In December 2019, police in Berlin reported that the grave of one of the most notorious Nazis had been disturbed. Someone had attempted to break into the burial site of Reinhard Heydrich, the man who chaired the conference at which the Final Solution was planned.
The timing was striking. It came 80 years after the Second World War had begun in Europe, and it reopened a dark chapter of Nazi history inside the city.
Heydrich had the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands. By all accounts he was a disturbing and very dark man who ruthlessly sought to slaughter as many people as he could under the persecuting laws of the Third Reich.
Following his assassination in 1942, it was a rather open secret where Heydrich had been buried. His grave marker had been removed, but the location of the grave itself was never truly hidden.
So why was the grave broken into? There are many theories, but it was obvious that whoever did it was looking for something. The people responsible have still not been located.
Heydrich would have been buried in his SS uniform, and he would have had on him a number of high-ranking artifacts. Today, such items could be worth millions if they ever came onto the market.
One possible item the grave robbers may have been seeking was the ceremonial SS sword of Reinhard Heydrich. What happened to that sword, and was he really buried with it?
Heydrich developed the nickname "the Blonde Beast" for a reason. He was seen in the eyes of Hitler and Himmler as the ideal Aryan man, and he rose to become chief of the Reich Security Main Office, overseeing the Gestapo, SD and Kripo.
He held a huge amount of power within Nazi Germany. He later became Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, where he was tasked with keeping the Czechs under submission because the region was involved in arming the German Army and was seen as a weapons factory of the Reich.
To achieve this, Heydrich brought in a reign of terror. People were executed in public, hanged from lamp posts, or made to disappear, all to keep the Czechs in line and on their toes.
To get involved in resistance and be found out was a death sentence. Heydrich needed the region to be as productive as it could be, but there was a great deal of underground resistance.
British-trained SOE agents would carry out his assassination in Prague in 1942. He was attacked as his convertible car passed by two assassins, Joseph Gabcik and Jan Kubis.
Despite having a bomb thrown at the car and being seriously wounded, Heydrich tried to fight on. He later succumbed to his injuries, and it was confirmed that he died from sepsis and blood poisoning, which was suspicious in itself after it was noted that he had seemed to be recovering.
One last visit from Himmler marked him falling into a coma and then dying on the 4th of June 1942. The 38-year-old Heydrich had a number of different funerals.
The first funeral occurred inside Prague, the very city where he had been killed. His body in the coffin was then placed on board a train to be transported back to Berlin, where a huge state funeral and occasion would take place.
This was a colossal Nazi gathering and spectacle, full of all the pomp and ceremony that would be expected. Hitler was also in attendance.
Himmler gave the long and lengthy eulogy and welcomed people to the service. Heydrich's coffin was draped in large Nazi swastika flags and was carried by senior members of the SS.
Flowers surrounded the coffin as it was placed on the plinth, and many SS banners decorated the Reich Chancellery building where the funeral took place. Hitler's role in the ceremony was significant, and the Führer placed decorations on Heydrich, including the highest grade of the German Order and the prestigious Blood Order medal, on his funeral pillow.
Himmler ended the ceremony by saying it was their holy duty to atone for Heydrich's death, to take up his tasks, and to pitilessly destroy without any sign of weakness the enemies of their people. He added one last thing: that Heydrich had truly been a good SS man, and thanked him for his unwavering loyalty and wonderful friendship, which united them in life and which death could not obliterate.
Following this, the body of Heydrich in the coffin was taken to the Invalidenfriedhof in Berlin, a military cemetery with a long history of housing the remains of high-ranking German military heroes and veterans. Heydrich was buried inside section A, and his grave was marked with an iron cross containing his name.
It was no secret where Heydrich was buried. He was interred in a grave near the north wall of the cemetery, at the front.
Hitler later commissioned a number of monumental sculptures and objects, along with a huge tomb for Heydrich. But as the war turned against the Germans, this tomb was never finished, and Heydrich's grave marker was later removed and destroyed.
One thing to consider is that even in the decades after the deaths of high-ranking members of the Nazi party, some figures were dealt with once and for all. Rudolf Hess, following his death decades after the war, was buried in different locations, but his body was then dug up and cremated due to unwanted activity inside the cemetery by neo-Nazi groups.
This was never the case with Reinhard Heydrich, a man whose role inside the SS led to the direct slaughter and deaths of so many people. His remains were left in the Berlin cemetery for some time.
Then, in December 2019, the shocking story of the attempted break-in at his grave was reported. Under the cover of darkness, a local council employee discovered the attempted break-in.
No motive for this has ever been uncovered. It was confirmed that no remains were taken, but it was certain that someone may have been looking for something.
Heydrich, without doubt, would have been dressed inside his coffin in his full SS uniform. He possibly could have been wearing some of his medals on his uniform.
He was a man who prided himself on his appearance and was rarely seen out of SS uniform in the months of his life. His attire would have included a number of things, including his hat, which was probably also buried with him.
But there was also a weapon which, despite being ceremonial, would have been something he could have used to fight off his attackers if desperate. Heydrich's SS sword today would be worth millions of pounds if it emerged on the market for purchase.
Such a weapon, with a link to a high-ranking Nazi, would disturbingly be worth a small fortune. The SS Degen, as it was known, was a dress sword worn with an SS uniform from 1935 until the end of the war.
Himmler's adviser on art designed it, and Himmler wanted all high-ranking SS members to have one. The sword itself has a thin, straight blade of different lengths based on the height of the owner.
The hilt has a D-shaped knuckle bow and a black wooden grip. Around the grip was silver wire and SS lightning bolt runes, with further decoration found around the weapon.
The officers' sword was given out to selected SS members for special merit, and Himmler himself awarded these with a hand-signed certificate. Officers who graduated from SS officer training centers were also given one.
The sword was worn at official functions and visits, and Heydrich is seen in a number of pictures with this at his side. Could it be that those who broke into the grave of Heydrich were looking for his sword?
It is likely that they wanted to loot a number of other objects, or even worse, steal the bones of Heydrich and use them as some sort of relic. But one thing to consider is the SS rituals that happened following the death of a high-ranking member.
There was a custom for SS officers to be buried with a sword. However, this may not have been the sword of the deceased.
One writer claimed that the man closest to the deceased in terms of rank and relationship or friendship would exchange the sword of the dead officer for his own. If we equate this to Heydrich's standing in the SS, it would mean that it would be someone like Himmler himself, who was great friends with the Blonde Beast, who could have exchanged his sword.
Someone like Heinrich Müller, the director of the Gestapo, who was preceded by Heydrich in the job, may also have swapped swords. If Müller or Himmler did exchange their weapons with the dead Heydrich, then that is what would be buried inside the coffin.
It is likely that if this was an SS custom or tradition, it would not have stopped with someone so high status, and it would have been observed. Himmler, let us remember, was a man who was obsessed with tradition, the occult, and ensuring his SS maintained the rules and regulations important to him.
But this would then lead to the conclusion that Himmler's or Müller's sword is the one inside the coffin. It is possible that this was among the items wanted from Heydrich's grave.
There are accounts following World War II of all manner of strange behavior occurring with the remains of high-profile Nazis or collaborators. For example, Benito Mussolini's decaying corpse, following the posthumous display of his body, was buried and then exhumed, with his body then being stolen.
Thieves removed part of his leg, and still today this has not been located. It is believed he is buried inside his tomb with one leg missing.
The thieves who broke into Heydrich's grave did not take anything, it is recorded. For this to be confirmed, there must have been some form of inspection of the remains of Heydrich to say otherwise.
What is concerning, though, is the media attention brought to the grave robbing attempt. It was now no secret where one of the most brutal Nazi mass murderers was buried, and this was then told to the world.
His sword, or someone's sword, it is almost certain, is still inside the coffin, along with probably some of his decorations and medals. It is strange, though, how there has been no attempt to exhume the remains of Heydrich by German government officials and deal with them once and for all, like what happened to Rudolf Hess.
This would have been a way for authorities to put Heydrich's actions behind them and to prevent any future activity occurring involving his grave site. Maybe it is because of what is inside the coffin that this has been prevented, as his funeral was one of the largest Nazi spectacles and shows of strength during the war years within Germany.