Hitler

blacker by the minute. The telephone rang. The ‘rebels’, it was reported, were ready to strike in Berlin. There was, in fact, no putsch attempt at all. But groups of SA men in different parts of Germany, aware of the stories circulating of an impending strike against the SA, or the deposition of Röhm, were going on the rampage. Sepp Dietrich was ordered to leave for Munich immediately. Soon after midnight, he phoned Hitler from Munich and was given further orders to pick up two companies of the Leibstandarte and be in Bad Wiessee by eleven in the morning. Around 2 a.m. Hitler left to fly to Munich, accompanied by his adjutants Brückner, Schaub, and Schreck, along with Goebbels, Lutze, and Press Chief Dietrich. The first glimmers of dawn were breaking through as he arrived. He was met by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner and two Reichswehr officers, who told him that the Munich SA, shouting abuse at the Führer, had attempted an armed demonstration in the city. Though a serious disturbance, it was, in fact, merely the biggest of the protest actions of despairing stormtroopers, when as many as 3,000 armed SA men had rampaged through Munich in the early hours, denouncing the ‘treachery’ against the SA, shouting: ‘The Führer is against us, the Reichswehr is against us; SA out on the streets.’ However, Hitler had not heard of the Munich disturbances before he arrived there in the early hours of the morning. Now, in blind rage at what he interpreted as the betrayal by Röhm – ‘the blackest day of my life’, he was heard to say – he decided not to wait till the following morning, but to act immediately.
    He and his entourage raced to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. The local SA leaders Obergruppenführer Schneidhuber and Gruppenführer Schmid were peremptorily summoned. Hitler’s fury was still rising as he awaited them. By now he had worked himself into a near-hysterical state of mind, reminiscent of the night of the Reichstag fire. Accepting no explanations, he ripped their rank badges from their shoulders, shouting ‘You are under arrest and will be shot.’ Bewildered and frightened, they were taken off to Stadelheim prison.
    Hitler, without waiting for Dietrich’s SS men to arrive, now demanded to be taken immediately to Bad Wiessee. It was just after 6.30 a.m. asthe three cars pulled up outside the Hotel Hanselbauer in the resort on the Tegernsee, where Röhm and other SA leaders were still sleeping off an evening’s drinking. Hitler, followed by members of his entourage and a number of policemen, stormed up to Röhm’s room and, pistol in hand, denounced him as a traitor (which the astonished Chief of Staff vehemently denied) and declared him under arrest. Edmund Heines, the Breslau SA leader, was found in a nearby room in bed with a young man – a scene that Goebbels’s propaganda later made much of to heap moral opprobrium on the SA. Other arrests of Röhm’s staff followed.
    Hitler and his entourage then travelled back to the Brown House. At midday he spoke to party and SA leaders gathered in the ‘Senators’ Hall’. The atmosphere was murderous. Hitler was beside himself, in a frenzy of rage, spittle dribbling from his mouth as he began to speak. He spoke of the ‘worst treachery in world history’. Röhm, he claimed, had received 12 million Marks in bribes from France to have him arrested and killed, to deliver Germany to its enemies. The SA chief and his co-conspirators, Hitler railed, would be punished as examples. He would have them all shot. One after the other, the Nazi leaders demanded the extermination of the SA ‘traitors’. Heß pleaded that the task of shooting Röhm fall to him.
    Back in his own room, Hitler gave the order for the immediate shooting of six of the SA men held in Stadelheim, marking crosses against their names in a list provided by the prison administration. They were promptly taken out and shot by Dietrich’s men. Not even a peremptory trial was held. The men were simply told before being shot: ‘You have been condemned to death by the Führer! Heil Hitler!’
    Röhm’s name was not among the initial six marked by Hitler for instant execution. One witness later claimed to have overheard Hitler saying that Röhm had been spared because of his many earlier services to the Movement. A similar remark was noted by Alfred Rosenberg in his diary. ‘Hitler did not want to have Röhm shot,’ he wrote. ‘He stood at one time at my side before the People’s