Ernst Röhm

Ernst Julius Röhm (1887 – 1934) was a German army officer and commander of the SA. In 1934, he was executed during the political purge known as the Night of the Long Knives. Ernst Röhm was born in Munich, Germany, on November 28, 1887. He joined the German Army in 1906. At the outbreak of World War I, he served in the 13th Regiment of Bavaria. He was wounded three times, reaching the rank of major.

After the war, in 1919, Röhm joined the Freikorps and served under Franz Epp in Munich. He actively participated in right-wing politics and in 1921 he recruited Adolf Hitler to spy on the German Worker’s Party. Realizing that this political party had no connections with the communists, but was rather a rightist political party, Ernst Röhm, like Hitler, also joined the German Worker’s Party, which evolved into the National Socialist German Workers Party, or "Nazi" party.

In November 1923, Ernst Röhm took part in the Beer Hall Putsch. After its failure, he was put on trial and sentenced to to one year and three months in prison, but was released on a promise of good behavior. In 1924, when Hitler was still in prison, Röhm helped to create the Frontbann, which was a legal alternative to the then-outlawed SA. In 1925, due to differences in their political approach with other members of the Nazi Party, Röhm emigrated to Bolivia, where he served as a military advisor to the Bolivian army. But in 1931, Adolf Hitler recalled Röhm to Germany and appointed him chief of the Sturm Abteilung (SA). In just over a year he expanded it from 70,000 to 170,000 members. By 1934 the SA had grown to 3,000,000 men.

In 1933, Hitler’s minister of war, General Werner von Blomberg, and Walther von Reichenau, chief liaison officer between the German Army and the Nazi Party, became deeply concerned about the growing power of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) and Ernst Röhm, who had been given a seat on the National Defence Council and started to demand more say over military matters. On 2nd October 1933, Röhm sent a letter to Reichenau that said: "I regard the Reichswehr (German Army) now only as a training school for the German people. The conduct of war, and therefore of mobilization as well, in the future is the task of the SA."

Werner von Blomberg and Walther von Reichenau, along with Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, began to conspire against Röhm and the SA. Himmler asked Reinhard Heydrich to assemble a dossier on Röhm. Heydrich, after painstakingly thorough investigation, found evidence that suggested that Röhm had been paid 12 million marks by the French to orchestrate a military coup to overthrow and execute Hitler.

Hitler liked Röhm and initially refused to believe the dossier provided by Heydrich. Röhm had been one of his first supporters and, without his ability to obtain army funds in the early days of the movement, it is unlikely that the Nazis would have ever become established. But Röhm had different political view; he was left-oriented and despised not only the army Generals, but also the German businessmen, some of whom had financed Hitler’s political campaigns. Nevertheless, Adolf Hitler had his own reasons for wanting Röhm removed. Powerful supporters of Hitler had been complaining about Röhm for some time. Generals were afraid that the Sturm Abteilung (SA), a force of over 3 million men, would absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks and Röhm would become its overall leader.

Industrialists, who had provided the funds for the Nazi victory, were unhappy with Röhm’s socialistic views on the economy and his claims that the real revolution had still to take place. Many people in the party also disapproved of the fact that Röhm and many other leaders of the SA were homosexuals. Adolf Hitler was also aware that Röhm and the SA had the power to remove him as leader. Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler played on this fear by constantly feeding him with new information on Röhm’s proposed coup. Their masterstroke was to claim that Gregor Strasser, whom Hitler hated, was part of the planned conspiracy against him. With this news Hitler ordered all the SA leaders to attend a meeting in the Hanselbauer Hotel in Wiesse.

In the early hours of June 30, 1934, Hitler, accompanied by a Schutzstaffel (SS) unit, arrived at Wiesse, where he personally arrested Ernst Röhm. During the next 24 hours 200 other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiesse. Many were shot as soon as they were captured but Hitler decided to pardon Röhm because of his past services to the movement. Nevertheless, after much pressure from Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Röhm should be executed at once. At first Hitler insisted that Röhm should be allowed to commit suicide but, when he refused, Ernst Röhm was killed by two SS men.