Night of the Long Knives

Purging dissent within the Nazi Party

Hitler built his regime and foul legacy on a mountain of corpses. Today's article is about the time he turned on his own, killing not innocent citizens for being a Jew or a homosexual, nor the soldiers and civilians of another country, but rather members of his own party. Ninety years ago, in the early hours of June 30, 1934, the Nazis embarked on Unternehmen Kolibri (Operation Hummingbird), better known as the Night of the Long Knives. It was a purge of the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Division," "SA"), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing. At least 85 men were killed in the purge, including the SA's leader Ernst Röhm, and numerous individuals who were not members but still wanted dead by Hitler. The event not only solidified Hitler's grasp on the Nazi Party, but also paved the way for further extrajudicial killings by the Nazi regime, the most appalling being the Holocaust itself.

The SA, also called the Brownshirts for their uniform, was inspired by Mussolini's "Blackshirts" paramilitary, and founded in 1921. It arose out of the German Freikorps tradition of independent paramilitary companies, which had existed since the 18th century. Right-wing Freikorps filled with disaffected veterans became a staple of post-World War I life in Weimar Germany, where they were instrumental in foiling a communist revolution. The Nazis put the SA to good effect, disrupting the events of rival political parties, intimidating the party's enemies and clashing with the Roter Frontkämpferbund ("Red Front Fighters' League), the German Communist Party's own paramilitary, in frequent street battles. (Half a year before Hitler became Chancellor (Read our earlier article), in June 1932, there were over 400 street clashes involving the SA, with over 80 dead.)

Ernst Röhm, the SA's co-founder and chief of staff, was a World War I veteran who reached the rank of captain, and an early and important Nazi Party stalwart. He was nicknamed "the machine gun king of Bavaria," as he was responsible for storing and supplying illegal machine guns to Bavarian Freikorps units. He participated in Hitler's ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, leading a force of 2,000 men and capturing the War Ministry for 16 hours. Röhm became a friend to Hitler, and the only man in the Nazi Party who could call him "Adolf" in public.

Röhm and the SA were useful tools in the 20s and the first years of the 30s, but quickly became a problem once Hitler gained the position of Chancellor and set about solidifying his control over the nation. With all other political parties banned, there was no longer a need for street violence. The SA, however, was accustomed to rowdy and violent behavior, and was determined to indulge in it. Wild SA parties made the SA, and therefore the Nazis, look decadent. Nighttime rampages and unprovoked attacks on civilian passersby, and even foreign diplomats, caused an outrage among the population. From Hitler's perspective, however, the SA and Röhm were growing an even worse headache.

As head of the government, Hitler desperately needed to be on good terms with two groups: industrial magnates and the military's top leadership. The first was needed to build up a new, reinvigorated military, while the second was vital for eventually carrying out Hitler's plans of conquest. As it happened, both groups had reason to fear and hate Röhm and his thugs

The Nazis were not reluctant to use socialist rhetoric and talking point in their early career, a fact attested by the party's full name: "National Socialist German Workers' Party." This drew many lower-class people to the party early on and also helped syphon away public support from the Communist and Social Democratic parties. Naturally, the redistribution of wealth along socialist principles was no longer desirable once the Nazis were actually in power, but Röhm wasn't willing to let go of the idea. He continued to demand an overtly anti-capitalistic "second revolution," which understandably upset the very same industrial magnates Chancellor Hitler was courting.

The military's problem with Röhm was equally profound. The Treaty of Versailles limited the German armed forces to 100,000 men, while the SA, unfettered by such rules, swelled to over 3 million members by 1934. Many people, Röhm himself included, wanted the SA to supplant the military as Germany's official armed forces, with the former military relegated to the duty of training new SA men. Röhm was also vocally disdainful of the entrenched officer elite, who largely came from the old aristocratic families of Prussia.

Hitler considered the SA not only an obstacle for two important alliance he had to make within German society, but also a potential threat to his personal control of the Nazi Party. Röhm was the only prominent Nazi who dared display independence rather than unquestioning loyalty, and the SA was a strong enough organization to seriously threaten Hitler should Röhm ever move against him.

Despite all the problems Röhm caused, it was not Hitler who started scheming against him, but men around the Führer. Rudolf Hess (Read our earlier article) was angered by Röhm's contempt of the party's internal bureaucracy. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the Schutzstaffel (SS), was frustrated by the authority the SA had over the SS, as the SS was originally an adjunct to the SA. Hermann Göring and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels also quietly positioned themselves against Röhm.

As the rift between Hitler and Röhm deepened, even non-Nazi conservative politicians started to get involved. General Kurt von Schleicher, a former defense minister and the last chancellor before Hitler, began to make his own maneuvers. He started criticizing Hitler's cabinet, while two of his followers, one of them General Ferdinand von Bredow, started circulating a proposed list for a new cabinet under Hitler, which included Röhm as defense minister; Gregor Strasser, an early Nazi leader who parted ways with Hitler, as minister of the national economy; a Heinrich Brüning, a non-Nazi politician as foreign minister; and Schleicher himself as vice-chancellor. Schleicher was no longer an important figure in politics by early 1934, but the list gave rise to rumors that he was conspiring with Röhm to make a comeback.

Meanwhile, in April 1934, Göring gave control of the Gestapo, the secret police he created the year before, to Himmler, whom he trusted to move on Röhm when the time came. Himmler, in turn, appointed his deputy Reinhard Heydrich (who would be famously assassinated in Prague in 1942) as head of the Gestapo. Himmler and Göring started compiling a list of people who would need to be terminated to remove the threat of Röhm and a rogue SA, sometimes adding or striking names as a favor to the other. In late May, Schleicher and Brüning were tipped off that they were on the death list. Brüning fled to the Netherlands, but Schleicher laughed off the warning as a practical joke.

By early June, the plan to decapitate the SA and do away with Röhm was complete. At this point, Hitler still knew nothing about it.

Hitler was scheduled to meet Mussolini in Venice on June 15. Prior to the meeting, German Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath, a former ambassador to Italy who knew Mussolini well, gave orders to the then-current ambassador to contact Mussolini with a request. Mussolini agreed to Neurath's request, and brought up the matter of the SA when he met with Hitler, claiming that the organization was tarnishing the Führer's international reputation. He also criticized Hitler for tolerating the SA's uncontrolled violence and its homosexuality. (It should be noted that, despite homosexuality being criminalized in Germany, Röhm was a known homosexual.) Mussolini's upbraiding did not convince Hitler to move against Röhm, but, combined with the concerns of the military and the industrial magnates, helped pushed him in that direction.

In true Nazi fashion, the final push to get Hitler moving came from a lie. Himmler and Heydrich assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence "proving" that France paid Röhm 12 million Reichsmarks (roughly 31.5 million dollars today) to overthrow Hitler. Simultaneously, top SS officers were shown similarly fake proof that Röhm was planning to use the SA in a coup against Hitler's government. This finally pushed Hitler over the edge, and he asked for a list of people in- and outside the SA to be killed. (Interestingly, one of the men compiling the list was secretly an agent of the NKVD, the Soviet predecessor of the KGB.) The military also promised their cooperation. On June 28, Hitler phoned Röhm's adjutant and ordered the SA leadership to meet him at a hotel in Bad Wiessee, a short drive from Munich.

The purge, originally codenamed Kolibri ("Hummingbird") began in the early hours of June 30, when Hitler and his entourage flew to Munich at around 4:30 a.m., then drove to the Bavarian Interior Ministry. The leaders of an SA rampage that occurred the night before were already assembled there. The men were shipped off to prison, and the chief of police, also an SA officer, was executed later in the day for “failing to maintain order.”

Hitler then took Goebbels and a large contingent of loyal SS men and local regular police, and drove to Bad Wiessee, where SA leadership was waiting for him as ordered, expecting the meeting at 11 a.m. Hitler's convoy, however, arrived between 6 and 7 a.m., and stormed the building, catching SA leaders in their beds. As they were dragged out of their rooms, Röhm and several key figures were placed under arrest by Hitler personally. One regional SA leader was found in bed with an 18-year-old troop leader; both were taken out of the building and shot on Hitler's orders. This event conveniently played on Röhm's homosexuality and the SA's reputation for immoral behavior, and Goebbels' propaganda machine made good use of it in the aftermath of the purge. Meanwhile, other SA leaders, arriving to Munich by train to attend the meeting, were arrested by other SS units waiting for them at the station.

The purge extended beyond Munich, as arrests and plain murders were taking place elsewhere to remove the men on the list. Von Schleicher, who previously circulated a proposal for an alternative Hitler cabinet, was shot dead along with his wife in their home in Potsdam. His associate von Bredow was shot when answering the door in Berlin. Gregor Strasser, a former Nazi who parted ways with Hitler, was taken to the Gestapo HQ in Munich and shot in a cell. An associate of his was shot from behind on the street. Gustav Ritter von Kahr was the former prime minister of Bavaria and helped suppress the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.

Some of the killings had petty or unknown motivation. Otto Ballerstedt was the former chief of a political group in Bavaria; in 1922, Hitler physically assaulted him at a rally and was given a one-month prison sentence as a consequence. Bernhard Stempfle was a defrocked priest who was in Landsberg prison at the same time as Hitler after the Beer Hall Putsch, and was in fact one of the editors of Mein Kampf; it's not known why he had to die. A music critic named Wilhelm Eduard Schmid was killed because he had a similar name to someone on the list. Many of the killings occurred in prisons or concentration camps a while after the purge.

Franz von Papen, Hitler's own vice-chancellor and one of the politicians whose maneuvering helped him into power, criticized Hitler's tolerance with towards the SA earlier. He was arrested while his secretary and a close associate were killed. Von Papen was released a few days later and sent to Vienna as German ambassador, and the cowed politician did not try to criticize Hitler again.

Ernst Röhm himself was briefly held at a local prison. On July 1, two SS men entered his cell, handed him a Browning pistol (Read our earlier article) with a single round, and told him he could either kill himself in ten minutes or they'll do it. Röhm defiantly replied "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself." He was left alone then promptly shot dead ten minutes later. All in all, at least 85 men were killed in Operation Kolibri, but the number is certain to be higher, with some estimates going up to 150-200. Around 1,000 people were arrested.

The chief conspirators of the purge initially tried to keep it a secret, but quickly realized it was impossible. Göring ordered all relevant documents burned, while Goebbels tried to prevent newspapers from publishing lists of the dead. It was, however, impossible to hide the facts, and the propaganda machine soon leaned into event, proclaiming that Hitler and the SS foiled an imminent coup planned by Röhm. Many Germans believed the story, and the ones who did not were afraid to speak up. It was during the aftermath that the event came to be known as the Night of the Long Knives. The phrase, which originally referenced an obscure and possibly never-happened event in early medieval British history (Read our earlier article), was already in use in Germany to describe sinister purges and vengeances like this. It was frequently used by anti-Nazi press when writing about Nazi violence, and Hitler happily adopted the phrase when referring to the purge of June 30.

With the threat of Röhm and the SA out of the picture, the military and the industrial elite were quick to support Hitler. A very few high-ranking officers, including Field Marshal August von Mackensen, one of the greatest military leaders of the German Empire, spoke up against the killings of von Schleicher and von Bredow, who were generals themselves. They managed to get the two rehabilitated, with Hitler stating in a speech that the two were shot "in error" based on incorrect information.

The SA survived as an organization under a new leader, but no longer held any power and membership sharply dropped in the following years. A law passed on July 3, 1934, just a few days after the purge, retroactively made it legal. Hitler not only got rid of a thorn in the side and a potential threat, but also set a legal precedent that made extrajudicial killings by the Nazis legal, paving the way for more terror.

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