Many historians regard Heydrich as one of the darkest figures within the Nazi regime, [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] and Adolf Hitler described him as "the man with the iron heart.
He helped organise Kristallnacht , a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9—10 November The attacks were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians and presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague , Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance.
He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen , the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing including 1. Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May as a result of Operation Anthropoid.
He was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill him; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Heydrich died from his injuries on 4 June Both villages were razed ; the men and boys age 14 and above were shot and most of the women and children were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps. His father came from a Protestant family, but converted to Elisabeth's Roman Catholic faith upon marriage.
Heydrich's third name, "Eugen", was his late maternal grandfather's forename Eugen Krantz had been the director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory.
