Hitler

by Ian Kershaw

  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, w
ith 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.