His political influence was limited. He was one of the milder Nazis, prompting RSHA leader Reinhard Heydrich and several others to try to remove him. However, all efforts failed due to Henlein's good relations with Hitler. When Henlein heard of Heydrich's assassination, he openly celebrated the news by visiting the local beer-hall to get drunk. With Heydrich gone, Henlein turned on Donnevert, telling him in October 1942 that he was "not a clown" who could be pushed around, a statement that revealed much about his wounded pride. In late 1942, Henlein completed the campaign to make the Sudetenland "judenfrei" ("free of Jews") by deporting the last Jews to Theresienstadt. As the Jews in the Sudetenland like the rest of Bohemia tended to speak German rather than Czech, by making the Sudetenland "judenfrei", Henlein was decreasing the number of people who spoke German in the Sudetenland. In February 1943, Henlein prevented Donnevert from entering his office by changing the locks, and fired him in August 1943. For the next two years, Henlein reigned supreme in his "Gau" and rehired many of the men he had been forced to fire in 1940. Henlein's willingness to assert himself won him the respect of Martin Bormann who called him in July 1944 a "historic personality" and "an especially reliable party comrade". In the last days of World War II, Henlein spent his time in what Cornwall called a "mad scheme" to persuade Hitler to abandon Berlin for the Sudetenland, from whose mountains he would continue the war and launch a new invasion of the Soviet Union. In his speech delivered on 8 May 1945 in Reichenberg, Henlein explained all his actions as being motivated only by his love of the Sudetenlanders, saying all his actions were those of "a child of my era, the executor of all your desires and yearnings, as the representative of your will".