Night of the Long Knives

• 1. Hitler's Consolidation Strategy

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  On the 30th of January 1934, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany. This appointment did not grant Hitler absolute power immediately. The German army remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a highly respected veteran field marshal. While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army and aggressive foreign policy, the military continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime. Hitler did not exercise full control despite his swift consolidation of political authority through the Gleichschaltung process. By the middle of 1933, the country had become a one-party state under his direction and control. Yet the Sturmabteilung (SA) remained somewhat autonomous within the party. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. These nationalistic organizations were primarily composed of disaffected German combat veterans utilized by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution. A very large number of the Freikorps believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. Hence, the Freikorps were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic. Captain Ernst Röhm of the Reichswehr served as the liaison with the Bavarian Freikorps. Röhm was given the nickname "The Machine Gun King of Bavaria" in the early 1920s. He left the Reichswehr in 1923 and later became commander of the SA. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt meetings of competing political parties. Also known as the "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers", the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists. The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were more than 400 street battles resulting in 82 deaths.

• 2. The SA And Army Rivalry

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  No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" than Röhm himself. Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute twelve men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper. Not content solely with the leadership of the SA, Röhm lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defence, a position held by the conservative General Werner von Blomberg. Although nicknamed the "Rubber Lion" by some of his critics in the army for his devotion to Hitler, Blomberg was not a Nazi and therefore represented a bridge between the army and the party. Blomberg and many of his fellow officers were recruited from the Prussian nobility and regarded the SA as a plebeian rabble that threatened the army's traditional high status in German society. If the regular army showed contempt for the masses belonging to the SA, many stormtroopers returned the feeling seeing the army as insufficiently committed to the National Socialist dictatorship. Max Heydebreck, an SA leader in Rummelsburg, denounced the army to his fellow brownshirts telling them "Some of the officers of the army are swine. Most officers are too old and have to be replaced by young ones. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army." Despite such hostility between the brownshirts and the regular army, Blomberg and others in the military saw the SA as a source of raw recruits for an enlarged and revitalized army. Röhm however wanted to eliminate the generalship of the Prussian aristocracy altogether using the SA to become the core of a new German military. With the army limited by the Treaty of Versailles to one hundred thousand soldiers its leaders watched anxiously as membership in the SA surpassed three million men by the beginning of 1934. In January 1934, Röhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum demanding that the SA replace the regular army as the nation's ground forces and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA.

• 3. Architects Of The Purge

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  In preparation for the purge both Himmler and Heydrich assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid money by France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on the 24th of June that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government. Röhm's homosexuality was used against him. In addition Röhm and other SA leaders were accused of debauchery and acts of drunkenness. At Hitler's direction Göring Himmler Heydrich and Victor Lutze drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed. One of the men Göring recruited to assist him was Willi Lehmann a Gestapo official and NKVD spy. On the 25th of June General Werner von Fritsch placed the Reichswehr on the highest level of alert. On the 27th of June Hitler moved to secure the army's cooperation. Blomberg and General Walther von Reichenau the army's liaison to the party gave it to him by expelling Röhm from the German Officers' League. On the 28th of June Hitler went to Essen to attend the wedding celebration and reception of Josef Terboven. From there he called Röhm's adjutant at Bad Wiessee and ordered SA leaders to meet with him on the 30th of June at 11:00. On the 29th of June a signed article in Völkischer Beobachter by Blomberg appeared in which Blomberg stated with great fervour that the Reichswehr stood behind Hitler. As a means of isolating Röhm on the 20th of April 1934 Göring transferred control of the Prussian political police (Gestapo) to Himmler who Göring believed could be counted on to move against Röhm. Himmler named his deputy Reinhard Heydrich to head the Gestapo on the 22nd of April 1934. Himmler envied the independence and power of the SA although by this time he and Heydrich had already begun restructuring the SS from a bodyguard formation for Nazi leaders into its own independent elite corps one loyal to both himself and Hitler.

• 4. Targets And Casualties

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  At about 04:30 on the 30th of June 1934 Hitler and his entourage flew to Munich. From the airport they drove to the Bavarian Interior Ministry where they assembled the leaders of an SA rampage that had taken place in city streets the night before. Enraged Hitler tore the epaulets off the shirt of SA-Obergruppenführer August Schneidhuber the chief of the Munich police for failing to keep order in the city the previous night. Hitler shouted at Schneidhuber and accused him of treachery. Schneidhuber was executed later that day. As the stormtroopers were hustled off to prison Hitler assembled a large group of SS and regular police and departed for the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee where Ernst Röhm and his followers were staying. With Hitler's arrival in Bad Wiessee between 06:00 and 07:00 the SA leadership still in bed were taken by surprise. SS men stormed the hotel and Hitler personally placed Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest. The SS found Breslau SA leader Edmund Heines in bed with an unidentified eighteen-year-old male SA senior troop leader. Hitler ordered both Heines and his partner taken outside the hotel and shot. Goebbels emphasised this aspect in subsequent propaganda justifying the purge as a crackdown on moral turpitude. Meanwhile the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Röhm and Hitler. Against conservatives and old enemies the regime did not limit itself to a purge of the SA. Having earlier imprisoned or exiled prominent Social Democrats and Communists Hitler used the occasion to move against conservatives he considered unreliable. This included Vice-Chancellor Papen and those in his immediate circle. In Berlin on Göring's personal orders an armed SS unit stormed the Vice-Chancellery. Gestapo officers attached to the SS unit shot Papen's secretary Herbert von Bose without bothering to arrest him first. The Gestapo arrested and later executed Papen's close associate Edgar Jung the author of Papen's Marburg speech and disposed of his body by dumping it in a ditch.

• 5. Legal Justification And Propaganda

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  Wanting to present the massacre as legally sanctioned Hitler had the cabinet approve a measure on the 3rd of July that declared "The measures taken on June the 30th of July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defence by the State." Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner a conservative who had been Bavarian Justice Minister in the years of the Weimar Republic demonstrated his loyalty to the new regime by drafting the statute which added a legal veneer to the purge. Signed into law by Hitler Gürtner and Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick the "Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defence" retroactively legalized the murders committed during the purge. Germany's legal establishment further capitulated to the regime when the country's leading legal scholar Carl Schmitt wrote an article defending Hitler's the 13th of July speech. It was named Der Führer schützt das Recht meaning "The Führer Upholds the Law". A special fund administered by SS General Franz Breithaupt was set up for the relatives of the murdered from which they were cared for at the expense of the state. The widows of the murdered SA leaders received between 1,000 and 1,600 marks a month depending on the rank of the murdered person. Kurt von Schleicher's stepdaughter received 250 marks per month up to the age of 21 and the son of General von Bredow received a monthly allowance of 150 marks. On the 13th of July 1934 Hitler justified the purge in a nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag. He denounced "the worst treachery in world history" telling the crowd that "undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements" would be annihilated. The crowd which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest shouted its approval.

• 6. Military Reaction And Aftermath

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  The army almost unanimously applauded the Night of the Long Knives even though the generals Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow were among the victims. A telegram purportedly from the ailing Hindenburg Germany's highly revered military hero expressed his "profoundly felt gratitude" and congratulated Hitler for "nipping treason in the bud" although Hermann Göring later admitted during the Nuremberg trials that the telegram was never seen by Hindenburg and was actually written by the Nazis. General von Reichenau went so far as to publicly give credence to the lie that Schleicher had been plotting to overthrow the government. In his speech to the Reichstag on the 13th of July justifying his actions Hitler denounced Schleicher for conspiring with Röhm to overthrow the government. Hitler alleged both were traitors working in the pay of France. Since Schleicher was a good friend of the French Ambassador André François-Poncet and because of his reputation for intrigue the claim that Schleicher was working for France had enough surface plausibility for most Germans to accept it nevertheless François-Poncet was not declared persona non grata as would have been usual if an ambassador were involved in a plot against his host government. The army's support for the purge however would have far-reaching consequences for the institution. The humbling of the SA ended the threat it had posed to the army but by standing by Hitler during the purge the army bound itself more tightly to the Nazi regime.