night of long knifes

[bruce]

another silly question,
can some1 tell me why? where? and when?
how many ppl died exactly? in my history book ive read that 98 ppl died, and in another book that only 15...wich one is more accurate if any?

thank u

[Mike R]

-June 30, 1934
-Leaders of the SA (Sturmabeiltung (spelling?) ) were targeted, including Ernst Roehm
-I've seen a figure as high as 2,000 for the number who were ordered killed.
-It is my understanding that Hitler had reasons to believe Roehm and the SA would try to seize power of the Nazi Party and government. In addition, Hitler would have not been able to gather support from the regular army, which viewed the SA as a threat. At the time the SA was something like 10 times the size of the regular army I believe.

Anyone please correct any info I may have incorrect, Thanks!

[cptstennes]

Nope, No SA revolt was planned. The SA leadership was partly, and I do not say largely, homosexual. Roehm, whose autobiography I have read, was an aggressive homosexual who had relations with Leutnant Rossbach, among others. The SA leaders in Berlin and in Silesia may have been homosexual. Certainly Graf Spreti was, so I hear. Very few weapons were found in SA arsenals. (See Max Gallo, Night of the Long Knives as well as Leutnant Rossbach's memoirs, auf Deutsch) See also biographies of SA leaders on this site. The SA was destroyed because it was a rival to the Army. Sort of a Red-Brown militia which had become obsolete. The term at the time was brown on the outside and red on the inside. Generally losers who ate in the SA soup kitchens, got drunk in Kneipe and brawled in the streets. No real use for them after the Machtergreifung. They outraged the bourgeois basis of the party and were useless thugs. Tho they did beat up helpless members of the SPD and various people to whom they owed debts. Roehm was supposedly found in bed with another SA man. Who knows? Roehm was handed a pistol and told to shoot himself by, supposedly Sepp Dietrich. He declined, similarly supposedly, and was shot by an SS trooper. Another sordid fascist episode reproduced to some extent in the denigration of the Falange in Spain.
This rather strange chapter is a window on the homophiliac nature of fascism. I say no more on that idea, Regards, F

[MaPen]

The problem Hitler had before the "Night of the long knives" was that Ernst Röhm wanted the nazi revolution to continue. He made several accusations of Hitler "betraying the brown revolution". Röhm also tried to establish complete control over the Reichswehr. It is important to consider that by this time SA had nearly 3 million of members and was much bigger than the Reichswehr.

Thus Hitler decided to act because of two things: to secure the support of high ranking German officers, who were intimidated by Röhm's threats of taking over the Army, and to secure the continuity support of Germany's most important industrialists (like Voegler, Krupp, Thyssen etc) who were intimidated by Röhm demanding the revolution to go on.

Both groups (generals and industrialists) were crucial for Hitler's future plans to wage a war.

Of course there was no SA Putsch being prepared. Hitler met with Röhm on June 4 1934 and after few days Röhm announced that he was taking a 'personal illness' vacation. Reinhard Heydrich, who operationaly ran the planed execution of SA leadership, went mad upon hearing this, because he knew that it will be difficult to explain to the people how a man on vacation could prepare a Putsch.

On June 30 Röhm, along with another high ranking SA officer (SA-Obergruppenführer Heines), was asleep in the hotel when Hitler with his escort came to arrest him. Heines was found in bed together with a male lover and was shot on the spot, while Röhm had been arrested and taken in Stadelheim prison near Munich. There he was shot, after he declined to commit suicide. The SS officers who shot him were Theodor Eicke and Michael Lippert. According to the witnesses his last words were "Mein Führer, mein Führer ...".

Hitler also used the alleged SA Putsch to get rid of his political opponents (Strasser, von Schleicher, von Kahr, von Bredow and others).

There are different estimates about how many people were killed, but the numbers are from 200 to 1.000 and more.

regards

MaPen