Known as 'The Hangman" and "The Blond Beast," Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) was the chief lieutenant of the German secret police during the Nazi regime. He organized mass executions in occupied countries during the early years of World War II.

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born March 7, 1904, into a Catholic family in the German city of Halle. The second of three children, his father Bruno was a singer and minor composer, and his mother Elizabeth came from a well-to-do musical family. The Heydrichs intended Reinhard to have a musical career, and taught him to play the violin, a skill he retained for the rest of his life. The family's ambitions to be accepted in the high society of Halle, were thwarted by rumors about the ancestry of Heydrich's father. Hatred of Jews was common in Germany at that time, and it was rumored that Bruno Heydrich was the son...