Hitler

organization, installed in April 1933 with the grand title of Deputy Führer, Rudolf Heß, and the increasingly powerful figure behind the scenes Martin Bormann, were more than aware of the contempt in which the Political Organization was held by Röhm’s men and the threat of the SA actually replacing the party, or making it redundant. For the army, as already noted, Rohm’s aim to subordinate the Reichswehr to the interests of a people’s militia was anathema. Intensified military exercises, expansive parades, and, not least, reports of extensive weapon collections in the hands of the SA, did little to calm the nerves.
    At the centre of this web of countervailing interests and intrigue, united only in the anxiety to be rid of the menace of the SA, Hitler’s sharp instinct for the realities of power by now must have made it plain that he had to break with Röhm.
    In April it became known that Hindenburg was seriously ill. Hitler and Blomberg had already been told that the end was not far off. At the beginning of June, the Reich President retired to his estate at Neudeck in East Prussia. The most important prop of the conservatives was nowfar from the centre of the action. And the succession issue was imminent. Moreover, to remove the obstacle which the SA was providing to recommencing talks about rearmament with the western powers, Hitler had, at the end of May, ordered the SA to stop military exercises, and, in the last talks he had with Röhm, a few days later, had sent the stormtroopers on leave for a month.
    This defusing of the situation, together with Hindenburg’s absence, made the situation more difficult, rather than easier, for the conservatives. But Papen used a speech on 17 June at the University of Marburg to deliver a passionate warning against the dangers of a ‘second revolution’ and a heated broadside against the ‘selfishness, lack of character, insincerity, lack of chivalry, and arrogance’ featuring under the guise of the German revolution. He even criticized the creation of a ‘false personality cult’. ‘Great men are not made by propaganda, but grow out of their actions,’ he declared. ‘No nation can live in a continuous state of revolution,’ he went on. ‘Permanent dynamism permits no solid foundations to be laid. Germany cannot live in a continuous state of unrest, to which no one sees an end.’ The speech met with roars of applause within the hall. Outside, Goebbels moved swiftly to have it banned, though not before copies of the speech had been run off and circulated, both within Germany and to the foreign press. Word of it quickly went round. Never again in the Third Reich was such striking criticism at the heart of the regime to come from such a prominent figure. But if Papen and his friends were hoping to prompt action by the army, supported by the President, to ‘tame’ Hitler, they were disappointed. As it was, the Marburg speech served as the decisive trigger to the brutal action taken at the end of the month.
    Hitler’s own mood towards the ‘reactionaries’ was darkening visibly. Without specifying any names, his speech at Gera at the Party Rally of the Thuringian Gau on 17 June, the same day as Papen’s speech, gave a plain indication of his fury at the activities of the Papen circle. He castigated them as ‘dwarves’, alluding, it seems, to Papen himself as a ‘tiny worm’. Then came the threat: ‘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 confronts them 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.’ Such a moodprefigured the murder of some prominent members of the conservative ‘reaction’ on 30 June. In fact, in the immediate aftermath of the Papen speech, a strike against the ‘reactionaries’ seemed more likely than a showdown with the SA.
    At the imposition of the ban on publishing his speech, Papen went to see Hitler. He said Goebbels’s action left him no alternative but to resign. He intended to inform the Reich President of this unless the ban were lifted and Hitler declared himself ready to follow the policies outlined in the speech. Hitler reacted cleverly – in wholly different manner from his tirades in the presence of his party members. He acknowledged