Introductory Remarks

POLITICS IS THE ART OF GOVERNING MANKIND BY DECEIVING THEM. NOWHERE IS THIS MORE EVIDENT THAN IN THE EVENTS AN INCIDENTS LEADING UP TO, DURING, AND AFTER A WAR. REVISIONIST HISTORY TRIES TO EXPOSE AND EXPLODE THESE DECEPTIONS.

My goal is not to revise history – but to expand it to give the reader a clearer panorama, and to do so while telling a compelling story. When I begun delving into the life of Reinhard Heydrich, to better understand his decisions and his actions, it became clear to me that I couldn’t tell his story without expanding it to include the cultural and historical context in which he acted.

If you are expecting me to agree with the more widely held opinion in certain prejudiced media that Heydrich was a monster, than you will be disappointed. Yes, many of the things he did led to the death of hundreds of thousands, if not millions – and I don’t ignore this. However, if making decisions that led to the deaths of others were the only criteria for deciding who was a monster, then all generals and political leaders would be so named, but yet, as we all know some are held in high esteem as heroes to their people. Moreover, if you were to judge by the funeral given to honor him after his assassination, you would have to conclude that to the Germans and the Czechs whom he governed as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia – Moravia – Heydrich was a hero in the traditions of the Norse Sagas and the Nebelungenlied.

So which was he – Hero or Monster? I think both. I am intrigued and fascinated in human destinies such as Heydrich’s, which are played against the backdrop of the transformations, tragedies and torments in Germany and in Europe after the end of the so called Great War in 1918, He was a young man who did extraordinary things during a period of great upheavals – some produced good results, some, proved to be bad. These feelings and opinions were based on how they affected the side you found yourself in during the war.

This is the reason why I entitled my story: CHECKMATE: THE ENIGMA OF REINHARD HEYDRICH.

Politically biased historians have dominated most of our global history. Official history is what remains in the public record after the voices of the dissidents have been stilled or suppressed. Consequently, to gain the insights I gleaned to my story, I had to take the view of an alien being, endowed with a different set of eyes and ears.

I have no intentions of objectivity, if it means avoiding an opinion. Anyone telling a story – historian, journalist or writer, is forced to choose from an infinite number of facts, what to omit, what to narrate and what to distort. That decision consciously or not, reflects the self-interests of the writer.

“In war, truth is the first casualty,” wrote Thucydides, 2,500 yeas ago. Even he admitted that he found it difficult to be impartial!

“Just the facts mam” is a ridiculous statement. What are ”facts?”

Everything in life, even facts, is interpreted. Behind every “fact” is a ”judgment”. Judgments are made from some perspective. In the case of Heydrich ... are the judgments from his peers, his opponents, his countrymen, the "enemy", the winners of the war, the victims of the war ... who?

The most widely held belief is that Heydrich was a monster. These are ‘’facts.” Do the people who make these judgments they know what they are saying? Are they, like Pavlov’s dogs, just reacting to a mass indoctrination? An individual, a group or cabal, decides for “the people” which “facts” are essential and should be revealed. The opposing views are frequently omitted from books, articles, motion pictures and television, to say nothing of schools and universities. This was brought home recently by widespread protest by the Chinese who objected to Japan’s view of history as it related to China during WWII.

Voltaire, philosopher, writer and one street-smart chap, reminds us ”all our history is no more than “Accepted Fiction.”

CHECKMATE is revisionism with flair and a large dose of individual thinking. My long research regarding the life and times of the enigmatic and (why not say it?) the glamorous Reinhard Heydrich, has not been an impetus for neutrality in writing the book - CHECKMATE.

Sixty-seven years after the death of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, it is time to clear up the misinformation, disinformation, and omissions regarding his life and his work. Prominent among these will be the Wannsee Conference, which he chaired and coordinated, and his role as the alleged author/executor of the Final Solution of the Jews.

Without the continual laments about the wrongs committed, it is easy to forget there were several Holocausts, which took place during the Second World War. We are more aware of the Shoah because many Jews and Christians, with just cause, have seen to it that the world must never forget the death of so many Jews. In the world of MTV and sound bites the prevailing opinion (partially or totally uninformed) is that the SS were generally evil and especially so to Jews.

Most of us have not been informed about The Transfer Agreement of 1933, (also known as the Haavara) in which the SS, in secret dealings with Zionist groups in Europe and Palestine, sent over 60,000 Jews to Palestine accompanied by $100 million worth of goods, materials and cash payments. There are close to 51 documents, which show a close collaboration between Heydrich, the Haganah, the Irgun and the Mossad.

Nor are we aware that the SS offered to pay travel expenses and even a reward to any country that would accept Jews – which were turned down by the United States, Great Britain, and most western countries. These arrangements continued until the death of Heydrich in June 1942, even as millions of Jews were being driven into the ghettos of Warsaw and Lodz, and into labor and concentration camps, to say nothing of the death camps.

One of Heydrich’s creations, the Einsatgruppen; had their hands full, deep inside Russia, executing / slaughtering not only the Soviet partisans but also hundreds of thousands of Jews who may or may not have been Communist/Bolshevik sympathizers.

Historians have avoided telling us that the English, the mandated Masters of Palestine, bombed the Nazi ships carrying Jews to Palestine, aware that the ships carried no armaments. Oil was the reason for their constant sinking of these ships. Since 1905, the Arab world had reacted in anger and increasing violence to the settlement of thousands of Jews in Palestine.

Nor do they tell us that the SS, under Heydrich offered to pay transportation costs and a resettlement fee to any country that would accept Jews. The United States agreed to take only a couple of thousand, all young males, involved in rabbinical studies. The United Kingdom followed suit with even less Jews.

We should not remain in denial. War is never clean, no matter who participates. War is an orgy of killing and destruction and in WWII more than any other previous war – civilian populations, not just the military were targeted by all sides.

Pope Benedict XV, a lone voice, begged for peace with Russia, Germany, Austria, Britain, America, France and Italy, as they stood on the precipice of World War One.

“WAR IS USELESS SLAUGHTER,“ he pleaded, on bended knees. In the Soviet Union, Lenin and Trotsky laughed and mocked the Pope’s initiatives towards Peace.

Ironically, Heydrich instead of being associated with the Final Solution might better be regarded as the first father of the state of Israel. He wrote in Schwarz Korps, the magazine of the SS.

“The racial and genetic uniqueness which the Zionists ascribe to, is one and the same with our own Aryan belief in our own racial purity.”

Heydrich was wrong. The only true Aryans, if ever there were any in the planet, are probably the Iranians and some tribes of Afghanistan. Indeed, Iran means Aryan. Their language Farsi, is neither Indo - European nor Semitic, but Aryan.

We have forgotten or don't want to remember or perhaps, few have enlightened us that over a hundred million people died as a result of World War II.

But for 50 million Russian corpses, there would not have been a D-DAY in Normandy in June of 1945.

We celebrate Columbus Day ... but have conveniently forgotten that the landing of Columbus in the New World initiated a genocide in which 70 million indigenous people were annihilated. Or that the expansion of the United States involved the violent expulsion of Native Americans from every part of the continent, until there was nothing to do but herd them into desolate reservations where nothing grew except despair and suicide. Where are the holocaust memorials that celebrate these mass genocides?

A hundred and fifty thousand Jews served in the SS. The Nuremberg Laws explicitly forbade membership of Jews in the National Socialist Deutsche Arbeit Partei. What then, are we to think? Were they coerced? Did the Jews join voluntarily? If so, why did Heydrich make so many exceptions to the Law? So few of us have been informed of these occurrences.

Usually, those who deceive have reasons for doing so. No one was perhaps as adapt at deceit as Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of Intelligence of the SS, SD, and RHSA AND INTERPOL. He was the most skillful practitioner of espionage and intelligence from 1931 until his death from blood poisoning after a bomb attack in Prague in 1942, at the age of 34. One of his primary tools was Deception, which he turned into an Art.

Heydrich saw the media around him as Masters at portraying a false picture of the world. Images and words thrown upon a lighted screen in a darkened room, so that what we think of as the “real world” is not seen or heard.

Heydrich bested Sir Branwell Swift, his much older counterpart and Nemesis in the SIS - the British Secret Intelligence Service - in several jousts between the services. I created Sir Branwell out of a collage of three ruthless British Spy Masters. Sir Stuart Menzies, Lord Stephenson and the most fascinating and cold-hearted of them all - Sir Victor Rothschild.

Lavrenti Beria, master of terror in the Soviet Union, a fellow Georgian like Josef Stalin, considered Heydrich his only dangerous enemy in the spy business. Beria ran the NKVD with cruel and merciless efficiency.

As Chiefs of Intelligence - it would never occur to me to doubt the brutality of Heydrich, Swift, and Beria. But the fact that a young Heydrich, starting with nothing but a broken down kitchen table and the part-time use of a typewriter was able to build an Intelligence Service that frequently outfoxed the two best in the world at that time, is a gripping story.

I will not comment on the American Intelligence Services, because in the late 30’s and early 1940’s, the British SIS trained them.

“The Intelligence business is not for those who are religious,” declared a candid Heydrich within the confines of his office in frequent meetings with those SS officers he dubbed “My Brainstormers”.

CHECKMATE is about unaccountability in high places - in Germany, Britain, Russia and the United States.

The young Heydrich is mostly regarded today as a murderous villain, for a variety of reasons. Germany lost the war. America and Britain were filled with Communist/Socialist/liberal intellectuals who wrote and declared whatever they felt like it so long as it was anti-Nazi, Anti-German and anti-Fascist.

The human beast is found everywhere, and Jews are no more immune than any other human group. That may be correct, but beside the point of my argument – which is that the Mass Mind, during World War II, was given a false picture of a SOLELY JEWISH PERSECUTION conducted by Non – Jews, Germans (GENTILES).

In the late 1920’s the Media in general wrote” The Nazi persecution of POLITICAL OPPONENTS AND JEWS”

By 1938 we saw “The Nazi persecution of Jews and political opponents“.

This became “The Nazi persecution of Jews“ in the early 40’s.

Please! Just look at the numbers. Over 100 million souls perished. A minority were Jews. That is true of the Death camps as well. We must mourn ALL the dead. ALL. Their religious beliefs as well as lack of them cannot come into play. They must not. That would be an abomination.

Heydrich’s assassination in 1942 ensured that every crime attributed to the Reich was reinforced by the Allied Prosecutors as well as by the Nazi war criminals on trial at Nuremberg and laid at the feet of a dead man.

Senator Robert Taft refused to serve on the Judgment at Nuremberg because most of the high-ranking Nazis on trial had been tortured. Why has this news not been disseminated? Are we allowed to think it might have been suppressed? Do we run the risks of being branded Anti–Semitic by asking these questions?

One could only assume that the Allies had an unquenchable thirst for Revenge. An old Testamentary vengeance. Only the Death of high-ranking Nazis could stanch the rivers of blood, which had flowed in World War ll. That most of the mutilated and the dead were German and Russian civilians was never considered.

Indeed Prime Minister Churchill had pondered on several occasions the possibility of exterminating 30 million German civilians – the elderly, the women and the children.

I quote Benjamin Disraeli “I protest against meeting atrocities by more atrocities. It is justice we seek, not vengeance. I have heard things said and seen things written of late which would make us almost suppose that the religious opinion of the people of England had undergone some sudden change and that instead of bowing before the name of Jesus, we were preparing to revive the worship of Moloch. ‘’

Disraeli is referring to the Indian Mutiny of 1847. The English Army considered savage reprisals for the killing of English military and civilians. He was then Prime Minister, and the quotes above contain parts of a speech he gave before the British Parliament.

It was expedient for the Allies to ignore as well as allow this duplicity in Nuremberg to take place. There was a pressing need to hide the vital importance the Allies had played in the Jewish and German Holocausts.

“One of the prerogatives of Power is the ability to write and rewrite History, with confidence that there will be little challenge.” Noam Chomsky tells us in his book HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL.

Since the world began, the victors have always been the so-called good guys. They write the books, concentrate on the crimes of the vanquished, whitewash their own, and define the memories. I call them Harlequin Narratives, because they are a patchwork of black and white. The blackest villains are always the vanquished, while the pristine qualities belong only to the victors. It has ever been thus. Perhaps, in the 21st century, we should reconsider this arrogant ‘’forma mentis ‘’ of those few Moneymen and War industrial complexes that proclaim themselves the Winners.

The “Masses” and the “ Public” never consciously work for the triumph of anything. They are pushed around, manipulated, thrashed and duped by whatever highly organized and powerful group obtains “POWER” over them.

The solid compact of “workers“ never works for a general strike, but general strikes are proclaimed in their name.

This applies even more to soldiers; the cannon fodder of powerful cabals and groups. War is declared on their behalf, but soldiers have never had the right to any opinions, other than about what is happening to them as they are maimed, blasted, or killed along with their comrades.

“The truth is more complex and rarely simple, if ever truthful,” one who should know what he is talking about … Oscar Wilde ... tells us.

Reinhard Heydrich served as a model for all future spymasters in the CIA, KGB, MI6, Stasi, Boss and the MOSSAD. That is, if they aspired to be the best in the high stakes game of total and almost infallible Intelligence. It is ironic that he was the prototype for “James Bond”, not those he fought against.

CHECKMATE also deals with the web of lies perpetrated by the Axis and Allied Powers in WWII.

For the sake of clarity, Germany, Japan and Italy formed the Axis Powers. Britain, the Soviet Union, and America, were known as the Allied Powers. Its leaders - Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, deceived their people often and without qualms.

“In wartime, truth is so precious that it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies,” wrote Churchill years after the end of the Second World War.

The use of government for class purposes, to serve the needs of the wealthy and powerful permeated British, European, American and Germany society and therefore Heydrich. It was camouflaged in words, which suggested that all the people, rich and poor and middle class had a common bond. DECEPTION. This thought survives to this day.

For example: Historians, politicians and the media in particular, had/have created a myth that the United States is a classless society with one common interest - the Preamble to the Constitution, which declares that ”We, the People” wrote this document. More Deception.

The Founding Fathers were fifty-five rich, white, Anglo-Teutonic Protestant, Masonic men - slave owners, merchants, bond holders and plantation owners - who built a strong central government that would serve their class interests. Everything and everyone who were part of “The People” would serve their interests.

This class interest was well hidden by impenetrable walls known as “the national interest” Thus, we have not only a distorted view of World War II, we are for the most part unaware of the important role the American government, Wall Street, and the country’s tycoons played in the rise of the National Socialist Deutsch Arbeit Partei - the Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler, in particular the ascent into Power of the SS, as embodied by Reinhard Heydrich.

Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister, statesman and novelist in the late 19th century, possessed an excoriating tongue equal in scope to his counterpart in the United States, Mark Twain, whom he admired. He took transparency and candor in high political office to heights rarely ever seen before or since.

Benjamin Disraeli is important to CHECKMATE, my story of Reinhard Heydrich, because the adolescent Reinhard read his novels and biographies and was inflamed, that was his first impact in the labyrinths of realpolitik. He would never meet anyone quite like Disraeli again.

For this writer, the acquaintance with Benjamin Disraeli is a rare privilege. In our present world of mediocre, blood thirsty, lying Leaders, Disraeli stands out as the rarest of diamonds.

‘’The World is governed by very different personages from what is imagines by those who are not behind the scenes," reveals Disraeli.

This occurred even as the ten-year-old Reinhard witnessed at first hand the humiliation, hyperinflation, degradation and Civil War, which Germany suffered as a result of her defeat in World War I.

“It is otherwise known as the Great War, great, I think because of the number of dead,” Heydrich often reminded his “Brainstormers in the SS and SD, when he was their Chief of Intelligence.

Disraeli was of Sephardic Jewish descent, a fact that seems to have disturbed neither Heydrich nor his parents who no doubt paid and consented to all his reading material.

I would venture to say that Disraeli had as much influence on Heydrich as Aristotle exerted on Alexander the Great, which is to say very little.

The Heydrich who emerged at age 23 to create the SS out of a broom closet with no money, to the vast organization of over 300,000 agents and a budget of hundreds of millions of pounds sterling, was a different being from the upper class child who had never had a childhood, the idealistic adolescent, who dreamed of becoming a bio-chemist as well as a concert violinist and the brilliant naval officer whose career was ruined by the unstable, daughter of a corrupt, defense contractor, who bought and paid high ranking officers in the German Navy.

Some historians claim Bruno Heydrich, Reinhard's father, a gifted tenor and composer, admired by Richard Wagner’s widow, the fearsome Cosima, was anti-Semitic and imparted this feelings to his son. Bruno Heydrich chose the best musicians to sing and play in his operas, regardless of religious beliefs. He had strong feelings of nationalism, which was shared by millions of Germans, including assimilated German Jews,

Please note: The word Semitic is a linguistic not a form of racial distinction. It is derived from Shem or Seem, one of the sons of Noah. Both Arabs and Jews claim descent from Shem/Sem. Indeed, Sumerian, Phoenician, Babylonian, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic are Semitic tongues, unlike Sanskrit, Latin, English and German which are Indo-European.”

Reinhard would immerse himself in Niccolo Machiavelli’s, The Prince, at the age of 23, when Heinrich Himmler, with the approval of Adolf Hitler appointed him Chief of the nascent SS - the SCHUSTAFFEL. He would have delighted Machiavelli. In some quarters, Heydrich is considered a Renaissance man. And I would concur.

His unique Zeitgeist in dissecting human emotions and desires, then attuning himself to those ingrained instincts, made him the most powerful figure in the shadows of the Third Reich. He had a thorough knowledge of all the secrets within the Reich, starting with the Fuhrer himself.

Through Richard Sorge, a highly paid German double agent for the SS as well as Stalin’s NKVD, Heydrich was able to keep count of the gastric attacks, which afflicted Stalin. Heydrich went to extraordinary and expensive lengths to pay the extravagant Sorge. This significant information, which was sold to Heydrich, meant that poisonous plants, flowers, reptiles, even fish and mollusks could be used to poison Stalin … at the time of Heydrich’s choosing. Toxins from these substances, if placed in Stalin’s vodka, or chai, would take effect more quickly in one suffering from gastric disturbances. There are some poisons, which do not leave any traces during a forensic examination. A bio- chemist like Heydrich would have known and cultivated that.

He was kept apprised as to the medications Prime Minister Churchill’s doctors were using to treat his frequent attacks of debilitating Depression as well as his see – saw hypertension.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘s condition fascinated Heydrich. What pills, drugs, painkillers, and diet were his doctors using? Nothing was a secret to Heydrich.

He thought the doctors looking after the Fuhrer were charlatans and quacks. Since 1934, Heydrich knew the Fuhrer’s terrible secret. Parkinson’s Syndrome. The Spy Master in minute detail knew every amphetamine, tranquilizer, fruit and vegetable cocktail given to Hitler.

Tens of millions of pounds rained upon Research and Technology. Heydrich made sure of that. The never – ending funds came from lucrative joint ventures the SS had with American bankers, industrialists and financiers. Famous names like Henry Ford, IBM, J.P. Morgan, Union Bank of New York, John D. Rockefeller, Alex Brown, Averell Harriman, Paul Warburg, and Prescott Bush all helped to finance SS activities. Does the general public know these things? Are they interested enough to ask questions?

Heydrich had several maxims, which he used as guides throughout his career as Chief of Intelligence and later in his political appointment as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia - Moravia. I am quoting just a few which are relevant to CHECKMATE:

BRAINSTORMERS! WHAT USE IS GADGETRY AND WEAPONRY IF YOU ARE UNABLE OR INCAPABLE OF USING YOUR BRAINS?

FINALITY IS NOT THE LANGUAGE OF POLITICS.

CHANGE IS CONSTANT.

THE DESTINIES OF THE ENTIRE WORLD ARE IN THE HANDS OF DISTURBED MEN AND THEIR CRONIES. .

MOST OF THE PRESS IS ORGANIZED OPINION.

WE ARE INEFFICIENT, HENCE WE HAVE NO ECONOMY.

MAN IS TRULY GREAT WHEN HE ACTS FROM PASSIONS.

THE RICH AND THE POOR FORM TWO SEPARATE NATIONS IN THE WORLD.

THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF LIES: LIES, DAMMED LIES AND STATISTICS.

N.B. This was quoted from Benjamin Disraeli, the great British Prime Minister, who advised the young Queen Victoria. It has often been attributed to Mark Twain. It is inexact. Disraeli and Twain held each other in affectionate esteem. But the quote is Disraeli’s.

THE POWERFUL ARE NOT SAFE WHEN THE POOR ARE HUNGRY AND WITHOUT WORK.

ASSASINATION HAS NEVER CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY. Again, this is a quote from Benjamin Disraeli.

Those statements are deep thoughts for any man let alone a Puppet master, and spymaster turned politician, such as Reinhard Heydrich.

That is the challenge I give the reader.

To enter with me, into dark and enigmatic areas during the turbulent times of the 30’s and the 40’s: where knowledge has been suppressed, and information twisted, Where the temple of Silence is considered so holy only a few should be privy to it.

Where the lines between Truth and Deceit are indistinguishable.

Where independent thought is a rare and precious commodity.

Where heroes and monsters are on the same razor’s edge.

That is what CHECKMATE is about. It is a carefully prepared lens through which to see the world from a slightly different perspective.

If Heydrich is the monster the world thinks he is ... how did he become this way?