They were afraid of him. Rightly so.

Out of the entirety of the National Socialist ruling cadre, Heydrich was the only person who didn’t approach his work with a stern sense of duty overruling any reservations, or enthusiastic passion, or even sadistic pleasure seen in a few.

No. What Heydrich had was utter, cold, uncaring.

He was called ‘The Man with the Iron Heart’ because he had an iron heart: Reinhard Heydrich was cold, uncaring, the machine. He didn’t hate those he was ordered or tasked to destroy, no, he simply lacked any feeling about them. Heydrich was a man who could put a million men in a line, kill each with his bare hands, and think more about his bloodied uniform than the act he had just committed.

He cared exactly as much about the Jews as a doctor prescribing antibiotics against a bacterial infection: there was no hate, no disgust, just the cold calculation of how to best rid of them: and that frightened everyone.


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