Heydrich arrives in Prague

JAN 01 1941 · 12:00

Reinhard Heydrich, official SS portrait, 1940. Named Acting Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia in September 1941. Place: Černín Palace, Hradčany Figures: Reinhard Heydrich, Acting Reichsprotektor · Konstantin von Neurath, removed · Alois Eliáš, Protectorate Prime Minister, arrested the same day Reinhard Heydrich is thirty-seven. He is chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), deputy of Himmler in the SS, and five months earlier, at Wannsee preparations and through his Einsatzgruppen orders in the East, he has been made the architect of the Final Solution. Goebbels writes privately in his diary that Heydrich is der gefährlichste Mann des Dritten Reichs: the most dangerous man of the Third Reich. Hitler sends him to Prague because Neurath has been too lenient and the Czech resistance has been too productive. Heydrich arrives by train on the morning of September 27, 1941, takes residence at the Černín Palace, and signs the first execution orders before lunch.