With these measures in place, the Nazification of the judicial system was complete. Hitler and Himmler unleashed the Gestapo against old enemies, as well. This act legalised removing anyone of non-Ayran descent from the civil service. The Night of the Long Knives was the term given to the process whereby Hitler, in 1934, purged the Nazi Party of all those who were a threat to Hitler. As such the Nazis justified this measure as implementing necessary security measures, rather than revealing their true motive to remove opposition. 4 terms. They come in PDF and Powerpoint formats and can be amended and changed to suit. Night of the Long Knives - Cunning History Teacher The Enabling Law allowed them to do this under the guise of legality. The Peoples Court, a court created by the Nazis in April 1934 with judges chosen specifically for their Nazi beliefs, replaced the Supreme Court. [72] Fritsch and Blomberg suddenly now claimed at the end of 1934 that as army officers they could not stand the exceedingly violent press attacks on Schleicher and Bredow that had been going on since July, which portrayed them as the vilest traitors, working against the Fatherland in the pay of France. During the years of the rise of the Nazi Party, the SA had been instrumental in helping the party to gain support. [23] Himmler envied the independence and power of the SA, although by this time he and Heydrich had already begun restructuring the SS from a bodyguard formation for Nazi leaders (and a subset of the SA) into its own independent elite corps, one loyal to both himself and Hitler. Hitler's entire life was one of making key-life and death-strategic decisions, successfully. Leading members of the leftist-leaning Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its leader Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Bavarian politician Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had helped suppress Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The Night of the Long Knives | Facing History & Ourselves isabellaaellis. A copy of the original film, before Rhm was edited out, was found in the 1980s in the German Democratic Republic's film archives. [5] In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were more than 400 street battles, resulting in 82 deaths. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. Religion and The Bloody Chamber. Night of the Long Knives, in German history, purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler on June 30, 1934. The leaders of the SA were ordered to attend a meeting at a hotel in Bad Wiesse, Bavaria. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army. Let the nation know that its existence which depends on its internal order and security cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. When the Nazi regime did not take such steps, those who had expected an economic as well as a political revolution were disillusioned. Others were appalled at the scale of the executions and at the relative complacency of many of their fellow Germans. As the SA were known for being violent and unruly, many saw this as a legitimate move by the government to ensure public order. The army's support for the purge, however, would have far-reaching consequences for the institution. [42] The Gestapo also murdered Erich Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action, and a close Papen associate. 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 Rhm and his followers were staying.[36].
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