Above: SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, photo taken after 24 September 1941 (56,960 bytes).

Reinhard Heydrich (b. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich on 7 March 1904), head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office), was so ruthless and competent a component of the Nazi hierarchy that he became arguably the most feared man in Nazi Germany, such a threat that the Allies trained a commando team to enter Czechoslovakia to assassinate him. The attack on 27 May 1942 wounded Heydrich as he rode through Prauge to work in an open Mercedes 320 Convertible B; he died in hospital of septicemia on 4 June 1942. Following Heydrich's assassination Himmler personally took over as acting chief of the RSHA, but in January 1943 delegated the office to SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who served as the head of the RSHA for the remainder of World War II.

Adolph Hitler commented after interviewing Heydrich, even as early as 1932:

"a highly gifted but also very dangerous man, whose gifts the movement had to retain"