From Anhalter Station Heydrich was carried to the Conference Hall of Gestapo headquarters, where six honour guards wearing black dress uniforms watched over his lying-in-state. For a lot of Berliners it was a chance to sing ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead!’ while sneaking a wary tiptoes look inside the Prinz Albrecht Palace. On a par with other semi-hazardous activities like climbing to the top of the old radio tower in Charlottenburg or driving on the bank at the Avus Speedway, it was nice to be able to say that you’d done it.

On the radio that night the Leader eulogized the dead Heydrich, describing him as ‘the man with the iron heart’, which I assume he meant to be a compliment. Then again, it’s possible that our own wicked wizard of Oz might simply have confused the Tin Man with the Cowardly Lion.

The next day, wearing civilian clothes and feeling altogether more human, I joined thousands of other Berliners outside the New Reich Chancellery and tried to look suitably gloomy as the whole ant’s nest of Hitler’s myrmidons came bursting out of the Mosaic Hall to follow the gleaming gun carriage as it bore Heydrich’s flag-draped coffin east along Voss Strasse and then north up Wilhelmstrasse toward the General’s final resting place in the Invaliden Cemetery, alongside some real German heroes like von Scharnhorst, Ernst Udet and Manfred von Richthofen.

There was no doubting Heydrich’s bravery: his impetuous part-time active service with the Luftwaffe while most of the top brass stayed safe in their wolf’s redoubts and their furlined bunkers was the most obvious example of this courage. I suppose Hegel might just have recognized Heydrich’s heroism as the incarnation of the spirit of our despotic times. But for my money heroes need to have a working relationship with the gods, not the Titan forces of darkness and disorder. Especially in Germany. So I wasn’t in the least bit sorry to see him dead. Because of Heydrich, I was an officer in the SD. And pressed into the tarnished silver cap badge that was the loathsome symbol of my long acquaintance with Heydrich were the hallmarks of hatred, fear and, after my return from Minsk, guilt, too.