For months Papen and the national Conservatives, who had done so much to insert Hitler into power, had grown increasingly dismayed by their dwindling influence and alarmed about the radical talk of a second revolution. During the spring they began sounding out like-minded conservatives and disgruntled generals who shared their unease with the radical course the Nazi revolution had taken. Their hope was to place a conservative in a caretaker role and then, supported by the army, restore the Hohenzollerns to power.
In a speech at Marburg University on June 17, Papen openly expressed their concerns and delivered a stern warning about the perils of a second revolution. He spoke with uncharacteristic boldness, arguing that Germany could not survive in a perpetual state of unrest—a second revolution would merely bring forth a third and a fourth, plunging the country into endless chaos. Hitler had sought to restore Germany’s spiritual unity, and the nation had “experienced that unity in the excitement of thousands of demonstrations, rallies, flags and celebrations.” But now, he suggested, the enthusiasm had waned, and the country needed “an open and manly discussion” of issues that was currently absent in German public life.
Without explicitly mentioning Hitler, he condemned “the false cult of personality,” pointedly noting that “great men are not made by propaganda but grown out of their actions.” And in a stinging rebuke to the regime, he stated that it should be confident enough of its power and popular support that it could tolerate “responsible criticism.” It should be possible, he said, to voice reservations about this policy or that without being branded an enemy of the state and treated like a criminal. The regime “should remember the old adage that only weaklings cannot tolerate criticism.” It was time to come together to “silence the doctrinaire fanatics” threatening German political life. It was a startlingly audacious speech, all the more for being the first public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis, and when he concluded, the audience broke into stormy applause.
The Marburg speech sent shockwaves through a country in which open political criticism was as extinct as a mastodon. A stunned Goebbels tried to suppress the speech; he seized newspapers, ordered all copies of the speech confiscated, and blocked its retransmission over the Frankfurt radio cable. But it was too late. Around the country Papen was greeted with cries of “Heil Marburg” instead of “Heil Hitler.” The conservatives close to him believed that their moment was coming. Given the mounting tension between Hitler and Röhm, it was time to press the case for a conservative succession. Hindenburg, they felt certain, would be open to a change of government.
Hitler was furious at Papen and his circle of “reactionaries,” and in a speech before an assembly of Nazi leaders in Thuringia, he blasted the “little worms” and “pygmies” of the Reaction. “If they should at any time attempt, even in a small way, to move from their criticism to a new act of perjury, they can be sure that what they are confronting today is not the cowardly and corrupt bourgeoisie of 1918 but the fist of the entire people. It is the fist of the nation that is clenched and will smash down anyone who dares to undertake even the slightest attempt at sabotage.” In an ominous preview of things to come, Himmler ordered the arrest of Edgar Jung, the author of the Marburg speech.
Still, for all his rage, Hitler was wary of Papen’s influence with the Reich President. He recognized the dangerous conservative disaffection with the Nazi dictatorship, and with Hindenburg’s demise on the near horizon, he was concerned about a renewed conservative push to reinstate the monarchy. When on June 21 Papen threatened to resign because of Goebbels’s actions, Hitler invited him to the Reich Chancellery to clear the air. At that meeting Hitler was conciliatory, expressing his understanding of Papen’s honorable intent, even condemning Goebbels’s overreaction, and promising to lift the ban on the Marburg speech (which he did not do). He did convince Papen to withhold his resignation until the two men could travel together to Neudeck to discuss the situation with Hindenburg. But Hitler had no intention of including Papen in such a meeting. Instead, the next day he hurried off to Hindenburg’s East Prussian estate alone, where upon arriving he encountered General Blomberg. Blomberg, Hitler’s minister of defense and a man favorably inclined toward National Socialism, was just leaving for Berlin after a conference with Hindenburg. On this occasion the general was not the malleable “rubber lion,” as Hitler privately called him; he made it abundantly clear to Hitler that the army had had enough. If Hitler could not tame the SA and establish domestic order, the Reich President was prepared to declare martial law and the army would assume control of the country. Hindenburg sternly reinforced that position.
Coming in the wake of Papen’s Marburg speech, these conversations proved to be the tipping point. Having done nothing for months to address the SA situation, Hitler now sprang into action. It was his usual pattern—wait for a situation to resolve itself, prevaricate, delay, postpone, then, when absolutely forced to make a decision, move swiftly and radically. Now the time had come to act. In the last week of June he began moving the pieces into place for a strike against both Röhm and the reactionaries. For months Himmler and Heydrich had been preparing an extensive dossier on Röhm’s “treasonous actions,” providing “evidence” that Röhm was plotting a coup d’état, conspiring with Strasser and even the French ambassador to bring down the Hitler government. The variations of these allegations were multiple and the evidence slight to nonexistent, but Hitler appears to have accepted them without question. On June 25 Himmler and Heydrich summoned SS and SD commanders to Berlin for a briefing on the situation. The SS men were informed that a Putsch by Röhm and the SA was imminent, and instructions were given for the countermeasures to be taken when the alert came. No date was set, but the SS was to hurry their preparations to seize SA leaders and functionaries. Hitler also conferred with Blomberg, who assured him of the military’s support for an action against the SA and agreed to put the troops on high alert. The army also supplied the SS with weapons and transportation to carry out the operation.
In the last week of June, the regime escalated its warnings against would-be “saboteurs” of the National Socialist revolution. In a radio address on June 24 Hess sounded a menacing note: “The order of the Führer, to whom we have sworn our loyalty, is alone decisive. Woe betide anyone who is unfaithful to this vow of loyalty, believing that his revolt will serve the Revolution. Pity unto those who believe themselves the chosen ones who must aid the Führer by revolutionary agitation from below.” Two days later, speaking to a convention of Nazi functionaries in Hamburg, Göring sharpened the rhetoric, issuing a thinly veiled threat to both the SA and the Papen circle. The regime had worked hard and been successful “because we have behind us a Volk which trusts us,” adding that “anyone who gnaws away at this trust is committing a crime against the Volk; he is committing treachery and high treason. He who designs to destroy this trust, destroys Germany; he who sins against this trust has put his own head in the noose.”
With rumors swirling about an SA Putsch and a backdoor conservative effort to undermine the regime, Hitler, on June 28, discovered that Papen had arranged to meet with Hindenburg on the 30th. It was, Hitler felt certain, a last-gasp effort to win the Reich President’s support for a conservative assumption of power. There could be no more hesitation. That night Hitler telephoned Röhm instructing him to call a meeting of the SA leadership for June 30 in the resort village of Bad Wiessee forty miles south of Munich, where Röhm was vacationing. Hitler would come to Wiessee to address them. On June 7 Röhm had sent all SA formations on leave for a month; it was to be a cooling-off period, an opportunity for the Storm Troopers to regroup and take a much needed rest. Although Röhm would never acknowledge it, the SA leadership had considerable trouble controlling its own Brown Shirts, who seemed immune to any plea to refrain from unruly behavior, which the public found increasingly obnoxious.
On June 29, Hitler kept a busy public schedule. In Westphalia to attend the wedding of a regional party leader, he toured the Krupp works in Essen,
made a short speech to the Labor Service unit near Lünen, and toured a nearby labor camp, before moving on to Bad Godesberg, where the wedding was to take place. There he was joined by Goebbels and Göring, who had flown in from Berlin. That night Hitler excused himself early from the wedding reception and retreated to his hotel room. Distressing reports from Himmler and Heydrich flooded in about SA unrest in different parts of the country. An SA Putsch, they believed, was imminent. Hitler briefed Göring and Goebbels about the situation, both of whom were surprised to learn that the primary target of the planned strike was not Papen and the conservatives but the SA. Hitler sent Göring back to Berlin to direct the action there and ordered Sepp Dietrich, commander of his elite body guard, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, to fly immediately to Munich, where he was to marshal two companies of SS troops. They were to rendezvous at the Hotel Hanselbauer in Bad Wiessee at 11:30 next morning.
At some point in the black early-morning hours, Hitler decided that he would fly to Munich immediately to lead the operation himself. After alerting Adolf Wagner, the Gauleiter and interior minister of Bavaria, to be prepared for his arrival, he boarded his private plane at 2:30 a.m. bound for Munich. It was coming on first light when Hitler’s Ju 52 touched down at the Oberwiesenfeld military field outside Munich. He demanded to be taken at once to the Interior Ministry, where he learned that during the night a mob of some three thousand SA men had stormed through the streets chanting, “The Führer is against us; the Army is against us. SA men, out into the streets!” On hearing this, Hitler erupted in a towering rage. He demanded to see the two ranking SA officers on duty at once. When the bewildered men appeared before him, Hitler was not interested in information or explanations. Before they could utter a word, he ripped the insignia from their uniforms and thundered: “You’re under arrest! You will be shot.” They were immediately led away to Stadelheim prison to await their fate, the first of many on that long murderous night.
It was now 4:30 a.m., and Sepp Dietrich had not yet arrived with his SS troops, but Hitler, by now virtually hysterical in his fury, could wait no longer. He would go to Bad Wiessee and make the arrests himself. Accompanied by Goebbels, press chief Otto Dietrich, and several heavily armed SS men and police detectives, he set off for the resort in a convoy of three large black touring cars. At 6:45 when they reached the Hotel Hanselbauer, all was quiet—the small group of SA men were still sleeping off a night of heavy drinking; the hotel staff just beginning to stir, sorting linens for the new day, bustling about in the kitchen preparing breakfast coffee. The dining room was empty, the places set for the anticipated meeting of the SA chiefs at noon. Brandishing a pistol, Hitler bounded upstairs to Röhm’s room. When the door opened, an astonished Röhm managed to blurt out a drowsy “Heil, mein Führer,” before Hitler, using the familiar “du” form, bellowed: “Ernst, you are under arrest!”
Across the hall, Edward Heines, leader of the Silesian SA, was found in bed with a young man, and after a brief scuffle was seized and led downstairs. The other Storm Troopers were taken by surprise and offered no resistance as they were led from their rooms to the hotel laundry, where they were locked in. Röhm, now fully dressed in civilian clothes, demanded an explanation, but none was given. He was taken to the hotel dining room rather than being forced to join the others in the cramped laundry. He took a chair and waited calmly. Hitler even allowed him to be served coffee. All had happened so quickly and so quietly that the other hotel guests slumbered on with no idea that anything unusual was taking place. The SA men taken at the Hotel Hanselbauer were loaded into a bus commandeered to carry them to Munich. Their destination was Stadelheim. While Hitler was trying to decide what to do with Röhm, a troop of about forty SA men from Röhm’s Munich guard arrived. Hitler came forward to address them. He informed them that he had assumed active command of the SA and that they were to return to Munich in his convoy, which would be leaving shortly for the Brown House. Hitler also sent word to SS leaders to intercept any SA men on their way to the leadership conference, whether at the Munich train station or on the roads leading to Bad Wiessee.
Meanwhile, Goebbels telephoned a one-word coded message to Göring in Berlin: “Kolibri”—hummingbird. It was the signal to launch the operation in the capital, and Göring wasted no time. He sent out hit squads with a list of “conspirators” to be rounded up. They were on their way when Papen appeared at Göring’s office. He was alarmed to find it surrounded by armed SS guards. Once inside he learned that Hitler had delegated to Göring the legal authority to deal with the situation in Berlin. Papen protested that by law he should have been placed in charge and insisted that President Hindenburg declare a state of emergency and mobilize the army. Göring flatly refused. The SS and police had matters well in hand, he said blandly, and “advised” Papen to return home and stay there. It was not safe in the capital today. The murders began immediately. General Schleicher and his wife were gunned down in their home; General Ferdinand von Bredow, a friend and aide of Schleicher’s, was shot at his front door; Edgar Jung, already held by the SS, was executed in the dreaded Gestapo prison at 8 Prinz-Albrech-Strasse. Three of Papen’s conservative inner circle were also arrested and shot. Gregor Strasser was taken to the Prinz-Albrech-Strasse prison, where he was shot in his cell. Erich Klausner, the president of the Catholic Action, the largest Catholic organization still in operation, was executed; various SA men and conservative government officials were shot. The killing went on throughout the day and night. Papen was spared, held under house arrest, his telephone line cut, his house surrounded. It was decided that it would be too embarrassing for the regime to have the vice chancellor executed without a trial. And, besides, how would Hindenburg react? Some of the targeted victims were taken into “protective custody,” but most were murdered in cold blood—no arrests, no formal charges, no trials. The death toll continued to rise throughout the evening and into the following day.
In Munich the executions began as soon as Hitler returned from Bad Wiessee in mid-morning. He ordered Heines and the other SA leaders from Bad Wiessee shot for treason, but here he encountered unexpected trouble. Upon learning that SA leaders were being held in Stadelheim and were condemned to death, Hans Frank, the Nazi justice minister of Bavaria, protested. By what right were they to be executed? The prisoners, he argued, were to be turned over to the Bavarian state police immediately, and no executions should take place under any circumstances. There must be formal legal proceedings, he insisted. When these complaints were relayed to Hitler by telephone, he took the receiver and speaking directly to Frank stated that he himself had given the order. “These gentlemen are criminals against the Reich. I am the Reich Chancellor. It is a matter of the Reich, which is never under your jurisdiction.” A similarly telling scene played out in the Brown House when the Nazi governor of Bavaria, Franz Ritter von Epp, demanded a court-martial for Röhm. He was shocked when Hitler exploded, screaming that Röhm was a proven traitor and deserved to be shot. Epp was speechless. As he left the room, he could only mutter “crazy.”
At noon, Hitler addressed high-ranking SA leaders in the Senate Room of the Brown House. It was a tense meeting, and Hitler had worked himself into such a titanic fury that one observer claimed that he was literally foaming at the mouth. Röhm had betrayed him, he raged. He had committed the “worst treachery in world history.” He had accepted twelve million marks from the French to have Hitler arrested and liquidated (an untrue assertion) and Germany put at the mercy of its enemies. Röhm and his co-conspirators would be shot. While asserting his “unshakable alliance with the SA,” Hitler at the same time bluntly threatened that he would show no mercy in “exterminating and destroying undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements.” Tens of thousands of upright SA men had made the most difficult sacrifices for the movement, and he expected the leaders of every SA division to prove themselves worthy of these sacrifices. He also reminded the nervous SA leaders that he had defended Röhm for years against the most vici
ous attacks on his private life but that the most recent developments had forced him “to place all personal feeling second to the welfare of the Movement and to that of the State.” Above all, he would “eradicate and nip in the bud any attempts to propagate a new upheaval by ludicrous circles of pretentious characters.” When he finished, his listeners lustily shouted their approval.
Despite his homicidal rage, Hitler hesitated in passing sentence on Röhm. Himmler and Göring pressed him to execute the SA commander, who they maintained was the leader of the planned insurrection. At first Hitler thought to pardon him, but in the end reluctantly decided that Röhm could not be spared. He did, however, offer his old comrade the opportunity to die with a soldier’s honor. On July 1, as Röhm waited in his sweltering cell in Stadelheim, two SS men, led by Theodor Eicke, the commandant of Dachau, entered. “You have forfeited your life,” Eicke stated. “The Führer gives you one more chance to draw the right conclusions.” With that, he placed a pistol loaded with a single round on a small table, and the three SS men left the cell. When some fifteen minutes passed and no shot was heard, Eicke and his men returned to the cell. They found Röhm standing, bare-chested, and defiant. “Chief of Staff, prepare yourself,” Eicke barked. As the powerful SA chief started to speak, his executioners opened fire. According to postwar reports his last words were “My Führer, my Führer.”
The Third Reich Page 36
