In the judicial system specifically, this act removed any judges that were deemed non-compliant with Nazi laws or principles. The Night of the Long Knives: the bloody purge that secured Hitler's power. [6], Hitler's appointment as chancellor, followed by the suppression of all political parties except the Nazis, did not end the violence of the stormtroopers. , who had previously been a separate organisation, now swore a personal allegiance to Hitler. Answer (1 of 5): if you were Ernst Rohm, or former conniving Chancellor Gen von Schleicher or his wife, the consequences were terminal. [28] Hitler had hesitated for months in moving against Rhm, in part due to Rhm's visibility as the leader of a national militia with millions of members. [37] Arriving back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler addressed the assembled crowd. [51] Meanwhile, Goebbels tried to prevent newspapers from publishing lists of the dead, but at the same time used a 2 July radio address to describe how Hitler had narrowly prevented Rhm and Schleicher from overthrowing the government and throwing the country into turmoil. 4 terms. [15] In January 1934, Rhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum demanding that the SA replace the regular army as the nation's ground forces, and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA.[16]. You must first remember and recite all the points made earlier in the circle then add your own point. Hitler announced to those present that the SA would act as an auxiliary to the Reichswehr, not the other way around. The Party had generally been aligned with the Social Democrats and Catholic Church during the rise of Nazism, being critical of Nazi ideology, but voting nonetheless for the Enabling Act of 1933 which granted Hitler dictatorial authority. The Reichstag, the German lower house of parliament, was set on fire on the 27 February 1933. A very large number of the Freikorps believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. Local governments proved more difficult to infiltrate, and even at the end of 1945 only 60% of local mayors were Nazi Party members. Gring's personal police battalion also took part in the killings. On 25 April 1933, the Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities was issued, restricting the number of Jewish students. Hess, present among the assembled, even volunteered to shoot the "traitors". [37] Meanwhile, the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Rhm and Hitler. Also killed that night were hundreds of other perceived opponents of Hitler. [42] The Gestapo also murdered Erich Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action, and a close Papen associate. The undersigned Generals and senior officers swear to preserve to the last breath their loyalty to you and the Fatherland. No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper, Edmund Heines, put it) than Rhm himself. Rhm was very critical of Hitler's policies of working with rich businessmen and the army. To take control of cultural policy, the Nazis appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minister for Public Engagement and Propaganda on the 13 March 1933. Over the next two days, most of the SA leadership were placed under arrest and murdered without trial. [19] Schleicher criticized the current Hitler cabinet, while some of Schleicher's followers such as General Ferdinand von Bredow and Werner von Alvensleben started passing along lists of a new Hitler cabinet in which Schleicher would become vice-chancellor, Rhm minister of defence, Heinrich Brning foreign minister and Gregor Strasser minister of national economy. They will . Gleichschaltung was the process of the Nazi Party taking control over all aspects of Germany. A poster from the March 1933 elections. [1] More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army. It's helped us to become more accustomed to acts of grim self-interested political butchery; but for those witnessing these events as they happened, they were simply unprecedented. The History Learning Site, 9 Mar 2015. ", Coincidentally, Hitler had been incarcerated at. by Gring and Himmler, who gave Hitler news of Rhm organising a potential Also killed that night were hundreds of other perceived . In conclusion, this lesson plan on Night of the Long Knives Rohm Source Investigation, provides an in-depth examination of one of the most controversial events in modern history. The consolidation of power that had begun barely a month before with the purge of Rhm and the SA was complete. [63] Franois-Poncet was not declared persona non grata as would have been usual if an ambassador were involved in a plot against his host government. The loyalty of the SS men would prove useful to both when Hitler finally chose to move against Rhm and the SA. 1 Quoted in Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 37-38. [21], Demands for Hitler to constrain the SA strengthened. He left Neudeck with the intention of both destroying Rhm and settling scores with old enemies. One of the men Gring recruited to assist him was Willi Lehmann, a Gestapo official and NKVD spy. , which opened just a few days before the vote on the 20 March 1933. First was his old comrade Ernst Rhm, chief of staff of the SA (Sturmabteilung; German: Assault Division), or Brownshirts. [2] The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the military for Hitler. The Bill passed by 444 votes for to 94 against on the 24 March 1933. coalition As such the Nazis justified this measure as implementing necessary security measures, rather than revealing their true motive to remove opposition. This continued when a young Dutchcommunist, Van der Lubbe was arrested for the crime. 20 terms. 2 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 82. Deprived of Communist party meetings to disrupt, the stormtroopers would sometimes run riot in the streets after a night of drinking; they would attack passers-by and then attack the police who were called to stop them. The 'Night of the Long Knives' is a name given to an internal purge within the National Socialist movement in mid-1934. The Nazi Party used the atmosphere of panic to their advantage, encouraging anti-communism. 9. [63] Since Schleicher was a good friend of the French Ambassador Andr Franois-Poncet, and because of his reputation for intrigue, the claim that Schleicher was working for France had enough surface plausibility for most Germans to accept it. [4] The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. Despite this, on the whole, Gleichschaltung was largely successful. This resource hasn't been reviewed yet. Over the next two months, they launched themselves into an intense election campaign. He was now a dictator. During the years of the rise of the Nazi Party, the SA had been instrumental in helping the party to gain support. This topic will explore how the Nazis managed to eliminate their opposition and The Gestapo arrested and later executed Papen's close associate Edgar Jung, the author of Papen's Marburg speech, and disposed of his body by dumping it in a ditch. [41], The regime did not limit itself to a purge of the SA. The Night of the Long Knives was the term given to the process whereby Hitler, in 1934, purged the Nazi Party of all those who were a threat to Hitler. Sixty years ago today, Harold Macmillan carried out a cabinet reshuffle which became known as the 'Night of the Long Knives'. : Why did Hitler order the massacre of hundreds of Nazis. Others were appalled at the scale of the executions and at the relative complacency of many of their fellow Germans. oppression Hitler remained indecisive and uncertain about just what precisely he wanted to do when he left for Venice to meet Benito Mussolini on 15 June. This event reputedly occurred during the fifth century Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, when Vortigern and the British leaders were invited to discuss peace and the Saxon leader Hengist commanded his men to draw their Seax (the infamous long knives) and massacre the unarmed Britons. It was named Der Fhrer schtzt das Recht ("The Fhrer Upholds the Law"). The Peoples Court, a court created by the Nazis in April 1934 with judges chosen specifically for their Nazi beliefs, replaced the Supreme Court. He asked, "What would people have said if I had done such a thing? Hitler saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. Rhm wanted to have his troops incorporated into the new Wehrmacht that was being prepared to take the place of the Reichswehr, despite the fact that the conservative-minded generals were resolutely opposed to any such contamination of the army by the SA. Hitler told the gathered officials, "The stream of revolution has been undammed, but it must be channelled into the secure bed of evolution. Alleging that Rhm was plotting a putsch, Hitler ordered a massacre. History portrays the infamous 'Night of the Long Knives' as a textbook political disaster, but as a BBC documentary shows on the 50th anniversary, it could have been so different. For new Germany unit - 1890-1945. 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. People could be imprisoned for any or no reason. Despite some initial efforts by local prosecutors to take legal action against those who carried out the murders, which the regime rapidly quashed, it appeared that no law would constrain Hitler in his use of power. This act legalised removing anyone of non-Ayran descent from the civil service. [47], Rhm was held briefly at Stadelheim Prison[j] in Munich, while Hitler considered his future. Reorganisation and the Bamberg Conference, The role of economic instability in the Nazi rise to power, The role of political instability in the Nazi rise to power, The role of the conservative elite in the Nazi rise to power. [11] Rhm saw violence as a means to political ends. The resources all include suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and come in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change. [72] Fritsch and Blomberg suddenly now claimed at the end of 1934 that as army officers they could not stand the exceedingly violent press attacks on Schleicher and Bredow that had been going on since July, which portrayed them as the vilest traitors, working against the Fatherland in the pay of France. Ernst Rhm was murdered in the event known as the Rhm Putsch, or the Night of Long Knives. After Hitler and most of the army officers had left, however, Rhm declared that he would not take instructions from "the ridiculous corporal" a demeaning reference to Hitler. This decree suspended the democratic aspects of the Weimar Republic and declared a state of emergency. Officially 85; estimates range up to 1,000. On 30 June 1934 these tensions came to a head. Gleichschaltung was applied across every possible aspect of government policy. Once the Enabling Law was in place, the Nazis could bypass the Reichstag and rule by decree seemingly creating laws that stabilised Germany and got rid of its internal enemies. [21] At the end of May, Brning and Schleicher, two former chancellors, received warnings from friends in the Reichswehr that their lives were in danger and they should leave Germany at once. [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. isabellaaellis. Hitler entitled the purge the 'Night of the Long Knives' - a reference to the lyrics from a popular Nazi song. 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. The day after the Reichstag fire, the 28 February 1933, Hindenburg signed a decree giving Hitler emergency powers. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties, especially those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Hitler ordered him, as one prominent historian described it, to put an end to "homosexuality, debauchery, drunkenness, and high living" in the SA. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Gring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Rhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". How seriously Hitler took the socialist character of National Socialism was to remain one of the main causes of disagreement and division within the Nazi party up to the summer of 1934. Complete a Diamond 9 of the consequences of the Night of the Long Knives. [35] Schneidhuber was executed later that day. and Hitler told the crowd that "undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements" would be annihilated. SA violence in Prussia gravely concerned Gring. [12] Although nicknamed the "Rubber Lion" by some of his critics in the army for his devotion to Hitler, Blomberg was not a Nazi, and therefore represented a bridge between the army and the party. The Night of the Long Knives was extremely significant in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship and ultimately Hitler's power. [41] Several leaders of the disbanded Catholic Centre Party were also murdered in the purge. This new law gave Hitler the power to rule by decree rather than passing laws through the Reichstag and the president. ultimate power over Germany, whilst maintaining an The Night of the Long Knives L.O. On the 31 January 1933, Hitler, conscious of his lack of a majority in the Reichstag, immediately called for new elections to try and strengthen his position. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a highly respected veteran field marshal. The Nazis had the support of the DNVP, and had banned the communist party, the KPD, from attending. Goebbels soon radicalised each of these areas, ensuring that they advocated Nazi ideas. In the years preceding the purge, the term "long knives" had become a popular description of treachery in Germany and was used as a criticism of Nazi actions and deceitfulness. Refusing to take his own life, he was shot on 1 July 1934 by two SS guards. Each resource gives suggested teaching strategies and are differentiated . The Nazis used the guise of moderationto conceal their rapid consolidation of power. concentration camp The Nazis consolidation of power can be grouped into three main themes: pseudo-legality, terror and intimidation and pseudo-moderation. With these measures in place, the Nazification of the judicial system was complete. By the end of May 1934, Hitler had been chancellor for 16 . The atmosphere of uncertainty following the Reichstag Fire secured many voters for the Nazi party. [i] Rhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. [53][54], Wanting to present the massacre as legally sanctioned, Hitler had the cabinet approve a measure on 3 July that declared, "The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defence by the State. [30] At Hitler's direction, Gring, Himmler, Heydrich, and Victor Lutze drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed. "[65] Another rare exception was Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who spoke about the murders of Schleicher and Bredow at the annual General Staff Society meeting in February 1935 after they had been rehabilitated by Hitler in early January 1935. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Although Hitler ordered him released days later, Papen no longer dared to criticize the regime and was sent off to Vienna as German ambassador.[43]. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. [h], The action Hitler took would not only defang Rhm and the SA as a potential threat to Hitler's personal control of the Nazi Party, but would also serve to strengthen his relationship with the Wehrmacht the German armed forces which had long considered the SA to be their primary rival, the SA at times outnumbering the military in manpower.[10].
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