English Translation

41-70 then, without my knowledge — and this, I can confess with proud joy and notice, was the only secret in the eleven years of our common path which he had ahead of me — once again as a fighter pilot at a German squadron in southern Russia and acquired there the silver front plane and the Iron Cross 1st class. During this time fate had once stretched out his hand after him. He had been shot down by Russian flak, but he ended up happily between the two lines and hit his way to the German side in order to get up the next morning in another plane immediately. As much as I have always taken the view that Heydrich was more important in his place than in the service of soldiers on the outer front, I have understood his insistence. He also wanted to "not to spare one's own blood on the front and prove it, even though his entire activity as head of the SD was a daily, dangerous operation. September of last year brought him a new great one; and as we know today, the last great task. After the illness of the Reich Protector of Neurath, the Führer used him as the Deputy Reich Protector in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Some in Germany, but above all in the Czech people, believed that now this feared Heydrich would come and rule there only with blood and terror. In these months, however, in which he received for the first time a great, positive, creative task visible to all the world, his brilliant abilities proved to be the richest. He seized hard, grabbed the guilty, gave unconditional respect to the German power and imperial power, 87