Infamous Assassinations TV - Ernst Rohm - Joseph Goebbels - Vance Stewart - Robert Aldrich - Project Nazi: Blueprints of Power TV - Hitler’s Circle of Evil TV -
June 29th 1934, Hotel Dreesen ... The final countdown to the assassination begins two days early at a luxury hotel ... Hitler is receiving news that a coup is about to be staged against his regime. The coup led by a man he believed to be one of his oldest and most loyal comrades: Ernst Rohm. He has built up the SA from a gang of street fighters to a mass movement of more than three million men. Infamous Assassinations: Ernst Rohm
Hitler’s other henchmen are telling him that Rohm and his SA must be muzzled if his regime is to be secure. ibid.
During World War One he is severely wounded. ibid.
By 1925 Hitler has imposed his authority. ibid.
Rohm has never abandoned his belief that the SA should be a mass revolutionary force. ibid.
Goering, now Interior Minister of Prussia, has set up a secret police force, the Gestapo. This clashes with the local SA leadership. ibid.
With Himmler and Goering, Heydrich prepares detailed plans for eliminating the leadership of the SA. How much Hitler is aware of this is uncertain. ibid.
The SS is now sending ever more lurid details of an SA plot, but Hitler still hesitates. ibid.
Hitler rushes in screaming insults and tells him that he is under arrest. Then the prisoners are herded into the cellar. By eight it is all over. ibid.
More than ninety murders take place all over Germany. ibid.
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 something. They want someone to frighten them. And make them shudderingly submissive. Ernst Rohm, cited A Warning from History
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. Ernst Rohm, to Hermann Rauschning, cited Housden’s ‘Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary?’
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. Ernst Rohm, to Kurt Ludecke, cited Jeffers’ ‘History's Greatest Conspiracies’
All revolutions devour their own children. Ernst Rohm, to Hans Frank 1934, cited Fest’s ‘The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership’
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 Rohm wanted was, of course, right in itself but in practice it could not be carried through by a homosexual and an anarchist. Had Rohm 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 Rohm 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
Rohm deceived himself when he thought that his closeness to Hitler would allow him to survive while other German homosexual men were being persecuted. Rohm 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
By 1933 the Stormtroopers have become so powerful even Hitler feels threatened by them. Project Nazi: Blueprints of Power s1e5: Himmler’s Empire of Terror, Daily Express, AHC 2017
Captain Roehm Executed: Arrested Storm Troop Commander Given Ten Minutes To Kill Himself – Shot When He Refuses: Hitler Crushes Brown Shirt Revolt. ibid.
[Ernst] Rohm: the disgraced army officer has created his own private army. Hitler’s Circle of Evil s1e2: Regrouping
In 1928 the fledgling Nazi party is reeling from election and struggling for legitimacy. But global events will throw them a lifeline. Propaganda man Joseph Goebbels devotes himself to tireless electioneering, while former war hero Hermann Goering gets a foothold in parliament … One of them will be destroyed. Hitler’s Circle of Evil s1e3: The Fall of Roehm
America hands this group the national calamity they have been predicting. ibid.
1930: They’re on the map and as the second biggest party in parliament people are taking notice. ibid.
But the SA, in direct competition with the SS, are a major obstacle to his plans. ibid.
Now it’s open season on Rohm and his SA. ibid.
Hitler has his base: the Stormtroopers, the paramilitary wing of the Nazis. Over two million angry young men. They are waiting for Hitler to deliver the Nazi revolution he promised. None more so than the leader of the Stormtroopers: Ernst Rohm. Rise of the Nazis III, BBC 2019
So Goering orders his secret surveillance organisation, the Research Bureau, to go after Rohm. ibid.
And Hitler publicly forces Rohm to back down from his demands for the Stormtroopers to take over Germany’s army. ibid.
Himmler has taken over police forces across Germany. But the biggest and most powerful remains outside his control. ibid.
Rohm stages Stormtrooper manoeuvres across Germany. ibid.
Hitler travels through the night to personally arrest Rohm at his hotel. ibid.