11
I
Hitler’s unruly party army, the SA, had outlived its purpose. That had been to win power. Everything had been predicated on the attainment of that single goal. What would follow the winning of power, what would be the purpose and function of the SA in the new state, what benefits would flow for ordinary stormtroopers, had never been clarified. Now, months after the ‘seizure of power’, the SA’s ‘politics of hooliganism’ were a force for disruption in the state. And particularly in the military ambitions of its leader, Ernst Röhm, the SA was an increasingly destabilizing factor, above all in relations with the Reichswehr. But its elimination, or disempowering, was no simple matter. It was a huge organization, far bigger than the party itself. It contained many of the most ardent ‘old fighters’ (in a literal sense) in the Movement. And it had been the backbone of the violent activism which had forced the pace of the Nazi revolution since Hitler had become Chancellor. Röhm’s ambitions, as we have seen in earlier chapters, had never been identical with those of Hitler. A large paramilitary organization that had never accepted its subordination to the political wing of the party had caused tensions, and occasional rebellion, since the 1920s. But, whatever the crises, Hitler had always managed to retain the SA’s loyalty. To challenge the SA’s leadership risked losing that loyalty. It could not be done easily or approached lightly.
The problem of the SA was inextricably bound up with the other threat to the consolidation of Hitler’s power. Reich President Hindenburg was old and frail. The issue of the succession would loom within the foreseeable future. Hindenburg, the symbol of ‘old’ Germany, and ‘old’ Prussia, was the figurehead behind which stood still powerful forces with somewhat ambivalent loyalties towards the new state. Most important among them was the army, of which as Head of State Hindenburg was supreme commander. The Reichswehr leadership was intensely and increasingly alarmed by the military pretensions of the SA. Failure on Hitler’s part to solve the problem of the SA could conceivably lead to army leaders favouring an alternative as Head of State on Hindenburg’s death – perhaps resulting in a restoration of the monarchy, and a de facto military dictatorship. Such a development would have met with favour among sections, not just of the military old guard, but of some national-conservative groups, which had favoured an authoritarian, anti-democratic form of state but had become appalled by the Hitler regime. The office of the Vice-Chancellor, Papen, gradually emerged as the focal point of hopes of blunting the edge of the Nazi revolution. Since Papen continued to enjoy the favour of the Reich President, such ‘reactionaries’, though small in number, could not be discounted in power-political terms. And since at the same time there were growing worries among business leaders about serious and mounting economic problems, the threat to the consolidation of Hitler’s power – and with that of the regime itself – was a real one.
Ernst Röhm’s SA had been the spearhead of the Nazi revolution in the first months of 1933. The explosion of elemental violence had needed no commands from above. The SA had long been kept on a leash, told to wait for the day of reckoning. Now it could scarcely be contained. Orgies of hate-filled revenge against political enemies and horrifically brutal assaults on Jews were daily occurrences. A large proportion of the estimated 100,000 persons taken into custody in these turbulent months were held in makeshift SA prisons and camps. Some hundred of these were set up in the Berlin area alone. Many victims were bestially tortured. The minimal figure of some 500–600 murdered in what the Nazis themselves proclaimed as a bloodless and legal revolution can largely be placed on the account of the SA. The first Gestapo chief, Rudolf Diels, described after the war the conditions in one of the SA’s Berlin prisons: ‘The “interrogations” had begun and ended with a beating. A dozen fellows had laid into their victims at intervals of some hours with iron bars, rubber coshes, and whips. Smashed teeth and broken bones bore witness to the tortures. As we entered, these living skeletons with festering wounds lay in rows on the rotting straw …’
As long as the terror was levelled in the main at Communists, Socialists, and Jews, it was in any case not likely to be widely unpopular, and could be played down as ‘excesses’ of the ‘national uprising’. But already by the summer, the number of incidents mounted in which overbearing and loutish behaviour by SA men caused widespread public offence even in pro-Nazi circles. By this time, complaints were pouring in from industry, commerce, and local government offices about disturbances and intolerable actions by stormtroopers. The Foreign Office added its own protest at incidents where foreign diplomats had been insulted or even manhandled. The SA was threatening to become completely uncontrollable. Steps had to be taken. Reich President Hindenburg himself requested Hitler to restore order.
The need for Hitler to act became especially urgent after Röhm had openly stated the SA’s aim of continuing the ‘German Revolution’ in the teeth of attempts by conservatives, reactionaries, and opportunist fellow-travellers to undermine and tame it. Röhm was clearly signalling to the new rulers of Germany that for him the revolution was only just starting; and that he would demand a leading role for himself and the mighty organization he headed – by now some 4½ million strong.
Forced now for the first time to choose between the demands of the party’s paramilitary wing and the ‘big battalions’ pressing for order, Hitler summoned the Reich Governors to a meeting in the Reich Chancellery on 6 July. ‘The revolution is not a permanent condition,’ he announced; ‘it must not turn into a lasting situation. It is necessary to divert the the river of revolution that has broken free into the secure bed of evolution.’ Other Nazi leaders – Frick, Göring, Goebbels, and Heß – took up the message in the weeks that followed. There was an unmistakable change of course.
Röhm’s ambitions were, however, undaunted. They amounted to little less than the creation of an ‘SA state’, with extensive powers in the police, in military matters, and in the civil administration. It was not just a matter of Röhm’s own power ambitions. Within the gigantic army of Brownshirts, expectations of the wondrous shangri-la to follow the day when National Socialism took power had been hugely disappointed. Though they had poured out their bile on their political enemies, the offices, financial rewards, and power they had naïvely believed would flow their way remained elusive. Talk of a ‘second revolution’, however little it was grounded in any clear programme of social change, was, therefore, bound to find strong resonance among rank-and-file stormtroopers.
Ernst Röhm had, then, no difficulty in expanding his popularity among SA men through his continued dark threats in early 1934 about further revolution which would accomplish what the ‘national uprising’ had failed to bring about. He remained publicly loyal to Hitler. Privately, he was highly critical of Hitler’s policy towards the Reichswehr and his dependency on Blomberg and Reichenau. And he did nothing to deter the growth of a personality cult elevating his leadership of the SA. At the Reich Party Rally of Victory in 1933, he had been the most prominent party leader after Hitler, clearly featuring as the Führer’s right-hand man. By early 1934, Hitler had been largely forced from the pages of the SA’s newspaper, SA-Mann, by the expanding Röhm-cult.
At least in public, the loyalty was reciprocated. Hitler wavered, as he would continue to do during the first months of 1934, between Röhm’s SA and the Reichswehr. He could not bring himself to discipline, let alone dismiss, Röhm. The political damage and loss of face and popularity involved made such a move risky. But the realities of power compelled him to side with the Reichswehr leadership. This became fully clear only at the end of February.
By 2 February 1934, at a meeting of his Gauleiter, Hitler was again criticizing the SA in all but name. Only ‘idiots’ thought the revolution was not over; there were those in the Movement who only understood ‘revolution’ as meaning ‘a permanent condition of chaos’.
The previous day, Röhm had sent Blomberg a memorandum on relations between the army and SA. What he appeared to be demanding – no copy of the actual memorandum has survived – was no less than the concession of national defence as the domain of the SA, and a reduction of the function of the armed forces to the provision of trained men for the SA. So crass were the demands that it seems highly likely that Blomberg deliberately falsified or misconstrued them when addressing a meeting of army District Commanders on 2 February in Berlin. They were predictably horrified. Now Hitler had to decide, stated Blomberg. The army lobbied him. In a conscious attempt to win his support against the SA, Blomberg, without any pressure from the Nazi leadership, introduced the NSDAP’s emblem into the army and accepted the ‘Aryan Paragraph’ for the officer corps, leading to the prompt dismissal of some seventy members of the armed forces. Röhm, too, sought to win his support. But, faced with having to choose between the Reichswehr, with Hindenburg’s backing, or his party army, Hitler could now only decide one way.
By 27 February the army leaders had worked out their ‘guidelines for cooperation with the SA’, which formed the basis for Hitler’s speech the next day and had, therefore, certainly been agreed with him. At the meeting in the Reichswehr Ministry on 28 February, attended by Reichswehr, SA, and SS leaders, Hitler rejected outright Röhm’s plans for an SA-militia. The SA was to confine its activities to political, not military, matters. A militia, such as Röhm was suggesting, was not suitable even for minimal national defence. He was determined to build up a well-trained ‘people’s army’ in the Reichswehr, equipped with the most modern weapons, which must be prepared for all eventualities on defence within five years and suitable for attack after eight years. He demanded of the SA that they obey his orders. For the transitional period before the planned Wehrmacht was set up, he approved Blomberg’s suggestion to deploy the SA for tasks of border protection and pre-military training. But ‘the Wehrmacht must be the sole bearer of weapons of the nation’.
Röhm and Blomberg had to sign and shake hands on the ‘agreement’. Hitler departed. Champagne followed. But the atmosphere was anything but cordial. When the officers had left, Röhm was overheard to remark: ‘What the ridiculous corporal declared doesn’t apply to us. Hitler has no loyalty and has at least to be sent on leave. If not with, then we’ll manage the thing without Hitler.’ The person taking note of these treasonable remarks was SA-Obergruppenfuhrer Viktor Lutze, who reported what had gone on to Hitler. ‘We’ll have to let the thing ripen’ was all he gleaned as reply. But the show of loyalty was noted. When he needed a new SA chief after the events of 30 June, Lutze was Hitler’s man.
II
From the beginning of 1934, Hitler seems to have recognized that he would be faced with no choice but to cut Röhm down to size. How to tackle him was, however, unclear. Hitler deferred the problem. He simply awaited developments. The Reichswehr leadership, too, was biding its time, expecting a gradual escalation, but looking then to a final showdown. Relations between the army and the SA continued to fester. But Hitler did, it seems, order the monitoring of SA activities. According to the later account of Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels, it was in January 1934 that Hitler requested him and Göring to collect material on the excesses of the SA. From the end of February onwards, the Reichswehr leadership started assembling its own intelligence on SA activities, which was passed to Hitler. Once Himmler and Heydrich had taken over the Prussian Gestapo in April, the build-up of a dossier on the SA was evidently intensified. Röhm’s foreign contacts were noted, as well as those with figures at home known to be cool towards the regime, such as former Chancellor Schleicher.
By this time, Röhm had incited an ensemble of powerful enemies, who would eventually coagulate into an unholy alliance against the SA. Göring was so keen to be rid of the SA’s alternative power-base in Prussia – which he himself had done much to establish, starting when he made the SA auxiliary police in February 1933 – that he was even prepared by 20 April to concede control over the Prussian Gestapo to Heinrich Himmler, thus paving the way for the creation of a centralized police-state in the hands of the SS. Himmler himself, and even more so his cold and dangerous henchman Reinhard Heydrich, recognized that their ambitions to construct such an empire – the key edifice of power and control in the Third Reich – rested on the élite SS breaking with its superior body, the SA, and eliminating the power-base held by Röhm. In the party, the head of the organization, installed in April 1933 with the grand title of Deputy Führer, Rudolf Heß, and the increasingly powerful figure behind the scenes Martin Bormann, were more than aware of the contempt in which the Political Organization was held by Röhm’s men and the threat of the SA actually replacing the party, or making it redundant. For the army, as already noted, Rohm’s aim to subordinate the Reichswehr to the interests of a people’s militia was anathema. Intensified military exercises, expansive parades, and, not least, reports of extensive weapon collections in the hands of the SA, did little to calm the nerves.
At the centre of this web of countervailing interests and intrigue, united only in the anxiety to be rid of the menace of the SA, Hitler’s sharp instinct for the realities of power by now must have made it plain that he had to break with Röhm.
In April it became known that Hindenburg was seriously ill. Hitler and Blomberg had already been told that the end was not far off. At the beginning of June, the Reich President retired to his estate at Neudeck in East Prussia. The most important prop of the conservatives was now far from the centre of the action. And the succession issue was imminent. Moreover, to remove the obstacle which the SA was providing to recommencing talks about rearmament with the western powers, Hitler had, at the end of May, ordered the SA to stop military exercises, and, in the last talks he had with Röhm, a few days later, had sent the stormtroopers on leave for a month.
This defusing of the situation, together with Hindenburg’s absence, made the situation more difficult, rather than easier, for the conservatives. But Papen used a speech on 17 June at the University of Marburg to deliver a passionate warning against the dangers of a ‘second revolution’ and a heated broadside against the ‘selfishness, lack of character, insincerity, lack of chivalry, and arrogance’ featuring under the guise of the German revolution. He even criticized the creation of a ‘false personality cult’. ‘Great men are not made by propaganda, but grow out of their actions,’ he declared. ‘No nation can live in a continuous state of revolution,’ he went on. ‘Permanent dynamism permits no solid foundations to be laid. Germany cannot live in a continuous state of unrest, to which no one sees an end.’ The speech met with roars of applause within the hall. Outside, Goebbels moved swiftly to have it banned, though not before copies of the speech had been run off and circulated, both within Germany and to the foreign press. Word of it quickly went round. Never again in the Third Reich was such striking criticism at the heart of the regime to come from such a prominent figure. But if Papen and his friends were hoping to prompt action by the army, supported by the President, to ‘tame’ Hitler, they were disappointed. As it was, the Marburg speech served as the decisive trigger to the brutal action taken at the end of the month.
Hitler’s own mood towards the ‘reactionaries’ was darkening visibly. Without specifying any names, his speech at Gera at the Party Rally of the Thuringian Gau on 17 June, the same day as Papen’s speech, gave a plain indication of his fury at the activities of the Papen circle. He castigated them as ‘dwarves’, alluding, it seems, to Papen himself as a ‘tiny worm’. Then came the threat: ‘If they should at any time attempt, even in a small way, to move from their criticism to a new act of perjury, they can be sure that what confronts them today is not the cowardly and corrupt bourgeoisie of 1918 but the fist of the entire people. It is the fist of the nation that is clenched and will smash down anyone who dares to undertake even the slightest attempt at sabotage.’ Such a mood prefigured the murder of some prominent members of the conservative ‘reaction’ on 30 June. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of the Papen speech, a strike against the ‘reactionaries’ seemed more likely than a showdown with the SA.
At the imposition of the ban on publishing his speech, Papen went to see Hitler. He said Goebbels’s action left him no alternative but to resign. He intended to inform the Reich President of this unless the ban were lifted and Hitler declared himself ready to follow the policies outlined in the speech. Hitler reacted cleverly – in wholly different manner from his tirades in the presence of his party members. He acknowledged that Goebbels was in the wrong in his action, and that he would order the ban to be lifted. He also attacked the insubordination of the SA and stated that they would have to be dealt with. He asked Papen, however, to delay his resignation until he could accompany him to visit the President for a joint interview to discuss the entire situation. Papen conceded – and the moment was lost.
Hitler wasted no time. He arranged an audience alone with Hindenburg on 21 June. On the way up the steps to Hindenburg’s residence, Schloß Neudeck, he was met by Blomberg, who had been summoned by the President in the furore following Papen’s speech. Blomberg told him bluntly that it was urgently necessary to take measures to ensure internal peace in Germany. If the Reich Government was incapable of relieving the current state of tension, the President would declare martial law and hand over control to the army. Hitler realized that there could be no further prevarication. He had to act. There was no alternative but to placate the army – behind which stood the President. And that meant destroying the power of the SA without delay.
What Hitler had in mind at this stage is unclear. He seems to have spoken about deposing Röhm, or having him arrested. By now, however, Heydrich’s SD – the part of the labyrinthine SS organization responsible for internal surveillance – and the Gestapo were working overtime to concoct alarmist reports of an imminent SA putsch. SS and SD leaders were summoned to Berlin around 25 June to be instructed by Himmler and Heydrich about the measures to be taken in the event of an SA revolt, expected any time. For all their unruliness, the SA had never contemplated such a move. The leadership remained loyal to Hitler. But now, the readiness to believe that Röhm was planning a takeover was readily embraced by all the SA’s powerful enemies. The Reichswehr, during May and June becoming increasingly suspicious about the ambitions of the SA leadership, made weapons and transport available to the SS (whose small size and – at this time – confinement to largely policing work posed no threat to the military). An SA putsch was now thought likely in summer or autumn. The entire Reichswehr leadership were prepared for imminent action against Röhm. The psychological state for a strike against the SA was rapidly forming. Alarm bells were set ringing loudly on 26 June through what seemed to be an order by Röhm for arming the SA in preparation for an attack on the Reichswehr. The ‘order’, in fact a near-certain fake (though by whom was never established), had mysteriously found its way into the office of the Abwehr chief, Captain Conrad Patzig. Lutze was present when Blomberg and Reichenau presented Hitler the following day with the ‘evidence’. Hitler had already hinted to Blomberg two days earlier that he would summon SA leaders to a conference at Bad Wiessee on the Tegernsee, some fifty miles south-east of Munich, where Röhm was residing, and have them arrested. This decision seems to have been confirmed at the meeting with Blomberg and Reichenau on 27 June. The same day, SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, commander of Hitler’s houseguards, the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler, arranged with the Reichswehr to pick up the arms needed for a ‘secret and very important commission of the Führer’.
III
The timing of the ‘action’ seems to have been finally determined on the evening of 28 June, while Hitler, together with Göring and Lutze, was in Essen for the wedding of Gauleiter Terboven. During the wedding reception, Hitler had received a message from Himmler, informing him that Oskar von Hindenburg had agreed to arrange for his father to receive Papen, probably on 30 June. It marked a final attempt to win the Reich President’s approval for moves to constrain the power not only of Röhm and the SA, but of Hitler himself. Hitler left the wedding reception straight away and raced back to his hotel. There, according to Lutze, he decided there was no time to lose: he had to strike.
Röhm’s adjutant was ordered by telephone to ensure that all SA leaders attended a meeting with Hitler in Bad Wiessee on the late morning of 30 June. In the meantime, the army had been put on alert. Göring flew back to Berlin to take charge of matters there, ready at a word to move not only against the SA, but also the Papen group.
Rumours of unrest in the SA were passed to Hitler, whose mood was becoming blacker by the minute. The telephone rang. The ‘rebels’, it was reported, were ready to strike in Berlin. There was, in fact, no putsch attempt at all. But groups of SA men in different parts of Germany, aware of the stories circulating of an impending strike against the SA, or the deposition of Röhm, were going on the rampage. Sepp Dietrich was ordered to leave for Munich immediately. Soon after midnight, he phoned Hitler from Munich and was given further orders to pick up two companies of the Leibstandarte and be in Bad Wiessee by eleven in the morning. Around 2 a.m. Hitler left to fly to Munich, accompanied by his adjutants Brückner, Schaub, and Schreck, along with Goebbels, Lutze, and Press Chief Dietrich. The first glimmers of dawn were breaking through as he arrived. He was met by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner and two Reichswehr officers, who told him that the Munich SA, shouting abuse at the Führer, had attempted an armed demonstration in the city. Though a serious disturbance, it was, in fact, merely the biggest of the protest actions of despairing stormtroopers, when as many as 3,000 armed SA men had rampaged through Munich in the early hours, denouncing the ‘treachery’ against the SA, shouting: ‘The Führer is against us, the Reichswehr is against us; SA out on the streets.’ However, Hitler had not heard of the Munich disturbances before he arrived there in the early hours of the morning. Now, in blind rage at what he interpreted as the betrayal by Röhm – ‘the blackest day of my life’, he was heard to say – he decided not to wait till the following morning, but to act immediately.
He and his entourage raced to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. The local SA leaders Obergruppenführer Schneidhuber and Gruppenführer Schmid were peremptorily summoned. Hitler’s fury was still rising as he awaited them. By now he had worked himself into a near-hysterical state of mind, reminiscent of the night of the Reichstag fire. Accepting no explanations, he ripped their rank badges from their shoulders, shouting ‘You are under arrest and will be shot.’ Bewildered and frightened, they were taken off to Stadelheim prison.
Hitler, without waiting for Dietrich’s SS men to arrive, now demanded to be taken immediately to Bad Wiessee. It was just after 6.30 a.m. as the three cars pulled up outside the Hotel Hanselbauer in the resort on the Tegernsee, where Röhm and other SA leaders were still sleeping off an evening’s drinking. Hitler, followed by members of his entourage and a number of policemen, stormed up to Röhm’s room and, pistol in hand, denounced him as a traitor (which the astonished Chief of Staff vehemently denied) and declared him under arrest. Edmund Heines, the Breslau SA leader, was found in a nearby room in bed with a young man – a scene that Goebbels’s propaganda later made much of to heap moral opprobrium on the SA. Other arrests of Röhm’s staff followed.
Hitler and his entourage then travelled back to the Brown House. At midday he spoke to party and SA leaders gathered in the ‘Senators’ Hall’. The atmosphere was murderous. Hitler was beside himself, in a frenzy of rage, spittle dribbling from his mouth as he began to speak. He spoke of the ‘worst treachery in world history’. Röhm, he claimed, had received 12 million Marks in bribes from France to have him arrested and killed, to deliver Germany to its enemies. The SA chief and his co-conspirators, Hitler railed, would be punished as examples. He would have them all shot. One after the other, the Nazi leaders demanded the extermination of the SA ‘traitors’. Heß pleaded that the task of shooting Röhm fall to him.
Back in his own room, Hitler gave the order for the immediate shooting of six of the SA men held in Stadelheim, marking crosses against their names in a list provided by the prison administration. They were promptly taken out and shot by Dietrich’s men. Not even a peremptory trial was held. The men were simply told before being shot: ‘You have been condemned to death by the Führer! Heil Hitler!’
Röhm’s name was not among the initial six marked by Hitler for instant execution. One witness later claimed to have overheard Hitler saying that Röhm had been spared because of his many earlier services to the Movement. A similar remark was noted by Alfred Rosenberg in his diary. ‘Hitler did not want to have Röhm shot,’ he wrote. ‘He stood at one time at my side before the People’s Court,’ Hitler had said to the head of the Nazi publishing empire, Max Amann.
The loss of face at having to murder his right-hand man on account of his alleged rebellion was most likely the chief reason for Hitler’s reluctance to order Röhm’s death. For the moment, at any rate, he hesitated about having Röhm killed. In Berlin, meanwhile, there was no hesitation. Immediately on return from Bad Wiessee, Goebbels had telephoned Göring with the password ‘Kolibri’ (‘Humming Bird’), which set in motion the murder-squads in the capital city and the rest of the country. Herbert von Bose, Papen’s press secretary, was brutally shot down by a Gestapo hit-squad after the Vice-Chancellery had been stormed by SS men. Edgar Jung, an intellectual on the conservative Right and speech-writer for Papen, in ‘protective custody’ since 25 June, was also murdered, found dead in a ditch near Oranienburg on 1 July. Papen’s staff were arrested. The Vice-Chancellor himself, whose murder would have proved a diplomatic embarrassment, was placed under house-arrest. The killing was extended to others who had nothing to do with the leadership of the SA. Old scores were settled. Gregor Strasser was taken to Gestapo headquarters and shot in one of the cells. General Schleicher and his wife were shot dead in their own home. Also among the victims was Major-General von Bredow, one of Schleicher’s right-hand men. In Munich, Hitler’s old adversary Ritter von Kahr was dragged away by SS men and later found hacked to death near Dachau. In all, there were twenty-two victims in and around Munich, mostly killed through ‘local initiative’. The blood-lust had developed its own momentum.
Hitler arrived back in Berlin around ten o’clock on the evening of 30 June, tired, drawn, and unshaven, to be met by Göring, Himmler, and a guard of honour. He hesitated until late the following morning about the fate of the former SA Chief of Staff. He was, it seems, put under pressure by Himmler and Göring to have Röhm liquidated. In the early afternoon of Sunday 1 July, during a garden party at the Reich Chancellery for cabinet members and their wives, Hitler finally agreed. Even now, however, he was keen that Röhm take his own life rather than be ‘executed’. Theodor Eicke, Commandant of Dachau Concentration Camp, was ordered to go to Stadelheim and offer Röhm the chance to recognize the enormity of his actions by killing himself. If not, he was to be shot. Along with his deputy, SS-Sturmbannführer Michael Lippert, and a third SS man from the camp, Eicke drove to Stadelheim. Röhm was left with a pistol. After ten minutes, no shot had been heard, and the pistol was untouched on the small table near the door of the cell, where it had been left. Eicke and Lippert returned to the cell, each with pistol drawn, signalled to Röhm, standing and bare-chested, and trying to speak, that they would wait no longer, took careful aim, and shot him dead. Hitler’s published announcement was terse: ‘The former Chief of Staff Röhm was given the opportunity to draw the consequences of his treacherous behaviour. He did not do so and was thereupon shot.’
On 2 July, Hitler formally announced the end of the ‘cleansing action’. Some estimates put the total number killed at 150–200 persons.
With the SA still in a state of shock and uncertainty, the purge of its mass membership began under the new leader, the Hitler loyalist Viktor Lutze. Within a year, the SA had been reduced in size by over 40 per cent. Many subordinate leaders were dismissed in disciplinary hearings. The structures built up by Röhm as the foundation of his power within the organization were meanwhile systematically dismantled. The SA was turned into little more than a military sports and training body. For anyone still harbouring alternative ideas, the ruthlessness shown by Hitler had left its own unmistakable message.
IV
Outside Germany, there was horror at the butchery, even more so at the gangster methods used by the state’s leaders. Within Germany, it was a different matter. Public expressions of gratitude to Hitler were not long in coming. Already on 1 July, Reichswehr Minister Blomberg, in a statement to the armed forces, praised the ‘soldierly determination and exemplary courage’ shown by the Führer in attacking and crushing ‘the traitors and mutineers’. The gratitude of the armed forces, he added, would be marked by ‘devotion and loyalty’. The following day, the Reich President sent Hitler a telegram expressing his own ‘deep-felt gratitude’ for the ‘resolute intervention’ and ‘courageous personal involvement’ which had ‘rescued the German people from a serious danger’. Much later, when they were both in prison in Nuremberg, Papen asked Göring whether the President had ever seen the congratulatory telegram sent in his name. Göring replied that Otto Meissner, Hindenburg’s State Secretary, had asked him, half-jokingly, whether he had been ‘satisfied with the text’.
Hitler himself gave a lengthy account of the ‘plot’ by Röhm to a meeting of ministers on the morning of 3 July. Anticipating any allegations about the lawlessness of his actions, he likened his actions to those of the captain of a ship putting down a mutiny, where immediate action to smash a revolt was necessary, and a formal trial was impossible. He asked the cabinet to accept the draft Law for the Emergency Defence of the State that he was laying before them. In a single, brief paragraph, the law read: ‘The measures taken on 30 June and 1 and 2 July for the suppression of high treasonable and state treasonable attacks are, as emergency defence of the state, legal.’ The Reich Minister of Justice, the conservative Franz Gürtner, declared that the draft did not create new law, but simply confirmed existing law. Reichswehr Minister Blomberg thanked the Chancellor in the name of the cabinet for his ‘resolute and courageous action through which he had protected the German people from civil war’. With this statement of suppliance by the head of the armed forces, and the acceptance by the head of the judicial system of the legality of acts of brute violence, the law acknowledging Hitler’s right to commit murder in the interest of the state was unanimously accepted. The law was signed by Hitler, Frick, and Gürtner.
The account to the cabinet was in essence the basis of the justification which Hitler offered in his lengthy speech to the Reichstag on 13 July. If not one of his best rhetorical performances, it was certainly one of the most remarkable, and most effective, he was ever to deliver. The atmosphere was tense. Thirteen members of the Reichstag had been among those murdered; friends and former comrades-in-arms of the SA leaders were among those present. The presence of armed SS men flanking the rostrum and at various points of the hall was an indication of Hitler’s wariness, even among the serried ranks of party members. After he had offered a lengthy, fabricated account of the ‘revolt’ and the part allegedly played in the conspiracy by General Schleicher, Major-General Bredow, and Gregor Strasser, he came to the most extraordinary sections of the speech. In these, the head of the German government openly accepted full responsibility for what amounted to mass murder. Hitler turned defence into attack. ‘Mutinies are broken according to eternal, iron laws. If I am reproached with not turning to the law-courts for sentence, I can only say: in this hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German nation and thereby the supreme judge of the German people … I gave the order to shoot those most guilty of this treason, and I further gave the order to burn out down to the raw flesh the ulcers of our internal well-poisoning and the poisoning from abroad.’ The cheering was tumultuous. Not just among the Nazi Reichstag members, but in the country at large, Hitler’s ruthless substitution of the rule of law by murder in the name of raison d’état was applauded. It matched exactly what Nazi parlance dubbed the ‘healthy sentiments of the people’.
The public was ignorant of the plots, intrigues, and power-games taking place behind the scenes. What people saw for the most part was the welcome removal of a scourge. Once the SA had done its job in crushing the Left, the bullying and strutting arrogance, open acts of violence, daily disturbances, and constant unruliness of the stormtroopers were a massive affront to the sense of order, not just among the middle classes. Instead of being shocked by Hitler’s resort to shooting without trial, most people – accepting, too, the official versions of the planned putsch – acclaimed the swift and resolute actions of their Leader.
There was great admiration for what was seen to be Hitler’s protection of the ‘little man’ against the outrageous abuses of power of the over-mighty SA leadership. Even more so, the emphasis that Hitler had placed in his speech on the immorality and corruption of the SA leaders left a big mark on public responses. The twelve points laid down by Hitler in his order to the new Chief of Staff, Viktor Lutze, on 30 June had focused heavily on the need to eradicate homosexuality, debauchery, drunkenness, and high living from the SA. Hitler had explicitly pointed to the misuse of large amounts of money for banquets and limousines. The homosexuality of Röhm, Heines, and others among the SA leaders, known to Hitler and other Nazi leaders for years, was highlighted as particularly shocking in Goebbels’s propaganda. Above all, Hitler was seen as the restorer of order. That murder on the orders of the head of government was the basis of the ‘restoration of order’ passed people by, was ignored, or – most generally – met with their approval. There were wide expectations that Hitler would extend the purge to the rest of the party – an indication of the distance that had already developed between Hitler’s own massive popularity and the sullied image of the party’s ‘little Hitlers’, the power-crazed functionaries found in towns and villages throughout the land.
There was no show of disapproval of Hitler’s state murders from any quarter. Both Churches remained silent, even though the Catholic Action leader, Erich Klausener, had been among the victims. Two generals had also been murdered. Though a few of their fellow officers momentarily thought there should be an investigation, most were too busy clinking their champagne glasses in celebration at the destruction of the SA. As for any sign that the legal profession might distance itself from acts of blatant illegality, the foremost legal theorist in the country, Carl Schmitt, published an article directly relating to Hitler’s speech on 13 July. Its title was: ‘The Führer Protects the Law’.
The smashing of the SA removed the one organization that was seriously destabilizing the regime and directly threatening Hitler’s own position. The army leadership could celebrate the demise of their rival, and the fact that Hitler had backed their power in the state. The army’s triumph was, however, a hollow one. Its complicity in the events of 30 June 1934 bound it more closely to Hitler. But in so doing, it opened the door fully to the crucial extension of Hitler’s power following Hindenburg’s death. The generals might have thought Hitler was their man after 30 June. The reality was different. The next few years would show that the ‘Röhm affair’ was a vital stage on the way to the army becoming Hitler’s tool, not his master.
The other major beneficiary was the SS. ‘With regard to the great services of the SS, especially in connection with the events of the 30th of June,’ Hitler removed its subordination to the SA. From 20 July 1934 onwards, it was responsible to him alone. Instead of any dependence on the huge and unreliable SA, with its own power pretensions, Hitler had elevated the smaller, élite praetorian guard, its loyalty unquestioned, its leaders already in almost total command of the police. The most crucial ideological weapon in the armoury of Hitler’s state was forged.
Not least, the crushing of the SA leadership showed what Hitler wanted it to show: that those opposing the regime had to reckon with losing their heads. All would-be opponents could now be absolutely clear that Hitler would stop at nothing to hold on to power, that he would not hesitate to use the utmost brutality to smash those in his way.
V
An early intimation that a head of government who had had his own immediate predecessor as Chancellor, General von Schleicher, murdered might also not shy away from involvement in violence abroad was provided by the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuss in a failed putsch attempt undertaken by Austrian SS men on 25 July while Hitler was attending the Bayreuth Festival. Hitler’s own role, and the extent to which he had detailed information of the putsch plans, is less than wholly clear. The initiative for the coup attempt clearly came from local Nazis. However, it seems that Hitler was aware of it, and gave his approval. The putsch attempt was rapidly put down. Under Kurt Schuschnigg, successor to the murdered Dollfuss, the Austrian authoritarian regime, treading its tightrope between the predatory powers of Germany and Italy, continued in existence – for the present.
The international embarrassment for Hitler was enormous, the damage to relations with Italy considerable. For a time, it even looked as if Italian intervention was likely. Papen found Hitler in a near-hysterical state, denouncing the idiocy of the Austrian Nazis for landing him in such a mess. Every attempt was made by the German government, however unconvincingly, to dissociate itself from the coup. The headquarters of the Austrian NSDAP in Munich were closed down. A new policy of restraint in Austria was imposed. But at least one consequence of the ill-fated affair pleased Hitler. He found the answer to what to do with Papen – who had ‘just been in our way since the Röhm business’, as Göring reportedly put it. He made him the new German ambassador in Vienna.
In Neudeck, meanwhile, Hindenburg was dying. His condition had been worsening during the previous weeks. On 1 August, Hitler told the cabinet that the doctors were giving Hindenburg less than twenty-four hours to live. The following morning, the Reich President was dead.
So close to the goal of total power, Hitler had left nothing to chance. The Enabling Act had explicitly stipulated that the rights of the Reich President would be left untouched. But on 1 August, while Hindenburg was still alive, Hitler had all his ministers put their names to a law determining that, on Hindenburg’s death, the office of the Reich President would be combined with that of the Reich Chancellor. The reason subsequently given was that the title ‘Reich President’ was uniquely bound up with the ‘greatness’ of the deceased. Hitler wished from now on, in a ruling to apply ‘for all time’, to be addressed as ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor’. The change in his powers was to be put to the German people for confirmation in a ‘free plebiscite’, scheduled for 19 August.
Among the signatories to the ‘Law on the Head of State of the German Reich’ of 1 August 1934 had been Reichswehr Minister Blomberg. The law meant that, on Hindenburg’s death, Hitler would automatically become supreme commander of the armed forces. The possibility of the army appealing over the head of the government to the Reich President as supreme commander thereby disappeared. This caused no concern to the Reichswehr leadership. Blomberg and Reichenau were, in any case, determined to go further. They were keen to exploit the moment to bind Hitler, as they imagined, more closely to the armed forces. The fateful step they took, however, had precisely the opposite effect. As Blomberg later made clear, it was without any request by Hitler, and without consulting him, that he and Reichenau hastily devised the oath of unconditional loyalty to the person of the Führer, taken by every officer and soldier in the armed forces in ceremonies throughout the land on 2 August, almost before Hindenburg’s corpse had gone cold. The oath meant that the distinction between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Hitler had been eradicated. Opposition was made more difficult. For those later hesitant about joining the conspiracy against Hitler, the oath would also provide an excuse. Far from creating a dependence of Hitler on the army, the oath, stemming from ill-conceived ambitions of the Reichswehr leadership, marked the symbolic moment when the army chained itself to the Führer.
‘Today Hitler is the Whole of Germany,’ ran a headline on 4 August. The funeral of the Reich President, held with great pomp and circumstance at the Tannenberg Memorial in East Prussia, the scene of his great victory in the First World War, saw Hindenburg, who had represented the only countervailing source of loyalty, ‘enter Valhalla’, as Hitler put it. Hindenburg had wanted to be buried at Neudeck. Ever alert to propaganda opportunities, Hitler insisted on his burial in the Tannenberg Memorial. On 19 August, the silent coup of the first days of the month duly gained its ritual plebiscitary confirmation. According to the official figures, 89.9 per cent of the voters supported Hitler’s constitutionally now unlimited powers as head of state, head of government, leader of the party, and supreme commander of the armed forces. The result, disappointing though it was to the Nazi leadership, and less impressive as a show of support than might perhaps have been imagined when all account is taken of the obvious pressures and manipulation, nevertheless reflected the fact that Hitler had the backing, much of it fervently enthusiastic, of the great majority of the German people.
In the few weeks embracing the Röhm affair and the death of Hindenburg, Hitler had removed all remaining threats to his position with an ease which even in the spring and early summer of 1934 could have been barely imagined. He was now institutionally unchallengeable, backed by the ‘big battalions’, adored by much of the population. He had secured total power. The Führer state was established. Germany had bound itself to the dictatorship it had created.
After the crisis-ridden summer, Hitler was, by September, once again in his element on the huge propaganda stage of the Nuremberg Rally. In contrast even to the previous year’s rally, this was consciously created as a vehicle of the Führer cult. Hitler now towered above his Movement, which had assembled to pay him homage. The film which the talented and glamorous director Leni Riefenstahl made of the rally subsequently played to packed houses throughout Germany, and made its own significant contribution to the glorification of Hitler. The title of the film, devised by Hitler himself, was Triumph of the Will. In reality, his triumph owed only a little to will. It owed far more to those who had much to gain – or thought they had – by placing the German state at Hitler’s disposal.