Activities and affiliations

Security, intelligence and policing Germany state institutions 1863–1925

German Social Democratic and Independent Social Democratic politician who headed Berlin police in 1918

“I got my job from the Revolution, and I shall give it up only to the Revolution.”

A trained mechanic, Eichhorn worked for the Social Democratic Party before joining the Independent Social Democratic Party in 1917. After the November Revolution of 1918, he became Berlin police president and pursued a policing policy favorable to left-wing political groups. On 4 January 1919, the Prussian cabinet tried to dismiss him and replace him with Social Democrat Eugen Ernst. Mass demonstrations and a general strike opposed the move, followed by occupations and armed clashes that became the January uprising.

Security, intelligence and policing Germany state institutions 1904–1942 ✕ Died of wounds from an assassination attack

Nazi official who led SS intelligence and police agencies in implementing the Holocaust.

At the 1942 Wannsee Conference, Heydrich coordinated German state agencies for the murder of Europe’s Jews.

Heydrich joined the SS in 1931 and built and led its Security Service (SD); in 1936 he took command of the Security Police, including the Gestapo and criminal police. When the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was established in 1939, he became its chief, unifying the Security Police and SD under an agency central to Nazi persecution and mass murder of Jews and political opponents. Appointed acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia in 1941, he oversaw executions of resistance figures and the ghettoization and deportation of Jews. He chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference to coordinate ministries in the murder of European Jews; wounded in an attack by Czech resistance agents in May, he died on June 4.