Hitler Orders Night of the Long Knives Purge

Context

By the spring of 1934, Adolf Hitler had been chancellor for over a year and had used the Enabling Act to establish dictatorial powers, yet two major constraints remained on his path to absolute control. The first was the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party’s massive paramilitary force of roughly two million men led by Ernst Röhm, whose demands for a “second revolution” and the absorption of the SA into the regular army alarmed both conservative generals and industrialists whose backing Hitler required for rearmament. The second constraint was President Paul von Hindenburg, whose prestige and control of the Reichswehr gave him the theoretical ability to curb Hitler’s ambitions or transfer power to the military upon his death.

What Happened

On June 28, Hitler directed the SA leadership to assemble at a lakeside hotel in Bad Wiessee near Munich for what was presented as a strategic meeting. In the early hours of June 30, Hitler flew to Munich, first confronted and detained SA officers at the Bavarian Interior Ministry, then proceeded with SS units to the Hanselbauer Hotel. There, between 6 and 7 a.m., the SS surprised the sleeping SA leaders; Hitler personally arrested Röhm and several others. Parallel operations in Berlin and elsewhere targeted additional figures, including former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and former Nazi organizer Gregor Strasser. Executions began immediately at sites such as Munich’s Stadelheim prison and Berlin’s Lichterfelde barracks, continuing over the following days.

Aftermath

The German army leadership, reassured by the elimination of the SA threat, publicly endorsed Hitler’s actions. Heinrich Himmler’s SS emerged strengthened at the expense of the decimated SA, while Hermann Göring and other Nazi figures used the chaos to settle old scores. President Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934; Hitler immediately combined the offices of chancellor and president, assuming the title of Führer with the army’s oath of personal loyalty.

Legacy

The Night of the Long Knives demonstrated Hitler’s willingness to use extralegal violence against even longtime allies, establishing a precedent for internal terror that defined the Nazi regime until 1945. It marked the decisive shift from the SA’s street-level revolutionary violence to the more disciplined state security apparatus centered on the SS, while removing any remaining checks from conservative or military circles and solidifying Hitler’s path to total dictatorship.