Night of the Long Knives

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The Night of the Long Knives (German: Nacht der langen Messer) or "Operation Hummingbird," took place in Germany on June 29 and June 30, 1934, when at least eighty-five people, mostly in the Sturmabteilung (SA), were murdered by the Nazi regime. Adolf Hitler ordered the purge to destroy the political independence of the SA, to placate its critics in the army, and to settle scores with old enemies. Most were killed on Hitler's orders by the Schutzstaffel (SS). The purge strengthened and consolidated Hitler's power in Germany.

No fewer than eighty-five people died during the purge, though the final death toll may have been more than a hundred. More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested as well.[1] The name "Night of the Long Knives" is a reference to the massacre of Vortigern's men by Angle, Jute, and Saxon mercenaries in Arthurian myth.

Background

Hitler's consolidation of power

President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. In the next several months, Hitler eliminated all rival political parties in Germany. By the summer of 1933, Germany had become a one-party state, under Hitler's direction and control.

And yet, despite his swift consolidation of political authority, Hitler did not exercise absolute power. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, or Reichswehr, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg as its commander-in-chief. While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army, a return to conscription, and a more aggresive foreign policy, the army continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime.

To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organization, also maintained a degree of autonomy from Hitler. Under the direction of Ernst Röhm, the Stormtoopers' street brawls against the Communists and other political parties had been crucial in Hitler's rise to power. After Hitler's appointment as chancellor, however, their continuing and largely unchecked violence disturbed the German middle classes and other conservative elements in society, such as the army. Hitler's next move would be to strengthen his position with the army by moving against its nemesis, the SA.[2]

On July 6, 1933, at a gathering of high-ranking Nazi officials, Hitler declared the success of the National Socialist revolution. Now that the Nazi party had seized the reigns of power in Germany, he said, it was time to consolidate its hold. As Hitler told the gathered officials, "The stream of revolution has been undammed, but it must be channelled into the secure bed of evolution."[3]

Hitler's speech signaled his intention to rein in the SA, whose ranks had grown rapidly in the early 1930s. This would not prove to be a simple task, however, as the SA constituted a large part of the most devoted followers of Nazism. The SA traced its dramatic rise in numbers in the 1930s to the onset of the Great Depression, when many Germans lost faith in traditional institutions. The SA fulfilled the yearning of many workers for both class solidarity and nationalist fervor. Many stormtroopers believed in the socialist promise of National Socialism and expected the Nazi regime to take more radical economic action, such as breaking up the vast landed estates of the aristocracy. That the regime did not take such steps disillusioned those who expected an economic as well as a political revolution.

Röhm's "continuing revolution"

No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution," as one prominent stormtrooper put it, than the organization's leader, Ernst Röhm."[4] As one of the founding members of the Nazi party, Röhm had participated in the Beer Hall Putsch, an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. Röhm took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.

Not content solely with the leadership of the SA, Röhm lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defense, 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 himself a Nazi, and therefore represented a bridge between the army and the party. Largely recruited from the Prussian nobility, Blomberg and many of his fellow officers regarded the SA as a plebeian brown-uniformed mob that endangered the position of the army as the sole repository of German military power.[5]

While Blomberg and others in the military saw the SA as a source of recruits for an enlarged and revitalized army, Röhm wanted the SA to become the core of a new German military. Limited by the Treaty of Versailles to one hundred thousand soldiers, army leaders watched anxiously as membership in the SA surpassed three million men by the beginning of 1934.[6] In January 1934, Röhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum demanding that SA should replace the army as the nation's ground forces, and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA.[7]

In response, Hitler met with Blomberg and the leadership of the SA and SS on February 28, 1934. Under pressure from Hitler, Röhm reluctantly signed a pledge stating that he recognized the supremacy of the army over the SA. Hitler announced to those present that the SA would act as a auxiliary to the Reichswehr, not the other way around. After Hitler and most of the army officers had left, however, Röhm declared that he would not take instructions from "the ridiculous corporal"—a demeaning reference to Hitler.[8] While Hitler did not take immediate action against Röhm for his intemperate outburst, it nonetheless deepened the rift between them.

The crisis mounts

By the spring of 1934, it became clear that Röhm's vision of a new Germany was incompatible with Hitler's plan to consolidate power and expand the army. As a result, a political struggle within the party grew, with Prussian Minister-President Hermann Göring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler, and Himmler's deputy Reinhard Heydrich arraying themselves against Röhm. As a means of isolating Röhm, on April 20, 1934 Göring transfered control of the Prussian political police to Himmler, whom Göring believed could be counted on to move against Röhm.[9] Himmler at the time had nearly completed the restructuring of the SS from a bodyguard of Nazi leaders into an elite corps loyal to both himself and Hitler. The eventual marginalization of the SA removed an obstacle to Himmler's accumulation of power in the coming years.

Conservatives in the army, industry, and politics placed Hitler under increasing pressure to reduce the influence of the SA and to move against Röhm. While Röhm's homosexuality did not endear him to conservatives, they were more concerned about his political ambitions. Industrialists such as Gustav Krupp, Alfried Krupp, and Fritz Thyssen, who had provided money and support for Hitler during his rise, saw Röhm and the SA as a threat to stability. On June 17, 1934, conservative pressure for Hitler to act came to a head when Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, confidant of the ailing Hindenburg, gave a speech at Marburg University warning of the threat of "second revolution."[10] In private, Papen, an Catholic aristocrat with ties to army and industry, threaten to resign if Hitler did not act.[11]

Hitler hurried off to Neudeck to meet with Hindenburg. Blomberg, who had been meeting with the President, told Hitler that Hindenburg was close to declaring martial law and turning the government over to the Reichswehr if Hitler did not take immediate steps against Röhm and his brownshirts. Such a move from Hindenburg, the only person in Germany with the authority to depose the Nazi regime, left Hitler with little room for compromise. He left Neudeck to with the intention to destroy Röhm, and to settle scores with old enemies.[12]

With instructions from Hitler, Himmler asked Heydrich to assemble a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid twelve million marks by France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown "evidence" on June 24 that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government (Röhm-Putsch).[13] Meanwhile Göring and Himmler, at Hitler's direction, drew up lists of people outside the SA that they wanted killed. The list included former high-ranking Nazi official Gregor Strasser, Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as chancellor, and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who crushed the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The frantic planning for the move against Röhm, the leadership of the SA, and many others who represented a real or imagined threat to the Nazi regime came to a head on the night of June 29, 1934.

Execution

On June 29, 1934, Hitler, accompanied by the SS, arrived at Wiesse, where he personally arrested Röhm. During the next twenty-four hours two hundred other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiesse and in the following weeks many SA men loyal to Röhm were killed. Many were shot as soon as they were captured but Hitler decided to pardon Röhm because of his past services to the movement. However, after much pressure from Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Röhm should die. At first Hitler insisted that Röhm should be allowed to commit suicide but, when he refused, Röhm was shot by two SS men.

Röhm was replaced by Victor Lutze as head of the SA. Lutze was viewed as a weak man and the SA gradually lost its power in Hitler's Germany. The Party had all of the decorative SA daggers ground to remove the name of Röhm from the blade, which was replaced with "Blut und Ehre." or blood and honour. The SS under the leadership of Himmler grew rapidly during the next few years, replacing the SA as the dominant force in Germany.

The purge of the SA was kept secret until it was announced by Adolf Hitler on 13th July. It was during this speech that Hitler gave the purge its name: Night of the Long Knives (a phrase from a popular Nazi song). Hitler claimed that 61 had been executed while 13 had been shot resisting arrest and three had committed suicide. Others have argued that as many as 400 people were killed during the purge. In his speech, Hitler explained why he had not relied on the courts to deal with the conspirators: "In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I become the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason."

The Night of the Long Knives represented a turning point in the conduct of German government. From then on, it was clear that the Nazi Party was in unquestioned control of the state, that Hitler was in control of the Nazi party, and that both were fully prepared to use brutal violence to accomplish their political objectives. This fratricidal bloodletting could be seen as a harbinger of the violence that characterized the Nazi regime, from the use of force to establish an empire of conquest, to the later abattoirs of the Holocaust.

Incomplete list of murdered persons

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 39. ISBN 0143037900. At least eight-five people are known to have been summarily killed without any formal legal proceedings being taken against them. Göring alone had over a thousand people arrested.
  2. ^ Kershaw, Ian (1999). Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 435. ISBN 0393046710.
  3. ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 20. ISBN 0143037900.
  4. ^ Frei, Norbert (1987). National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Führer State 1933-1945. Oxford University Press. p. 126.
  5. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John (2005). The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (2nd edition ed.). {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
  6. ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 22. ISBN 0143037900.
  7. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John (2005). The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945 (2nd edition ed.). p. 726. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
  8. ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 26. ISBN 0143037900.
  9. ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 29. ISBN 0143037900.
  10. ^ Von Papen, Franz (1953). Memoirs. Dutton]. pp. 308–312.
  11. ^ Von Papen, Franz (1953). Memoirs. Dutton]. p. 309.
  12. ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 30. ISBN 0143037900.
  13. ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 29. ISBN 0143037900.

References

  • Evans, Richard, The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Group, 2004.
  • Evans, Richard, The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group, 2005.
  • Frei, Norbert, National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Führer State 1933-1945. Oxford University Press, 1987.
  • Heiden, Konrad, A History of National Socialism. A.A. Knopf, New York City, 1935.
  • Kershaw, Ian, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris. W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.
  • Littlejohn, David, The Sturmabteilung: Hitler’s Stormtroopers 1921 – 1945. Osprey Publishing, London, 1990
  • Maracin, Paul, The Night of the Long Knives: 48 Hours that Changed the History of the World. The Lyons Press, 2004.
  • 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, New York City, 1972.
  • O'Neill, Robert, The German Army and the Nazi Party 1933-1939. James H Heineman, 1967.
  • Spielvogel, Jackson J. Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History. New York: Prentice Hall, 1996.
  • Tolstoy, Nikolai, Night of the Long Knives. Balantine Books, New York City, 1972.
  • Wheeler-Bennett, John, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945, Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd Edition, 2005.

External links

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