Heydrich, Reinhard Tristan Eugen (1904–1942)

German Nazi, head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the party's security service, and Heinrich Himmler's deputy. He was instrumental in organizing the final solution, the policy of genocide used against Jews and others. ‘Protector’ of Bohemia and Moravia from 1941, he was ambushed and killed the following year by three members of the Czechoslovak forces in Britain, who had landed by parachute. Reprisals followed, including several hundred executions and the massacre in Lidice.

Heydrich is believed to have had Jewish ancestry, although this was not widely known at the time and seems, if anything, only to have made him a more fanatical Nazi. He was responsible for the fake attack on a German radio station at Gleiwicz in 1939 that provided the pretext for the German invasion of Poland, and went on to organize the Einsatzgruppen in 1941.