Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives, also known as Reichsmordwoche or "the Blood Purge" (German, Nacht der langen Messer) was a purge ordered by Adolf Hitler of potential political rivals in the Sturmabteilung, or S.A. The Night of the Long Knives took place during the late night of June 30 and the early morning of July 1 in 1934. Official records tally the dead at 77, though 400 are believed to have been killed.
Origins
By the summer of 1933, the S.A. had grown discontent with the progress of the Nazi revolution. Many had taken seriously the socialist aspects of the Nazi platform and believed further steps needed to be taken to achieve substantive social and economic change. They also wanted to become the core of a new German army.
By 1934, Hitler dominated Germany's government, but still feared losing power in a coup d'état. To maintain complete control, he encouraged political infighting among his subordinates. As a result, a political struggle grew, with Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich on one side and Ernst Röhm, the leader of the S.A., on another. The S.A. was the only remaining viable threat to Hitler's power.
The power of Röhm and his violent organization frightened his rivals. Goering and Himmler asked Heydrich to assemble a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid 12 million marks by France to overthrow Hitler. Himmler presented the "evidence" to Hitler, fuelling his suspicion that Röhm intended to use the S.A. to launch a plot against him.
Hitler had always liked Röhm; he was one of the first members of the Nazi Party, paticipating in the Beer Hall Putsch. But Hitler was under increasing pressure to reduce the S.A. influence. German military leaders were unhappy with Röhm's proposal that the German army be absorbed into the larger S.A., and the industrialists that supported Hitler were concerned over the SA's socialist leanings. The regular army was also alarmed by the size of the S.A. — in early 1934 it numbered 2.5 million, while the army was limited by the Treaty of Versailles to 100,000. Members of the Nazi party also viewed Röhm and some other S.A. leaders with distaste because they frequently practiced homosexual acts.
With all these groups aligned against Röhm, Hitler decided to act. He ordered all S.A. leaders to attend a meeting at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Wiessee near Munich. On June 30 Hitler took personal command of Röhm's arrest. Alfred Rosenberg's diary provides an account:
With an SS escort detachment the suicide but was eventually shot. Hitler also used this purge of the S.A. to settle old scores: Gregor Strasser, Gustav von Kahr, General Kurt von Schleicher and Edgar Jung were all murdered, totaling over 100. Franz von Papen was put under house arrest.
On July 3, the Reich government decided upon the Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense, consisting of a single article simply declaring the "measures taken" to be "legal State self-defense."
Hitler announced the purge on 13 July, claiming 61 had been executed, 13 shot while resisting arrest, and 3 had committed suicide. In announcing the purge he stated, "If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge (oberster Gerichtsherr) of the German people". - from William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1959.
As a result of the purge, Hitler gained a measure of gratitude and support from the Reichswehr. On July 26th, the S.S. was made independent of the S.A., with Himmler as its Reichsführer, answerable only to Hitler. Victor Lutze became the new leader of the S.A., and it was soon marginalized in the Nazi power structure.
See also
