Reinhard Heydrich ordered the immediate annihilation of Jews and Communist officials in the conquered Soviet territories; he headed the Gestapo, directed the concentration of Polish Jews into ghettos, and convened the notorious Wannsee conference to announce the Final Solution. He had his hand in every significant anti-Jewish action in Nazi Europe until his assassination by Czech resistance fighters in June 1942. Had he survived that attack, he would in all likelihood have continued to pilot the Nazi destruction of European Jewry to the bitter end.
We must learn to accept the difficult truth that Hitler’s regime was the most popular government in German history; yet we know as well that few Germans after the war would confess having given any loyalty to the Nazi movement. This was not a lie in the soul of the German nation; it was a part of a collective delusion that all the fascist movements brought upon their followings. It was as if the movements themselves, as things independent of the men that embodied them, were responsible for the things that happened.
