Dramatic portrayals of Reinhard Heydrich number among the more numerous of any Second World War figure, comparable to Adolf Hitler as well as war films depicting Erwin Rommel. Reinhard Heydrich has been portrayed numerous times in both television and film, and was one of the few high ranking Nazis to be depicted in a dramatic film while the Second World War was still ongoing.
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Early portrayals
The first known portrayal was in the 1943 film Hangmen Also Die!, where Heydrich was played by Hans Heinrich von Twardowski. That same year, he was the subject of the feature Hitler's Madman, where he was portrayed by John Carradine. Further works, produced during World War II, were The Hitler Gang, where Heydrich is portrayed by Peter Pohlenz, as well as Air Raid Wardens where he is played by actor Don Costello.
The sole film of the 1950s depicting Heydrich was Deadly Decision, produced in 1954 and starring Martin Held as Heydrich.
The 1960s
Due to an increase in the World War II genre of 1960s cinema, the character of Heydrich began to be portrayed more frequently and was thus introduced to a new generation, many of whom had been children during the Second World War, Heydrich's role in the war in general and the Holocaust in particular. Heydrich's first portrayal in the 1960s was as a character in the Armstrong Circle Theatre, where he appears in a 1960 television episode entitled "Engineer of Death: The Eichmann Story" and is portrayed by Alvin Epstein.
Further appearances in 1960s film and television were:
Actor Anton Diffring further portrayed Heydrich in the 1965 series Interpol (episode "Geld, Geld, Geld"). Diffring would portray Heydrich again, a decade later, in the film Operation Daybreak.
The 1970s & 80s
The character of Reinhard Heydrich became internationally known when David Warner portrayed Heydrich in the miniseries Holocaust. Warner would again play the character in the 1980s TV production Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil. Warner's performance was rated as "cunning and chilling" with the Holocaust miniseries receiving several television awards.
Within German productions, Heydrich appears as a character in the 1977 television production Manager des Terrors (1977) where he was portrayed by Dietrich Mattausch. Mattausch's performance was viewed as "cold and stunning", and he reprised the role of Heydrich in the acclaimed 1984 film The Wannsee Conference. The Wannsee Conference would inspire the remake Conspiracy, where Heydrich was portrayed by Kenneth Branagh, as well as a brief mention (for a few seconds) in the HBO movie Fatherland. This film also depicted, as a major character, Arthur Nebe played by British actor Peter Vaughan.
Within Czech cinema, Heydrich appears in the 1975 film Sokolovo, where he was portrayed by Hannjo Hasse. Portrayals of Heydrich behind the Iron Curtain were rare, mainly due to Heydrich's brutal actions in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as well as a general effort by communist governments to suppress films depicting the Nazi regime, except for propaganda purposes involving the glorification of communism.
Modern cinema
During the 1990s, there were few depictions of Heydrich in either television or film. Beginning in 2003, several foreign films portrayed Heydrich, including many from former communist countries, such as Poland, who were now open to produce more works about Nazi Germany. In 2009, Heydrich is spoken of (but not actually seen) by the character Hans Landa in the Spaghetti Western parody film Inglourious Basterds.
The 2016 film Anthropoid details the events of Heydrich's assassination and includes a CGI version of Heydrich in some of the film's scenes, including a close-up of his face shortly after being attacked.
The most recent appearance of Heydrich is in the Amazon.com series The Man in the High Castle, set in an alternate history where Heydrich still serves as head of the secret police and as an SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer in the year 1962. Heydrich, as portrayed by Ray Proscia, is shown in the series as having earned the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross, with swords and a spange, as well as having received additional, fictional Nazi awards, for his role in the German conquest of Africa and suppression of the native population.