Encyclopedia
The
Night of the Long Knives , also known as
Reichsmordwoche, "Operation Hummingbird" or "the Blood Purge", was a lethal purge of
Adolf Hitler's potential political rivals in the
Sturmabteilung . The SA was the paramilitary organization of the
Nazi Party that had helped the Nazis rise to power in the Twenties, culminating with Hitler being appointed
Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The name, "
Night of the Long Knives", is a reference to the massacre of Vortigern's men by
Angle,
Jute and
Saxon mercenaries in the
Arthurian myth.
Occurring over a weekend, the purge targeted
SA leaders and members who were associated more with
socialism than with
nationalism, and hence were viewed as a threat to the continued support for
Chancellor Adolf Hitler within the Army and conservative business community that had supported Hitler's rise to power. During this event, however, the
Gestapo also targeted conservative rivals and elements within and outside the regime, and the purge did not focus on suppressing the
Communists or
Social Democrats, the
Nazi Party's primary foes from the left.
Official records tally the dead at 77, though some 400 are believed to have been killed.
The Night of the Long Knives should not be confused with the
Kristallnacht.
Background
By the summer of 1933, the SA had grown discontented with the progress of the
Nazi regime. Many had taken seriously the "Socialism" of "National Socialism" and were angry at Hitler and the other party leaders for abandoning principles of
socialism.
This socialist uprising within the SA was due to the earlier stock market crisis of
Wall Street in the autumn of 1929. The
stock market crash of 1929 at Wall Street forced the US banks to withdraw their financial loans to foreign countries, which also affected Germany, as it had received a rather large amount of money as loans during the Dawes Plan, which rendered financial support from the US to Germany in the period after
World War I. The withdrawing of these loans resulted in numerous bankruptcies all over Germany, leading to widespread layoffs and unemployment amongst the working class. For these unemployed workers the dream of food, clothes and solidarity all became reality with the creation of the SA. This made many of the unemployed German workers join the SA, which by the Nazi assumption of power in March 1933 counted about 700,000 men. Of these 700,000 men about 85% belonged to the working class. This eventually resulted in strong socialist leanings within the SA, and resulted in alienation towards the national-socialist policy of the
NSDAP. The SA grew increasingly distant from the Nazi leadership as a result 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.
Hitler dominated Germany's government by 1934 but still feared losing power in a
coup d'état. To maintain complete control he allowed political infighting to continue 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 SA, on the other. The SA 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, fueling his suspicion that Röhm intended to use the SA to launch a plot against him . Himmler at the time had nearly completed the restructuring of another Nazi organization, the SS , from one tasked with protecting Nazi leaders into a secret police formation. The eventual marginalization of the SA removed an obstacle to Himmler's accumulation of power over the coming years.
Hitler had always liked Röhm; he was one of the first members of the Nazi Party and had participated in the Beer Hall Putsch. But Hitler was under increasing pressure to reduce the influence of the SA. Hitler's wealthy industrialist supporters were concerned over the SA's
socialist leanings: Socialist rhetoric had been useful for the Nazi rise to power, but many felt the ideology stood in contradiction to nationalist Nazi goals.
Military leaders were likewise alarmed by Röhm's proposal that the German army, which was limited by the
Treaty of Versailles to 100,000 men, be absorbed into the larger SA, which in early 1934 numbered 2.5 million. Some leaders of the Nazi party also joined in the dislike that many conservative officers expressed over the overt
homosexuality of Röhm and some other SA leaders.
The
Night of the Long Knives represented a turning point in the conduct of German government. From that point on, a number of things were clear: The Nazi party was in unquestioned control of the state, Hitler was in control of the Nazi party, and both were fully prepared to use raw, brutal violence to accomplish their political objectives. In the post-war period, this first round of fratricidal bloodletting would be seen by some as a presage of the
Holocaust.
The purge
With all these groups aligned against Röhm, Hitler decided to act. He ordered all SA leaders to attend a meeting at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee near
Munich. On June 30 Hitler took personal command of Röhm's arrest. He then ordered Göring's
Landespolizeigruppe General Göring and Himmler's
Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler into action.
Alfred Rosenberg's diary provides an account:
- With an SS escort detachment the Führer drove to Bad Wiessee and knocked softly on Röhm's door: “Message from Munich,” he said with disguised voice. “Well come in,” Röhm called to the supposed messenger, “the door is open.” Hitler tore open the door, fell on Röhm as he lay in bed, seized him by the throat and screamed, “You are under arrest, you swine.” Then he turned the traitor over to the SS. At first Röhm refused to get dressed. The SS then threw his clothes in the Chief of Staff's face until he bestirred himself to put them on. In the room next door, they found young men engaged in homosexual activity. “And these are the kind who want to be leaders in Germany,” the Führer said trembling.
In the following hours other SA leaders were also arrested, and many were shot out of hand. Apparently Hitler intended to pardon Röhm, but eventually decided to have him executed. It is believed that Röhm was offered a chance of
suicide but was eventually shot by
Dachau Concentration Camp Commandant
Theodor Eicke. Hitler also used this purge of the SA to settle old scores: Third-Positionist
Gregor Strasser, former Bavarian Commissar and
Triumvir Gustav von Kahr, Father Bernhard Stempfle, former
Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Conservative Revolutionary figure Edgar Jung, among others, were all murdered. The current Vice Chancellor,
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 addressed the Reichstag 13 July, claiming 61 had been executed, 13 shot while resisting arrest, and 3 had committed suicide. He denounced Röhm for his homosexuality and justified his extra-legal actions by declaring "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 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 SS was made independent of the SA, with Himmler as its Reichsführer, answerable only to Hitler. Victor Lutze became the new leader of the SA, and it was soon marginalized in the Nazi power structure.
In Nazi propaganda the purge was disguised as the suppression of a fictitious
Röhm-Putsch, i.e., a coup d'etat of SA-leader
Röhm against
Hitler.
See also
References
- Tolstoy, Nikolai, Night of the Long Knives Balantine Books, New York City, 1972.
- Mau, Herman, “The ‘Second Revolution’ — June 30, 1934” article in Republic to Reich: The Making of the Nazi Revolution edited by Hajo Holborn. Pantheon Books, N.Y.C., 1972.
- Heiden, Konrad, A History of National Socialism A.A. Knopf, New York City, 1935.
- Littlejohn, David, The Sturmabteilung: Hitler’s stormtroopers 1921 – 1945 Osprey Publishing, London, 1990
- Maracin, Paul, Night of the Long Knives: 48 Hours that Changed the History of the World
External links
