kimerajamm
Joined: 28 Nov 2010
Posts: 785
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 Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 5:09 pm Post subject: Before its execution |
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The Night of the Long Knives (German: About this sound Nacht der langen Messer (help·info)) or "Operation Hummingbird [Kolibri]", or, more commonly used in Germany "Röhm-Putsch" was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political executions. Most of those killed were members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary Brownshirts.
Adolf Hitler moved against the SA and its leader, Ernst Röhm, because he saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his power. He also wanted to conciliate leaders of the Reichswehr, the official German military who both feared and despised the SA—in particular Röhm's ambition to absorb the Reichswehr into the SA under his own leadership. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate critics of his regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, and to settle scores with old enemies.
At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds,[2][3] and more than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested.[2] Most of the killings were carried out by the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), the regime's secret police. The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the Reichswehr for Hitler. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extra-judicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime.
Before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to it as "Hummingbird" (German: Kolibri), as that was the codeword used to set the execution squads in motion on the day of the purge.[4] The codename for the operation appears to have been chosen arbitrarily. The phrase "Night of the Long Knives" in the German language predates the massacre itself, and it also refers generally to acts of vengeance. To this day, Germans still use the term "Röhm-Putsch" to describe the event, as that was the term the Nazi regime used at the time, despite its unproven implication that the murders were necessary to forestall a coup. To emphasize this, German authors often use quotation marks or write about the so-called Röhm-Putschδιατροφή γάτας
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