A list compiled by the Silesian SA of those regional SA leaders who were temporarily removed from the ranks in late July 1934 contains detailed information on the accusations later advanced in this court. Some of these charges were juridical in nature, concerning participation in excessive violence, defalcation, or male homosexuality. Other charges were highly subjective and, in a stricter sense, hardly more than moral judgements based on personal observations or rumours. One SA leader, for example, was accused of ‘having been in nearly all political parties’ prior to joining the SA in 1932, while another was accused of being married to a Czechoslovakian wife who was now regarded as a spy. Still other SA leaders were criticized for their ‘totally improper private lives’, for being a ‘bumbler’, or for being ‘too young, arrogant, and with an unclear comportment’ during the Röhm revolt.66 As these examples demonstrate, the accusations partly reflected criticisms previously levied by Hitler, but they also point to the interpersonal character of the ‘cleansings’. Even those character traits that had previously been considered positive qualities for an SA leader during the Kampfzeit – such as boldness and the readiness to violently push one’s interests through – could now be turned against those caught in the crosshairs.67
This ‘transvaluation of values’ constituted a severe problem for many convicted stormtroopers long after the immediate crackdown on the SA had come to an end, as even those who remained in the organization and even climbed the SA’s hierarchy were unable to forget the humiliation of the summer of 1934. The scars from these events remained, even after Hitler in his infamous justification for the killings delivered on 13 July 1934 reached out to the SA, predicting that ‘in a few weeks’ time, the brown shirt will once again dominate the German streets’.68 Lutze remained a sworn enemy of Himmler for the rest of his life, in private accusing the Reichsführer-SS of murder and hypocrisy.69 Even if the SA leaders managed to push aside these painful memories in carrying out their daily routines, a grain of insecurity remained. A good example of these lingering effects is the case of Siegfried Kasche, who, as leader of the SA-Gruppe Ostmark in Frankfurt an der Oder, only narrowly escaped the hangman in July 1934. Seven years later, in November 1941, while serving as German envoy to Croatia, he met with Himmler in Hitler’s New Reich Chancellery in Berlin on the occasion of Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Denmark, and Finland joining the Anti-Comintern Pact. When the men disagreed about the SS’s influence in eastern Europe, Himmler maliciously told Kasche that ‘he had apparently not yet forgotten the 30 June’. ‘I understood the warning his words implied,’ Kasche wrote in his personal notebook. He was apparently so troubled by this clash with the Reichsführer-SS that he noted this incident twice – the only repetition in his otherwise short and aphoristic notes.70
The Myth of the Homosexual Nazi Activist
‘Daddy, what does homosexual mean?’ Hitlerjunge Knax asks his begetter.
‘That is what you become as soon as you are a traitor,’ his father snarled.71
This joke, printed in the Social Democratic Neuer Vorwärts in Czechoslovakia on 15 July 1934, in a nutshell sarcastically summarizes how the murderers in the wake of the ‘Röhm purge’ exploited the stigma of male homosexuality to legitimize their politically motivated killings. The paradigmatic image that was produced to help justify such actions appeared in a summary of the events of 30 June 1934 provided by the Reich Press Office on the same day: ‘The enforcement of the detention [of Röhm and the other SA leaders in Bad Wiessee, D.S.] revealed images morally so sad that the slightest grain of sympathy had to vanish. A number of the SA leaders present had taken toy boys along, and one even had to be awoken and arrested in the most despicable situation. The Führer ordered the uncompromising extermination of this pestilential bubo.’72
Colourful accounts of Hitler breaking into the Pension Hanselbauer in the morning hours of 30 June 1934 and finding SA leaders in bed with other men are part of many accounts of the ‘Night of the Long Knives’.73 From a careful historian’s point of view, it is impossible to verify such testimonies, given the political context and the partisan stance of those numerically few witnesses who were later able to provide first-hand accounts of the arrests. Even if one assumes that such statements were based on facts, their morally self-righteous tone was plainly hypocritical, as the homosexuality of some high-ranking SA leaders, most notably Röhm and Heines, had become an open secret within Germany prior to June 1934.74 Hitler had early on taken notice of it but until the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ had come to Röhm’s defence, claiming that the SA was ‘not a school to educate the daughters of the upper classes, but a formation of rough fighters’.75 Moralization was for a long time second to mobilization. As party leader, Hitler had also tolerated the presence of other known homosexuals in the upper ranks of the SA, much to the distaste of many in his party.
The Münchener Post had attacked Röhm and with him the SA for homosexual activities as early as June 1931. Yet it was the publication of Röhm’s private letters in March 1932 that proved most influential in triggering debates on ‘morality’. These letters had been confiscated by the Berlin police in 1931 and were then leaked to the journalist Helmuth Klotz, a former Nazi activist who had switched sides. Since 1929, Klotz had worked closely with the SPD and edited several anti-Nazi brochures on its behalf.76 Some 300,000 copies of Röhm’s letters were published and a few weeks later provoked a violent incident in the national parliament.77 On 12 May 1932, Heines recognized Klotz in the Reichstag café and, with several other Nazi deputies, beat him bloody on the spot. The attack made nationwide headlines and helped establish a connection between National Socialism and male homosexuality. Derisive nicknames such as ‘Rent boys’ and ‘Paragraph 175 Guard’ – referring to the paragraph of the German penal code that illegalized male homosexuality – became common. Nazi opponents publicly greeted stormtroopers with shouts of ‘Hot Röhm!’ (Geil Röhm!) or ‘Gay Heil!’ (Schwul Heil!).78
However, it would be wrong to assume that in the early 1930s those opposing the Nazis widely exploited such accusations for their own ends. Apart from the tone emanating from the Communist and Socialist left, a restrained atttitude dominated the discourse.79 Characteristic of the efforts to not misuse intimate private information to influence national politics was an article by Kurt Tucholsky in the left-liberal Die Weltbühne in April 1932. The well-known writer and journalist had no problem revealing the hypocrisy of the National Socialists, who publicly attacked the allegedly sinful republic while at the same time tolerating homosexuals within their leadership. Yet a personal attack on Röhm’s homosexuality, which he carefully tried to keep private, could not be justified – not for the purpose of preserving his dignity, but for preserving our own, Tucholsky explained: ‘One should not go to see one’s opponent in bed.’80 Even if the perception that parts of the SA leadership were gay gained ground in the two years following the ‘Röhm scandal’, it was ultimately the National Socialists themselves who contributed to its lasting effect. The previous rumours and disclosures had set the stage for the regime’s 1934 accusations that the SA was a bunch of homosexual ‘perverts’, and the idea immediately caught on, to the extent that the cliché of the ‘gay Nazi’ is still firmly embedded in the cultural imaginary of the Nazi movement.
Yet, as Laurie Marhoefer, Alexander Zinn, Jörn Meve, and Andreas Pretzel have rightly emphasized, the ‘myth of legions of gay Nazis has no historical basis’; rather, it was a ‘propaganda tool created by the German Left’ that survived well into the post-war decades.81 This is not to say that homosexual stormtroopers did not exist, but rather that we have no historical record to assume that the percentage of homosexual men in the SA was higher than their proportion in the general male population.82 This assertion holds true despite the companionship and mutual affection among men in local units, as Andrew Wackerfuss has recently demonstrated with regard to the Hamburg SA in the Kampfzeit.83 In fact, it would have been highly surprising if homosexual men had deliberately chosen
the SA as an environment in which to live out their sexuality. The official Nazi discourse was distinctly homophobic, putting forward ‘biological’ and ‘social’ arguments against the orientation. Official party doctrine declared that in order to guarantee the future of the German people, all attempts to legalize and promote male homosexuality had to be blocked. As early as February 1933 the new government under Hitler started to close down places of homosexual encounters, such as gay bars and bathhouses. This was only the beginning of a violent crackdown on male homosexuals that in the following years led to the condemnation and imprisonment of several 10,000 men, including hundreds of cases of forced castration.84
Among National Socialists the conception of a homosexual ‘fighter’ as a particularly masculine identity – in the tradition of Hans Blüher’s Männerbund ideal – remained a minority opinion.85 Unlike Röhm, most of its militants did not believe in the image of the ‘homosexual warrior-activist’ and instead conventionally associated male homosexuality with ‘femaleness’ and weakness, characteristics with which they carefully contrasted their own self-images.86 For a stormtrooper to ‘come out’ by free choice was thus extremely difficult, if not impossible. The fact that homosexuals in the SA leadership at times established networks that protected or actively promoted fellow homosexuals, such as those created in the Silesian SA under Heines and within the SA leadership under Karl Ernst, was ultimately a consequence of the party’s homophobia – and not the other way round.87 Yet, after 1945, the popular myth of the gay stormtrooper featured even in the serious historical scholarship on the SA. When it came to sexual politics, there was no zero hour; instead, a homophobic continuity prevailed, stretching from the self-declared moral crusades of the SS to later mainstream historiography. Homophobic attitudes now coalesced with anti-Fascist convictions, an unfortunate liaison that for decades contributed to the belittlement of the persecution of homosexual men in the Third Reich.88
Consequences
Mindful observers understood the fundamental consequences of the events that took place in the summer of 1934. An American diplomat called the occurrences of 30 June 1934 ‘without parallel in the history of civilized Europe’.89 Ten years later, when news of the failed assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944 emerged, the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ still served as a point of reference in Germany. A critical observer remarked that the ‘butchery of 1934’ would be nothing compared to the crackdown on conspirators that he expected to follow.90 And even long after the Second World War had come to an end, the liberal daily Frankfurter Rundschau in 1957 referred to the summer of 1934 as ‘one of the most atrocious chapters in the history of our people’.91
In contrast to these later judgements, the opinion in Germany in the days and weeks after those deadly days was divided. After the arrests became known, Social Democrats observed that the first reactions in the streets of the capital on the afternoon of 30 June 1934 were often smiles and expressions of Schadenfreude. Others noted disbelief and apathy, particularly from rank-and-file stormtroopers.92 Because several SA leaders had the reputation of being corrupt and indecent, many Germans credited Hitler for what they regarded as his determined intervention. Some even saw the days of a ‘moral renewal’ drawing near.93
On 13 July 1934, Hitler attempted to justify his line of action in the previous weeks in a long speech at the Kroll Opera House, the provisional parliamentary building. The speech was broadcast live and eagerly awaited by many, yet the reactions to it were very mixed. One critical listener described Hitler as having been ‘in a state of highest excitement and near-pathological depression’. Hitler had even exclaimed that he would put a bullet through his own head if the state and the party organizations did not remain united.94 Thomas Mann noted in his diary that Hitler had delivered a ‘barking speech’ in which he elevated the murders into an act of salvation, interrupted by frequent applause. The writer’s comment was short: ‘Nightmarish’.95 Yet, by and large, Hitler’s unusually emotional address did not fail to impress the public. For example, the conservative but independent mayor of the city of Celle in Lower Saxony, in a public speech on the occasion of the annual marksmen’s festival, said that he had been deeply moved by Hitler’s confession (Selbstbekenntnis) and even exclaimed: ‘From a human point of view alone he merits our profound sympathy and honest adoration.’96 Such a grotesque, but not atypical, reaction transformed this cold-blooded killer into a sensitive and responsible political leader. Hitler’s (staged) suffering paid direct political dividends – and it seemed to contrast him favourably with the allegedly simple-minded and brutal ‘hotheads’ of the SA. Within the Reichswehr, the events of 30 June 1934 confirmed the army’s role as the nation’s only armour-bearer and were celebrated as nothing less than a decisive ‘victory over the SA and the party’ – regardless of the blood-soaked nature of this political success that made the regular military command accomplices in crime.97
Whereas the Celle mayor’s appreciation was derived from his taking Hitler’s emotional theatre at face value, Carl Schmitt, the leading jurist of the early Third Reich, justified the political murders as a form of higher justice. On 1 August 1934, Schmitt published an article entitled ‘Der Führer schützt das Recht’ (‘The Führer Protects the Law’) in which he not only justified the killings but even elevated the ‘Führer’s action’ into an act of ‘true jurisdiction’. Taking up Hitler’s remarks on the alleged Socialist betrayal during the First World War, Schmitt insisted that a true political leader would thereby also serve as the nation’s highest judge, and as such would ‘defend the law from the most fatal abuse if, at a moment of danger, he creates unmediated justice’.98 In so arguing, Schmitt not only abandoned the established principle of the separation of powers but even compared the new state of lawlessness favourably to the alleged liberal ‘positive web of compulsory legal norms’.99 This was a remarkable position even for Schmitt, who less than five months earlier had insisted on the ability of German jurists to distinguish between a politically motivated ‘empty dictum’ (leerer Machtspruch) and a ‘legal dictum’ (Rechtsspruch).100 National Socialist ideology was to be applied in those cases where sweeping clauses were at hand, but in all other cases the legal norms had to be respected, Schmitt had argued. Yet even in this earlier text, Schmitt accepted the pre-eminence of formal laws only conditionally. It was ultimately the political sovereign who enjoyed the discretion to alter the legal framework at any given moment, Schmitt argued, as he was restricted only by a higher righteousness that was beyond human judgement. Consequently, Schmitt reduced the state in its entirety to a ‘body at the disposition of the leader of the [Nazi] movement’.101
With his highly political legal writings Schmitt contributed to what Ernst Fraenkel in 1940 described as the parallel existence of the ‘prerogative state’ and the ‘normative state’. Although the German judiciary applied legal norms in a formal way throughout the Third Reich, the government was permitted to ‘exercise unlimited arbitrariness and violence’, Fraenkel observed.102 In this respect the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ was a key event, not only putting an end to the far-reaching ambitions of the social-revolutionary wing of the Nazi movement but also indicating that from now on Nazi leaders could justify even the most serious capital crimes as long as they were deemed necessary to prevent an imminent danger to the nation’s development and expansion. Based on such reasoning, even Hitler’s ‘Commissar Order’ of June 1941, which requested the summary execution of alleged Bolshevists behind the eastern front lines, or the Nazi policies of ethnic cleansing and mass murder in eastern Europe, could be technically ‘justified’. The ‘Night of the Long Knives’ thus contributed decisively to the development of a Nazi morality that did not accept uncircumventable limits.
The immediate consequence of these developments was that ‘power shifted decisively upwards’, as the economic historian Adam Tooze has put it. Unlike the political situation of the early 1920s, not only was the independent labour movement destroyed, but the ‘autonomous param
ilitary potential of the right’ was also strictly contained.103 The SA special representatives were officially recalled on 10 July 1934, indicating the end of the short-lived era of ambitious and somehow ‘autonomous’ SA politics.104 At about the same time, the infamous SA-run concentration camp in Oranienburg near Berlin closed. On 19 July 1934, Adolf Wagner, the Munich Gauleiter and Bavarian Minister of the Interior, decreed that from now on the civil administrations alone would be charged with maintaining public order and security.105 In the years to come, the Nazi Party kept the SA on a short leash, allowing only brief outbursts of violence. Most of the time the stormtroopers were assigned tasks that were considerably more ‘civilian’ in nature, testifying to the transformation of the SA into a regular feature of German society. Young men who received professional training in one of the SA’s northern schools, for example, served their local communities by furnishing a marching band at a children’s fair, organizing an SA artist group, staging amateur theatre performances, fighting against environmental problems, and organizing midsummer festivals (Plate 18).106
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