released for the front. Behind the façade of autonomy, Bohemia–Moravia was to be fully integrated into the war economy of the Nazi Reich.

The SS had always regarded the Protectorate regime as a dangerous relic of past independence which hindered the proper subordination of the Czech people to the master race. When he arrived in Prague, Heydrich ignored the Czech ministers, who were deliberately left confused and leaderless, fearing that they were about to share the fate of Eliáš. The Minister of Health, Ladislav Klumpar, was reduced to haunting the offices of German civil servants in a forlorn attempt to find out if his name appeared on an arrest list.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.