Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

by Ian Kershaw

  More threatening was the growing dismay among national-conservative élites about the Pandora’s box they themselves had helped prise open. Some among them recognized the potential for exploiting the crisis to turn the party dictatorship they so detested into what they had always wanted: an authoritarian state without parties – and under their own control. The ‘taming’ of Hitler had failed disastrously in 1933. The antics of Röhm, and the wild talk of a ‘second revolution’, offered a second opportunity. ‘We are partly responsible that this fellow has come to power,’ commented Edgar Jung, an intellectual on the conservative Right and speech-writer for Papen, of Hitler. ‘We must get rid of him again.’49 Another member of Papen’s circle, his press secretary Herbert von Bose, used his control over the Vice-Chancellor’s press agency to contact numerous generals known to be critical of the regime. His hope was to use the SA crisis to weaken Hitler. Crucially, given Hindenburg’s frailty, it was urgently necessary to make plans for his replacement as Head of State. The restoration of the monarchy, perhaps with a Hohenzollern prince as regent in the first instance, was the hope of the conservatives. Hitler’s chances of obtaining supreme power would thereby be blocked. However limited the realistic chances of success of this strategy were, the very substance of the National Socialist regime was at this time in question.50

  In April it became known that Hindenburg was seriously ill.51 Hitler and Blomberg had already been told that the end was not far off.52 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.53

  This defusing of the situation, together with Hindenburg’s absence, made the situation more difficult, rather than easier, for the conservatives. But Bose was anxious not to let the initiative seep away. He knew that Jung had been working on and off since December on a speech for Papen which would attack the ‘degeneration’ (Entartung) of the new state. As it happened, Papen was due to deliver a speech on 17 June at the University of Marburg. The text prepared by Jung and completed eight days earlier was adopted for it. Papen’s secretary was concerned at its tone. But Papen was given a copy only as he left for Marburg and was prevented from making any alterations.54 Sensationally, he delivered his boldly challenging speech – 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.’55 The speech met with roars of applause within the hall. Outside, Goebbels moved swiftly to have it banned, though not before some extracts were printed in the Frankfurter Zeitung, one of Germany’s most respected newspapers and still able to avoid the tightening Nazi straitjacket on the press. Copies of the speech were run off and circulated, both within Germany and to the foreign press.56 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.57 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 (Meineidstat), 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.’58 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.59

  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.60 Papen conceded – and the moment was lost.

  Hitler wasted no time. He arranged an audience alone with Hindenburg on 21 June, officially to discuss his meeting with Mussolini in Venice a few days earlier.61 This, Hitler’s first visit abroad (if we discount his time during the war spent in France and Belgium), had given the opportunity for an airing of the Austrian question. But Mussolini and Austria were not on Hitler’s mind as he travelled to see the ailing Reich President.

  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 Hitler 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.62 The Reich President himself, according to Meissner’s later account, told Hitler ‘to bring the revolutionary trouble-makers finally to reason’.63 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.

  Any action had to be undertaken by 1 August, when the stormtroopers were due to return from leave. Probably the decision to purge the SA had already been taken by the date, four days after Hitler’s audience with Hindenburg, when Heß ominously threatened, in a radio broadcast: ‘Woe to anyone in breach of loyalty in the belief of serving the revolution through a revolt.’64

  What Hitler had in mind at this stage is unclear. He seems to have spoken about deposing Röhm, or having him arrested.65 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.66 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 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 thr
eat to the military). An SA putsch was now thought likely in summer or autumn. The entire Reichswehr leadership – most prominently Blomberg and Reichenau, but also Fritsch and Beck – were prepared for imminent action against Röhm.67 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.68 The same day, SS – Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, commander of Hitler’s house-guards, 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’.69

  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.70 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. The meeting had been initiated by Herbert von Bose and Fritz Günther von Tschirschky und Boegendorff, the personal secretary of the Vice-Chancellor. It marked a final attempt, after they had heard of the arrest of Edgar Jung by the Gestapo, to win the Reich President’s approval for moves to constrain the power not only of Röhm and the SA, but of Hitler himself.71 Hitler left the wedding reception straight away. As a non-drinker and non-smoker, content only when he was holding court and dominating proceedings, such festivities gave him little pleasure anyway (and his presence was presumably an inhibition as well as an honour to other guests). He raced back to his hotel. There, according to Lutze, he decided there was no time to lose: he had to strike.72

  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.73 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.74 On the morning of 29 June, betraying no sign of anything unusual, Hitler inspected Reich Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) camps in Westphalia. But that afternoon, he travelled to Bad Godesberg, to be joined in the Rheinhotel Dreesen by Goebbels and Sepp Dietrich, flying in from Berlin. Goebbels had been impatient at Hitler’s delay in dealing with the ‘reaction’.75 He flew to Godesberg thinking the strike against Papen and his cronies was finally going to take place. Only on arrival did he learn that the main target was Röhm’s SA. Hitler reported to him how serious the situation was. There was proof, he claimed (and evidently believed), that Röhm had conspired with the French ambassador François-Poncet, Schleicher and Strasser. So he was determined to act the very next day ‘against Röhm and his rebels’. Blood would be shed. They should realize that people lose their heads through rebellion. While arrangements were made, total secrecy had to be maintained.76

  Rumours of unrest in the SA were meanwhile being 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.77 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 straight away. 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.78 Around 2a.m. Hitler left to fly to Munich, accompanied by his adjutants Brückner, Schaub and Schreck, along with Goebbels, Lutze and Press Chief Dietrich.79 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.80

  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.81

  Hitler, without waiting for Dietrich’s SS men to arrive, now demanded to be taken immediately to Bad Wiessee. It was just after 6.30a.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. Those taken in custody were held in the cellar of the hotel until a bus hurriedly chartered from a Bad Wiessee coach firm arrived to transport the SA leaders to Stadelheim prison in Munich. A potentially hazardous moment occurred while the prisoners were still being held in the cellar, as a lorry bringing more of Röhm’s staff to the scheduled conference with Hitler arrived from Munich. Hitler stepped out and addressed the men, telling them that he had taken over the leadership of the SA himself, and ordered them to return to Munich. They obeyed without demur.82

  Hitler and his entourage then travelled back themselves 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. One of those present later recalled spittle dribbling from Hitler’s 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.83 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.84

  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.85 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!’86

  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.87 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. (Amann’s view was simply that ‘the great swine had to go’. He told Heß he was ready to shoot Röhm himself. Heß retorted that, no, that was his duty, even if he himself should afterwards be shot for it.)88

  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.89 As in Bavaria, a great deal was improvised. Göring later announced in a press conference that he had extended his commission to strike against ‘these malcontents’.90 He meant primarily the ‘reactionaries’ in the Papen group, and the former Chancellor Schleicher. Herbert von Bose was brutally shot down by a Gestapo hit-squad after the Vice-Chancellery had been stormed by SS men. Edgar Jung, 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. The head of ‘Catholic Action’, Erich Klausener, who had at one time been head of the police department in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, was also brutally shot down by an assassination squad of SS men, on Heydrich’s orders. 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 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. The music critic Wilhelm Eduard Schmid was murdered by mistake; the SS men who killed him thought he was Dr Ludwig Schmitt, a one-time sympathizer of Otto Strasser. Among the twenty-two victims in and around Munich, mostly killed through ‘local initiative’, was one of Hitler’s early supporters, Pater Bernhard Stempfle, who had helped with the editing of Mein Kampf. No motive for his murder is known. It may also have been a case of mistaken identity. Nor in Silesia, where, under Heines, the terror of the SA had been a hallmark of political life, was the revenge-killing guided by any central directives.91 The blood-lust had developed its own momentum. All in all, the ‘action’ was beginning to get out of hand.