From the annexation of the Sudetenland and the subsequent dismantling and takeover of Czechoslovakia and its transformation into the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, to the invasion of Russian and the deployment of the Einsatzgruppen-mobile death squads that could shoot over 30,000 Jews at a time at places like Babi Yar outside Kiev-to Heydrich’s scourging of even the mildest resistance and his hosting of the infamous Wannsee Conference, over and over again he is the right man at the right place at the right time to take advantage of new developments, of new positions, of the frequent changes in the Nazi hierarchy, and he uses his positions to advance the cause of Nazism ruthlessly. The novel tracks, in often surprising detail-crucial context, the author assures us, and he’s right-the career of Heydrich and his steady, implacable rise. From there the novel backtracks, backtracks all the way to Heydrich’s family and birth, his upbringing and abortive naval career-cut short after he seduced the daughter of Admiral Raeder-and his entry into the world of Nazism and the SS. The author, French novelist Laurent Binet, begins with an image of one of the assassins, Slovak commando Jozef Gabčík, trying to sleep in his safehouse in Prague ahead of the assassination attempt.

He is one of the most powerful and evil people who ever lived, and HHhH tells the story of his assassination by agents of the Czech resistance.

The Heydrich in question is Reinhard Heydrich: disgraced naval officer violinist, champion fencer, and connoisseur of the arts model Aryan object of admiration from no less than Hitler himself head of the Gestapo, Criminal Police, and Security Service, and other powerful instruments of Nazi order and one of the architects of the Final Solution. An abbreviation of a German phrase purportedly current within the upper echelons of the Third Reich, HHhH stands for Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich-Himmler’s Brain is called Heydrich.

Hhhh binet