Fearing that the paramilitary SA had become too powerful, Hitler ordered his elite SS guards to murder the organization's leaders, including Ernst Rhm. [21] By the beginning of June everything was set and all that was needed was permission from Hitler. Hitler travelled to Munich by plane with . The SS found Breslau SA leader Edmund Heines in bed with an unidentified eighteen-year-old male SA senior troop leader. [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. 9. Hitler feared that the SA and Ernst Rhm, their leader, were a potential threat to his leadership. Through the use of primary sources, students will gain a deeper understanding of the motivations, actions, and consequences of the Night of the Long Knives. Night Of The Long Knives: What Happened & Why? | HistoryExtra On the 23 March 1933, Hitler proposed the Enabling Law to the Reichstag. 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. They will . [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]. In a new pair Rally Coach this worksheet. Night of the Long Knives, in German history, purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler on June 30, 1934. It was named Der Fhrer schtzt das Recht ("The Fhrer Upholds the Law"). These acts removed peoples ability to oppose the Nazi Party, in any form. Political instability in the Weimar Republic, Hyperinflation and the invasion of the Ruhr, Strength and weaknesses of the Weimar Republic. 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). Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. [29] On 29 June, a signed article in Vlkischer Beobachter by Blomberg appeared in which Blomberg stated with great fervour that the Reichswehr stood behind Hitler. 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 generals, whose chief spokesman was the minister of defense, Werner von Blomberg, were certainly impressed by the efficiency with which Rhm and his SA clique had been eliminated. 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. 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. The decree also removed basic personal freedoms, such as the freedom of speech, the right to own property, and the right to trial before imprisonment. "[35] Having heard nothing in the allotted time, they returned to Rhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance. Hitler and Himmler unleashed the Gestapo against old enemies, as well. [4] The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. It targeted potential threats to Hitler's power, particularly within the NSDAP's fast-growing and politically vocal paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung or SA. [44] The murdered included at least one accidental victim: Willi Schmid, the music critic of the Mnchner Neuste Nachrichten newspaper, whose name was confused with one of the Gestapo's intended targets. [68] Hammerstein, who was a close friend of Schleicher, had been much offended at Schleicher's funeral when the SS refused to allow him to attend the service and confiscated the wreaths that the mourners had brought. The law needed two thirds of the Reichstag to vote for it to pass. 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. Night of the Long Knives: Jonathan Petropoulos 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. One of the men Gring recruited to assist him was Willi Lehmann, a Gestapo official and NKVD spy. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. [7] Complaints of "overbearing and loutish" behaviour by stormtroopers became common by the middle of 1933. From the airport they drove to the Bavarian Interior Ministry, where they assembled the leaders of an SA rampage that had taken place in city streets the night before. Refusing to take his own life, he was shot on 1 July 1934 by two SS guards. Hess, present among the assembled, even volunteered to shoot the "traitors". [63], Former Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was in exile in Doorn, Netherlands, was horrified by the purge. Max Heydebreck, an SA leader in Rummelsburg, denounced the army to his fellow brownshirts, telling them, "Some of the officers of the army are swine. Rhm was very critical of Hitler's policies of working with rich businessmen and the army. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army. [25] During the summit in Venice, Mussolini upbraided Hitler for tolerating the violence, hooliganism and homosexuality of the SA, which Mussolini stated were ruining Hitler's good reputation all over the world. Deprived of Communist party meetings to disrupt, the stormtroopers would sometimes run riot in the streets after a night of drinking; they would attack passers-by and then attack the police who were called to stop them. [63] Franois-Poncet was not declared persona non grata as would have been usual if an ambassador were involved in a plot against his host government. Religion and The Bloody Chamber. persecution On the night of June 30, 1934, Rhm and many more leaders of the SA were shot by members of Heinrich Himmlers SS (Schutzstaffeln; German: Protective Echelon). 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. SS men stormed the hotel, and Hitler personally placed Rhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest. [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]. By 1935, over 1,600 newspapers had been closed. Night of the Long Knives, (June 30, 1934) Purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler. Many of the prisoners were tortured and abused. oppression The first concentration camp, Dachau, opened in a broken-down munitions factory on the 20 March 1933, imprisoning primarily political prisoners. In addition to this, there was a mutual dislike between the traditional conservative elite who maintained many key positions in the government and the army during the first years of the Third Reich and the SA. The Nazi Party used the atmosphere of panic to their advantage, encouraging anti-communism. The result was that it was made Hitler the undisputed leader of the Nazis and by extension Germany. Although President Hindenburg and the Reichstag continued to exist, Hitler could now govern by decree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. ", Coincidentally, Hitler had been incarcerated at. The Nazis also took several more steps to reduce their political opposition legally. The leaders of the SA were ordered to attend a meeting at a hotel in Bad Wiesse, Bavaria. The Night of the Long Knives - the Education Forum If that was indeed true then, as a legal matter, the law was entirely unnecessary and redundant. Blomberg, Hitler and Goebbels. This fear was While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army, a return to conscription, and a more aggressive foreign policy, the army continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime. [68] Besides working for the rehabilitation of Schleicher and Bredow, Hammerstein and Mackensen sent a memo to Hindenburg on 18 July setting out in considerable detail the circumstances of the murders of the two generals and noted that Papen had barely escaped. pardoned 89.93% voted in favour of Hitler. [1] More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested. The humbling of the SA ended the threat it had posed to the army but, by standing by Hitler during the purge, the army bound itself more tightly to the Nazi regime. Night of the Long Knives - Oxford Reference On 30 June 1934 these tensions came to a head. 2 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 82. Gring instructed police stations to burn "all documents concerning the action of the past two days". Goering, Himmler, and Heydrich, Hitler's new head of internal security for the SS, got together and drew up a list of opponents to Hitler's new Government, while Goebbels publicly accused Ernst Rhm of planning a takeover or 'Putsch'. [45][41] As Himmler's adjutant Karl Wolff later explained, friendship and personal loyalty were not allowed to stand in the way: Among others, a charming fellow [named] Karl von Spreti, Rhm's personal adjutant. Gleichschaltung was the process of the Nazi Party taking control over all aspects of Germany. What were the consquence of the night of the long knives June - Answers 8. Night of the Long Knives - SlideShare The Night of the Long Knives was a helping event in Hitler becoming a dictator. , issuing the Act for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service on the 7 April 1933. illusion The Centre Partys vote was crucial. Rhm's contempt for the party's bureaucracy angered Hess. In response, Hitler met Blomberg and the leadership of the SA and SS on 28 February 1934. This would allow them to rule unopposed and unhindered by coalition governments. ultimate power over Germany, whilst maintaining an "Rhm was given the opportunity to draw the consequences of his treacherous behaviour," said Hitler in . The purge of the SA was kept secret until it was announced by Adolf Hitler on July 13. Rhm, who was initially [38], Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Rhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA. Once inside Rhm's cell, they handed him a Browning pistol loaded with a single cartridge and told him he had ten minutes to kill himself or they would do it for him. On 1 April 1933, the Nazi Party led a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned businesses across Germany. On the 30 January 1933 Hitler was appointed as chancellor of the Weimar Republic. He wanted the Nazi Party to focus on socialist policies to support . Carried out primarily by the SS and the Gestapo, over 150 people were murdered and hundreds more were arrested. In Berlin, on Gring's personal orders, an armed SS unit stormed the Vice-Chancellery. 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. [56] Germany's legal establishment further capitulated to the regime when the country's leading legal scholar, Carl Schmitt, wrote an article defending Hitler's 13 July speech. 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. 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. The Night of the Long Knives is a harrowingif little knownevent in the history of the Troubles, but it served as an important link in the torturously slow process of transitioning from . On 1 July, at Hitler's behest, Theodor Eicke, Commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, and his SS adjutant Michael Lippert visited Rhm. 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. Free Essay: Night of The long Knives - 597 Words | Studymode Only the SPD opposed it. Also known as the "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers," the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists. [62] General von Reichenau went so far as to publicly give credence to the lie that Schleicher had been plotting to overthrow the government. [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. [27] While von Papen's resignation as vice-chancellor would not have threatened Hitler's position, it would have nonetheless been an embarrassing display of independence from a leading conservative. Following Hitlers appointment as chancellor the Nazis were finally in a position of power. Some estimates, however, put the total number killed at between 150 and 200. Following the purge, the Nazi's sculpted the media coverage to portray the event as a preventative measure against a revolutionary, violent, and . It established Hitler as "the supreme leader of the German people", as he put it in his 13 July speech to the Reichstag. "[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. Rhm demurred, telling them, "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself. 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. This new law gave Hitler the power to rule by decree rather than passing laws through the Reichstag and the president. Paul von Hindenburg was still alive and in office and, if he wished, could have stopped all of Hitlers plans by handing power over to the Reichswehr. After this date, the SS lead by Heinrich Himmler was to become far more powerful in Nazi Germany. The Night of Long Knives, one of most noteworthy events during Hitler's rule, was a purge that occurred on the 30th June 1934. . Hitler and the rest of the Nazi leadership disagreed with their approach. How Night Of Long Knives Affected Hitler's Rise To Power 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. 15 Apr 2023. Goebbels became responsible for controlling the national media, film, theatre, arts, and other cultural aspects. Over the next two days, most of the SA leadership were placed under arrest and murdered without trial. Hitler's task would not be simple, however, as the SA made up a large part of Nazism's most devoted followers. ", "But in origin the National Socialists had been a radical anti-capitalist party, and this part of the National Socialist programme was not only taken seriously by many loyal Party members but was of increasing importance in a period of economic depression. Following the Enabling Law, much of this harassment and imprisonment was legal. ", "The names of eighty-five victims [exist], only fifty of them SA men. The Night of the Long Knives - Nazi Germany [73] However, despite the rehabilitation of the two murdered officers, the Nazis continued in private to accuse Schleicher of high treason. 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. [35] Papen was unceremoniously arrested at the Vice-Chancellery, despite his insistent protests that he could not be arrested in his position as Vice-Chancellor. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a highly respected veteran field marshal. The crowd, which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest, shouted its approval. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). While all of these men were veterans of the Nazi movement, only Rhm continued to demonstrate his independence from, rather than his loyalty to, Adolf Hitler. 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. 4 terms. The legacy of Macmillan's 'Night of the Long Knives' - BBC News The army's support for the purge, however, would have far-reaching consequences for the institution. Within weeks of Rhms death, Hitler made an attempt to settle the question of union with Austria through simple violence. Hitler did not exercise absolute power, however, despite his swift consolidation of political authority. isabellaaellis. Just two months later, on 14 July 1933 the Nazis used the Enabling Act to ban all political parties except the Nazi Party. If passed, the law would establish the conditions needed for dictatorial rule. Night of the Long Knives - Achieving Total Power - July 1933 - August The Freikorps were nationalistic organizations primarily composed of disaffected, disenchanted, and angry German combat veterans founded by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution when it appeared that there was a lack of loyal troops. Despite this, on the whole, Gleichschaltung was largely successful. This included Vice-Chancellor Papen and those in his immediate circle. The day after the fire, Hindenburg signed the Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People. The speed and scale of the reshuffle caused it to be associated by its critics with the 1934 Night of the Long Knives in Nazi Germany . 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. What were the consequences of the Night of the Long Knives? The bottom half of the poster reads The more power you give Hitler, the easier he will win and the more independent you make him from the parties that led the people to where they are today. However, this power was limited, as the Nazis were just one party in a three party This photograph was taken the same day, showing the Reichstag still burning. [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). The destiny of our country is at stake. Goebbels engineered the media coverage following the attack to present it as a preventative measure, in response to the SAs plan to overthrow the government. Despite this improvement, the Nazis still did not command a majority in the Reichstag. The primary instruments of Hitler's action, which carried out most of the killings, were the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service (SD), and Gestapo (secret police) under Reinhard Heydrich. The Night of the Long Knives was the least important factor, as it did no help much towards Hitler's consolidation of power. Censorship was heightened, and any person publishing actively anti-Nazi material was threatened or imprisoned. Local governments proved more difficult to infiltrate, and even at the end of 1945 only 60% of local mayors were Nazi Party members. Night of the Long Knives | Teaching Resources Conservatives in the army, industry and politics placed Hitler under increasing pressure to reduce the influence of the SA and to move against Rhm. He then told Hitler that Hindenburg was close to declaring martial law and turning the government over to the Reichswehr if Hitler did not take immediate steps against Rhm and his brownshirts. 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. Ernst Rhm was murdered in the event known as the Rhm Putsch, or the Night of Long Knives. The Night of the Long Knives. 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 Night of the Long Knives L.O. [13], If the regular army showed contempt for the masses belonging to the SA, many stormtroopers returned the feeling, seeing the army as insufficiently committed to the National Socialist revolution. Hitler's entire life was one of making key-life and death-strategic decisions, successfully. He lifted his arm in the Nazi salute and called out "Heil Hitler, I love Germany. By some estimates, as many as 1,000 were rounded up, never to be seen again. Hitler claimed that 61 had been executed while 13 had been shot resisting arrest and three had committed suicide. By June 1934 this had grown to over 3,000,000 members. [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. "[74], Hitler named Viktor Lutze to replace Rhm as head of the SA. On the 4 October 1933, it was declared that all editors must be Aryan. We were close personal friends; we often dined together in Berlin. Both Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as Chancellor, and his wife were murdered at their home. In reality, the laws that the Nazis put forward secured their future as the sole ruling party in Germany. . Consequences of the Night of the Long Knives Flashcards | Quizlet [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. Consequences of the Night of the long Knives Death of Hindenburg and Fuhrer Army Oath Plenary - hierarchy task. Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Rhm the so-called Rhm Putsch. Many were terrified of voting of at all, and many turned to voting for the Nazi Party out of fear for their own safety. Rhm, however, wanted to eliminate the generalship of the Prussian aristocracy altogether, using the SA to become the core of a new German military. [75] Hitler expressly told him to stop SA funds from being spent on limousines and banquets, which he considered evidence of SA extravagance. 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. [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. 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.