The
Night of the Long Knives (
German:
Nacht der langen Messer (
help·
info)), or the
Röhm Purge, also called
Operation Hummingbird (German:
Unternehmen Kolibri), was a
purge that took place in
Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934. Chancellor
Adolf Hitler, urged on by
Hermann Göring and
Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political
extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of
Ernst Röhm and the
Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis'
paramilitary organization. Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent
coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called
Röhm Putsch.
The primary instruments of Hitler's action, which carried out most of the killings, were the
Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its
Security Service (SD) and
Gestapo (
secret police) under
Reinhard Heydrich.
Göring's personal police battalion also took part in the killings. Many of those killed in the purge were leaders of the SA, the best-known being Röhm himself, the SA's chief of staff and one of Hitler's longtime supporters and allies. Leading members of the leftist-leaning
Strasserist faction of the
Nazi Party, including its figurehead,
Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor
Kurt von Schleicher and
Bavarian politician
Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Hitler's Munich
Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The murders of SA leaders were also intended to improve the image of the Hitler government with a German public that was increasingly critical of thuggish SA tactics.
Hitler saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. He also wanted to conciliate leaders of the
Reichswehr, the German military, who feared and despised the SA as a potential rival, in particular because of Röhm's ambition to merge the army and the SA under his own leadership. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. In Röhm's view, President
Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933 had brought the Nazi Party to power, but had left unfulfilled the party's larger goals. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate
German critics of his new regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor
Franz von Papen, as well as to settle scores with old enemies.
[a]
At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds,
[b][c][d] with high estimates running from 700 to 1,000.
[1] More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested.
[2] The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the Wehrmacht for Hitler. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against
extrajudicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government.
[3] It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his July 13 speech to the
Reichstag.
Before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to the purge as
Hummingbird (German:
Kolibri), the codeword used to send the execution squads into action on the day of the purge.
[4] The codename for the operation appears to have been chosen arbitrarily. The phrase "Night of the Long Knives" in the German language predates the killings and refers generally to acts of vengeance.
Purge
At about 04:30 on June 30, 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
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.
[36] 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.
[37]
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.
[36] Goebbels emphasised this aspect in subsequent propaganda justifying the purge as a crackdown on
moral turpitude.
[38] Meanwhile, the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Röhm and Hitler.
[39]
Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Röhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA.
[38] Arriving back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler addressed the assembled crowd. Consumed with rage, Hitler denounced "the worst treachery in world history". Hitler told 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. Hess, present among the assembled, even volunteered to shoot the "traitors".
[39] Joseph Goebbels, who had been with Hitler at Bad Wiessee, set the final phase of the plan in motion. Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Göring at 10:00 with the codeword
Kolibri to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims.
[38] Sepp Dietrich received orders from Hitler for the
Leibstandarte to form an "execution squad" and go to Stadelheim prison where certain SA leaders were being held.
[40] There in the prison courtyard, the
Leibstandarte firing squad shot five SA generals and an SA colonel.
[41] Those not immediately executed were taken back to the
Leibstandarte barracks at
Lichterfelde, given one-minute "trials", and shot by a firing squad.
[42]
Röhm's fate
Röhm was held briefly at
Stadelheim Prison[j] in Munich, while Hitler considered his future. On July 1, at Hitler's behest,
Theodor Eicke, Commandant of the
Dachau concentration camp, and his SS adjutant
Michael Lippert visited Röhm. Once inside Röhm's cell, they handed him a
Browning pistol loaded with a single cartridge and told him he had ten minutes to kill himself or they would do it for him. Röhm demurred, telling them, "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself."
[36] Having heard nothing in the allotted time, they returned to Röhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance.
[49] Eicke and Lippert then shot Röhm, killing him.
[50] In 1957, the German authorities tried Lippert in Munich for Röhm's murder. Until then, Lippert had been one of the few executioners of the purge to evade trial. Lippert was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
[51]
Interestingly, Rohm was in favor of a second revolution to re-distribute wealth - a communist tenet tht Hitler found offensive.
Sounds a lot like Bernie, Lizzie, and Bpptie - all Marxists!
Is Fauxcahontas a fake candidate too?????
