A Room Full of Night

by TR Kenneth

  He was known as the Hangman, the Blond Beast, the Young Evil God of Death, but while his nicknames were terrorizing, he had a human side. He came from a musical family and was enormously talented at the violin, so much so that his plaintive music could being tears to his eyes and the eyes of his audience. He was secretly derisive of Himmler’s descent into occultism. He, himself, had silly ideas at times, such as the development of an SS brothel where he could scheme to collect secrets from the clients. He was so enamored of spy novels, he once asked his subordinates to refer to him as C, perhaps referring to the habit within the British Navel Intelligence Division to refer to their chief as such, a practice that long preceded the Ian Fleming novels. Foibles aside, however, he was powerful, intelligent, and supremely destructive—personally instrumental in the murder of some twelve million souls.

  Much has been written about Heydrich’s assassination in Prague, but the man himself remains a sphynx. Even so, his thinking and directorship is alive and well today in many groups and individuals throughout the world. As George C. Browder wrote in Hitler’s Enforcers, the SD was to “remain a flexible instrument for all eventualities.” There is certainly a history of this. Interpol flourished under Heydrich’s Gestapo and has now spent decades trying to rid itself of its Nazi past. SS Officer Paul Dickopf was its president till 1972, and while Interpol was aware of his Nazi rank, they disregarded it as his work record with the SD was “incomplete.”

  Of course it was.

  Heydrich’s methods of intelligence gathering included keeping individual cards on persons until he accumulated thousands of them. In order to keep track of Jews and other undesirables in the Third Reich, this progressed to the hiring of IBM and its punch-card system. We may not know all the persons that Heydrich saw murdered, but we do have a pretty good idea of how many thanks to his exactitude. He haunts to this day. As he told Hans Gisevius, the German diplomat and military intelligence officer, “I can pursue my enemies even from the tomb.” I don’t think he was lying.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As Sinclair Lewis wrote in It Can’t Happen Here, “Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn ‘reasonable’ and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.” He would know. He was married to Dorothy Thompson who was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934.

  I would like to thank that quarter of friends in my life. To Pam, Barry, and Thomas Ahearn, for the best family a girl could have; for Bekye Faragson, my big sister whom I love so much; always to Suzie Jagger Richards, eternally gorgeous inside and out; and, last but not least, to Donni Young and Corinne Cloud, my rock when I needed one. Also to my homegirlz: To Vonnie Lynn Sox (I’ll always be your Dogg!); to Julia Sotcilina who proved to me that the Russian and American sense of humor is exactly the same; to Ashley Turner Clinton who wears the same social justice armor as I do; and lastly, to the artist Lovetta Clark, the bravest, kindest, most amazing person I’ve ever met.

  To those who’ve made my path to writing this book infinitely easier: To Marie Dufour Goodwin; Halvor Mikel Halvorson; Bettymae Cronheim; Tommy Lyons; Monique Muñoz; and, to the fabulous doyenne of the family, Anna Peterson Delson.

  Lastly, with love forever and ever, to my two boys, Thomas Young Roberson III and Richard John Lafayette Roberson. I’m grateful every day for you both.