Rohm had more than fulfilled his promise to organize a uniformed paramilitary force for Hitler. By the beginning of 1931, the membership was marginally larger than the Reichswehr’s 100,000 men. As unemployment grew, so did the SA, and by the end of that same year they numbered 300,000. By the summer of 1934 there were 4.5 million brownshirts. Such numbers presented more of a threat to the Nazi Party than to the rest of the nation. Its strength gave the SA leaders enormous power over their fellow Nazis, and Rohm was as powerful as Hitler.
It has been alleged that the SA—and more especially its leader, Rohm—was determined to continue the revolution to a truly socialist conclusion. But the brownshirts were not reformers. They simply felt that the part they had played in giving Hitler absolute power should now be rewarded by jobs in the civil service, positions in commerce, or ranks in a new sort of army. Throughout the SA there was a feeling of anticlimax. The great revolutionary battle for which they had marched and drilled and trained for years was not going to take place. Hitler had moved into power without it. Furthermore, Hitler had already decided that his plans for curing unemployment and encouraging the economy and rearming must on no account be disturbed. Hitler said, “We must therefore not dismiss a businessman if he is a good businessman, even if he is not yet a National Socialist; and especially not if the National Socialist who is to take his place knows nothing about business.” That was not encouraging for old brown-shirts who had broken bones and spilled blood for the Nazi revolution.
On Thursday, 28 June 1934, Hitler went to Westphalia to attend the wedding of an old friend. Hardly had he arrived than there was a phone call from Himmler in Berlin. He had alarming reports of an imminent SA uprising. Goring—at Hitler’s side—fueled his anger. More reports followed, all equally alarming and equally false. Hitler returned to Berlin and alerted his SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (the elite unit used as his ceremonial guard). On Friday he phoned Rohm to tell him that he was coming to see him next day at 11 a. m. Rohm was to ensure that all senior SA officers were present.
Himmler continued to push his master to a decision. There was now evidence, said Himmler, that the SA units in Berlin were briefed to occupy government buildings on Saturday afternoon. In fact, the head of the Berlin SA had already left for a holiday in Tenerife. Another report from Himmler’s SS told of brownshirts marching through Munich demonstrating against Hitler. Actually they were shouting, “The Reichswehr is against us.” These two stories were enough to galvanize Hitler into action. By 2 a. m. he was in his private Junkers Ju 52 on his way to see Rohm. At 6:30 a. m. on Saturday, Hitler, gun in hand, forced open the bedroom doors of Hansel-bauer Pension where Rohm and his SA men were staying. Hitler was visibly shaken to find male sleeping partners in some of the rooms. Hitler called Rohm a traitor and arrested him in person.
By 10 A. M. Saturday, 30 June, Hitler had returned to nearby Munich. To Goring went the codeword kolibri (hummingbird). All over Germany senior SS officers opened their sealed orders and began the systematic murders.
At 5 P. M. Hitler. sent for Josef (Sepp) Dietrich, Commander of Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, and gave him a list of all the imprisoned SA leaders. “Go back to the barracks,” Hitler ordered, “select an officer and six men, and have the SA leaders shot for high treason.” Dietrich saw that six names had been ticked in green pencil.
Dietrich supervised the executions in person. As each of the men was led into the prison courtyard Dietrich impassively told him, “You have been condemned to death by the Fiihrer. Heil Hitler!” before each was shot. One of the men greeted Dietrich warmly. “Sepp, my friend, what on earth’s happening?” asked SA Obergruppenfuhrer August Schneidhuber, who was also the police president of Munich. Dietrich gave him the same treatment as the others.
The killings continued over the weekend. Some were shot as they answered the door or in their offices. No less horrifying than the ruthless way in which men were sent to kill was the robotic way they obeyed. Sent to murder a director in the Ministry of Transport (Dr. Erich Klausener, also president of Catholic Action and one-time police chief), Heydrich’s man killed him in his office and calmly phoned Heydrich on the director’s phone to say that the deed was done.
And the victims were not all supporters of Rohm. A high-ranking SS officer was murdered on the orders of his rival. A lawyer was killed for having taken part in legal proceedings against Nazis. Gregor Strasser had received from Hitler the Gold Party Badge just a few days before. He was killed because, although no longer a rival to Hitler for control of the Nazi Party, he was still considered a rival to Goring and Himmler.
At 3 p. M. on 1 July Rohm was still alive in his prison cell, but eventually Goring and Himmler persuaded Hitler that the brownshirt leader must die too. An SS officer gave Rohm a loaded revolver and a copy of Volkischer Beobachter which gave details of the “purge in the SA.” When Rohm declined to commit suicide, he was shot. “Aim slowly and calmly” were Rohm’s last words, but it took three bullets to kill him.
Disconcerted by the proliferation of killings. Hitler gave the order to stop on the afternoon of 2 July. At least one SA leader was saved by a messenger arriving in the nick of time. “The Fiihrer has given Hindenburg his word that the shooting is now finally over,” the execution squads were told.
To what extent the army was surprised by the “Night of the Long Knives” is difficult to ascertain. Some units had made guns and transport available to local SS units to help keep order should there be an SA revolt. Wachregiment-Berlin (Berlin Guard Regiment) assigned a company of men to guard the Bendlerstrasse buildings (the Reichs-wehr Ministry and Army High Command were in the same block). Reichswehr Ministry officers were told to have weapons at their place of work. As late as 28 June Generalleutnant Ewald von Kleist, the army commander in Silesia, had had a meeting with the local SA commander and discovered that each was preparing for an attack by the other. Inquiries made that night revealed that this same situation was being repeated by SA and army units all over Germany. General von Kleist was sufficiently alarmed to fly to Berlin and tell Fritsch, adding that he believed that the alarm was being fomented by the SS. Fritsch told Reichenau, who said, “That may well be right, but it is too late now.”
There is no evidence that Reichenau, or even Blomberg, had prior information about the planned murders, but it seems certain, from their subsequent actions, that neither of these men of the Ministry (as opposed to the generals in the High Command, next door on the Bendlerstrasse) was caught by surprise.
Fritsch, however, was certainly caught by surprise. General Walther K. Nehring remembers:
On 29th June 1934 after work I found myself at my house near the Reichswehr Ministry in the Bendlerstrasse on the Tirpitz Ufer. Captain von Mellenthin (personal general staff officer to General Freiherr von Fritsch, the army C in C) asked me to come to Fritsch urgently. I went in my civilian clothes rather than take the time to change. Upon arrival there General von Fritsch seemed rather excited as news had just arrived about a putsch of the SA planned for tomorrow. Fritsch ordered security measures and urgently wanted from me all the armoured vehicles in the area of Berlin. At that time there were very few.
It was quite clear that the General and his staff were completely surprised and could give no details. I suspected that he had been given very incomplete information by General von Reichenau of the Ministry.8
The killing that weekend of two of the army’s own came as a shock to many officers who had been told that this business had nothing to do with the army. General Kurt von Schleicher, soldier turned politician, had been Chancellor when Hitler took over the post in January 1933. He was shot by an execution squad, and General Kurt von Bredow, his subordinate, was murdered soon afterward. Although neither of these generals was popular, it was generally expected that the army would condemn the murders and demand an investigation into the circumstances of the deaths. Such an investigation might have shown the Nazi leaders as the ruthless criminals that they were. Instead, without hesitation. General von Reichenau issued a communique saying that Schleicher had been proved a traitor to the state in both word and deed. His wife, added Reichenau, died because she placed herself in the line of fire. The truth was that even the Nazis, in trying to justify the murder, failed to find any evidence connecting Schleicher with Rohm or with any other treasonable activities.
Defense Minister von Blomberg praised Hitler. In his Order of the day for 1 July he spoke of the Fiihrer’s soldierly decision and the exemplary courage used to wipe out traitors and mutineers. The Defense Minister’s congratulations on behalf of the army left Hinden-burg, its Supreme Commander, little alternative but to add his own. The next day Hindenburg significantly included the words “From
Reports placed before me” in the message of thanks and appreciation he sent to Hitler for his gallant personal intervention.
“All catched” was the message in bad English that Reichenau sent to his counterespionage chief after the SA leaders were dead. Many other army officers could not conceal their satisfaction.
Hitler displayed his usual astonishing skill at squeezing every last advantage out of the situation. Having legalized the murders by means of a retrospective law consisting of a single sentence, Hitler took responsibility upon himself but did it in such a way that most Germans believed he was covering up for the misdeeds of subordinates.
Hitler had gambled that the army would not move against the murder squads and he had proved right. The generals had condoned murder, even the murder of two generals. They had been initiated into the dirty business of Nazi politics, but artfully Hitler had not involved them to the extent of owing them a favor.
While the army was celebrating the destruction of its rival. Hitler was arranging the emergence of a new one. Just one week after the murders, it was announced that Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst des RfSS (the SS Security Service organization), which had done so much to prepare and foment the killings, would now extend its power to all Nazi Party organizations. In July, Hitler made the SS an independent organization. Contrary to Hitler’s promise that the army and navy would be the only armed organizations, the SS was also now given permission to form armed units.
The SA continued under its new leader—Viktor Lutze—but it was no longer a force to be reckoned with. “Someday we’ll. . .” its members could be heard saying late at night when the beer had flowed too freely, but their voices remained low. The days of the rowdy, violent bohemian brownshirts were over. In contrast, Himmler’s SS men were silent, impassive puritans, their habitat not the street corner but the office. The day of the ultimate bureaucrat had dawned.
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