Night of Long Knives Crossed a Crucial Line

… and became a major step on the Road to Holocaust. And, of course, another very heavy slab in the “stack of slabs” that eight years later triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche” that took four million Jewish lives.

The Night of the Long Knives (Unternehmen Kolibri – Operation Hummingbird), also somewhat incorrectly called the R;hm purge was a mass murder (let’s call a spade a spade) of Hitler’s political opponents that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934 – so it was more than just one night.

Nazi propaganda presented the murders (ordered by Adolf Hitler and urged by Hermann G;ring and Heinrich Himmler) as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under R;hm – the so-called R;hm Putsch.

It was – as usual – a blatant lie: no one in he Third Reich at that time (let alone the SA top brass) was planning – or even considering – a coup to depose Adolf Hitler and his regime.

However, the SA in general and its leaders in particular (first and foremost, its Chief of Staff Ernst R;hm) did become an existential threat to Germany – and thus had to be physically eliminated (there was no other choice – given the size and the power of the SA that had over 3,000,000 members in 1934, 30 times more than the German Army).

The SA became an existential threat because they were an insurmountable obstacle to the vital objectives of Adolf Hitler (and to vital needs of Germany at the time). Solving immediate economic problems (such as murderous unemployment); restoring economic, military and political power of Germany (making it a great world power once again); returning territories taken away by Versailles criminals; and eliminating the existential threat of Bolshevism.

More specifically, R;hm and SA in general became such an existential threat because they pressed Hitler for a “second revolution”. They rejected capitalism and they intended to take steps to curb monopolies and promoted the nationalization of land and industry – among other socialist reforms aimed at radical transformation of German society.

Furthermore, R;hm and his SA saw their paramilitary force as the core of the future German Army (he wanted Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defense), and saw themselves as replacing the Reichswehr.

All that would have led to almost instant collapse of German political and economic system (and the military) which would have made it an easy prey for the Communists both inside and outside the country.

Years later, in November 1945, while being interviewed by psychologist Gustave Gilbert in his cell during the Nuremberg trials, G;ring angrily justified the killings to Gilbert, “It’s a damn good thing I wiped them out, or they would have wiped us out!”

Not via the coup – but via resistance to absolutely vital reforms and actions.

Obviously, such suicide was out of the question for Hitler and other Nazi leaders and, as there was no legal way to do away with these “revolutionaries” (which had to be done to save Germany) … they took the illegal route.

R;hm and other SA leaders were arrested and unceremoniously shot (mostly in Stadelheim Prison in Munich) … as were other political enemies of Hitler (for good measure). Overall, at least 85 people died during the purge (possibly close to 100).

Leading members of the Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party (revolutionaries ideologically similar to SA), including its leader Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Bavarian politician Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had helped suppress Hitler’s Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 (that was pure revenge).

Wanting to present the massacre as legally sanctioned, Hitler had the cabinet approve a measure on July 3 that declared: “The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defense by the State.”

The Night of the Long Knives represented a triumph for Hitler, and a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as the supreme leader of the German people – and put his word above any written law. Which came very handy during the Holocaust.

The consequences of this mass murder were enormous. It was the first mass murder of a group deemed to be an existential threat to Germany. Which made the next ones (including the Holocaust) so much easier.

The second effect of this event was much more profound. No matter what Hitler believed, internationally this was a mass murder. Period. Which made Hitler’s regime fundamentally criminal – and thus made impossible any military cooperation with Western democracies.

True, Stalin was a criminal – but he made his crimes look legal. Hence, the Western democracies (Britain, France, the USA, etc.) had no other choice but to align themselves with Stalin. Which ultimately killed the Third Reich – and Adolf Hitler.