• General of the Schutzstaffel Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, 1904
• Lieutenant Colonel of the Schutzstaffel Otto Adolf Eichmann, 1906

Historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite; Adolf Hitler christened him "the man with the iron heart". He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), an intelligence organization charged with seeking out and neutralizing resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations and killings. He helped organize Kristallnacht, a series of co-ordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9-10 November 1938. The attacks, which were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians, presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance.

Heydrich was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by a British trained team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government - in - exile to kill him in an operation code named Operation Anthropoid. He died from his injuries a week later. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Lidice was razed to the ground; all adult males were executed, and all but a handful of its women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps.

Heydrich was born in 1904 in Halle an der Saale to composer and opera singer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Krantz, a Roman Catholic. His two forenames were patriotic musical tributes: "Reinhard" referred to the tragic hero from Amen (an opera written by his father), and "Tristan" stems from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Heydrich's third name, "Eugen", was his late maternal grandfather's forename (Professor Eugen Krantz had been the director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory). Heydrich was born into a family of social standing and substantial financial means. Music was a part of Heydrich's everyday life; his father founded the Halle Conservatory of Music and his mother taught piano there. Heydrich developed a passion for the violin and carried that interest into adulthood; he impressed listeners with his musical talent.

His father was a German nationalist who instilled patriotic ideas in his three children, but was not affiliated with any political party until after World War I. The Heydrich household was strict. As a youth, Heydrich engaged his younger brother, Heinz, in mock fencing duels. Heydrich was very intelligent and excelled in his schoolwork — especially in science — at the "Reformgymnasium". A talented athlete, he became an expert swimmer and fencer. But he was shy, insecure, and was frequently bullied for his high pitched voice and rumored Jewish ancestry. The latter claim earned him the nickname "Moses Handel". Years later, Wilhelm Canaris said he had obtained photocopies proving Heydrich's Jewish ancestry, but these photocopies never surfaced. Nazi Gauleiter Rudolf Jordan also claimed that Heydrich was not a pure "Aryan". Heydrich ultimately ordered Schutzstaffel (SS) researchers to investigate the rumor. They reported that he had no Jewish ancestors. Nazi official and "race expert" Achim Gercke concluded that Heydrich was a pure Aryan.

In 1918, World War I ended with Germany's defeat. In late February 1919, civil unrest — including strikes and clashes between communist and anti - communist groups — took place in Heydrich's home town of Halle. Under Defense Minister Gustav Noske's directives, a right wing paramilitary unit was formed and ordered to "recapture" Halle. Heydrich, then 15 years old, joined Maercker's Volunteer Rifles (the first Freikorps unit). When the skirmishes ended, Heydrich was part of the force assigned to protect private property. Little is known about his role, but the events left a strong impression; it was a "political awakening" for him. He joined the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund (The National German Protection and Shelter League), an anti - Semitic organization.

As a result of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, hyperinflation spread across Germany and many lost their life savings. Halle was not spared. By 1921, few townspeople there could afford a musical education at Bruno Heydrich's conservatory. This led to a financial crisis for the Heydrich family.

In 1922 Heydrich joined the Navy, taking advantage of the security, structure, and pension it offered. He became a naval cadet at Kiel, Germany's chief naval base. On 1 April 1924 he was promoted to senior midshipman (Oberfähnrich zur See) and sent to officer training at the Mürwik Naval College. In 1926 he advanced to the rank of ensign (Leutnant zur See) and was assigned as a signals officer on the battleship Schleswig - Holstein, the flagship of Germany's North Sea Fleet. With the promotion came greater recognition; he received good evaluations from his superiors and had few problems with other crewmen. He was promoted on 1 July 1928 to the rank of sub - lieutenant (Oberleutnant zur See). However, the increased rank fueled his ambition and arrogance.

Heydrich became a notorious womanizer, having countless affairs. In December 1930 he attended a rowing club ball and met Lina von Osten. The two became romantically involved and soon announced their engagement. Lina was already a Nazi Party follower; she had attended her first rally in 1929. Admiral Erich Raeder dismissed Heydrich from the navy in April 1931. Heydrich had been charged with "conduct unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman" for breaking an engagement promise to a woman he had known for six months before the von Osten engagement. Heydrich was devastated by the dismissal and found himself without prospects for a career. But he kept the engagement and married Lina in December 1931.

In 1931, Heinrich Himmler began setting up a counterintelligence division of the SS. Acting on the advice of his associate Karl von Eberstein, who was von Osten's friend, Himmler interviewed Heydrich. Himmler was impressed and hired him immediately. His pay was 180 reichsmarks per month (40 USD). His NSDAP number was 544,916 and his SS number was 10,120. Heydrich later received a Totenkopfring from Himmler for his service.

On 1 August 1931 Heydrich began his job as chief of the new 'Ic Service' (intelligence service). He set up office at the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich. By October he had created a network of spies and informers for intelligence gathering purposes and to obtain information to be used as blackmail to further political aims. Information on thousands of people was recorded on index cards and stored at the Brown House. To mark the occasion of Heydrich's December wedding, Himmler promoted him to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major). In just over fifteen months, Heydrich had surpassed his former naval rank and was making what was considered a "comfortable" salary.

In 1932 a number of Heydrich's enemies began to spread rumors of his alleged Jewish ancestry. Within the Nazi organization such innuendo could be deadly, even for the head of the Reich's counterintelligence service. Nazi Party racial expert Dr. Achim Gercke investigated Heydrich's genealogy. Gercke reported that Heydrich was "... of German origin and free from any colored and Jewish blood".

In the summer of 1932, Himmler appointed Heydrich chief of the renamed security service — the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). Heydrich's counterintelligence service grew into an effective machine of terror and intimidation. With Hitler striving for absolute power in Germany, Himmler and Heydrich wished to control the political police forces of all 17 German states. They began with Bavaria. In 1933, Heydrich gathered some of his men from the SD and together they stormed police headquarters in Munich and took over the police using intimidation tactics. Himmler became the Munich police chief and Heydrich became the commander of Department IV, the political police.

In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and through a series of decrees became Germany's Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). The first concentration camps, which were originally intended to house political opponents, were established in early 1933. By year's end there were over fifty camps.

Hermann Göring founded the Gestapo in 1933 as a Prussian police force. When Göring transferred full authority over the Gestapo to Himmler in April 1934, it immediately became an instrument of terror under the SS's purview. Himmler named Heydrich to head the Gestapo on 22 April 1934. Further, on 9 June 1934, the SD was declared the official Nazi intelligence service by Rudolf Hess.

Beginning in April 1934, and at Hitler's request, Heydrich and Himmler began building a dossier on Sturmabteilung (SA) leader Ernst Röhm in an effort to remove him as a rival for party leadership. At this point, the SS was still part of the SA, the early Nazi paramilitary organization which now numbered over 3 million men. At Hitler's direction, Heydrich, Himmler, Göring and Viktor Lutze drew up lists of those who should be liquidated, starting with seven top SA officials and including many more. On 30 June 1934 the SS and Gestapo acted in coordinated mass arrests that continued throughout the weekend. Röhm was shot without trial, along with the leadership of the SA. The purge became known as the Night of the Long Knives. Up to 200 people were killed in the action. Lutze was appointed SA's new head and it was converted into a sports and training organization.

With the SA out of the way, Heydrich began building the Gestapo into an instrument of fear. He improved his index card system, creating categories of offenders with color coded cards. The Gestapo had the authority to arrest citizens on the suspicion that they might commit a crime, and the definition of a crime was at their discretion. The Gestapo Law, passed in 1936, gave police the right to act extra - legally. This led to the sweeping use of Schutzhaft — "protective custody", a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings. The courts were not allowed to investigate or interfere. The Gestapo was considered to be acting legally as long as it was carrying out the leadership's will. People were arrested arbitrarily, sent to concentration camps, or killed.

Himmler began developing the notion of a Germanic religion and wanted SS members to leave the church. In early 1936, Heydrich left the Catholic Church. His wife, Lina, had already done so the year before. Heydrich not only felt he could no longer be a member, but came to consider the church's political power and influence a danger to the state.

On 17 June 1936 all police forces throughout Germany were united, following Hitler appointing Himmler as Chief of German Police. On 26 June, Himmler reorganized the police into two groups: the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo), consisting of both the national uniformed police and the municipal police, and the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo), consisting of the Gestapo and Kripo (Kriminalpolizei - criminal police). At that point, Heydrich was head of the SiPo and SD. Heinrich Müller was the Gestapo's operations chief.

Heydrich was assigned to help organize the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The games were used to promote the propaganda aims of the Nazi regime. Goodwill ambassadors were sent to countries that were considering a boycott. Anti - Jewish violence was forbidden for the duration, and news stands were required to stop displaying copies of Der Stuermer. For his part in the games' success, Heydrich was awarded the Deutsches Olympiaehrenzeichen or German Olympic Games Decoration (First Class).

In mid 1939 Heydrich created the Stiftung Nordhav Foundation to obtain real estate for use of the SS and Security Police as guest houses and vacation spots. The Wannsee Villa, which the Stiftung Nordhav acquired in November 1940, was the site of the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942). At the conference, senior Nazi officials formalized plans for the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German occupied territory, and in countries not yet conquered. This action was to be coordinated among the representatives from the Nazi state agencies present at the meeting.

On 27 September 1939 the SD and SiPo (made up of the Gestapo and the Kripo) were folded into the new Reich Main Security Office or SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), which was placed under Heydrich's control. The title of "Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD" (Chief of Security Police and SD) or CSSD was conferred on Heydrich on 1 October. Heydrich became the President of Interpol (then under Nazi control) on 24 August 1940, and its headquarters were transferred to Berlin. He was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei on 24 September 1941.

In 1936, Heydrich learned that a top ranking Soviet officer was plotting to overthrow Joseph Stalin. Sensing an opportunity to strike a blow at both the Soviet Army and Admiral Canaris of Germany's Abwehr, Heydrich decided that the Russian officers should be "unmasked". He discussed the matter with Himmler and both in turn brought it to Hitler's attention. But the "information" Heydrich had received was actually misinformation planted by Stalin himself in an attempt to legitimize his planned purges of the Red Army's high command. Stalin ordered one of his best NKVD agents, General Nikolai Skoblin, to pass Heydrich false information suggesting that Marshall Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other Soviet generals were plotting against Stalin. Heydrich received Hitler's approval to act on the information immediately. Heydrich's SD forged a series of documents and letters implicating Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders. The material was delivered to the NKVD. The Great Purge of the Red Army followed on Stalin's orders. While Heydrich believed they had successfully deluded Stalin into executing or dismissing some 35,000 of his officer corps, the importance of Heydrich's part is a matter of speculation and conjecture. Soviet military prosecutors did not use the forged documents against the generals in their secret trial; they instead relied on false confessions extorted or beaten out of the defendants.

By late 1940, German armies had swept through most of Western Europe. In 1941, Heydrich's SD was given responsibility for carrying out the Nacht und Nebel (Night - and - Fog) decree. According to the decree, "persons endangering German security" were to be arrested in a maximally discreet way: "under the cover of night and fog". People disappeared without a trace and no one was told of their whereabouts or their fate. For each prisoner, the SD was required to fill in a questionnaire that listed their personal information, their country of origin, and the details of their crimes against the Reich. This questionnaire was to be put into an envelope inscribed with a seal reading "Nacht und Nebel" and submitted to the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). In the WVHA "Central Inmate File", as in many camp files, these prisoners would be given a special "covert prisoner" code, as opposed to the code for POW, Felon, Jew, Gypsy, etc. The decree remained in effect after Heydrich's death. The exact number of people who vanished under it has never been positively established, but it is estimated to be 7,000.

On 27 September 1941 Heydrich was appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (the part of Czechoslovakia incorporated into the Reich on 15 March 1939) and assumed control of the territory. The Reich Protector, Konstantin von Neurath, remained the territory's titular head, but was sent on "leave" because Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich felt his "soft approach" to the Czechs had promoted anti - German sentiment and encouraged anti - German resistance via strikes and sabotage. Upon his appointment, Heydrich told his aides "[w]e will Germanize the Czech vermin."

Heydrich came to Prague to enforce policy, fight resistance to the Nazi regime, and keep up production quotas of Czech motors and arms that were "extremely important to the German war effort". He viewed the area as a bulwark of Germandom and condemned the "stabs in the back" by the Czech resistance. To realize his goals Heydrich demanded racial classification of those who could and could not be Germanized. He explained, "... making this Czech garbage into Germans must give way to methods based on racist thought". Heydrich started his rule by terrorizing the population: within three days of his arrival in Prague, 92 people were executed. Their names appeared on posters throughout the occupied region. Almost all avenues by which Czechs could act Czech in public were closed. According to Heydrich's estimate between 4,000 and 5,000 people had been arrested by February 1942. Those who were not executed were sent to Mauthausen - Gusen concentration camp, where only four per cent of Czech prisoners survived the war. In March 1942, further sweeps against Czech cultural and patriotic organizations, military and intelligentsia resulted in the practical paralysis of Czech resistance. Although small disorganized cells of Central Leadership of Home Resistance (Ústřední vedení odboje domácího, ÚVOD) survived, only the communist resistance was able to function in a coordinated manner (although it also suffered arrests). The terror also served to paralyze resistance in society, with public and widespread reprisals against any action resisting the German rule. Heydrich's brutal policies during that time quickly earned him the nickname "the Butcher of Prague".

As Acting Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich applied carrot - and - stick methods. Labor was reorganized on the basis of the German Labor Front. Heydrich used equipment confiscated from the Czech organization Sokol to organize events for workers. The black market was suppressed, with food given out in worker cafeterias. Food rations and free shoes were given out, pensions were increased, and (for some time) free Saturdays were introduced. Unemployment insurance was established for the first time. But those associated with the resistance movement or the black market were tortured or executed. Heydrich described those harshly dealt with as "economic criminals" and "enemies of the people", which helped gain him support. Conditions in Prague and the rest of the Czech lands were relatively peaceful under Heydrich, and industrial output increased. Still, those measures could not hide shortages and increasing inflation, and reports of growing discontent multiplied.

Despite public displays of goodwill towards the populace, privately Heydrich left no illusions as to his eventual goal: "This entire area will one day be definitely German, and the Czechs have nothing to expect here". Eventually up to two - thirds of Czechs were to be either be removed to regions of Russia or exterminated after Nazi Germany won the war. Bohemia and Moravia were to be annexed directly into the German Reich.

The Czech workforce was exploited as conscripted labor by the Nazis. More than 100,000 workers were removed from "unsuitable" jobs and conscripted by the Ministry of Labor; by December 1941, Czechs could be called to work anywhere within the Reich. Between April and November 1942, 79,000 Czech workers were taken in this manner for work within Nazi Germany. Also, in February 1942, the work day was increased from eight to twelve hours.

Heydrich was, for all intents and purposes, military dictator of Bohemia and Moravia. His changes to the government's structure left President Emil Hacha and his cabinet virtually powerless. He often drove alone in a car with an open roof — a show of his confidence in the occupation forces and in his government's effectiveness.

Heydrich's time in the SS was a mixture of rapid promotions, reserve commissions in the regular armed forces, and front line combat service. During his 11 years with the SS, Heydrich truly "rose from the ranks", being appointed to every rank from private to full general. He was also a major in the Luftwaffe, flying nearly one hundred combat missions until 22 July 1941, when his plane was hit by Soviet anti - aircraft fire. Heydrich made an emergency landing behind enemy lines. He evaded a Soviet patrol and met up with a forward German patrol. After this Heydrich returned to Berlin and resumed his SS duties. His service record also gives him credit as a Navy Reserve Lieutenant, although during World War II Heydrich had no contact whatsoever with this military branch.

Heydrich received several Nazi and military awards, including the German Order, Blood Order, Golden Party Badge, Luftwaffe Pilot's Badge, bronze and silver combat mission bars and the Iron Cross First and Second Classes.

Historians regard Heydrich as the most fearsome member of the Nazi elite; Hitler called him "the man with the iron heart". He was one of the main architects of the Holocaust during the early war years, answering only to, and taking orders from, Hitler, Göring and Himmler in all matters that pertained to the deportation, imprisonment and extermination of Jews.

Heydrich was one of the organizers of Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews throughout Germany on the night of 9-10 November 1938. Heydrich sent a telegram that night to various SD and Gestapo offices, helping to coordinate the program with the SS, SD, Gestapo, uniformed police (Orpo), SA, Nazi party officials, and even the fire departments. It talks about permitting arson and destruction of Jewish businesses and synagogues, and orders the taking of all "archival material" out of Jewish community centers and synagogues. The telegram ordered that "as many Jews – particularly affluent Jews – are to be arrested in all districts as can be accommodated in existing detention facilities ... Immediately after the arrests have been carried out, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted to place the Jews into camps as quickly as possible." Twenty thousand Jews were sent to concentration camps in the days immediately following; historians consider Kristallnacht the beginning of the Holocaust.

When Hitler asked for a pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler, Heydrich and Heinrich Müller masterminded a false flag plan code - named Operation Himmler. It involved a fake attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz on 31 August 1939. Heydrich worked out the operation plan and toured the site, which was about four miles from the Polish border. Wearing Polish uniforms, 150 German troops carried out a group of attacks along the border. Hitler used the ruse as an excuse to launch his invasion.

On 21 September 1939 Heydrich sent out a teleprinter message on the "Jewish question in the occupied territory" to the chiefs of all Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police. It contained instructions on how to round up Jewish people for placement into ghettos, called for the formation of Judenräter (Jewish councils), ordered a census, contained Aryanization plans for Jewish owned businesses and farms, and discussed other measures. The Einsatzgruppen followed the army into Poland for this purpose. Later, in the Soviet Union, they were charged with rounding up and killing Jews via firing squad and gas vans. By the end of the war, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered over one million people, including over 700,000 in Russia alone.

On 29 November 1939 he sent out a cable regarding the "Evacuation of New Eastern Provinces", describing details of the deportation of people by railway to concentration camps, and giving guidance surrounding the December 1939 census, which would be the basis on which those deportations were performed. In May 1941, Heydrich drew up regulations with Quartermaster general Eduard Wagner for the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union that ensured that the Einsatzgruppen and army would cooperate in murdering Soviet Jews.

On 10 October 1941 Heydrich was the senior officer at a meeting in Prague that discussed deporting 50,000 Jewish people from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to ghettos in Minsk and Riga. Also discussed was the taking of 5,000 Jewish people from Prague "in the next few weeks" and handing them over to the Einsatzgruppen commanders Arthur Nebe and Otto Rasch. The creation of ghettos in the Protectorate was planned, which resulted in the construction of Theresienstadt, where 33,000 people would eventually die. Tens of thousands more would pass through the camp on their way to their deaths in the East. In 1941 Himmler named Heydrich as "responsible for implementing" the forced movement of 60,000 Jewish people from Germany and Czechoslovakia to the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto in Poland.

On 20 January 1942 Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference, at which he presented to the heads of a number of German Government departments a plan for the deportation and transporting of 11 million Jewish people from every country in Europe, to be worked to death or killed outright in extermination camps.

Under suitable direction, the Jews should be brought to the East in the course of the Final Solution, for use as labor. In large labor gangs, with the sexes separated, the Jews capable of work will be transported to those areas and set to road - building, in the course of which, without doubt, a large part of them ("ein Großteil") will fall away through natural losses. The surviving remnant, surely those with the greatest powers of resistance, will be given special treatment, since, if freed, they would constitute the germinal cell for the re-creation of Jewry.

— from Heydrich's speech at the Wannsee Conference, January 1942

In London, the Czechoslovak government - in - exile resolved to kill Heydrich. Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík headed the team chosen for the operation. Trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), the pair returned to the Protectorate by parachute, jumping from a Handley Page Halifax, on 28 December 1941. They lived in hiding, preparing for the assassination attempt.

On 27 May 1942 Heydrich was scheduled to attend a meeting with Hitler in Berlin. German documents suggest that Hitler intended to transfer Heydrich to German occupied France, where the French resistance had started to gain ground. Heydrich would have to pass a section where the Dresden - Prague road merged with a road to the Troja Bridge. The intersection, in the Prague suburb of Libeň, was well suited for the attack because Heydrich's car would have to slow for a hairpin turn. As the car slowed, Gabčík took aim with a Sten sub-machine gun, but it jammed and failed to fire. Instead of ordering his driver to speed away, Heydrich called his car to a halt and attempted to take on the attackers. Kubiš then threw a bomb (a converted anti - tank mine) at the rear of the car as it stopped. The explosion wounded Heydrich and Kubiš.

When the smoke cleared, Heydrich emerged from the wreckage with his gun in his hand; he chased Kubiš and tried to return fire. Kubiš jumped on his bicycle and pedaled away. Heydrich ran after him for half a block but became weak from shock. He sent his driver, Klein, to chase Gabčík on foot. In the ensuing firefight, Gabčík shot Klein in the leg and escaped to a safe house. Heydrich, still with pistol in hand, gripped the left side of his back, which was bleeding profusely.

A Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. Heydrich was first placed in the driver's cab, but after complaining that the truck's movement was causing him pain, he was placed in the back of the truck, on his stomach, and taken to the emergency room at Na Bulovce Hospital. He had suffered severe injuries to his left side, with major damage to his diaphragm, spleen and lung, as well as a broken rib. Dr. Slanina packed the chest wound, while Dr. Walter Diek tried unsuccessfully to remove the splinters. He immediately decided to operate. This was carried out by Drs. Diek, Slanina and Hohlbaum. Heydrich was given several blood transfusions. A splenectomy was performed. The chest wound, left lung and diaphragm were all debrided and the wounds closed. Himmler ordered Dr. Karl Gebhardt to fly to Prague to assume care. Despite a fever, Heydrich's recovery appeared to progress well. Dr. Theodor Morell, Hitler's personal physician, suggested the use of sulfonamide (a new antibacterial drug), but Gebhardt, thinking Heydrich would recover, refused. On 2 June, during a visit by Himmler, Heydrich reconciled himself to his fate by reciting a part of one of his father's operas:

The world is just a barrel - organ which the Lord God turns Himself.
We all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum.

Heydrich slipped into a coma after Himmler's visit and never regained consciousness. He died on 4 June, probably around 4:30 am. He was 38. The autopsy stated that he died of sepsis. Heydrich's facial expression as he died betrayed an "uncanny spirituality and entirely perverted beauty, like a renaissance Cardinal," according to Bernhard Wehner, a Kripo police official who investigated the assassination.

After an elaborate funeral in Prague, Heydrich's coffin was placed on a train to Berlin, where a second ceremony was held in the new Reich Chancellery. Hitler attended, and placed Heydrich's decorations — including the highest grade of the German Order, the Blood Order Medal, the Wound Badge in Gold and the War Merit Cross 1st Class with Swords — on his funeral pillow. Although Heydrich's death was employed for pro-Reich propaganda, Hitler seemed privately to blame Heydrich for his own death, through carelessness:

Since it is opportunity which makes not only the thief but also the assassin, such heroic gestures as driving in an open, unarmored vehicle or walking about the streets unguarded are just damned stupidity, which serves the Fatherland not one whit. That a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich should expose himself to unnecessary danger, I can only condemn as stupid and idiotic.

Heydrich was buried in Berlin's Invalidenfriedhof, a military cemetery; the exact location is not known — a temporary wooden marker which disappeared when the Red Army overran the city in 1945 was never replaced, so that Heydrich's grave could not become a rallying point for neo-Nazis. A photograph of Heydrich's burial shows the wreaths and mourners to be in section A, which abuts the north wall of the Invalidenfriedhof and Scharnhorststraße, at the front of the cemetery. A recent biography of Heydrich also places the grave in Section A. Hitler wanted Heydrich to have a monumental tomb but, because of Germany's declining fortunes, it was never built.

After the war the West Germany judicial system awarded Heydrich's widow a federal pension. The couple had four children: Klaus, born in 1933; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942. Klaus was killed in a traffic accident in 1943. Lina wrote a memoir, Leben mit einem Kriegsverbrecher (Living With a War Criminal), which was published in 1976. She remarried once and died in 1985.

Heydrich's assailants hid in safe houses, and eventually took refuge in Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral, an Orthodox church in Prague. A traitor in the Czech resistance betrayed their location. The church was surrounded by eight hundred members of the SS and Gestapo. Several Czechs were killed, and the remainder hid in the church's crypt. The Germans attempted to flush the men out with gunfire, tear gas and by flooding the crypt. Eventually an entrance was created with explosives. Rather than surrender, the soldiers took their own lives. Supporters of the assassins who were killed in the wake of these events included the church's leader, Bishop Gorazd, who is now revered as a martyr of the Orthodox Church.

Infuriated by Heydrich's death, Hitler ordered the arrest and execution of 10,000 randomly selected Czechs. But after consultations with Karl Hermann Frank, he tempered his response. The Czech lands were an important industrial zone for the German military, and indiscriminate killing could reduce the region's productivity. Hitler ordered a quick investigation. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the towns of Lidice and Ležáky. A Gestapo report stated that Lidice, 22 km north - west of Prague, was suspected as the hiding place of the assailants as it was known that several Czech army officers, then in England, had come from there. Further, the Gestapo had found a resistance radio transmitter in Ležáky. On 9 June, after discussions with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, Hitler ordered brutal reprisals. Over 13,000 people were arrested, deported and imprisoned. Beginning on 10 June, all males over the age of 16 in the village of Lidice and the village of Ležáky were murdered. All the women in Ležáky were also murdered. All but four of the women from Lidice were deported immediately to Ravensbrück concentration camp (four were pregnant – they were forcibly aborted at the same hospital where Heydrich had died and then sent to the concentration camp). A number of children were chosen for Germanization, but 81 were killed in gas vans at the Chełmno extermination camp. Both towns were burned and the ruins of Lidice were leveled. At least 1,300 people were massacred after Heydrich's death.

Heydrich's replacements were Ernst Kaltenbrunner as the chief of RSHA, and Karl Hermann Frank (27-28 May 1942) and Kurt Daluege (28 May 1942 - 14 October 1943) as the new acting Reichsprotektors.

After Heydrich's death, decisions made at the Wannsee conference he had chaired were carried out. The first three true death camps, designed for mass killing with no legal process or pretext, were constructed and put into operation at Treblinka, Sobibór and Belzec. The project was named Operation Reinhard after Heydrich.

After World War II, he fled to Argentina using a fraudulently obtained laissez passer issued by the International Red Cross. He lived in Argentina under a false identity, working a succession of different jobs until 1960. He was captured by Mossad operatives in Argentina and taken to Israel to face trial in an Israeli court on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962. He is the only person to have been executed in Israel on conviction by a civilian court.

Adolf Eichmann was born to a Lutheran family in Solingen, Germany. His parents were businessman and industrialist Adolf Karl Eichmann and Maria née Schefferling. After his mother died in 1914, his family moved to Linz, Austria. During the First World War, Eichmann's father served in the Austro - Hungarian Army. At the war's conclusion, Eichmann's father moved the family back to Linz, where he operated a business. Eichmann left high school — Realschule — without having graduated and began training to become a mechanic, which he also discontinued. In 1923, he started working in the mining company of his father. From 1925 to 1927 he worked as a sales clerk for the Oberösterreichische Elektrobau AG and until spring 1933 Eichmann worked as district agent for the Vacuum Oil Company AG, a subsidiary of Standard Oil. During this time he was a member of the Jungfrontkämpfervereinigung, the youth section of Hermann Hiltl's right wing veterans movement. In late 1933 he moved back to Germany.

Eichmann married Veronika Liebl (1909 - 1997) on March 21, 1935. The couple had four sons: Klaus Eichmann (b. 1936 in Berlin), Horst Adolf Eichmann (b. 1940 in Vienna), Dieter Helmut Eichmann (b. 1942 in Prague) and Ricardo Francisco Eichmann (b. 1955 in Buenos Aires).

On the advice of family friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann joined the Austrian branch of the NSDAP, member number 889,895 — and the Schutzstaffel (SS) — membership number 45,326. He enlisted on April 1, 1932, as an SS-Anwärter (candidate). He was accepted as a full SS member that November, appointed an SS-Mann (man).

For the next year, Eichmann was a member of the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and served in a mustering formation operating from Salzburg while continuing in his position at Vacuum Oil. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power, Eichmann returned to Germany and submitted an application to join an active duty SS regiment. He was accepted, and in November 1933, promoted to SS-Scharführer (Squad Leader, equivalent to corporal). Eichmann was assigned to the administrative staff of Dachau concentration camp.

By 1934, Eichmann requested transfer to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: Security Service) of the SS, to escape the "monotony" of military training in SS-Standarte Deutschland at Dachau. Eichmann was accepted into the SD and assigned to the sub-office on Freemasons, organizing seized ritual objects for a proposed museum. After about six months, Eichmann had a meeting with Leopold von Mildenstein, a fellow Austrian, and was invited to join Mildenstein's Jewish Department, or Section II/112, of the SD at its Berlin headquarters. He later came to see this as his "big break". Eichmann's transfer was granted in November 1934. In 1935, he was promoted to SS-Hauptscharführer (Head Squad Leader) and later commissioned as an SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) in 1937.

In 1937, Eichmann travelled to the British Mandate of Palestine with his superior Herbert Hagen to assess the possibilities of massive Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine. They landed in Haifa using forged press credentials, and spent two days there. They next visited Cairo, where they met Feival Polkes, an agent of the Haganah, with whom they were unable to strike a deal of any kind. Eichmann and Hagen were unable to re-enter Palestine when the British authorities refused to give them the appropriate visas.

In 1938, Eichmann was assigned to Austria to help organize SS security forces in Vienna after the Anschluss of Austria with Germany. Through this effort, Eichmann was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer (first lieutenant) and by the end of 1938, was selected by the SS leadership to form the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. He served as an "expert on Jewish matters" for the Third Reich, overseeing the concentration camps, the expropriation of Jewish property, and the deportation of Jews to ghettos and death camps. He played a major role in implementing the Final Solution.

At the start of World War II, Eichmann had been promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) and had made a name for himself with his Office for Jewish Emigration. Through this work Eichmann made several contacts in the Zionist movement, which he worked with to speed up Jewish emigration from the Third Reich.

Eichmann returned to Berlin in 1939 after the formation of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office: RSHA). In December 1939, he was assigned to head RSHA Referat IV B4 (RSHA Sub-Department IV-B4), which dealt with Jewish affairs and evacuation, where he reported to Heinrich Müller. In August 1940, he released his Reichssicherheitshauptamt: Madagaskar Projekt (Reich Main Security Office: Madagascar Project), a plan for forced Jewish deportation that never materialized. He was promoted to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major) in late 1940, and less than a year later to SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel).

Reinhard Heydrich disclosed to Eichmann in autumn 1941 that all the Jews in German controlled Europe were to be murdered. In 1942, Heydrich ordered Eichmann to attend the Wannsee Conference as recording secretary, where Germany's antisemitic measures were set down into an official policy of genocide. Eichmann was given the position of Transportation Administrator of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", which put him in charge of all the trains that would carry Jews to the death camps in the territory of occupied Poland.

In 1944, he was sent to Hungary after Germany had occupied that country prior to a Soviet invasion. Eichmann at first made an offer through Joel Brand (who was to act as an intermediary) to trade captive European Jews to the Western Allies for trucks and other goods (Blood for goods). When there was no positive response to this offer, Eichmann started deporting Jews, sending 430,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers.

By 1945, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had ordered Jewish extermination to be halted and evidence of the Final Solution to be destroyed. Eichmann was appalled by Himmler's turnabout, and continued his work in Hungary against official orders. Eichmann was also working to avoid being called up in the last ditch German military effort, since a year before he had been commissioned as a Reserve Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS and was now being ordered to active combat duty.

In 1945, Eichmann fled Hungary as the Soviets entered. He returned to Austria, where he met up with his old friend Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Kaltenbrunner, however, refused to associate with Eichmann since Eichmann's duties as an extermination administrator had left him a marked man by the Allies.

At the end of World War II, Eichmann was captured by the U.S. Army, which was not aware of Eichmann's true identity as he presented himself as "Otto Eckmann." Early in 1946, he escaped from U.S. custody and hid in Altensalzkoth, an obscure hamlet on the Lüneburg Heath, for a few years. In 1948 he obtained a landing permit for Argentina, but did not use it immediately.

At the beginning of 1950, Eichmann went to Italy, where he posed as a refugee named Riccardo Klement. With the help of a Franciscan friar who had connections to Bishop Alois Hudal, who organized one of the first postwar escape routes for Axis personnel, Eichmann obtained an International Committee of the Red Cross humanitarian passport, issued in Genoa, and an Argentine visa. Both of these issued to "Ricardo Klement, technician." However, Hannah Arendt claims that Eichmann was assisted in his escape by ODESSA, "a clandestine organization of SS veterans". In May 2007, this passport was discovered in court archives in Argentina by a student doing research on Eichmann's capture. Eichmann boarded a ship heading for Argentina on July 14, 1950. For the next 10 years, he worked a succession of jobs including metal factory worker, junior water engineer, rabbit farmer and finally welder and mechanic at the Mercedes - Benz plant in Buenos Aires. Eichmann brought his family to Argentina in 1952.

In June 2006, old CIA documents about Nazis and stay - behind networks dedicated to anti - communism were released. Among the 27,000 documents was a March 1958 memo from the German BND agency to the CIA, which stated that Eichmann was reported to have lived in Argentina since 1952 using the alias "Clemens". The CIA took no action on this information, because Eichmann's arrest could embarrass the US and Germany by turning public attention to the former Nazis they had recruited after World War II. For example, the West German government, headed by Konrad Adenauer, was worried about what Eichmann might say, especially about the past of Hans Globke, Adenauer's national security adviser, who had worked with Eichmann in the Jewish Affairs department and helped draft the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.

At the request of the West German government the CIA persuaded Life magazine to delete any reference to Globke from Eichmann's memoirs, which it had bought from his family. By the time the CIA and the BND had this information, Israel had temporarily given up looking for Eichmann in Argentina because they could not discover his alias. In the 1950s, neither the CIA nor the US government as a whole had a policy of pursuing Nazi war criminals. In addition to protecting Eichmann's and Globke's past, the CIA also protected Reinhard Gehlen, who recruited hundreds of former German spies for the CIA.

Israel's official intelligence agency, Mossad, had as one of its principal assigned tasks the pursuit and capture of accused Nazi war criminals. Throughout the 1950s, many Jews and other victims of the Holocaust also dedicated themselves to finding Eichmann and other notorious Nazis. Among them was the Jewish Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. In 1954, Wiesenthal saw a letter received by an Austrian Baron from an associate living in Buenos Aires, saying Eichmann was in Argentina. The message read in part:

Ich sah jenes schmutzige Schwein Eichmann. ("I saw that filthy pig Eichmann.") Er wohnt in der Nähe von Buenos Aires und arbeitet für ein Wassergeschäft. ("He lives near Buenos Aires and works for a water company.")

With this and other information collected by Wiesenthal, Israel had solid leads about Eichmann's whereabouts. However, Isser Harel, the head of Mossad, later claimed that Wiesenthal played no role in Eichmann's apprehension.

Eichmann changed his name but not those of his wife and sons. It was this that led to his capture.

Also instrumental in exposing Eichmann's identity was Lothar Hermann, a German Jewish lawyer who had fled to Argentina after escaping from Dachau concentration camp, where Eichmann had been an administrative officer at one time. When Hermann's daughter Sylvia began dating a man named Klaus Eichmann who boasted about his father's Nazi exploits, Hermann alerted Fritz Bauer, the Hessen district attorney, who passed on the information to a Mossad operative, Shlomo Cohen Abarbanel. In her book about the Eichmann Trial, historian Deborah Lipstadt describes how Sylvia, sent on a fact finding mission, was met at the door by Eichmann himself who said he was Klaus' uncle. Informed that Klaus was not home, she sat down to wait and made small talk with the man. When Klaus returned, he addressed Eichmann as 'Father.'

In 1959, the Mossad was informed that Eichmann was in Buenos Aires under the name Ricardo Klement (Clement) and then began an effort to locate his exact whereabouts. When surveillance affirmed that Ricardo Klement was Eichmann, the Israeli government approved a covert operation to bring him to Jerusalem for trial as a war criminal. It was to be a joint operation, carried out by the Mossad and Shin Bet, the Israel Security Agency. The Israelis continued their surveillance of Eichmann in 1960 until it was judged safe to take him. A key figure was Yitzhak Elron, the IDF attache in Argentina, who trailed Eichmann with his wife, Sarah, before the abduction.

Eichmann was captured by a team of Mossad and Shin Bet agents in San Fernando, Buenos Aires, an industrial community 20 km north of the center of Buenos Aires on May 11, 1960. The Mossad agents had arrived in Buenos Aires in April 1960 after Eichmann's identity was confirmed. After observing the suspect's routine for many days, they determined that he usually arrived home by bus from his work as foreman at a Mercedes - Benz factory around the same time every evening and planned to seize him when he was walking beside an open field from the bus stop to his house at 14 Garibaldi St (now 4261 Garibaldi Street). The plan was almost abandoned when Eichmann on the designated day was not present on the bus he usually took home. Tension rose when a passerby offered to assist the agents who pretended to be fixing the broken down Mossad vehicle; the agents declined the offer. Finally, almost a half hour later, Eichmann got off a bus. A Mossad agent engaged him, asking him in Spanish ("un momentito, señor") if he had a moment. Eichmann was frightened and attempted to leave while blinded by Mossad headlights. Two Mossad men seized him and wrestled him to the ground and after a struggle, he was brought to the car and hidden down on the floor. Eichmann told his captors later that as soon as they told him to keep quiet or they would shoot him, he knew he had been captured by Israelis. The Mossad agents ran into a police checkpoint, but managed to pass a license plate check.

Eichmann was brought to a Mossad safe house, Tira, where he was kept for nine days, during which time his identity was double checked and confirmed.

Eichmann was drugged to appear drunk by an Israeli doctor included in the Mossad team and dressed as a flight attendant. He was smuggled out of Argentina on board an El Al Bristol Britannia plane which a few days before had transported an Israeli delegation to the 150th anniversary celebration of Argentina's independence from Spain. After some tense delay at the airport over getting its flight plan approved, the plane took off from Buenos Aires to Dakar, Senegal and then to Israel on May 21, 1960. He arrived heavily sedated, and like the agents, disguised in the uniform of the El Al crew.

There had been a backup plan in case the apprehension did not go as planned. If the police happened to intervene, one of the agents was to handcuff himself to Eichmann and make full explanations and disclosure.

For some time the Israeli government denied involvement in Eichmann's capture, claiming that he had been taken by Jewish volunteers who eagerly turned him over to Israeli authorities. Negotiations followed between Prime Minister David Ben - Gurion and Argentine president Arturo Frondizi, while the abduction was met from radical right sectors in Argentina with a violent wave of antisemitism, carried on the streets by the Tacuara Nationalist Movement — including assaults, torture and bombings.

Ben - Gurion announced Eichmann's capture to the Knesset — Israel's parliament — on May 23, receiving a standing ovation in return. Isser Harel, head of the Mossad at the time of the operation, wrote the book The House on Garibaldi Street about Eichmann's capture, which was made into the 1979 American television movie of the same name.

When Eichmann was brought to Israel for trial, the Israeli police officer Avner Less was Eichmann's interrogator. Extracts from Less's interrogation of Eichmann have been published in the book Eichmann Interrogated.

Heavily edited parts of the interrogation, now available freely and in full from the Israeli archives, were incorporated in the 2007 film Eichmann, dramatizing Eichmann's interrogation. According to historian Deborah Lipstadt, the movie downplays his role in the Holocaust, including his admission of planning the task and his determination to complete it.

Some years later, Peter Malkin, the member of the kidnapping team actually assigned to seize the suspect, wrote Eichmann in My Hands, which describes the preparation for and details of the capture, while exploring Eichmann's character and motivations.

In June 1960, after unsuccessful secret negotiations with Israel, Argentina requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council, to protest what Argentina regarded as the "violation of the sovereign rights of the Argentine Republic". In the ensuing debate, Israeli representative Golda Meir claimed that the abductors were not Israeli agents but private individuals, so that the incident was only an "isolated violation of Argentine law". Eventually the Council passed Resolution 138, which requested Israel "to make appropriate reparation", while stating that "Eichmann should be brought to appropriate justice for the crimes of which he is accused" and that "this resolution should in no way be interpreted as condoning the odious crimes of which Eichmann is accused."

After further negotiations, on August 3, Israel and Argentina agreed to end their dispute with a joint statement that "the Governments of Israel and the Republic of the Argentine, imbued with the wish to give effect to the resolution of the Security Council of June 23, 1960, in which the hope was expressed that the traditionally friendly relations between the two countries will be advanced, have decided to regard as closed the incident that arose out of the action taken by Israel nationals which infringed fundamental rights of the State of Argentina."

In the subsequent trial and appeal, the Israeli courts avoided the issue of the legality of Eichmann's capture, relying instead on Israeli legal precedents that the circumstances of his capture had no bearing on the legality of his trial. The Israeli Court also determined that because "Argentina has condoned the violation of her sovereignty and has waived her claims, including that for the return of the Appellant, any violation of international law that may have been involved in this incident has thus been remedied."

Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem before the Jerusalem District Court began on April 11, 1961. He was indicted on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership in an outlawed organization. In accordance with Israeli criminal procedure, the trial was presided over by three judges: Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevy and Yitzhak Raveh. The chief prosecutor was Gideon Hausner, the Israeli Attorney General. The three judges sat high atop a plain dais. The trial was held at the Beit Ha'am — today known as the Gerard Behar Center — an auditorium in downtown Jerusalem. Eichmann sat inside a bulletproof glass booth to protect him from victims' families. This image inspired the novel, stage play and film The Man in the Glass Booth, although the plot of the drama has nothing to do with the actual events of the Eichmann trial.

The legal basis of the charges against Eichmann was the 1950 "Nazi and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law".

The trial caused huge international controversy, as well as an international sensation. The Israeli government allowed news programs all over the world to broadcast the trial live with few restrictions. The trial began with various witnesses, including many Holocaust survivors, who testified against Eichmann and his role in transporting victims to the extermination camps. One key witness for the prosecution was an American judge named Michael A. Musmanno, who was a U.S. naval officer in 1945. Musmanno had questioned the Nuremberg defendants and would later go on to become a Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He testified that the late Hermann Göring "made it very clear that Eichmann was the man to determine, in what order, in what countries, the Jews were to die."

When the prosecution rested, Eichmann's defense lawyers, Robert Servatius and Dieter Wechtenbruch, opened up the defense by explaining why they did not cross examine any of the prosecution witnesses. Eichmann, speaking in his own defense, said that he did not dispute the facts of what happened during the Holocaust. During the whole trial, Eichmann insisted that he was only "following orders" — the same Nuremberg Defense used by some of the Nazi war criminals during the 1945 - 1946 Nuremberg Trials. He explicitly declared that he had abdicated his conscience in order to follow the Führerprinzip. Eichmann claimed that he was merely a "transmitter" with very little power. He testified that: "I never did anything, great or small, without obtaining in advance express instructions from Adolf Hitler or any of my superiors."

During cross examination, prosecutor Hausner asked Eichmann if he considered himself guilty of the murder of millions of Jews. Eichmann replied: "Legally not, but in the human sense ... yes, for I am guilty of having deported them". When Hausner produced as evidence a quote by Eichmann in 1945 stating: "I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have five million human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction." Eichmann countered the claim saying that he was referring only to "enemies of the Reich".

Witnesses for the defense, all of them former high ranking Nazis, were promised immunity and safe conduct from their German and Austrian homes to testify in Jerusalem on Eichmann's behalf. All of them refused to travel to Israel, but they sent the court depositions. However, almost none of the depositions supported Eichmann's "following orders" defense. One deposition was from Otto Winkelmann, a former senior SS police leader in Budapest in 1944. His memo stated that "(Eichmann) had the nature of a subaltern, which means a fellow who uses his power recklessly, without moral restraints. He would certainly overstep his authority if he thought he was acting in the spirit of his commander [Adolf Hitler]". Franz Six, a former SS brigadier general in the German security service, who was assigned the supervision of the occupation of the United Kingdom had Operation Sea Lion been successful, said in his deposition that Eichmann was an absolute believer in National Socialism and would act to the most extreme of the party doctrine, and that Eichmann had greater power than other department chiefs.

After 14 weeks of testimony with more than 1,500 documents, 100 prosecution witnesses (90 of whom were Nazi concentration camp survivors) and dozens of defense depositions delivered by diplomatic couriers from 16 different countries, the Eichmann trial ended on August 14. At that point, the judges began deliberations in seclusion. On December 11, the three judges announced their verdict: Eichmann was convicted on all counts. Eichmann had said to the court that he expected the death penalty. On December 15, the court imposed a death sentence. Eichmann appealed the verdict, mostly relying on legal arguments about Israel's jurisdiction and the legality of the laws under which he was charged. He also claimed that he was protected by the principle of "Acts of State" and repeated his "following orders" defense.

On May 29, 1962 Israel's Supreme Court, sitting as a Court of Criminal Appeal, rejected the appeal and upheld the District Court's judgment on all counts. In rejecting his appeal again claiming that he was only "following orders", the court stated that, "Eichmann received no superior orders at all. He was his own superior and he gave all orders in matters that concerned Jewish affairs ... the so-called Final Solution would never have assumed the infernal forms of the flayed skin and tortured flesh of millions of Jews without the fanatical zeal and the unquenchable blood thirst of the appellant and his associates." A large number of prominent persons sent requests for clemency. On May 31, Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi turned down Eichmann's petition for mercy. On the telegram that Eichmann's wife, Vera, sent in support of the clemency, Ben-Zvi added in his handwriting a passage from the First Book of Samuel: "As your sword bereaved women, so will your mother be bereaved among women." (1 Samuel 15:33, Samuel's words to Agag, king of the Amalekites).

In 1999, 128 minutes of the original video recordings made during court sessions of the Eichmann trial were released to cinemas and later to home video under the title Un spécialiste (The Specialist in the US). The title is related to Eichmann's wartime reputation as a "specialist" in logistics regarding the expatriation, expropriation and deportation of Jewish people.

Secret German documents made available in 2011 to the German periodical Der Spiegel indicate that the Adenauer government was in a panic after the arrest of Eichmann. There was fear that a trial would highlight a number of former high level government officials who had served the Nazis, particularly Hans Globke, who was the Chancellery Chief of Staff and a close advisor to Chancellor Adenauer.

An agent from the German Intelligence Service, Rolf Vogel, was sent to the trial in the guise of a reporter for the German newspaper Deutsche Zeitung. Vogel worked closely with the Israeli prosecutors, making sure that there would be no implication of Globke and other former Nazis. Vogel even arranged a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, with whom he expressed the German concern. Vogel came away with the impression that the names of people like Globke would not be raised at the trial. At the same time, negotiations for a large arms purchase by Israel from the Federal Republic of Germany were taking place.

In the end, no mention was made during the trial nor were there any reference which were made public from the interrogations of Eichmann to former Nazi German officials. In 1962, military aid worth some 240 million DM was approved by the German government.

Eichmann was hanged shortly before midnight on May 31, 1962, at a prison in Ramla, Israel. His executioner was Shalom Nagar, an Israeli of Yemenite origin. Eichmann allegedly refused a last meal, preferring instead a bottle of Carmel, a dry red Israeli wine, consuming about half the bottle. He also refused to don the traditional black hood for his execution.

There is some dispute over Eichmann's last words. One account states that these were:

Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries with which I have been most closely associated and I shall not forget them. I had to obey the rules of war and my flag. I am ready.

According to David Cesarani, a leading Holocaust historian and Research Professor in History of the Royal Holloway, University of London, Eichmann is quoted thus:

Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria. These are the three countries with which I have been most connected and which I will not forget. I greet my wife, my family and my friends. I am ready. We'll meet again soon, as is the fate of all men. I die believing in God.

Shortly after the execution, Eichmann's body was cremated in a specially designed furnace, and a stretcher on tracks was used to place the body into it. The next morning, June 1, his ashes were scattered at sea over the Mediterranean, beyond the territorial waters of Israel by an Israeli Navy patrol boat. This was to ensure that there could be no future memorial and that no country would serve as his final resting place.

Political theorist Hannah Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany after Hitler's rise to power, reported on Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, a book formed by this reporting, Arendt details the conclusion of several Israeli psychiatrists that Eichmann was "normal." She called him the embodiment of the "banality of evil", as he appeared at his trial to have an ordinary and common personality, displaying neither guilt nor hatred. She suggested that this most strikingly discredits the idea that the Nazi criminals were manifestly psychopathic and different from ordinary people. Eichmann himself said he joined the SS not because he agreed with its ethos, but to build a career.

Stanley Milgram interpreted Arendt's work as stating that even the most ordinary of people can commit horrendous crimes if placed in certain situations and given certain incentives. He wrote: "I must conclude that Arendt's conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine." However, Arendt did not suggest that Eichmann was normal or that any person placed in his situation would have done as he did. According to her account, Eichmann had abdicated his will to make moral choices, and thus his autonomy. Eichmann claimed he was just following orders, and that he was therefore respecting the duties of a "bureaucrat". Arendt thus argued that he had essentially forsaken the conditions of morality, autonomy and the ability to question orders.

In Becoming Eichmann, David Cesarani claimed that Eichmann was in fact extremely anti - Semitic, and that these feelings were important motivators of his genocidal actions.

In tapes recorded in the 1950s that have recently been made available by the German Federal Archive in Koblenz, Eichmann was recorded as stating he "was no ordinary recipient of orders" and that he "was part of the thinking process; an idealist". The tapes are reported to contradict Eichmann's defense during his 1961 Jerusalem trial for crimes against humanity that he was only "following orders".

Eichmann's son, Ricardo, who was born after World War II, said he harbored no resentment toward Israel for executing his father. He explained that his father's lack of remorse caused "difficult emotions" for the Eichmann family, and that he was unable to grasp his father's "following orders" argument to excuse his actions. Ricardo became a professor of archaeology at the German Archaeological Institute.