The Night of Long Knives was the purge of the SA leadership and other political opponents from the 30 June 1934 to the 2 July 1934. It will first explore this topic in chronological order, from the Reichstag Fire through to the death of President Hindenburg, and then explore it thematically in the last section. [3] It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his 13 July speech to the Reichstag. The resources all include suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and come in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change. [l] Luise Solmitz, a Hamburg schoolteacher, echoed the sentiments of many Germans when she cited Hitler's "personal courage, decisiveness and effectiveness" in her private diary. [76], According to Albert Speer, "the Right, represented by the President, the Minister of Justice, and the generals, lined up behind Hitler the strong left wing of the party, represented chiefly by the SA, was eliminated. Over the next two months, they launched themselves into an intense election campaign. For new Germany unit - 1890-1945. On 17 June 1934, conservative demands 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 a "second revolution. Night of the Long Knives, in German history, purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler on June 30, 1934. "It was plain that there was wide acceptance of the deliberately misleading propaganda put out by the regime. Wilhelm Miklas, and recalled his minister from Vienna. The Night of the Long Knives was "an act of carnage" which had come out of the blue. On the 28 February 1933, President Hindenburg signed the Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People. Following the Enabling Law, much of this harassment and imprisonment was legal. Purge in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934, Papen, nonetheless, remained in his position although people quite close to him were murdered, including, "At least eighty-five people are known to have been summarily killed without any formal legal proceedings being taken against them. On 11 April 1945, the US army liberated Buchenwald camp. [28] Hitler had hesitated for months in moving against Rhm, in part due to Rhm's visibility as the leader of a national militia with millions of members. [4] The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. Both Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as Chancellor, and his wife were murdered at their home. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazis, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extrajudicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The day after the Reichstag fire, the 28 February 1933, Hindenburg signed a decree giving Hitler emergency powers. 5. impact of nazi foreign policy mrmarr 4.9K views . With Hitler's arrival in Bad Wiessee between 06:00 and 07:00, the SA leadership, still in bed, were taken by surprise. Local governments proved more difficult to infiltrate, and even at the end of 1945 only 60% of local mayors were Nazi Party members. This included Vice-Chancellor Papen and those in his immediate circle. 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]. This hysteria helped to turn the public against the communists, one of the Nazis main opponents, and 4000 people were imprisoned. [8], On 6 July 1933, at a gathering of high-ranking Nazi officials, Hitler declared the success of the National Socialist, or Nazi, seizure of power. A combat veteran of World War I, Rhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper. He wanted the Nazi Party to focus on socialist policies to support . [34], At about 04:30 on 30 June 1934, Hitler and his entourage flew to Munich. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini sent four army divisions up the Brenner Pass and to the Carinthian frontier, and the Italian press vehemently denounced German imperialism and bad faith. The Party had generally been aligned with the Social Democrats and Catholic Church during the rise of Nazism, being critical of Nazi ideology, but voting nonetheless for the Enabling Act of 1933 which granted Hitler dictatorial authority. No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper, Edmund Heines, put it) than Rhm himself. [45] Then, on 13 July 1934,[52] Hitler justified the purge in a nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag: If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this. Many of those killed in the purge were leaders of the SA, the best-known being Rhm himself, the SA's chief of staff and one of Hitler's longtime supporters and allies. He was now a dictator. On the 31 January 1933, Hitler, conscious of his lack of a majority in the Reichstag, immediately called for new elections to try and strengthen his position. This new law gave Hitler the power to rule by decree rather than passing laws through the Reichstag and the president. [51] Meanwhile, Goebbels tried to prevent newspapers from publishing lists of the dead, but at the same time used a 2 July radio address to describe how Hitler had narrowly prevented Rhm and Schleicher from overthrowing the government and throwing the country into turmoil. (29-30 June 1934) The name coined by Hitler for a weekend of murders throughout Germany. He held the same position with Rhm as I held with Himmler. The SS found Breslau SA leader Edmund Heines in bed with an unidentified eighteen-year-old male SA senior troop leader. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany. President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933. By May, lists of those to be "liquidated" started to circulate amongst Gring and Himmler's people, who engaged in a trade, adding enemies of one in exchange for sparing friends of the other. [31] On 27 June, Hitler moved to secure the army's cooperation. And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot. The SA were dramatically reduced in size, dropping by 40% to 1.8 million by 1935. isabellaaellis. [i] Rhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. Religion in Dracula. They will . The loyalty of the SS men would prove useful to both when Hitler finally chose to move against Rhm and the SA. [21], As a means of isolating Rhm, on 20 April 1934, Gring transferred control of the Prussian political police (Gestapo) to Himmler, who, Gring believed, could be counted on to move against Rhm. Some estimates, however, put the total number killed at between 150 and 200. Gestapo officers attached to the SS unit shot Papen's secretary Herbert von Bose without bothering to arrest him first. "[63] The statements that Schleicher had been killed because he wanted to partition Poland with the Soviet Union were later published in the Polish White Book of 1939, which was a collection of diplomatic documents detailing GermanPolish relations up to the outbreak of the war. [48] Eicke and Lippert then shot Rhm, killing him. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. With these measures in place, the Nazification of the judicial system was complete. On 1 July, at Hitler's behest, Theodor Eicke, Commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, and his SS adjutant Michael Lippert visited Rhm. Censorship was heightened, and any person publishing actively anti-Nazi material was threatened or imprisoned. Once the Enabling Law was in place, the Nazis could bypass the Reichstag and rule by decree seemingly creating laws that stabilised Germany and got rid of its internal enemies. [69] The memo asked that Hindenburg instead create a directorate to rule Germany, comprising the Chancellor (who was not named), General Werner von Fritsch as Vice-Chancellor, Hammerstein as Minister of Defense, the Minister for National Economy (also unnamed), and Rudolf Nadolny as Foreign Minister. [21] At the end of May, Brning and Schleicher, two former chancellors, received warnings from friends in the Reichswehr that their lives were in danger and they should leave Germany at once. 95.7% of the population voted. [39] There in the prison courtyard, the Leibstandarte firing squad shot five SA generals and an SA colonel. concentration camp Fearing that the paramilitary SA had become too powerful, Hitler ordered his elite SS guards to murder the organization's leaders, including Ernst Rhm. "A very calm and easy going mailman," the diarist Victor Klemperer wrote, "who is not at all National Socialist, said, 'Well, he simply sentenced them.'" ultimate power over Germany, whilst maintaining an [33] On 28 June Hitler went to Essen to attend the wedding celebration and reception of Josef Terboven; from there he called Rhm's adjutant at Bad Wiessee and ordered SA leaders to meet with him on 30 June at 11:00. Hitler's task would not be simple, however, as the SA made up a large part of Nazism's most devoted followers. Rhm is pictured here on the left next to Rudolf Hess, who was the deputy Fhrer from 1933-1941. From 20 August onwards, the [19] Schleicher criticized the current Hitler cabinet, while some of Schleicher's followers such as General Ferdinand von Bredow and Werner von Alvensleben started passing along lists of a new Hitler cabinet in which Schleicher would become vice-chancellor, Rhm minister of defence, Heinrich Brning foreign minister and Gregor Strasser minister of national economy. [1] More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested. Leading members of the leftist-leaning Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its leader 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 helped suppress Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. 2 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 82. [6], Hitler's appointment as chancellor, followed by the suppression of all political parties except the Nazis, did not end the violence of the stormtroopers. persecution coalition The SA and the SS had also been on a month long campaign of violence to scare or imprison other opponents to the party. They murdered Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in his chancellery, but the putsch failed in its main purpose. Many of the prisoners were tortured and abused. However, most accounts argue that as many as 1,000 deaths occurred during the Night of the Long Knives. The crowd, which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest, shouted its approval. When the Nazi regime did not take such steps, those who had expected an economic as well as a political revolution were disillusioned. Precise details remain unknown, but the army is believed to have promised to support Hitler as head of state after Hindenburg's death in return for . retrospectively The Enabling Law allowed them to do this under the guise of legality. [29], In preparation for the purge, both Himmler and Heydrich assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Rhm had been paid 12 million (EUR 29.1million in 2023) by France to overthrow Hitler. Refusing to take his own life, he was shot on 1 July 1934 by two SS guards. Each resource gives suggested teaching strategies and are differentiated . [82] However, the term was soon adopted by the Nazis themselves to invoke what they saw as justifiable and necessary measures taken by Germanic peoples against an enemy. . However, it did so under the guise of legality, and protecting the German people and their democracy. But with the Night of the Long Knives, it's . and [75] Lutze did little to assert the SA's independence in the coming years, and the organization lost its power in Germany. In conclusion, this lesson plan on Night of the Long Knives Rohm Source Investigation, provides an in-depth examination of one of the most controversial events in modern history. [62] General von Reichenau went so far as to publicly give credence to the lie that Schleicher had been plotting to overthrow the government. The SA traced its dramatic rise in numbers in part to the onset of the Great Depression, when many German citizens lost both their jobs and their faith in traditional institutions. A very large number of the Freikorps believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. [78], The term "long knives" as a metonym for treachery and violence had been used to describe the Treason of the Long Knives since this incident was recorded in the 9th century Historia Brittonum. . "[77], Rhm was purged from all Nazi propaganda, such as The Victory of Faith, the Leni Riefenstahl film about the 1933 Nuremberg rally, which showed Rhm frequently alongside Hitler. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). This act was reinforced by the German Civil Service code of 26 January 1937, which retired any judges or judicial official who would not intervene in cases and rule in favour of the Nazis. Originally designed and developed by the London Jewish Cultural Centre. President Hindenburg died at the age of 87 on 2 August 1934. [2] The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the military for Hitler. It targeted potential threats to Hitler's power, particularly within the NSDAP's fast-growing and politically vocal paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung or SA. NHS services across England will face major disruption throughout today as nurses walk out in a 28-hour strike over pay. The Night of Long Knives, also known as the Rhm Putsch, was the purge of the SA leadership and other political opponents from 30 June 1934 to 2 July 1934. ", Night of the Long Knives (disambiguation), The History Place Triumph of Hitler Night of the Long Knives, German Culture The Third Reich Consolidation of Power, The German Embassy in the United States The Era of National Socialism, National Political Institutes of Education, National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), National Socialist German Doctors' League, National Socialist League for Physical Exercise (NSRL), Bulgarian National Socialist Workers Party, German National Socialist Workers' Party (Czechoslovakia), Finnish National Socialist Labor Organisation, German National Movement in Liechtenstein, National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands, National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark, Nationalist Liberation Alliance (Argentina), South African Gentile National Socialist Movement, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Night_of_the_Long_Knives&oldid=1148917121, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from June 2022, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing explicitly cited English-language text, Pages using Sister project links with wikidata mismatch, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Operation Hummingbird, Rhm Putsch (by the Nazis), The Blood Purge. On the 2 May 1933 trade unions were banned. Over 150 people were murdered and hundreds more were arrested. In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. He also wanted to appease leaders of the Reichswehr, the German military, who feared and despised the SA as a potential rival, in particular because of Rhm's ambition to merge the army and the SA under his own leadership. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. [5] In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were more than 400 street battles, resulting in 82 deaths. Whilst Gleichschaltung aimed to reach every aspect of rule in Germany, this was not always possible. On 30 June 1934 these tensions came to a head. The long term impact brought forth by the consequences or legacy of the Nazi party included a population decrease and an increase in deaths. Despite his earlier agreement with Hitler, Rhm still clung to his vision of a new German army with the SA at its core. [32] Blomberg and General Walther von Reichenau, the army's liaison to the party, gave it to him by expelling Rhm from the German Officers' League. On 25 June, General Werner von Fritsch placed the Reichswehr on the highest level of alert. Also known as the "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers," the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists. With the army limited by the Treaty of Versailles to one hundred thousand soldiers, its leaders watched anxiously as membership in the SA surpassed three million men by the beginning of 1934. In a new pair Rally Coach this worksheet. ", "After the 'Night of the Long Knives,' [Reich Minister for Justice Franz Grtner] nipped in the bud the attempts of some local state prosecutors to initiate proceedings against the killers. Until then, Lippert had been one of the few executioners of the purge to evade trial. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army. It would become known in Welsh as "twyll y cyllyll hirion" (English: Deceit of the long knives) (first recorded around 1587) and in English as the "Treachery/Plot/Treason of the long knives" (recorded around 1604). However, there were also other events which helped Hitler in achieving the position of a dictator. A copy of the original film, before Rhm was edited out, was found in the 1980s in the German Democratic Republic's film archives. How did the Night of the Long Knives help to create a dictatorship out of a democracy? In the judicial system specifically, this act removed any judges that were deemed non-compliant with Nazi laws or principles. , who had previously been a separate organisation, now swore a personal allegiance to Hitler. [70] It is noteworthy that even those officers who were most offended by the killings, like Hammerstein and Mackensen, did not blame the purge on Hitler, whom they wanted to see continue as Chancellor; they at most wanted a reorganization of the Cabinet to remove some of Hitler's more radical followers. On 19 August 1934, the German people were asked to vote on whether or not they approved of the merging of the two offices and Hitlers new role as Fhrer. However getting rid of the SA did get the support of the army which was very helpful for Hitler. "[67] The extent of the massacre and the relative ubiquity of the Gestapo, however, meant that those who disapproved of the purge generally kept quiet about it. Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934. Blomberg and many of his fellow officers were recruited from the Prussian nobility and regarded the SA as a plebeian rabble that threatened the army's traditional high status in German society. [64] One retired captain, Erwin Planck, seemed to realize this: "If you look on without lifting a finger", he said to his friend, General Werner von Fritsch, "you will meet the same fate sooner or later. Moreover, it was not just the Reichswehr that viewed the SA as a threat. To ensure quality for our reviews, only customers who have purchased this resource can review it . Hitler travelled to Munich by plane with . Hence, the Freikorps were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic, which was born as a result of the November Revolution, and whose founders were contemptuously called "November criminals". Despite this, on the whole, Gleichschaltung was largely successful. Many members of the SA, including its leader Ernst Rhm, were demanding that the Nazi party carry out its socialist agenda and that the SA take over the army. [20] Although Schleicher was in fact unimportant by 1934, increasingly wild rumours that he was scheming with Rhm to re-enter the corridors of power helped stoke the sense of crisis. They had placed many in the first Germany feared revolution. With Hindenburg gone, there was no longer a limit to Hitlers power. It was a mass murder planned by the SS for the SA and their members. Gring instructed police stations to burn "all documents concerning the action of the past two days". By the end of May 1934, Hitler had been chancellor for 16 months and dictator for 14 (under the Enabling Act of March 24, 1933), but two obstacles to his absolute power remained. Hitler announced that he would occupy this new role. approved a bill legalising the purge as emergency defence measures. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Rhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. On 1 April 1933, the Nazi Party led a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses across Germany. [19] The British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, who knew Schleicher and his circle well, wrote that Bredow displayed a "lack of discretion" that was "terrifying" as he went about showing the list of the proposed cabinet to anyone who was interested. [21], Demands for Hitler to constrain the SA strengthened. ", "The names of eighty-five victims [exist], only fifty of them SA men. During a trip to Warsaw in January 1935, Gring told Jan Szembek that Schleicher had urged Hitler in January 1933 to reach an understanding with France and the Soviet Union, and partition Poland with the latter, and Hitler had Schleicher killed out of disgust with the alleged advice. Hitler and Himmler unleashed the Gestapo against old enemies, as well. Excellency, save Germany for the fourth time! Through these aspects the Nazis suppressed any opposition to their power, and were able to start the road from democracy to a dictatorship. "[46], Some SA members died saying "Heil Hitler" because they believed that an anti-Hitler SS plot had led to their execution. Although Hitler ordered him released days later, Papen no longer dared to criticize the regime and was sent off to Vienna as German ambassador.[43]. [38], Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Rhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA. The law needed two thirds of the Reichstag to vote for it to pass. The Nazis started with the The atmosphere of terror that had followed the Reichstag Fire, and Hindenburgs and von Papens support, made the proposal seem legitimate and, to some, necessary. However, the threat of a declaration of martial law from Hindenburg, the only person in Germany with the authority to potentially depose the Nazi regime, put Hitler under pressure to act. They would later reopen it to liquidate the d ghetto. By the end of May 1934, Hitler had been chancellor for 16 . There were 4 main reasons why the Night of the Long Knives occurred: Ernst Rhm had become too powerful with 3 million SA loyal to him. Rhm's contempt for the party's bureaucracy angered Hess. Also killed that night were hundreds of other perceived opponents of Hitler. 4 terms. Hitler had become a chancellor in 1933 henceforth he had the power to establish his power. Political instability in the Weimar Republic, Hyperinflation and the invasion of the Ruhr, Strength and weaknesses of the Weimar Republic. People could be imprisoned for any or no reason. The result was that it was made Hitler the undisputed leader of the Nazis and by extension Germany. Hitler, knowing that military strength was necessary for his foreign policy and that antagonizing the generals could be fatal to himself, decided to sacrifice Rhm. Despite this improvement, the Nazis still did not command a majority in the Reichstag. The process primarily took place between 1933-1934. Hitler's entire life was one of making key-life and death-strategic decisions, successfully. In response to conservative pressure to constrain Rhm, Hitler left for Neudeck to meet with Hindenburg. The Foreign Office even complained of instances where brownshirts manhandled foreign diplomats. Carried out primarily by the SS and the Gestapo, over 150 people were murdered and hundreds more were arrested. The Nazis consolidation of power can be grouped into three main themes: pseudo-legality, terror and intimidation and pseudo-moderation. In August 1932 there were approximately 445,000 members of the SA. Others were appalled at the scale of the executions and at the relative complacency of many of their fellow Germans. The Nazis also took several more steps to reduce their political opposition legally. [37] Arriving back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler addressed the assembled crowd. 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. [m] Years later, in November 1945, while being interviewed by psychologist Gustave Gilbert in his cell during the Nuremberg trials, Gring angrily justified the killings to Gilbert, "It's a damn good thing I wiped them out, or they would have wiped us out!"[85]. Hitler, however, disclaimed all responsibility for the coup, sent a telegram of condolence to Austrian Pres. The Night of the Long Knives was the term given to the process whereby Hitler, in 1934, purged the Nazi Party of all those who were a threat to Hitler. Tes paid licenceHow can I reuse this? Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen only narrowly escaped inclusion among the victims, and he was dismissed from the vice-chancellorship three days later (July 3). Rhm, however, wanted to eliminate the generalship of the Prussian aristocracy altogether, using the SA to become the core of a new German military.

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