Editing Night of the Long Knives (section)

==Purge==
[[File:ASchneidhuber.JPG|thumb|upright|SA-''Obergruppenführer'' [[August Schneidhuber]], chief of the Munich police, 1930]]
{{Further|Victims of the Night of the Long Knives}}
At about 04:30 on 30 June 1934, Hitler and his entourage flew to [[Munich]]. From the airport they drove to the [[Bavaria]]n Interior Ministry, where they assembled the leaders of an SA rampage that had taken place in city streets the night before. Enraged, Hitler tore the [[epaulet]]s off the shirt of SA-''Obergruppenführer'' [[August Schneidhuber]], the chief of the Munich police, for failing to keep order in the city the previous night. Hitler shouted at Schneidhuber and accused him of treachery.{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=221}} Schneidhuber was executed later that day. As the stormtroopers were hustled off to prison, Hitler assembled a large group of SS and regular police, and departed for the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Ernst Röhm and his followers were staying.{{sfn|Bullock|1958|p=166}}

[[File:Kurheim Hanselbauer.JPG|thumb|Hotel Lederer am See (former Kurheim Hanselbauer) in Bad Wiessee before its planned demolition in 2017]]

With Hitler's arrival in Bad Wiessee between 06:00 and 07:00, the SA leadership, still in bed, were taken by surprise. SS men stormed the hotel, and Hitler personally placed Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest.

The SS found [[Breslau]] SA leader [[Edmund Heines]] in bed with an unidentified eighteen-year-old{{dubious|date=May 2024}} male SA senior troop leader. Hitler ordered both Heines and his partner taken outside the hotel and shot.{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=221}} Goebbels emphasised this aspect in subsequent propaganda justifying the purge as a crackdown on [[moral turpitude]].{{sfn|Kershaw|1999|p=514}} Meanwhile, the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Röhm and Hitler.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=32}}

Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Röhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA.{{sfn|Kershaw|1999|p=514}} Arriving back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler addressed the assembled crowd. Consumed with rage, Hitler denounced "the worst treachery in world history". Hitler told the crowd that "undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements" would be annihilated. The crowd, which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest, shouted its approval. Hess, present among the assembled, even volunteered to shoot the "traitors".{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=32}} Joseph Goebbels, who had been with Hitler at Bad Wiessee, set the final phase of the plan in motion. Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Göring at 10:00 with the codeword {{lang|de|Kolibri}} to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims.{{sfn|Kershaw|1999|p=514}} [[Sepp Dietrich]] received orders from Hitler for the ''[[Leibstandarte]]'' to form an "execution squad" and go to [[Stadelheim Prison]] where certain SA leaders were being held.{{sfn|Cook|Bender|1994|pp=22, 23}} There in the prison courtyard, the ''Leibstandarte'' firing squad shot five SA generals and an SA colonel.{{sfn|Cook|Bender|1994|p=23}} Those not immediately executed were taken back to the ''Leibstandarte'' barracks at [[Lichterfelde (Berlin)|Lichterfelde]], given one-minute "trials", and shot by a firing squad.<ref name="gunther1940">{{cite book |last=Gunther |first=John |author-link=John Gunther |title=Inside Europe |url=https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.149663/2015.149663.Inside-Europe#page/n73/mode/2up |publisher=Harper & Brothers |location=New York |year=1940 |pages=51, 57}}</ref>

===Against conservatives and old enemies===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 136-B0228, Kurt von Schleicher.jpg|thumb|upright|General [[Kurt von Schleicher]], Hitler's predecessor as Chancellor, in uniform, 1932]]
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 119-1721, Gregor Strasser.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[Gregor Strasser]] in 1928]]
[[File:Gustav Ritter von Kahr (1920).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Gustav Ritter von Kahr]] in 1920]]
[[File:WilliSchmid.JPG|thumb|upright|[[Willi Schmid]], a mistaken victim of the purge, in 1930]]
The regime did not limit itself to a purge of the SA. Having earlier imprisoned or exiled prominent Social Democrats and Communists, Hitler used the occasion to move against conservatives he considered unreliable. This included Vice-Chancellor Papen and those in his immediate circle. In Berlin, on Göring's personal orders, an armed SS unit stormed the Vice-Chancellery. Gestapo officers attached to the SS unit shot Papen's secretary [[Herbert von Bose]] without bothering to arrest him first. The Gestapo arrested and later executed Papen's close associate [[Edgar Julius Jung|Edgar Jung]], the author of Papen's Marburg speech, and disposed of his body by dumping it in a ditch.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=34}} The Gestapo also murdered [[Erich Klausener]], the leader of Catholic Action, and a close Papen associate.{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=221}} Papen was unceremoniously arrested at the Vice-Chancellery, despite his insistent protests that he could not be arrested in his position as Vice-Chancellor. Although Hitler ordered him released days later, Papen no longer dared to criticize the regime and was sent off to Vienna as German ambassador.{{sfn|Evans|2005|pp=33–34}}

Hitler and Himmler unleashed the Gestapo against old enemies as well. Both Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as Chancellor, and his wife were murdered at their home. Others killed included [[Gregor Strasser]], a former Nazi who had angered Hitler by resigning from the party in 1932, and [[Gustav Ritter von Kahr]], the former Bavarian state commissioner who had helped crush the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.{{sfn|Spielvogel|1996|pp=78–79}} The murdered included at least one accidental victim: [[Willi Schmid]], the music critic of the {{lang|de|Münchner Neuste Nachrichten}} newspaper, whose name was confused with one of the Gestapo's intended targets.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=36}}{{r|gunther1940}} As Himmler's adjutant [[Karl Wolff]] later explained, friendship and personal loyalty were not allowed to stand in the way:

{{blockquote|Among others, a charming fellow [named] [[Hans Erwin Graf von Spreti-Weilbach|Karl von Spreti]], Röhm's personal adjutant. He held the same position with Röhm as I held with Himmler. [He] died with words "Heil Hitler" on his lips. We were close personal friends; we often dined together in Berlin. He lifted his arm in the Nazi salute and called out "Heil Hitler, I love Germany."{{sfn|The Waffen-SS 2002}}}}

Some SA members died saying "Heil Hitler" because they believed that an anti-Hitler SS plot had led to their execution.{{r|gunther1940}} Several leaders of the disbanded [[Centre Party (Germany)|Catholic Centre Party]] were also murdered in the purge. The Party had generally been aligned with the Social Democrats and Catholic Church during the rise of Nazism, being critical of [[Nazism|Nazi ideology]], but voting nonetheless for the [[Enabling Act of 1933]] which granted Hitler dictatorial authority.{{sfn|United States Holocaust Memorial Museum}}

[[Kurt Lüdecke]], a party associate of Röhm, was imprisoned but escaped after eight months in a concentration camp.<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=1937-11-15 |title=Books: Nazi Salvage |language=en-US |magazine=Time |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,758376,00.html |access-date=2023-12-25 |issn=0040-781X}}</ref> He later wrote ''I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood-Purge,'' published in 1937 by [[Scribners]] of New York, United States.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lengyel |first=Emil |date=1937-11-28 |title=An Inside View of the Nazis by a Former Party Member; Kurt Ludecke, Once Director of Propaganda--in the United States. Escaped the Famous Blood Purge |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1937/11/28/archives/an-inside-view-of-the-nazis-by-a-former-party-member-kurt-ludecke.html |access-date=2023-12-25 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Layton |first=Roland V. |date=1979 |title=Kurt Ludecke and "I Knew Hitler": An Evaluation |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545876 |journal=Central European History |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=372–386 |doi=10.1017/S0008938900022470 |jstor=4545876 |issn=0008-9389}}</ref>

===Röhm's fate===
Röhm was held briefly at Stadelheim Prison{{efn|name=Stadelheim Prison}} in Munich, while Hitler considered his future. On 1 July, at Hitler's behest, [[Theodor Eicke]], Commandant of the [[Dachau concentration camp]], and his SS adjutant [[Michael Lippert]] visited Röhm. Once inside Röhm's cell, they handed him a [[Browning Hi-Power|Browning pistol]] loaded with a single cartridge and told him he had ten minutes to kill himself or they would do it for him. Röhm demurred, telling them, "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself."{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=221}} Having heard nothing in the allotted time, they returned to Röhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=33}} Eicke and Lippert then shot Röhm, killing him.{{sfn|Kershaw|2008|p=312}} In 1957, the German authorities tried Lippert in Munich for Röhm's murder. Until then, Lippert had been one of the few executioners of the purge to evade trial. Lippert was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison.<ref>{{cite book |last=Messenger |first=Charles |title=Hitler's Gladiator: The Life and Wars of Panzer Army Commander Sepp Dietrich |location=London |year=2005 |pages=204–205 |isbn=978-1-84486-022-7}}</ref>