Night of the Long Knives 30 June

On this day, the 30th June, in 1934, Adolf Hitler led the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, against the Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. The S.A. was discontented with the progress of the Nazi regime and they felt that the ‘socialism’ element of National Socialism was being neglected. Their big mistake though was that they also wanted to become the core of a new German army. Hitler, using the tried and tested ‘divide and rule’ principle, fostered political infighting among his subordinates, with Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich on one side and Ernst Röhm, the leader of the S.A., on the other. At this time, the S.A. was the only remaining viable threat to Hitler’s power. 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. Hitler decided to act. Alfred Rosenberg’s diary provides an account of what happened next: "With an SS escort detachment the Führer … 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." Official records tally the dead at 77, although some 400 are believed to have been murdered - most were simply shot out of hand. When you come to think about it, there is a lot to be said for parliamentary democracy.