25.Next to the secondary literature already mentioned, see also Evans, Third Reich in Power, pp. 31–41; Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 319–44; Otto Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt . . .’: Hitlers ‘Röhm-Putsch’-Morde vor Gericht (Munich: Beck, 1993); Susanne zur Nieden and Sven Reichardt, ‘Skandale als Instrument des Machtkampfes in der NS-Führung’, in Martin Sabrow (ed.), Skandal und Diktatur: Öffentliche Empörung im NS-Staat und in der DDR (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), pp. 33–58; Charles Bloch, Die SA und die Krise des NS-Regimes 1934 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), pp. 96–116; Max Gallo, The Night of the Long Knives: Hitler’s Purge of Roehm and the S.A. Brown Shirts (Godalming and Surrey: Fontana, 1972).
26.The political diary of Viktor Lutze is today stored in the archives of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn (FES). The story of how it landed there is worth a chapter of its own. In the final stages of the Second World War the Lutze family in Bevergern – allegedly out of fear of Allied confiscations – handed over the diary to friends who lived in the city of Werne and had promised to keep an eye on it. Yet, in November 1945, the diary was in possession of the U.S. journalist William Chester, who had come to Germany to cover the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Unsure of the diary’s authenticity, Chester showed it in the same month to the former Nuremberg police president and SS-Obergruppenführer Benno Martin, who was in Allied internment. Martin confirmed the authenticity of the diary and provided a handwritten ‘expert opinion’ on the notebook’s blank pages. In 1957 the above-mentioned extracts of the diary were published in the Frankfurter Rundschau. Subsequently, Anton Hoch, the archivist of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich (IfZ), attempted to buy the diary for the institute’s library and contacted Chester, who was then living in Togo, offering $1,000 for the diary. However, all attempts by the IfZ to get hold of the diary were unsuccessful. Instead, in early 1959, Chester gave it to Georges Spénale, at the time the French Haut Commissaire Spéciale for Togo. Eleven years later Spénale – who had become a member of the French Assemblée Nationale – travelled to Bonn and presented the diary to the FES. Since then it has been held in the special collections of the FES archive and can only be consulted with the consent of Karl Lutze, a nephew of Viktor who represents the family’s interests. See the Viktor Lutze Papers at FES. Additional information was provided by Karl Lutze and Anja Kruke at the FES.
27.For a short biographical sketch of Lutze, see Marcus Weidner, ‘Lutze, Viktor’, in Die Straßenbenennungspraxis in Westfalen und Lippe während des Nationalsozialismus: Datenbank der Straßenbenennungen 1933–1945, http://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/nstopo/strnam/Begriff_211.html, with further references.
28.Bloch, Die SA und die Krise des NS-Regimes, p. 155.
29.Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, p. 358.
30.Niekisch, Das Reich der niederen Dämonen, p. 167.
31.Hans Rudolf Wahl, ‘Antisemitismus in der NS-Wochenzeitung Der SA-Mann’, in Michael Nagel and Moshe Zimmermann (eds), Judenfeindschaft und Antisemitismus in der deutschen Presse über fünf Jahrhunderte: Erscheinungsformen, Rezeption, Debatte und Gegenwehr, vol. 2 (Bremen: edition lumière, 2013), pp. 671–90, here p. 676.
32.A day before, on 21 June, Hitler had met with General Blomberg and Reich President Hindenburg in Gut Neudeck. It seems likely that it was at this meeting that the decisive actions against the SA were discussed and coordinated. See Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’, ch. 6.3, with further references.
33.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 31–5.
34.According to the post-war testimony of Karl Schreyer, Röhm had heard rumours that Hitler planned to replace him with Lutze as early as 26 June 1934 but was lulled into a false sense of security by later reports. See HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Letter from Karl Schreyer to the Munich Police about the events of 30 June 1934, 27 May 1949.
35.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 28–30. Lutze’s verdict on Röhm was largely negative. In Lutze’s eyes, ‘besides his sexual predisposition’, Röhm was ‘too militaristic’ and not enough of a politician. He regarded him as a troublemaker who threatened the political unity of the Nazi camp.
36.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 39–41.
37.Ibid., pp. 41–51.
38.On Röhm’s execution, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 160–1; Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 29–36.
39.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Letter from Karl Schreyer to the Munich Police about the events of 30 June 1934, 27 May 1949.
40.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 59–79.
41.Ibid., p. 65. On the night of 1–2 July, Lutze made Erich Reimann, who later became the commander of the SA-Standarte Feldherrnhalle, his adjutant; see BArch Berlin, SA 400003178 (Reimann, Erich): Erich Reimann, Curriculum Vitae, 21 March 1942.
42.Lutze claimed to have personally seen these lists, which provided the basis for Hitler’s ultimate decision of life or death on 30 June 1934. See FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 62.
43.In this paragraph I follow the detailed reconstruction of events by Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’, chs 6.3.1 and 6.3.2. For an instructive case study on the planned Feme murder of Paul Schulz – who in 1934 narrowly escaped execution, not for the first time – see Anke Hoffstadt and Richard Kühl, ‘“Dead Man Walking”: Der “Fememörder” Paul Schulz und seine “Erschießung am 30. Juni 1934”’, Historische Sozialforschung 34:4 (2009), pp. 273–285.
44.As quoted in Mathilde Jamin, ‘Das Ende der “Machtergreifung”: Der 30. Juni 1934 und seine Wahrnehmung in der Bevölkerung’, in Wolfgang Michala (ed.), Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1984), pp. 207–19, here p. 212.
45.ÖstA/AdR, Bürckel/Materie, Karton 206, Mappe 4605: Decree of Adolf Hitler to Chief of Staff Lutze, 30 June 1934 (typescript).
46.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Werner von Blomberg, Order to the Army, translated by the Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, 1 July 1932.
47.Published in Reichsgesetzblatt I 1934, p. 529. See also Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 46–51.
48.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 66–8. On the tension between the SA and the SS during the ‘Röhm purge’, see also BArch Berlin, NS 26/2540: Report of the SA-Sturmführer Hermann Baecke about the comportment of the SS man Fritz Völker on the night of 30 June–1 July 1934.
49.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Report from Jacob W. S. Wuest, U.S. Military Attaché in Berlin, to the U.S. Department of State, 2 July 1934.
50.BayHStA, StK, no. 7579: Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, situational report, 2 July 1934.
51.Dietmar Schulze, ‘Der “Röhm-Putsch” in der Provinz Sachsen’, in Hallische Beiträge zur Zeitgeschichte, ed. Jana Wüstenhagen and Daniel Bohse (Halle/Saale: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 2005), pp. 9–33, here pp. 9 and 21.
52.StA München, Bestand Polizeidirektion München, Personalakten, Nr. 10007 (Otto Ballerstädt): Testimony of Paul Zell, 18 June 1949.
53.BayHStA, StK, no. 7579: Letter from the Bavarian Minister President, 5 July 1934. Röhm’s mother died on 6 January 1936.
54.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 88. See also Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 38–9.
55.Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’; idem, Der SD-Mann Johannes Schmidt (Marburg: Tectum, 2012), pp. 102–12.
56.Schulze, ‘Der “Röhm-Putsch” in der Provinz Sachsen’, pp. 25–6.
57.BArch Berlin, NS 23/475: List of the victims of the ‘Röhm purge’, undated.
58.On the ‘Röhm purge’ in Silesia, see Schmidt, ‘Der SA-Führer Hans Ramshorn’, pp. 233–5.
59.Mann, journal entries of 5
July and 11 July 1934, in his Tagebücher 1933–1934, pp. 460–1, 467. Such reasoning is substantiated by Bloch, Die SA und die Krise des NS-Regimes, pp. 165–72. See also Hett, Burning the Reichstag, pp. 122–39.
60.On the case of Wilhelm Schmid, see Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 37–9.
61.Ludecke, I Knew Hitler, p. 554.
62.Nikolai Tolstoy, Night of the Long Knives (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), p. 145.
63.BArch Berlin, NS 23/434: Letter from SA--Obersturmbannführer Lothar Schiedlausky, with two anonymous reports attached, 9 August 1934. See also the detailed information available in HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Letter from Karl Schreyer to the Munich Police about the events of 30 June 1934, 27 May 1949.
64.BArch Berlin, NS 26/2048: Article in the Lübbener Kreisblatt, 18 or 19 August 1934.
65.BArch Berlin, NS 23/204: Letter from Walter Buch to the Führer’s deputy (Rudolf Hess), 2 August 1934.
66.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: Letter from the Silesian SA to the OSAF, 26 July 1934.
67.In the years to come ‘moral failings’ remained a common accusation in many of the disciplinary proceedings carried out against members of the SA. See Campbell, ‘SA after the Röhm Purge’, p. 660.
68.As quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, vol. 1: Triumph, Erster Halbband 1932–1934 (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1965), pp. 423–4.
69.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: Report of SS-Hauptsturmführer Helmut Willich, Stettin, 21 August 1935. This document is also used by Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 144–5.
70.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 24, pp. 25 and 45.
71.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: ‘Geflüster um das Morden’, Neuer Vorwärts: Sozialdemokratisches Wochenblatt, no. 57, 15 July 1934. ‘Hitlerjunge Knax’ was a reference to the feature film Hitlerjunge Quex. Based on a novel by the writer Karl Aloys Schenzinger, the propaganda film was first shown in September 1933 and became a big success in the German cinemas. See Kurt Schilde, ‘“Hitlerjunge Quex” – Eine Welturaufführung am 11. September 1933 in München: Blick hinter die Kulissen des NS-Propagandafilms’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 59:10 (2008), pp. 540–50.
72.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: Der Führer der Leibstandarte [König], Munich, 30 June 1934.
73.For a recent example, see Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, p. 323.
74.For a list of other homosexual SA leaders, see Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 679–80.
75.As quoted in Hancock, Ernst Röhm, p. 107.
76.Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD, pp. 135–89.
77.Helmuth Klotz, Der Fall Röhm (Berlin-Tempelhof: Self-Publishing, 1932).
78.For a detailed reconstruction of the incident as well as public reactions to it, see Laurie Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 146–73; Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 200–8. The nicknames are quoted according to FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 71. See also Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 681–2.
79.For a detailed analysis of the press coverage, see Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, pp. 160–73. In contrast to Marhoefer, Susanne zur Nieden and Sven Reichardt have argued that homophobic arguments were widespread among the mainstream press coverage of the ‘Röhm scandal’; Susanne zur Nieden and Sven Reichardt, ‘Skandale als Instrument des Machtkampfes in der NS-Führung’, pp. 37–8. Hans Rudolf Wahl has emphasized that Social Democrats in particular in the early 1930s attempted to ‘disclose’ the Nazis’ identity as a genuine homosexual movement; Wahl, ‘Männerbünde, Homosexualitäten und politische Kultur’, pp. 221–2.
80.Ignaz Wrobel [Kurt Tucholsky], ‘Bemerkungen: Röhm’, Die Weltbühne, no. 17 from 26 April 1932, p. 641.
81.Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, p. 154; Alexander Zinn, Die soziale Konstruktion des homosexuellen Nationalsozialisten: Zu Genese und Etablierung eines Stereotyps (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1997); idem, ‘SA, Homosexualität und Faschismus’, p. 410; Andreas Pretzel, ‘Schwule Nazis: Narrative und Desiderate’, in Homosexuelle im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Michael Schwartz (Munich: de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014), pp. 69–76. In many of the early anti-Nazi novels published in the first years of the Third Reich, the homosexuality of the higher-ranking SA leadership figured prominently. See Jörn Meve, ‘“Homosexuelle Nazis”: Zur literarischen Gestaltung eines Stereotyps des Exils bei Ludwig Renn und Hans Siemsen’, Forum Homosexualität und Literatur 11 (1991), pp. 79–100.
82.This view is also advanced by Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, p. 155. See also Wahl, ‘National-Päderasten?’, which provides a careful discussion of this aspect based on the assumption that there are only two mutually exclusive positions: that the SA was marked by homosexuality or that it was not. In the view advanced here, by contrast, the SA is seen as an organization that had homosexual men in its ranks but was less shaped by male homosexual subcultures than Wahl suggests.
83.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 163–209.
84.Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 683. On the persecution of male homosexuals in the Third Reich, see Stefan Micheler and Patricia Szobar, ‘Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex-Desiring Men under National Socialism’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 11: 1–2 (2002), pp. 95–130; as well as the pioneering study by Burckhard Jellonnek, Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1990).
85.For these continuities, see in particular Claudia Bruns and Susanne zur Nieden, ‘“Und unsere germanische Art ruht bekanntlich zentnerschwer auf unserem Triebleben . . .”: Der “arische” Körper als Schauplatz von Deutungskämpfen bei Blüher, Heimsoth und Röhm’, in Paula Diehl (ed.), Körper im Nationalsozialismus: Bilder und Praxen (Munich: W. Fink, 2006), pp. 111–28. For a critical view of Blüher’s influence in the SA, see Reichardt, ‘Homosexualität und SA-Führer’, p. 739.
86.For a detailed discussion, see Jason Crouthamel, ‘“Comradship” and “Friendship”: Masculinity and Militarisation in Germany’s Homosexual Emancipation Movement after the First World War’, Gender & History 23:1 (2011), pp. 111–29, esp. pp. 118–26. See also Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, pp. 151–2, as well as above, chapter 4.
87.On the homosexual networks in the Silesian SA prior to the summer of 1934, see Schmidt, ‘Der SA-Führer Hans Ramshorn’, pp. 226–7; on Karl Ernst and his ‘entourage’, see Wahl, ‘National-Päderasten?’ On homosexual networks in the SA more generally, see Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 680.
88.See also Pretzel, ‘Schwule Nazis’, p. 69.
89.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Letter from George S. Messersmith, Legation of the United States of America, to William Philipps, Under Secretary of State, 18 August 1934.
90.Werner Otto Müller-Hill, journal entry from 21 July 1944, in his ‘Man hat es kommen sehen und ist dennoch erschüttert’: Das Kriegstagebuch eines deutschen Richters 1944/45 (Munich: Siedler, 2012), p. 59.
91.‘Hitler: Ich warte nicht bis 11.00 Uhr’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 14 May 1957, p. 3.
92.Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 1 (1934), pp. 191–5.
93.Jamin, ‘Das Ende der “Machtergreifung”’, p. 215.
94.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 127: Manuskript ‘Betr.: Adolf Hitler’, Kopenhagen, 17 March 1949, p. 6.
95.Mann, journal entry from 13 July 1934, in his Tagebücher 1933–1934, p. 470. For the text of Hitler’s speech, see Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, pp. 410–24.
96.Bösch, Das konservative Milieu, p. 138. For similar examples, see Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, p. 143.
97.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Maximilian Fretter-Pico, Memorandum on the relationship between the Wehrmacht and the Nazi Party.
98.Carl Schmitt, ‘Der Führer schützt das Recht’, De
utsche Juristen Zeitung, 1 August 1934, pp. 945–50, here pp. 946–7.
99.Ibid., p. 947.
100.Carl Schmitt, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Rechtsstaat’, Juristische Wochenschrift 63 (no. 12/13, 24 and 31 March 1934), pp. 713–18.
101.Ibid., pp. 716–17.
102.Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), p. xiii.
103.Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Allan Lane, 2006), p. 101. The view that the ‘Röhm purge’ was first and foremost an attempt to repress the growing resistance of the German working classes is advocated by Gossweiler, Die Röhm-Affäre, pp. 523–4.
104.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Letter from the Bavarian Minister of the Interior to the Bavarian Minister President, 14 August 1934.
105.Ibid.: Decree of the Bavarian Minister of the Interior Adolf Wagner, 19 July 1934.
106.Carsten Schröder, ‘Der NS-Schulungsstandort Lockstedter Lager: Von der “Volkssportschule” zur SA-Berufsschule “Lola I”’, Informationen zur schleswig-holsteinischen Zeitgeschichte 37 (2000), pp. 3–26, here p. 12.
107.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Confidential report of U.S. ambassador William E. Dodd, 13 July 1934; BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: ‘Das Schicksal der SA’, Neuer Vorwärts: Sozialdemokratisches Wochenblatt (Karlsbad), 15 July 1934.
108.For this view, see Jamin, ‘Das Ende der “Machtergreifung”’, p. 207.
Chapter 6
1.Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 2 (1935), p. 610.
2.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 34: Letter from SA--Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Blessing, Schönlanke, to SA--Gruppenführer Siegfried Kasche, 24 November 1934.
Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts Page 63