Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA or Storm Troop) had served him well on the road to power, but once he got into power, they had more or less fulfilled their purpose. As the Nazi leaders got rich on the spoils of victory, the ordinary SA man was just as poor as he had ever been. They felt they were owed, and they started to cause trouble.

Ernst Röhm, the leader of the SA, had lofty ambitions for his fighting force. He was a dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary, and the pace of change that Hitler was bringing about was not fast enough for him. He started talking about a "second revolution", and began defying Hitler's orders. Most of all, he wanted the SA to replace the German army, the Reichswehr. He of course would command the new "People's Army".

Röhm was making a lot of powerful enemies, chief among them Hermann Göring, the creator of the Gestapo, and Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the elite SS. It was an intolerable situation for Hitler, and he was under pressure to act from all sides. In the end he was left with a choice between his SA and the Reichswehr. He knew he needed to do something, but he put off the decision as long as he could.

At the end of June 1934 things came to a violent head in the Night of the Long Knives. Röhm and many of his SA leaders were murdered, along with a long list of other enemies that Hitler wanted to be rid of. From then on, everyone knew that loyalty to the regime and the Führer would be rewarded, but disloyalty meant death, or perhaps worse.

FIND OUT HOW Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler brutally disposed of the enemies of the Third Reich and betrayed Ernst Rohm and his Storm Troopers.

THE MAKING HITLER and BREAKING HITLER series describe in simple terms, though without sacrificing the details, the important events in the history of the Third Reich. The history of Nazi Germany is complex, and often hard for the casual reader to grasp. So much was happening at the time, and there was so much political intrigue, that the simple story is easily lost. These books bring back the story, in plain language that makes reading them a pleasure.

• We started tracking this book on June 2, 2020.
• The current price of this book is £2.55 last checked one year ago.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• HistoryEurope

• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 49 Pages
• File Size: 1,847 KB