History is messy. Usually, when we talk about the rise of the Third Reich, we picture a steady, unstoppable climb to power. But in the summer of 1934, the whole thing almost vibrated apart from the inside. The Night of the Long Knives wasn't just some random act of cruelty; it was a desperate, bloody "house cleaning" that turned a shaky coalition into a total dictatorship.
If you were living in Berlin or Munich in late June, things felt tense. Weirdly tense. You had the regular army (the Reichswehr) on one side and the brown-shirted brawlers of the SA (Sturmabteilung) on the other. They hated each other. Like, really hated each other. Adolf Hitler was caught in the middle, and for a few days there, it looked like he might actually lose his grip.
Why the Night of the Long Knives Had to Happen (According to Hitler)
To understand this, you have to look at Ernst Röhm. He was Hitler’s old buddy. They’d been through the trenches—literally. Röhm ran the SA, a paramilitary force that had grown to nearly three million men. Think about that for a second. Three million. That’s way bigger than the actual German army was allowed to be at the time.
Röhm was loud. He was blunt. He also wanted a "Second Revolution."
He basically thought Hitler was selling out to the old-school aristocrats and big business types. Röhm wanted the SA to absorb the army and become the sole military force of Germany. This absolutely terrified the traditional generals. They told Hitler, in no uncertain terms: "Control your dog, or we’re out." President Paul von Hindenburg, who was basically on his deathbed, even threatened to declare martial law and let the army take over the government if Hitler didn't fix the SA problem.
Hitler was stuck. He needed the army’s expertise to rearm Germany, but he needed the SA’s muscle to keep the streets quiet.
The Players and the Plot
It wasn't just about Röhm, though. Other high-ranking Nazis like Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring saw an opportunity. They whispered in Hitler’s ear. They fed him fake intelligence—fabricated by the SD (the SS intelligence service)—suggesting that Röhm was planning a coup. They called it the "Röhm-Putsch."
Honestly, there’s no evidence Röhm was actually planning to overthrow Hitler that week. He was mostly just complaining loudly while vacationing at a resort. But in politics, perception is everything. Himmler wanted the SS to be independent of the SA. Göring wanted to settle old scores. They drew up "hit lists" that included anyone who had ever annoyed them.
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The Bloodbath Begins: June 30, 1934
The sun hadn't even come up when Hitler’s motorcade screeched to a halt at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee. This is where Röhm and his top officers were sleeping off a night of partying.
Hitler personally went into Röhm’s room.
Imagine that scene. The Chancellor of Germany, flanked by SS gunmen, waking up his "best friend" to arrest him for treason. It was chaotic. Some SA leaders were hauled out and shot on the spot. Others were sent back to Berlin to face a firing squad at the Lichterfelde Cadet School.
- Röhm was taken to Stadelheim Prison.
- He was left in a cell with a pistol and a single bullet.
- He refused to use it.
- "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself," he reportedly said.
- He wasn't that lucky. Two SS officers, Theodor Eicke and Michael Lippert, walked in and shot him point-blank.
It Wasn't Just the SA
This is the part most people forget. The Night of the Long Knives was a convenient cover to murder anyone Hitler didn't like.
Take Kurt von Schleicher, the former Chancellor. He was a conservative who had tried to block Hitler’s path to power. SS men knocked on his door, and when he answered, they gunned him and his wife down in their foyer.
Then there was Gustav von Kahr. He was the guy who had suppressed Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch back in 1923. Eleven years later, the Nazis finally got their revenge. They found his body in a swamp near Dachau; he’d been hacked to death with pickaxes.
Even Gregor Strasser, who represented the more "socialist" wing of the Nazi party and had once been Hitler’s main rival for leadership, was grabbed. He was shot in his cell, and the guards reportedly joked about him "bleeding out" through the food slot in the door.
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The Legalized Murder
You’d think the public would be horrified, right? I mean, the government just spent three days murdering its own citizens without a single trial.
But Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda master, went into overdrive. He framed the whole thing as a heroic act. He told the public that Hitler had saved the nation from a "homosexual clique" (playing on Röhm’s known sexuality) that was planning to plunge Germany into civil war.
On July 3, the cabinet passed a law with a single paragraph. It basically said: "The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as self-defense of the State."
Just like that, mass murder was legal.
The army was happy because the SA was neutered. The public was mostly relieved because the "thugs" in the brown shirts were finally under control. They didn't realize that they had just traded a disorganized group of street brawlers for the cold, calculated efficiency of the SS.
Why This Still Matters for Historians Today
When we look back at the Night of the Long Knives, we see the exact moment the "Old Germany" died.
Before this, Hitler was a chancellor who had to play ball with a parliament and a president. After this, he was the Führer. When Hindenburg died a few weeks later, Hitler merged the offices of Chancellor and President. He made every soldier in the army swear a personal oath of loyalty—not to the constitution, not to the country, but to him personally.
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Historians like Ian Kershaw and Richard J. Evans point out that this purge proved Hitler’s willingness to use extreme violence against his own "loyal" followers to secure his position. It set the precedent for everything that followed, from the Nuremberg Laws to the Holocaust. If the state could murder a former Chancellor and the head of the SA with zero consequences, no one was safe.
Misconceptions About the Numbers
People often ask how many died. The official Nazi report claimed 77.
That’s a lie.
Most modern estimates put the death toll somewhere between 150 and 200, though some researchers believe it could be as high as 700 to 1,000 if you count the people who "disappeared" in the weeks surrounding the event. The names we know—Röhm, Schleicher, Strasser—are just the tip of the iceberg. There were countless local leaders, lawyers, and journalists who were simply picked up and never seen again.
What You Can Learn From This
The Night of the Long Knives is a grim case study in how power consolidates. It teaches us a few specific things about authoritarianism:
- The "Purge" is a Pattern: Dictators almost always turn on the people who helped them get to power. The very traits that make someone a good revolutionary (aggression, lack of respect for rules) make them a threat once the revolution is over.
- Legalism as a Weapon: Notice how Hitler didn't just break the law; he changed the law to fit his crimes after the fact.
- The Danger of Compromise: The German army thought they were winning by letting Hitler crush the SA. In reality, they were handing the keys of the country to the SS, who would eventually dominate them.
If you want to understand the mechanics of the Nazi regime, don't just look at the big battles of World War II. Look at these three days in 1934. It was the moment the mask slipped, and Germany—and the world—found out exactly what kind of man Adolf Hitler really was.
Actionable Insights for Research
If you are digging deeper into this topic for a project or personal interest, here are your next steps for a more nuanced understanding:
- Analyze the "Hossbach Memorandum": Compare Hitler's 1934 actions with his 1937 secret meetings to see how his internal control shifted toward external aggression.
- Read Primary Source Accounts: Look for the diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Jewish professor in Germany who recorded the shifting atmosphere of the country during the purge.
- Study the SS-SA Rivalry: Research the "Gestapo" (Geheime Staatspolizei) origins to see how Himmler used the purge to centralize police power under his wing.
- Investigate the "White Rose" Context: See how later resistance movements in Germany referenced the lawlessness of 1934 as a turning point in their radicalization against the regime.
The history of the Third Reich isn't a straight line; it's a series of brutal pivots. None was more significant than the weekend Hitler decided that his friends were just as dangerous as his enemies.