[2] The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the military for Hitler. [1] More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Rhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. [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. He held the same position with Rhm as I held with Himmler. [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. Following the purge, the Nazis sculpted the media coverage to portray the event as a preventative measure against a revolutionary, violent, and uncontrollable force, rather than a series of political murders. The Night of the Long Knives. Also killed that night were hundreds of other perceived . Rhm was the leader of the Nazi Brownshirts . The Centre Partys vote was crucial. 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. Among the few exceptions were General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord and Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who started a campaign to have Schleicher rehabilitated by Hitler. Your Excellency has thrice before saved Germany from foundering, at Tannenberg, at the end of the War and at the moment of your election as Reich President. The purge list is drawn up. info)), or the Rhm purge (German: Rhm-Putsch), also called Operation Hummingbird (German: Unternehmen Kolibri), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. The SA and the SS had also been on a month long campaign of violence to scare or imprison other opponents to the party. In 1933, up to 200,000 people were seized and imprisoned by the SA and the SS. 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. [18], Finally, in early 1934, the growing rift between Rhm and Hitler over the role of the SA in the Nazi state led former chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher to start playing politics again. When the Nazi regime did not take such steps, those who had expected an economic as well as a political revolution were disillusioned. Others killed included Gregor Strasser, a former Nazi who had angered Hitler by resigning from the party in 1932, and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the former Bavarian state commissioner who had helped crush the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. This meant, as well as removing other personal freedoms, that the Nazis could now imprison their political opposition for an indefinite period for any, or no, reason. In response, Hitler met Blomberg and the leadership of the SA and SS on 28 February 1934. . Hitler and Himmler unleashed the Gestapo against old enemies, as well. On 25 June, General Werner von Fritsch placed the Reichswehr on the highest level of alert. Its membership plummeted from 2.9 million in August 1934 to 1.2 million in April 1938. Under pressure from Hitler, Rhm reluctantly signed a pledge stating that he recognised the supremacy of the Reichswehr over the SA. On 30 April 1945, Hitler took his own life in his bunker underneath the Reich chancellery in Berlin. The Night of the Long Knives was a helping event in Hitler becoming a dictator. Night of the Long Knives - Cunning History Teacher Because their plans for the army conflicted, Rhm's success could come only at Hitler's expense. [79] This story would be popularized across western Europe in the 12th century as part of the History of the Britons by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which introduced many of the Arthurian legends to Germany.[80][81]. [69] The memo went on to demand that Hindenburg punish those responsible, and criticized Blomberg for his outspoken support of the murders of Schleicher and Bredow. "[74], Hitler named Viktor Lutze to replace Rhm as head of the SA. The undersigned Generals and senior officers swear to preserve to the last breath their loyalty to you and the Fatherland. How Night Of Long Knives Affected Hitler's Rise To Power [15] In January 1934, Rhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum demanding that the SA replace the regular army as the nation's ground forces, and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA.[16]. 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. Hess, present among the assembled, even volunteered to shoot the "traitors". This hysteria helped to turn the public against the communists, one of the Nazis main opponents, and 4000 people were imprisoned. They were often given a free rein on their activities and were violent and difficult to control. Other sets by this creator. We were close personal friends; we often dined together in Berlin. [75] Hitler expressly told him to stop SA funds from being spent on limousines and banquets, which he considered evidence of SA extravagance. Significance of the Night of the Long Knives for Hitler's Power Free Essay: Night of The long Knives - 597 Words | Studymode One of the men Gring recruited to assist him was Willi Lehmann, a Gestapo official and NKVD spy. However, most accounts argue that as many as 1,000 deaths occurred during the Night of the Long Knives. This photograph shows the SA as they marched victoriously through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin the same day. This also lead to the Oath Of Loyalty which was. The Nazi adoption of the phrase for an upcoming violent event was well known even to the foreign press, with the 2 August 1932 issue of The Times reporting that: Prominent Nazi leaders have played upon the imaginations of their followers..with such phrases as the night of the long knives and a vengeance for every Nazi killed.[79]. 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. President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933. 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. Hitler ordered him, as one prominent historian described it, to put an end to "homosexuality, debauchery, drunkenness, and high living" in the SA. They had placed many in the first [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. 2 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 82. Night of the Long Knives: Summary & Victims | StudySmarter Hitler's entire life was one of making key-life and death-strategic decisions, successfully. Historian Gavin Mortimer explains how Hitler nearly came unstuck as early as 1934 - and that the bloody purge that followed was a warning of horrors to come . The Night of the Long Knives, June 1934 - gcsehistory.com and [53][54], Wanting to present the massacre as legally sanctioned, Hitler had the cabinet approve a measure on 3 July that declared, "The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defence by the State. [7] Complaints of "overbearing and loutish" behaviour by stormtroopers became common by the middle of 1933. [31] On 27 June, Hitler moved to secure the army's cooperation. [4] The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. 9. The process primarily took place between 1933-1934. 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. Night of the Long Knives 30 June 1934. Shortly after Hindenburgs death, Hitler announced that offices of the chancellor and the president were to be combined to create one position, the Fhrer and chancellor. "[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. 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. Hitler's desire to consolidate his power and settle old scores, Desire of Ernst Rhm and the SA to continue "the National Socialist revolution" versus Hitler's need for relative social stability so that the economy could be refocused to rearmament and the German people acclimated to the need for expansion and war, Hitler's need to bring the Reichswehr under his control, Significant reduction in the regime's opposition, Strengthening of relationship between Hitler and the military. Hitler arrived and personally placed Rhm and other high ranking SA leaders under arrest. This act legalised removing anyone of non-Ayran descent from the civil service. Ernst Rhm was murdered in the event known as the Rhm Putsch, or the Night of Long Knives. The Night of Long Knives, one of most noteworthy events during Hitler's rule, was a purge that occurred on the 30th June 1934. . was 10.99. [35] Schneidhuber was executed later that day. 25 terms. 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). Censorship was heightened, and any person publishing actively anti-Nazi material was threatened or imprisoned. To make both of these impacts, Hitler had to overcome many hard . Mussolini used the affair occasioned by the murder of Giacomo Matteotti as an example of the kind of trouble unruly followers could cause a dictator. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. leaders knew consequences of questioning Hitler - role of SA was reduced - membership dropped from 2.9 million to 1.6 million. The atmosphere of uncertainty following the Reichstag Fire secured many voters for the Nazi party. Over the next two days, most of the SA leadership were placed under arrest and murdered without trial. Gleichschaltung was applied across every possible aspect of government policy. With instructions from Berlin and with active help from the German legation in Vienna, Austrian Nazis on July 25, 1934, tried to take over their countrys government by an insurrectionary putsch. [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. History portrays the infamous 'Night of the Long Knives' as a textbook political disaster, but as a BBC documentary shows on the 50th anniversary, it could have been so different. 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. Rhm wanted to have his troops incorporated into the new Wehrmacht that was being prepared to take the place of the Reichswehr, despite the fact that the conservative-minded generals were resolutely opposed to any such contamination of the army by the SA. Through these aspects the Nazis suppressed any opposition to their power, and were able to start the road from democracy to a dictatorship. 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 would allow them to rule unopposed and unhindered by coalition governments. It was a mass murder planned by the SS for the SA and their members. As the SA were known for being violent and unruly, many saw this as a legitimate move by the government to ensure public order. Also in 1932, the Nazi critic Carl von Ossietzky would use the term to describe the then unrealised plans for a violent uprising: At the beginning of 1932 the Nazis seemed on the verge of a dictatorship, and the air was full of the stench of blood. 15 Apr 2023. 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. SS men stormed the hotel, and Hitler personally placed Rhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest. [37] Meanwhile, the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Rhm and Hitler. [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. Thereupon the German generals agreed to the merging of the office of president of the Reich and supreme head of the armed forces with that of chancellor, in Hitlers person. 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. He dismissed seven ministers - one-third of the cabinet - and . ", Coincidentally, Hitler had been incarcerated at. [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 very calm and easy going mailman," the diarist Victor Klemperer wrote, "who is not at all National Socialist, said, 'Well, he simply sentenced them.'" People could be imprisoned for any or no reason. In August 1932 there were approximately 445,000 members of the SA. 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. Night of the Long Knives | Date, Victims, Summary, & Facts "[14], Despite such hostility between the brownshirts and the regular army, Blomberg and others in the military saw the SA as a source of raw recruits for an enlarged and revitalized army. [25] Neurath's manoeuvre to put pressure on Hitler paid off, with Mussolini agreeing to the request (Neurath was a former ambassador to Italy, and knew Mussolini well). Night of the Long Knives - Achieving Total Power - July 1933 - August [35] Goebbels emphasised this aspect in subsequent propaganda justifying the purge as a crackdown on moral turpitude. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Gring 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 Rhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". In the years preceding the purge, the term "long knives" had become a popular description of treachery in Germany and was used as a criticism of Nazi actions and deceitfulness. Goebbels soon radicalised each of these areas, ensuring that they advocated Nazi ideas. Hitler and the rest of the Nazi leadership disagreed with their approach. While Nazism was not exclusively or even primarily a working-class phenomenon, the SA fulfilled the yearning of many unemployed workers for class solidarity and nationalist fervour. 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. 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. Night of the Long Knives | Teaching Resources Hitler told the crowd that "undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements" would be annihilated. illusion On the 5 March 1933, the elections took place, with an extremely high turnout of 89%. The first concentration camp, Dachau, opened in a broken-down munitions factory on the 20 March 1933, imprisoning primarily political prisoners. These acts removed peoples ability to oppose the Nazi Party, in any form. Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Gring at 10:00 with the codeword Kolibri to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims. Many were terrified of voting of at all, and many turned to voting for the Nazi Party out of fear for their own safety. You give Hitler power and time by voting HITLER!. "It was plain that there was wide acceptance of the deliberately misleading propaganda put out by the regime. Tes paid licenceHow can I reuse this? Others were appalled at the scale of the executions and at the relative complacency of many of their fellow Germans. Second, German Pres. [75] Lutze did little to assert the SA's independence in the coming years, and the organization lost its power in Germany. ultimate power over Germany, whilst maintaining an On the 2 May 1933 trade unions were banned. . Wiskemann, Elizabeth, "The Night of the Long Knives", This page was last edited on 9 April 2023, at 02:08. You must first remember and recite all the points made earlier in the circle then add your own point. The Night of the Long Knives was "an act of carnage" which had come out of the blue. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties, especially those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. [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. The tension between the SA and the Nazi leadership grew. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. Gring alone had over a thousand people arrested. A poster from the March 1933 elections. [40] Those not immediately executed were taken back to the Leibstandarte barracks at Lichterfelde, given one-minute "trials", and shot by a firing squad. [48] Eicke and Lippert then shot Rhm, killing him. [57][58], A special fund administered by SS General Franz Breithaupt was set up for the relatives of the murdered, from which they were cared for at the expense of the state. Gring declared that the communists had planned a national uprising to overthrow the Weimar Republic. consolidate However, this power was limited, as the Nazis were just one party in a three party government, under President Hindenburg. In response to conservative pressure to constrain Rhm, Hitler left for Neudeck to meet with Hindenburg. 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. 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. [24] Before Hitler left, and at the request of Presidential State Secretary Otto Meiner, Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath ordered the German Ambassador to Italy Ulrich von Hassell without Hitler's knowledge to ask Mussolini to tell Hitler that the SA was blackening Germany's good name. [69] The request that Neurath be replaced by Nadolny, the former Ambassador to the USSR, who had resigned earlier that year in protest against Hitler's anti-Soviet foreign policy, indicated that Hammerstein and Mackensen wanted a return to the "distant friendliness" towards the Soviet Union that existed until 1933. 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. The Night of the Long Knives (in addition to Hindenburgs deatha few months later) helped Hitler and the Nazi Party to consolidate absolute power in Germany by removing their political opposition. : Why did Hitler order the massacre of hundreds of Nazis. Whilst Gleichschaltung aimed to reach every aspect of rule in Germany, this was not always possible. The History Learning Site, 9 Mar 2015.

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