Review: HHhH by Laurence binnet

 I have always been fascinated and simultaneously repelled by Heydrich and his ilk.  Having read several biographies of the monster, I bought this one. 

The antithesis of a straight narrative biography, I discovered it to be quite appealing and interesting, not just in his reflections on Heydrich, but the literature, culture, and historical milieu surrounding the man. The conceit is an unnamed novelist obsessed with researching Heydrich in hopes of writing about his murder as a thriller. He decides instead to provide a running commentary on what he finds rather than invent scenes and dialogue.

"Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich",  ("Hhhm is literally translated as "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich".)  My background in German would idiomatically translate it differently: "Heydrich was Himmler's brain." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." Assassinated by some British trained Czech agents, German vengeance was swift and terrible.  A town was chosen at random (seemingly, but who knows) and its inhabitants killed and the town completely leveled. 

There are trenchant comments and quotes throughout: Daladier, former defense minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defense not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week—one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. At this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art....Hitler and Mussolini have already left. Chamberlain yawns ostentatiously, while Daladier tries and fails to hide his agitation behind a façade of embarrassed haughtiness. When the Czechs, crushed, ask if their government is expected to make some kind of declaration in response to this news, it is perhaps shame that removes his ability to speak. (If only it had choked him—him and all the others!) It is therefore left to his colleague to speak, and he does so with such casual arrogance that the Czech foreign minister says afterward, in a laconic remark that all my countrymen should ponder:

As the SD extends its web, Heydrich will discover that he has an unusual gift for bureaucracy, the most important quality for the management of a good spy network. His motto could be: Files! Files! Always more files! In every color. On every subject. Heydrich gets a taste for it very quickly. Information, manipulation, blackmail, and spying become his drugs.

One interesting tidbit I did not know was that Heydrich was a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe. He had hopes of downing an enemy plane, but once, even after becoming head of the SD, he flew his Messerschmidt 109 with a group of German fighters over the eastern front. Sighting a Yak, he assumed it would be an easy kill and swooped down only to discover that while the Yak was slower, it was extremely maneuverable and the Yak pilot led him directly over a Russian anti-aircraft battery.  He was shot down and there were many nervous Germans hoping he was either dead or would make his way back to their lines.  He knew too much. When he did return two days later, he had earned an Iron Cross, but Hitler forbade him from ever flying any combat missions again.

Heydrich was assassinated (it took him a few days to die, of sepsis, not the actual attempt) just a day before he was to leave for Germany to be reassigned France. Whether the assassination accomplished anything other than his death and the deaths of thousands of people in retribution, is for ethicists to ponder.