The Night of Long Knives

Max Gallo is a French journalist who wrote this historical narrative to recreate the events of June 29 to July 2, 1934. He used public documents, newspapers, memoirs, historical studies, and some of the participants (`Foreword'). Hitler ordered the murders of those who were once his friends and closest allies. This was done over a weekend when government offices and businesses were dormant (`Prologue'). People were murdered all over Germany without an explanation (p.4). Foreign observers were perplexed at this sudden purge. Hitler explained the murders as needed to save the German people (p.10). Gallo reports the events as a historical record, as if `you are there'. The description of those four days brings in historical facts as the background. After revolutions broke out across 1918 Germany the Armistice allowed the Army to suppress them. The Freikorps continued to oppress Revolutionaries and was joined by the Storm Troopers (SA), which became a very large organization that attacked any enemy of the Nazis (p.23). The SA was recruited from the unemployed (p.24). They used torture in their prison camps (p.25) and operated beyond the law (p.26). Many had police records (p.34). Was Roehm plotting a putsch (p.35)? Or Karl Ernst (p.39)? Goering created the Gestapo to counter the SA (p.45). The SA wanted to take over the Army even if unqualified (p.76). Conservatives and the business world hated the SA and so did the Army (p.94). But could Hitler survive without the SA (p.95)? Rumors of an SA putsch caused Hitler to eliminate the leaders of the SA (p.107). The Night of Long Knives became operational (p.110). Part Two is about the events of June 30, 1934. A Bishop warned against the "atheists who fight against the Christian faith" (p.116) or "violence and excess" (p.115). There were brawls between Army officers and SA men (p.122). The SA attacked the Minister of Labor (p.127). Would Germany pursue rearmament or a domestic consumer's market (p.158)? Were groups drawing away from the regime (p.162)? Part Three tells of the elimination of the SA leaders. The landowners, corporations, and the Army feared the social policies of the SA. Many others were killed "resisting arrest" (p.230). So too General Schleicher and his wife (p.237). Old enemies and friends as well (pp.238-239). Even wrong with the wrong name (p.240)! Rivals were killed (p.251). These events were broadcast on Sunday morning (p.264). That afternoon Roehm was shot (p.270). The SA was no longer an autonomous force (p.271), the killings stopped (p.272). The `Epilogue' says the newspapers carried the official bulletins. Records were destroyed (p.275). Life went on without the disappeared (p.277). The SS was victorious (p.279). The generals and aristocrats approved (p.282). Hitler boasted that he eliminated former allies and enemies (p.284). The Army was now in charge of the SA (p.289). Hitler became the new Chief of State (p.291). The Army swore a personal oath to obey Hitler. What will happe

After little over a year in power, Hitler was plagued by some dominant enemies. There was the SA on the left, which wanted to start a second German Revolution. Then there was the conservative polical base represented by Papen and Schleiter that posed a risk to his regime. Hitler through the intrigues of Goering, Himmiler, and his sidekick Heydrich managed to be persuaded that Roehm and his cohorts in the SA were plotting a putsch, when in fact they were planning a well deserved vacation. Goering, Himmiler, and Heydrich composed a list of all those who were obstacles in their way, along with the main opponents in the conservatives and SA. On the night of June 30-July 1, 1934 the SS struck with the cooperation of the army and other elements. Hundreds were killed, including a music critic, two German generals, and a Catholic politician. Hitler justified his action because of the threat of a coup and the population believed it. This early killing spree showed the way to what the Third Reich became, a killing empire. Although the writing style took some getting used to, I found this a practical and informative book about this famous event. Other books I have read about this event were not nearly as informative. This was an easy and enjoyable read about a distasteful event.

By 1934, the new German President and Fuhrer of the Nazi party faced competition for power and control from a source that he had once relied upon to grease his way to control over the German state. This now unreliable source was the rowdy Sturmabteilung, the SA, the brown-shirted bully boys who had bashed in the heads of many an anti-Hitler opponent since the inception of the Nazi party in the early 1920s. They numbered in the millions, but from Hitler's point of view they were fast becoming a nuisance. They were wild, unpredictable, hooliganistic, and rumored to be rife with homosexual leaders. Somehow they had to go, and go they did. Max Gallo, in his NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES, details a sequence of events that had been building up for years since the 1920s, finally culminating in an orgy of the slaughter of the top leaders of the SA during the weekend of Saturday, June 30, 1934 to Monday, July 2. Gallo begins 'in medias res' with the incarceration and execution of targeted SA officers:Edmund Schmidt, Gruppenfuhrer, SA shotHans Joachim von Spreti-Weilbach, Standartenfuhrer, SA shotHans Peter von Hydebreck, Gruppenfuhrer, SA shotHans Heyn, Gruppenfuhrer, SA shotAugust Schneidhuber, Obergruppenfuhrer, SA shot The ranks listed above were all of high rank, mostly brigadier general or higher. The same day, the leader of the SA, Ernst Roehm, the most powerful man in Germany after Hitler, the commanding officer of a body of armed men many times larger than any other uniformed corps in Germany, was then begging for his life in a filthy jail cell. He was offered a pistol to kill himself. When he declined, one of the most vicious of sadists in the Schutzstaffel, the black-garbed SS, Theodore Eicke, blew a hole in Roehm's head with that same pistol. Gallo describes the events of that weekend on a daily and near hourly basis. Each of his many chapters is a blueprint for the killing of those who should have kept their eyes and ears open to the clear signals that Hitler had been sending out. Adolf Hitler felt threatened by the demands of the masses of the SA who were complaining that now was the time for massive social upheavel in Germany. They shouted for jobs in the civilian sector, for posts of high rank in the regular army, and for a broom to sweep out from power those whom they deemed unreliable. Gallo notes Hitler's inability to eliminate the SA until he had the backing of the Wehrmacht, which would act in concert with the one force upon which he could rely absolutely, the SS,under Heinrich Himmler. Hitler had to mollify Ernst Roehm until he was ready to use his long knives. Gallo documents a letter from Hitler to Roehm dated December 31, 1933, which concludes with, 'I must thank you, Ernst Roehm, for the inestimable services you have rendered to nationalism and the German people.' While writing this letter, Hitler was getting ready for the events of the June 30 weekend. Within the space of that time, hundreds of SA were r