70 years ago on this date,
2 July 1934, The
Night of the Long Knives ends with the death of Ernst Röhm. I will post
information about this German Military Officer from Wikipedia and other links.
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Ernst Röhm in uniform,
1933
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Born
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Ernst Julius Günther Röhm
28 November 1887 Munich, German Empire |
Died
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2 July 1934 (age 46)
Stadelheim Prison, Munich, Nazi Germany |
Nationality
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German
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Occupation
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Stabschef, Sturmabteilung (SA)
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Political party
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National Socialist German Workers Party
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Parents
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Julius Röhm and Emilie Röhm
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Ernst Julius Günther Röhm (28 November 1887 – 2 July 1934)
was a German officer in the Bavarian Army and later an early Nazi leader. He
was a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA),
the Nazi Party militia, and later was its commander. In 1934, as part of the Night of the Long Knives, he was executed
on Heinrich Himmler's orders as a potential rival.
Early
career
Ernst
Röhm was born in Munich, the youngest of three children (older sister and
brother). His father, a railway official, was described as "a harsh
man". Although the family had no military tradition, Röhm entered the
Royal Bavarian 10th Infantry Regiment Prinz Ludwig at Ingolstadt as a
cadet on 23 July 1906 and was commissioned on 12 March 1908. At the outbreak of
war in August 1914, he was adjutant of the 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry
Regiment König. The following month, he was seriously wounded in the
face at Chanot Wood in Lorraine and carried the scars for the rest of his life.
He was promoted to first lieutenant (Oberleutnant) in April 1915. During
an attack on the fortification at Thiaumont, Verdun, on 23 June 1916, he
sustained a serious chest wound and spent the remainder of the war in France
and Romania as a staff officer. He had been awarded the Iron Cross First Class
on 20 June 1916, three days before being wounded at Verdun, and was promoted to
captain (Hauptmann) in April 1917. In October 1918, while serving on the
Staff of the Gardekorps, he contracted the deadly Spanish influenza and
was not expected to live, but survived and recovered after a lengthy
convalescence.
Following
the armistice on 11 November 1918 that ended the war, Röhm continued his
military career as an adjutant in the Reichswehr.
He was one of the senior members in Colonel von Epp's Bayerisches Freikorps für
den Grenzschutz Ost (Freikorps Epp), formed at Ohrdruf in April 1919, which
finally overturned the Munich Soviet Republic by force of arms on 3
May 1919. In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), which the
following year became the National Socialist German
Workers Party (NSDAP). Not long afterward he met Adolf Hitler, and they
became political allies and close friends. He led the Reichskriegsflagge militia at the time
of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, when it occupied the War
Ministry for sixteen hours.
Following
the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 9 November 1923, Röhm, Hitler, General Erich
Ludendorff, Lieutenant Colonel Kriebel and six others were tried in
February 1924 for high treason. Röhm was found guilty and sentenced to a year and
three months in prison, but the sentence was suspended and he was granted a
conditional discharge. Röhm's resignation from the Reichswehr was accepted in
November 1923 during his time as a prisoner at Stadelheim
prison. Hitler was also found guilty and sentenced to five years
imprisonment, but would only serve nine months (under permissively lenient
conditions), where he wrote his Mein Kampf
(My Struggle).
In
April 1924, Röhm became a Reichstag Deputy for the völkisch ( = racial-national)
National Socialist Freedom Party. He made only one speech, urging the release
from Landsberg of Lieutenant Colonel Kriebel. The seats won by his party were
much reduced in the December 1924 election, and his name was too far down the
list to return him to the Reichstag. While Hitler was in prison, Röhm helped to
create the Frontbann
as a legal alternative to the then-outlawed SA. At Landsberg prison in April
1924, Röhm had also been given authority by Hitler to rebuild the SA in any way
he saw fit. When in April 1925 Hitler and Ludendorff disapproved of the
proposals under which Röhm was prepared to integrate the 30,000-strong Frontbann
into the SA, Röhm resigned from all political movements and military brigades
on 1 May 1925 and sought seclusion from public life. In 1928, he accepted a
post in Bolivia
as adviser to the Bolivian Army, where he was given the rank of
lieutenant colonel and went to work after six months' acclimatization and
language tutoring. But after the 1930 revolt in Bolivia, Röhm was
forced to seek sanctuary in the German Embassy. After the election results in
Germany that September, Röhm received a telephone call from Hitler in which the
latter told him "I need you", paving the way for Röhm's return to
Germany.
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| Röhm with Hitler, August 1933 |
SA
leader
In
September 1930, as a consequence of the Stennes Revolt in Berlin, Hitler
assumed supreme command of the SA as its new Oberster SA-Führer.
He sent a personal request to Röhm, asking him to return to serve as the SA's
chief of staff. Röhm accepted this offer and began his new assignment on 5
January 1931. He brought radical new ideas to the SA, and appointed several
close friends to its senior leadership. Previously, the SA formations were
subordinate to the Nazi Party leadership of each Gaue. Röhm
established new Gruppe which had no regional Nazi Party oversight. Each Gruppe
extended over several regions and was commanded by a SA Gruppenführer
who answered only to Röhm or Hitler.
The
SA now numbered over a million members. Its traditional function of party
leader escort had been given to the SS, but it continued its street battles
with "Reds" and its attacks on Jews. The SA also attacked or
intimidated anyone deemed hostile to the Nazi agenda, including uncooperative
editors, professors, politicians, other local officials and businessmen.
Under
Röhm, the SA also often took the side of workers in strikes and other labor
disputes, attacking strikebreakers and supporting picket lines. SA intimidation
contributed to the rise of the Nazis and the violent suppression of left-wing
parties during electoral campaigns, but its reputation for street violence and
heavy drinking was a hindrance, as was the open homosexuality of Röhm and other
SA leaders such as his deputy Edmund
Heines. One American journalist would later write, "[Röhm's] chiefs,
men of the rank of Gruppenfuehrer or Obergruppenfuehrer, commanding units of
several hundred thousand Storm Troopers, were almost without exception
homosexuals. Indeed, unless a Storm Troop officer were homosexual, he had no
chance of advancement." In 1931, the Münchener Post, a Social Democratic
newspaper, obtained and published Röhm's letters to a friend discussing his
homosexual affairs.
Hitler
was aware of Röhm's homosexuality. At this point they were so close that they
addressed each other as du (the German familiar
form of "you"). No other top Nazi leader enjoyed that privilege,
and their close association led to rumors that Hitler himself was homosexual.
Röhm was the only Nazi leader who dared to address Hitler by his first name
"Adolf" rather than "mein Führer."
As
Hitler rose to national power with his appointment as Chancellor in 1933, SA
members were appointed auxiliary police and marched into local government
offices forcing officials to surrender their authority to the Nazis.
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With Kurt Daluege and
Heinrich Himmler, August 1933
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Second
revolution
Röhm
and the SA regarded themselves as the vanguard of the "National Socialist
revolution". After Hitler's takeover they expected radical changes in
Germany including power and rewards for themselves, unaware that Hitler as
Chancellor now no longer needed their street-fighting expertise as storm
troopers. However, Hitler did name Röhm to the cabinet on 1 December as a
minister without portfolio.
Along
with Gregor and Otto
Strasser, Joseph Goebbels, Gottfried
Feder and Walther Darré, Röhm was a prominent member of the
party's radical faction. This group put emphasis on the word
"socialist" and "workers" in the party's name; putting them
ideologically closer to the Communists. They largely rejected capitalism (which
they associated with Jews) and pushed for nationalization
of major industrial firms, expansion of worker control, confiscation and
redistribution of the estates of the old aristocracy, and social equality. Röhm
spoke of a "second revolution" against the "Reaktion" (the
National Socialist label for conservatives) to follow the violent Nazi
"first revolution" purging of left-wing Communists and Socialists.
All
this was threatening to the business community in general and Hitler's
corporate financial backers in particular, including many German industrial
leaders (which, the leaders hoped, would reap huge profits from the coming Nazi
military buildup); so Hitler swiftly reassured his powerful industrial allies
that there would be no "second revolution." Many "storm
troopers" were of working-class origins and expected a radical program.
They were now disappointed by the new regime's lack of socialistic direction
and its failure to provide the lavish patronage they had expected. Furthermore,
Röhm and his SA colleagues thought of their force as the core of the future
German army, replacing the Reichswehr and its longstanding professional officer
corps. By this time, the SA had swollen to over three million men, dwarfing the
Reichswehr, which was limited to 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles. Although Röhm had been a
member of the officer corps, he viewed them as "old fogies" who
lacked "revolutionary spirit." He believed that the Reichswehr should
be merged into the SA to form a true "people's army" under his
command. At a February 1934 cabinet meeting, he demanded that the Reichswehr be
absorbed into the SA under his leadership as Minister of Defense.
This
horrified the army, with its traditions going back to Frederick the Great. The
army officer corps viewed the SA as a brawling mob of undisciplined street
fighters, and were also concerned by the pervasiveness of homosexuality and
"corrupt morals" within the ranks of the SA. Further, reports of a
huge cache of weapons in the hands of SA members raised further concern among
the Reichswehr leadership. Not surprisingly, the entire officer corps opposed
Röhm's proposal, insisting that discipline and honor would vanish if the SA
gained control; but Röhm and the SA would settle for nothing less.
Hitler
privately shared much of Röhm's animus toward the traditionalists in the army,
but he had gained power with the army's support and he knew that it would be
fatal for him to betray it. He also wanted to rebuild the army into a strong
and disciplined unit, and felt he needed the officer corps' help to do it. On
the political side, Hitler was well aware that the army had the ear of
President Paul von Hindenburg, who since the passage of
the Enabling Act was effectively the only check on
his power. Additionally, he was already angling to succeed the 86-year-old
Hindenburg as head of state, and needed the army's support to do it.
Hitler
had already begun preparing for the coming politico-military struggle. In
February 1934, he told British diplomat Anthony
Eden of his plan to reduce the SA by two-thirds. That same month, he
announced that the SA would be left with only a few minor military functions. Röhm
responded with complaints against Hitler, and began expanding the armed
elements of the SA. To many, it appeared as if the SA was planning or
threatening a coup against Hitler. In March, Röhm offered a compromise in which
a few thousand SA leaders would be taken into the army, but the army promptly
rejected it.
On
11 April 1934, Hitler met with German military leaders on the ship Deutschland.
By this time, he knew Hindenburg would die before the end of the year. Hitler
informed them of Hindenburg's declining health and proposed the Reichswehr
support him as Hindenburg's successor. In exchange, he offered to reduce the
SA, suppress Röhm's ambitions and guarantee the Reichswehr would be Germany's
only military force. According to William
L. Shirer, Hitler also promised to expand the army and navy.
But
both the Reichswehr and the conservative business community continued to
complain to Hindenburg against the SA. In early June, defense minister Werner von Blomberg issued an ultimatum to
Hitler from Hindenburg: unless Hitler took immediate steps to end the growing
tension in Germany, Hindenburg would declare martial law
and turn over control of the country to the army. Knowing such a step could
forever deprive him of power, Hitler decided to carry out his pact with the
Reichswehr to suppress the SA. This meant a showdown with Röhm. In Hitler's
view, because the army was willing to submit, the SA constituted the only real
remaining power centers in Germany that were independent of his National
Socialist state. Blomberg had the swastika added
to the army's insignia in February and ended the army's practice of preference
for "old army" descent in new officers, replacing it with a
requirement of "consonance with the new government."
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Ernst
Röhm stands behind Adolf Hitler [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.whale.to/b/rohm_h.html]
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Death
Although
determined to curb the power of the SA, Hitler put off doing away with his
long-time comrade to the very end. A political struggle within the party grew,
with those closest to Hitler, including Prussian premier Hermann Göring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler, positioning themselves against Röhm. To isolate the latter,
on 20 April 1934 (Hitler's 45th birthday) Göring transferred control of the
Prussian political police (Gestapo) to Himmler, who he believed could be
counted on to move against Röhm. Himmler, Heydrich and Göring used Röhm's
published anti-Hitler rhetoric to support the claim that the SA was plotting to
overthrow Hitler. Himmler and his deputy Heydrich, chief of the SS Security
Service (Sicherheitsdienst or SD), built up a dossier of fabricated
evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid twelve million marks by France to
overthrow Hitler. Leading officers were shown falsified evidence on 24 June
that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government, the
so-called Röhm-Putsch.
Reports
of the SA threat were passed to Hitler, who felt it was time to act. Meanwhile
Göring, Himmler, Heydrich and Viktor
Lutze (at Hitler's direction) drew up lists of people inside and outside
the SA marked for death. Himmler and Heydrich issued marching orders to the SS,
while Sepp
Dietrich went around showing army officers a purported SA execution list.
Meanwhile,
Röhm and several of his companions went on holiday at a resort in Bad Wiessee.
On 28 June, Hitler phoned Röhm and asked him to gather all the SA leaders at
Bad Wiessee on 30 June for a conference. Röhm agreed, apparently unsuspecting.
The
Night of the Long Knives began two days
later. At dawn on 30 June, Hitler flew to Munich and drove to Bad Wiessee,
where he personally arrested Röhm and the other SA leaders, who were all
consigned to Stadelheim prison in Munich. From 30 June to 2
July 1934 the entire leadership of the SA was purged, along with many other
political adversaries of the Nazis.
Hitler
was hesitant in authorizing Röhm's execution, and gave him the option of
suicide. On 1 July, SS-Brigadeführer Theodor
Eicke (then Kommandant of the Dachau concentration camp) and SS-Obersturmbannführer Michael
Lippert walked into his cell, laid a pistol on the table, told Röhm he had
ten minutes to use it and left. He refused, stating, "If I am to be
killed, let Adolf do it himself." Having heard nothing after the
stipulated ten minutes, Eicke and Lippert returned to Röhm's cell to find him
standing with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance, and Lippert
shot him in the chest at point-blank range. He was buried in the Westfriedhof (Western Cemetery) in Munich.
The
purge of the SA was legalized the next day with a one-paragraph decree: the Law
Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense. At this time no public reference
was made to the alleged SA rebellion, but only generalised references to
misconduct, perversion and some sort of plot. John Toland noted that Hitler had long been
privately aware that Röhm and his SA associates were homosexuals; In their
defense Hitler had stated that 'the SA are a band of warriors and not a moral
institution.'
A
few days later, the claim of an incipient SA rebellion was publicized and
became the official reason for the entire wave of arrests and executions.
Indeed, the affair was labelled the "Röhm-Putsch" by German
historians, although after World War II the claim has usually been qualified as
"the alleged Röhm-Putsch" or known as the "Night of the Long Knives."
In a speech on 13 July, Hitler alluded to Röhm's homosexuality but explained
the purge as mainly a defense against treason.
In
an attempt to erase Röhm from German history, all known copies of the 1933
propaganda film Der Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of
Faith), in which Röhm appeared, were ordered destroyed in 1934. Der Sieg
des Glaubens was long thought to have been lost until a single copy was
found in storage in Britain in the 1990s. The 1935 film Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens),
produced in 1934, showed the new Nazi hierarchy, with the SS as the Nazis'
premier uniformed paramilitary group and Röhm replaced by Viktor
Lutze as the far less powerful new head of the SA.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm
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| Ernst Röhm [PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.whale.to/b/rohm_h.html] |
Ernst Julius Röhm (28 November 1887 – 2 July 1934) was a career German
military officer who was the co-founder and commander of the Nazi
Sturmabteilung (storm troopers), often called simply the SA. The leadership of
SA was purged during the "Night of the Long Knives" in June 1934.
Hitler arrested Röhm personally at a resort in Bad Wiessee on June 30. Röhm was
held without trial at Stadelheim Prison in Munich, and on July 2 he was visited
by SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke and SS-Sturmbannführer Michel Lippert, who
offered Röhm a pistol and suggested he commit suicide. When he refused, Lippert
shot Röhm at point-blank range.
Sourced
- I am still today a soldier and only a soldier. (Ich bin noch heute Soldat und nur Soldat)
- Quoted in "Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf: Die Geschichte der SS" - by Heinz Höhne - 1967 - Page 26
- Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than good bourgeois order. Brutality is respected, the people need wholesome fear. They want to fear someone. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive.
- Cited in "The Nazis: A Warning from History", Disc 1, 10:48. Also quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 139 by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999
- Adolf is a swine. He will give us all away. He only associates with reactionaries now. His old friends aren't good enough for him. Getting matey with the East Prussian generals. They're his cronies now. Adolf is turning into a gentleman. He's got himself a tail-coat now. Adolf knows exactly what I want. I've told him often enough. Not a second edition of the old imperial army. Are we revolutionaries or aren't we? Allons, enfants de la patrie! If we are, then something new must arise out of our élan, like the mass armies of the French Revolution. If we're not, then we'll go to the dogs. We've got to produce something new, don't you see? A new discipline. A new principle of organization. The generals are a lot of old fogeys. They never had a new idea.
- To Hermann Rauschning about Adolf Hitler in May, 1933. Quoted in "Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary?" - Page 82 to Page 83 - by Martyn Housden - History - 2000
- Hitler can't walk over me as he might have done a year ago; I've seen to that. Don't forget that I have three million men, with every key position in the hands of my own people, Hitler knows that I have friends in the Reichswehr, you know! If Hitler is reasonable I shall settle the matter quietly; if he isn't I must be prepared to use force - not for my sake but for the sake of our revolution.
- To Kurt Ludecke in January, 1934. Quoted in "History's Greatest Conspiracies" - by H. Paul Jeffers - History - 2004
- All revolutions devour their own children.
- Remark in prison to Hans Frank (30 June 1934) paraphrasing Pierre Vergniaud; quoted in The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (1999) by Joachim C. Fest
- He (Hitler) is thinking about the peasant girls. When they stand in the fields and bend down at their work so that you can see their behinds, that's what he likes, especially when they've got big round ones. That's Hitler's sex life. What a man.
- While Hitler, who was present, stared at him with compressed lips. Quoted in "Getting Hitler Into Heaven" - Page 44 - by John Graven Hughes, Heinz Linge - 1987
- I expect that on the 1st of August, the SA will be once more ready for duty. If the enemies of the SA are hoping that the SA will not return from leave, we are ready to let them enjoy the hope for a short time. The SA is, and remains, Germany's destiny.
- SA summer furlough decree, published in Völkischer Beobachter (10 June 1934)
- If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself!
- The day Röhm was killed. Quoted in "Famous Last Words" - Page 68 - by Laura Ward, Robert Allen - 2004
- Mein Führer, mein Führer!
- Last words after being shot by Michael Lippert. Quoted in "Himmler's Secret War: The Covert Peace Negotiations of Heinrich Himmler" - Page 39 - by Martin Allen - Biography & Autobiography - 2005
About Röhm
- I pointed out to the Führer at length that in 1934 we unfortunately failed to reform the Wehrmacht when we had an opportunity of doing so. What Roehm wanted was, of course, right in itself but in practice it could not be carried through by a homosexual and an anarchist. Had Roehm been an upright solid personality, in all probability some hundred generals rather than some hundred SA leaders would have been shot on June 30. The whole course of events was profoundly tragic and today we are feeling its effects. In that year the time was ripe to revolutionise the Reichswehr. As things were the Führer was unable to seize the opportunity. It is questionable whether today we can ever make good what we missed doing at that time. I am very doubtful of it. Nevertheless the attempt must be made.
- Joseph Goebbels, March 1945
- Ernst Roehm was a thug. He was a brutish and zealous believer in National Socialism. If anything, he was more radical than Hitler. He believed in the elimination of anyone connected with the old order, businessmen, office holders of any kind. He became the leader of the SA, the Storm Troopers, whose terror tactics had helped make Hitler the leader of Germany.
- Vance Stewart, "Three Against One," 2002
- Röhm deceived himself when he thought that his closeness to Hitler would allow him to survive while other German homosexual men were being persecuted. Röhm was not murdered because he was homosexual, but the fact that he was so gave his enemies a means of turning Hitler against him and securing his destruction.
- Robert Aldrich
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