Adolf Hitler and The Night of The Long Knives

On 30 January, 1933, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. He had not been elected to the post (indeed, his NSDAP had lost votes in the most recent election) rather his appointment had been engineered by a previous Chancellor, Franz von Papen, in an attempt to pre-empt his great rival General Kurt von Schleicher from successfully forming a Government. Papen, an aristocrat, thought he could manipulate Hitler, that he would merely serve as his puppet. Hitler also had the problem of dealing with the ageing German President Paul von Hindenburg, who had little time for a man he referred to as “that coarse little corporal”, and Papen had to spend many hours persuading him to appoint Hitler in the first place. So, although, Hitler was now Chancellor he was a long way from truly having his hands on the levers of power, and unable to form a majority in the Reichstag his time as Chancellor seemed as if it would be short-lived, which was of course as Papen had intended.

All this changed, however, on 27 February, 1933, with the Reichstag Fire. A Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested at the scene and later charged with the crime of arson. Hitler immediately announced that he had uncovered a communist conspiracy to overthrow the Government and declared a state of emergency. On 23 March, Hitler forced through the Reichstag an Enabling Act which suspended the Constitution and allowed the Government to govern without reference to the Reichstag for a maximum of 4 years. Papen’s strategy had fallen apart and Hitler now had the power he had sought, now he could re-build Germany as he wished, and return her to the greatness he believed it was his destiny to achieve. He proceeded to suppress the Communists, abolish the Trade Unions, arrest and imprison his political opponents. He was systematically eliminating all threat to his continuation in power, but one threat did remain, and it did not come from his political opponents, but from within his own party.

Hitler, with his Brownshirts

The Sturm Abteilung (SA) or Brownshirts were a paramilitary organisation of storm troopers created to bully and intimidate opponents of the Nazi Party. By 1934, they numbered 4 million and were led by Ernst Rohm, one of Hitler’s oldest comrades. Rohm had been a professional soldier, and a First World War veteran who carried the scars to prove it. He was a brute of a man, a street brawler, an active homosexual (as indeed many of the SA leadership were) and extremely ambitious.