Reinhard Heydrich quote about the Czechs

[George L Gregory]

The Czech is more dangerous and must be handled differently from Aryan peoples. Slavic man is very difficult to convince. And the consequence of this is that we must constantly keep our thumb on him so that he always remains bent, so that he will obey us and cooperate.

Patrick G. Zander, Hidden Armies of the Second World War: World War II Resistance Movements, page 119.

The same quote is cited in Robert Gerwarth's Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich, but Gerwarth doesn't include "from Aryan peoples" in the quote and also mentions, "The Nordic, Germanic man can either be convinced or broken" before "Slavic man...".

Does anyone know when Heydrich said this? Is the original German text available anywhere?

I have a feeling that Zander subsituted "Aryan peoples" for the "Nordic, Germanic man" and that's why he included it in the quote and omitted the latter.

[GregSingh]

From Deutsches Reich und Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren Oktober 1941 – März 1943 edited by Susanne Heim.

Susanne Heim.jpg (182.4 KiB) Viewed 4092 times

Full speech is here:
https://www.herder-institut.de/digitale ... tails.html

[andrek]

Heydrich reads this speech from the paper. He has therefore prepared this speech. Maybe it was a dictation in the typewriter or he wrote his handwritten recordings over several days.

In any case, the speech is bad German. Sometimes even very bad German. Talking of Gauleiter Frank, for example, his speeches are on a completely different intellectual level.

That surprises me. Heydrich is described in the german literature - without exception - as highly intelligent. He should know sentence construction, german grammar etc. - at least the basics. As the reader can read, even at the basics he fails. Translation is therefore a risk.

[George L Gregory]

Robert Gerwarth is more accurate. But, there is no mention of “Aryan peoples” in the German text so I presume he was equating the Nordic, Germanic as Aryan.

Google Translate translates the text as:

Der Tscheche, der – und das möchte ich hier nochmals feststellen – als über­wiegend slawischer Mensch sich biegt, ohne gebrochen zu sein, ist eben in der Beziehung gefährlicher und anders zu behandeln als andere Men­schen. Den nordischen, den germanischen Menschen überzeugt man oder man bricht ihn, – den tschechischen, slawischen Menschen kann man sehr schwer überzeugen, biegen tut er sich immer, brechen kann man ihn nie, und wenn dann eben das Biegen aufhört und man losläßt, dann schwingt er wieder hoch und steht wieder da und ist eben ein Gegner. Und die Kon­sequenz ist eben, daß man den Daumen dauernd darauf halten muß, daß er eben immer gebogen bleibt und nun pariert und zieht.

The Czech, who - and I would like to state this again here - as a predominantly Slavic person bends without being broken, is more dangerous and to be treated differently than other people in this relationship. You convince the Nordic, the Germanic people or you break them - the Czech, Slavic people are very difficult to convince, they always bend, you can never break them, and when the bending stops and you let go, then they swing he gets up again and stands there again and is just an opponent. And the consequence is that you have to keep your thumb on it, so that it always stays bent and now parries and pulls.