Dougherty is adept at dissecting Lina Heydrich’s attempts to exonerate her husband from the label of 'the Hangman,' and gets to the essence of what it was like to enjoy the privileges of living so close to the center of Nazi power. Dougherty periodically moves beyond the Heydriches’ story to go into great detail on some events, such as Kristallnacht; here she risks losing her focus. She is, however, extremely dexterous in demonstrating Reinhard Heydrich’s role in policy making and implementation in Nazi Germany. Dougherty also deconstructs the internal dynamics of the Nazi party, in which Heydrich excelled. Of particular interest in this biography is its discussion of the postwar experiences of Lina Heydrich and her children, and what they reveal about the families of high-ranking Nazi officials ... A dual biography that will have wide appeal for fans of World War II history. Recommended for all libraries.
... an exhaustive and dark expedition into the diabolical mind of a truly evil villain and unsettling insight on the deliberate delusion that blinded some Germans to the horrific atrocities committed by the Third Reich.
Dougherty’s particular contribution is that she has extensively interviewed the feisty and mostly unreflective widow, Lina, who generally ends her revisionist observations with a verbal shrug: 'nicht wahr?' (wasn’t it so?) ... There is, perhaps because of the successive deaths of both author and editor, a slightly morbid, almost futile feel to this book — as though its subject has outrun the attempt to pin him down ... Dougherty’s account makes for absorbing reading without offering radically new insights into what made Heydrich tick. Although it presents itself as revelatory because of the interviews the author conducted with his wife, Lina Heydrich is too shrewd to be caught in anyone’s net; she is willing to admit to complexities in her marriage and has strong, sometimes witty opinions about other Nazis, but concedes nothing when it comes to the horrific vision her husband embraced...Then again, I would suggest that even the most psychologically astute biography is not equipped to explain the guiltless machinations of ruthless despots: It can never catch the elusive, complex matrix of character and circumstance that creates a Heydrich (or a Putin, for that matter) ... In the end, the reader is left gazing at something that is ultimately inscrutable. Just as actual train wrecks tend to stop us cold because of their apparent inevitability and imperviousness to intervention, moral train wrecks seem to create a similar element of stop-time — a mixture of fascination and paralysis — with no one able to prevent the damage even as the carnage and destruction roll on.
... gripping ... an engrossing biography that cuts away regularly to Heydrich’s wife as she delivers her version of events and freely expresses her opinion of her husband’s colleagues and superiors, including Hitler ... Nearly 600 pages of cutthroat Nazi political maneuvering added to genuine throat-cutting in Germany and throughout Europe would be excessive in less-skilled hands, but Dougherty, with the assistance of Heydrich’s wife and Lehmann-Haupt, has the right stuff ... A masterful account of the quintessential Nazi.
Dougherty vividly dissects the murderous intrigues roiling Nazi bureaucracies and the crooked path of opportunism, brutalization, and warped Nazi idealism that led Hitler’s minions to a policy of extermination. The result is a chilling, revelatory case study of the moral corruption of the Third Reich.
