[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. Excellency, save Germany for the fourth time! The crowd, which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest, shouted its approval. Night of the Long Knives: Summary & Victims | StudySmarter Night of the Long Knives | Teaching Resources Religion and The Bloody Chamber. Gleichschaltung was applied across every possible aspect of government policy. Purge in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934, Papen, nonetheless, remained in his position although people quite close to him were murdered, including, "At least eighty-five people are known to have been summarily killed without any formal legal proceedings being taken against them. [69], Hindenburg never responded to the memo, and it remains unclear whether he even saw it, as Otto Meiner, who decided that his future was aligned with the Nazis, may not have passed it along. Refusing to take his own life, he was shot on 1 July 1934 by two SS guards. Rhm was very critical of Hitler's policies of working with rich businessmen and the army. The Peoples Court, a court created by the Nazis in April 1934 with judges chosen specifically for their Nazi beliefs, replaced the Supreme Court. Each resource gives suggested teaching strategies and are differentiated . [63], Former Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was in exile in Doorn, Netherlands, was horrified by the purge. "[14], Despite such hostility between the brownshirts and the regular army, Blomberg and others in the military saw the SA as a source of raw recruits for an enlarged and revitalized army. Rhm was a potential rival to Hitler's position. 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 . You give Hitler power and time by voting HITLER!. 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. By the end of May 1934, Hitler had been chancellor for 16 . Night of the Long Knives - Achieving Total Power - July 1933 - August The Nazis had the support of the DNVP, and had banned the communist party, the KPD, from attending. Some estimates, however, put the total number killed at between 150 and 200. She even compared him to Frederick the Great, the 18th-century king of Prussia.[2]. Fearing that the paramilitary SA had become too powerful, Hitler ordered his elite SS guards to murder the organization's leaders, including Ernst Rhm. [4] The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. Wilhelm Miklas, and recalled his minister from Vienna. 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. The result was that it was made Hitler the undisputed leader of the Nazis and by extension Germany. Thus from June 30 to July 2, 1934, which the chancellor later titled the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler purged any and all opposition in his way to a dictatorship. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The loyalty of the SS men would prove useful to both when Hitler finally chose to move against Rhm and the SA. The Nazi adoption of the phrase for an upcoming violent event was well known even to the foreign press, with the 2 August 1932 issue of The Times reporting that: Prominent Nazi leaders have played upon the imaginations of their followers..with such phrases as the night of the long knives and a vengeance for every Nazi killed.[79]. [e] Over the next few months, during the so-called Gleichschaltung, Hitler dispensed with the need for the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a legislative body[f] and eliminated all rival political parties in Germany, so that by the middle of 1933 the country had become a one-party state under his direction and control. Hitler told the gathered officials, "The stream of revolution has been undammed, but it must be channelled into the secure bed of evolution. This continued when a young Dutchcommunist, Van der Lubbe was arrested for the crime. Reichswehr On 25 April 1933, the Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities was issued, restricting the number of Jewish students. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on 24 June that Rhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government (Rhm-Putsch). The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. In 1928, the popular Nazi song "Wetzt die langen Messer" (English: Sharpen the long knives) encourages the mass murder of Jewish people and the desecration of Synagogues. They had placed many in the first "[74], Hitler named Viktor Lutze to replace Rhm as head of the SA. : Why did Hitler order the massacre of hundreds of Nazis. 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. [38], Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Rhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA. Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Gring at 10:00 with the codeword Kolibri to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims. ", "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. Gring alone had over a thousand people arrested. 20 terms. [45] Then, on 13 July 1934,[52] Hitler justified the purge in a nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag: If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this. Through these aspects the Nazis suppressed any opposition to their power, and were able to start the road from democracy to a dictatorship. Answer (1 of 5): if you were Ernst Rohm, or former conniving Chancellor Gen von Schleicher or his wife, the consequences were terminal. The Night of the Long Knives, in June 1934, saw the wiping out of the SA's leadership and others who had angered Hitler in the recent past in Nazi Germany. Blomberg and many of his fellow officers were recruited from the Prussian nobility and regarded the SA as a plebeian rabble that threatened the army's traditional high status in German society. [73] Hitler's speech was not reported in the German press, but the army was appeased by the speech. Centuries of jurisprudence proscribing extrajudicial killings were swept aside. [69] The request that Neurath be replaced by Nadolny, the former Ambassador to the USSR, who had resigned earlier that year in protest against Hitler's anti-Soviet foreign policy, indicated that Hammerstein and Mackensen wanted a return to the "distant friendliness" towards the Soviet Union that existed until 1933. Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Rhm the so-called Rhm Putsch. In Berlin, on Gring's personal orders, an armed SS unit stormed the Vice-Chancellery. [63] During a meeting with Polish Ambassador Jzef Lipski on 22 May 1935, Hitler told Lipski that Schleicher was "rightfully murdered, if only because he had sought to maintain the Rapallo Treaty.