The (now former, unless I'm mistaken) leading German developer gives their take on Heydrich's path and it's flaws. Also touches on the inconsistency of Remer's characterization that I had pointed out months earlier.
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My issue with Heydrich is this: Yes, it isn't intended to be a redemption arc. But when your writing Heydrich's storyline which consists of the following-
1. A struggle against someone who is close alarmingly close to unleashing global nuclear genocide.
2. Options to form alliances with groups who are vehemently regarded as "subhuman", though a character like Heydrich wouldn't be inclined to actually consider due to pressingly inflammatory reasons. like the Poles who tore down German supremacy over their country and intend to reassert their independence or the foreign slaves who seized over a piece of
fundamentally integral German territory (East Prussia) and are bearing flags with the Star of David on them, to add insult to injury (despite that their leader is a Pole and the slaves are largely Eastern Europeans with the Jews still being targeted for death, but I digress).
3. At the end gets an epiphany that the Nazi ideology, which his fanatical devotion towards was never less than absolute, was a farcical falsehood all along that he descends into guilt ridden, pitiful depression which leads to the "tragic" (and unimpressive) ending of suicide (giving off Joel from TLOU2 vibes here).
You then inevitably set yourself up trying to endure the challenging hurdles on how exactly
not to make it look like Heydrich's storyline is a redemption arc. It's why the whole debate on whether or not the storyline qualifies as such exists. Because it's showing some pretty confusing and mixed signals for the fandom.
As Moyme said. Heydrich was more gung-ho than even Himmler when it came to Nazi race doctrine. For all that TNO requires a measure of suspension of belief, it's too radically OOC for Heydrich even having the option to bury the hatchet with the Children of Spartakus when the most "lenient" approach that he'd go with would be just giving tacit consent for the Freistaat Prussen to conquer them, even if only to keep Eichmann too preoccupied for him to cooperate with Himmler. That Heydrich merely aligns with the Poles and rebel slaves purely as a desperate measure kinda falls flat meaningfully when after Heydrich ganks Himmler, he just turns Doomer then offs himself rather than instantly turning his guns on them in the very next second.
Will confirm that as one of the early devs Heydrich was never meant to be "redeemable" and Panzer did kinda tell me that himself that he's not "redeemable" in the sense that we'd associate with redemption and his suicide was more guilt and regret driven from Heydrich's eyes and not the author writing a redemption arc. Perhaps the redemption that Moyme complained about is Speidel going full denazification and destroying nazism forever in Germany after Heydrich bites it, which does genuinely come off as a unearned happy ending for Germany.
Also will state that Moyme statement isn't one everyone agrees upon outside Heydrich being extremely murderous.
There are, looking at past discussions in the history and ah related communities, two interpretations of Heydrich's behavior among historians and alternate history writers. You have the "fanatical ideologue" interpretation which Moyme agrees with, and you also have the "extremely evil social climber with some pragmatism" interpretation, which I have seen Panzer state as his justification why Heydrich didn't pounce on Himmler as immediately as possible. The former interpretation, which sees Heydrich as a extreme fanatic, is the more common one, and is the one most alternate history draws on, but the latter interpretation, which sees Heydrich as a extremely twisted social climber willing to plan mass genocide to get to the top, but is more focused on self-advancement overall and is a bit more pragmatic than the rest of the Nazis, does have some advocates in the historian and ah community(the original MITHC draws on the latter for whatever characterization we have of him, the series draws on the former). And I know one person did complain that a now dead axis victory TL used the former interpretation when he gave evidence to support the latter.
If we go by the latter interpretation, Heydrich flipping out could be a sense of "I climbed the fucking wrong ladder" over "Darth Vader" and has some plausibility(a comparison could be with Walter White vs. the Neo-Nazis in the end of Breaking bad: except here Walt is a Nazi too and the neo-nazis are even crazier nazis), and we could buy him holding his nose long enough to ally with the slaves. Through this still opens the can of worms as I know a couple of people that went "even if Heydrich didn't like these goals, he wouldn't have the ephiany and kill himself but will try to govern on". Through to be fair its' vague enough you can even argue that he regrets climbing up the wrong ladder over the damage he has done.
That said, I am willing to let this storyline slide because it is extremely well written. It's a problematic fave for me.
Is it extremely problematic and somewhat contrived? Yes, and there are arguably ethics related problems related to creating a arc that pants such a murderous IRL figure with a small level of humanity. But it has enough distance from what I would associate with a redemption arc to make sense unless you are that sort of person that goes "any depth for a villain=redemption", it is genuinely well written and fun to at least play one game with, the context(tragic portrayal of Heydrich) is out there enough that it is very much going to be a genuinely really one off idea as a premise rather than setting a extremely problematic trend of people humanizing extremely horrific individuals(even in the various alt-TNOs*, I tend to use genuine historical nobodies or people that weren't as bad as Heydrich filling his role-as you will see when I do my writeup of FoM!TNO on the FoM thread, and if it's a "fictional universe's equvilent to TNO", I'll use villains that genuinely redeemed themselves for this role or had the door open for that).
Not to mention that if there was a fictional story with a character acting like this, I would support that storyline wholeheartedly because I have less issues with these storylines in a purely fictional environment and such a hypothetical fictional storyline will be better written than most villain feels bad storylines out there(despite what the tumblr, stitchmediamix and Lily Orchard crowd thinks, pure fiction
is the best place to explore these themes, not somewhere that should be barred off because of fictional bodycounts: in part because working with reality and horrible people IRL, as well as real atrocities and bodycounts, opens a big can of worms and is a bigger no-no as we see with some of the controversy here).
*-For RedsVerse!TNO, I admit I did use Heydrich and the
same plotline, but I gave it a different ending where he does try to consolidate power on the ruins of Germany: only for him to be killed by either another ambitious SS leader or Speidel and Germany to descend into a bloodier warlord era.