Heydrich — the Conference of 21 September
, thirty-five, has been chief of the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo, security police) and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, the intelligence service of the SS) since 1936. Direct deputy to . At the outbreak of war he had constituted five (task groups), each made up of 200-400 men drawn from the Sipo, the SD, and the general SS, under regional commanders: Streckenbach (EG I), von Woyrsch (EG II), Hasselberg (EG III), Beutel (EG IV), Damzog (EG V).
Initial mission (planned since July 1939 in the framework of Operation Tannenberg): to follow the Wehrmacht into Poland and liquidate the Polish elites listed in the Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen ("Special Search Book Poland"), together with the designated racial groups (Jews above all).
From 1 to 20 September 1939, the have already executed about 16,000 Poles (IPN figure 2009). But implementation remains uneven: some Wehrmacht commanders protest at the summary executions of civilians (General will draft two famous memoranda on the subject in November 1939 and February 1940). Other "hold back" before ambiguous targets (priests, Jewish doctors integrated into German society).
On 21 September, Heydrich summons to Berlin the five chiefs together with the head of Amt IV (Gestapo, Müller) for a strategic conference. The central question: should the liquidation be systematised and accelerated, or moderated to maintain public order?
What directive does Heydrich issue at the close of the conference?
Heydrich chooses B. On 21 September 1939 he signs the Express Brief ("Fast Letter") — a directive addressed by name to the five chiefs. The text (recovered after the war from seized archives, exhibited at Nuremberg) orders: (1) concentration of the Jews in the great industrial towns, with the creation of Judenräte charged with organising the community; (2) physical liquidation of Jewish and Polish intellectuals, of priests, of nationalists, of listed reserve officers; (3) a maintained distinction between Endziel ("final aim") and Etappen ("stages") — a formulation that will be taken up in the planning of the Final Solution in 1941-1942. It is one of the first times Heydrich uses in writing the coded term Endziel, whose precise meaning (physical elimination) will be made explicit at the Wannsee Conference of January 1942. The Express Brief of September 1939 is today regarded by historians (, , ) as a founding document of the genocidal process. The Wehrmacht continues its sporadic protests. Heydrich is promoted chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), created in September 1939. He will be assassinated in Prague on 27 May 1942 by the Czechoslovak resistance fighters Gabcik and Kubis as part of Operation Anthropoid.
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