text:
Victims of the Night of the Long Knives
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Ernst Röhm with Kurt Daluege and Heinrich Himmler, August 1933
Part of a series on
Nazism
Organizations[show]
National Socialist German
Workers' Party (NSDAP)
Sturmabteilung (SA)
Schutzstaffel (SS)
Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo)
Hitler Youth (HJ)
Deutsches Jungvolk (DJ)
League of German Girls (BDM)
National Socialist German Students' League (NSDStB)
National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise (NSRL)
National Socialist Flyers Corps (NSFK)
National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK)
National Socialist Women's League (NSF)
Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists (KGRNS)
History[show]
Early timeline
Hitler's rise to power
Machtergreifung
German re-armament
Nazi Germany
Religion in Nazi Germany
Night of the Long Knives
Nuremberg Rally
Anti-Comintern Pact
Kristallnacht
World War II
Tripartite Pact
The Holocaust
Nuremberg trials
Neo-Nazism
Ideology[show]
Fascism
Totalitarianism
Führerprinzip
Anti-democratic thought
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Gleichschaltung
Arthur de Gobineau
Hitler's political views
Mein Kampf
The Myth of the Twentieth Century
Militarism
National Socialist Program
New Order
Preussentum und Sozialismus
Propaganda
Religious aspects
Strasserism
Symbolism
Women in Nazi Germany
Racial ideology[show]
Aryan race
Blood and Soil
An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
Eugenics
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century
Greater Germanic Reich
Heim ins Reich
Lebensraum
Master race
The Passing of the Great Race
Racial policy of Nazi Germany
Völkisch equality
Final Solution[show]
Concentration camps
Deportations
Doctors' trial
Extermination camps
Genocide
Ghettos
Human experimentation
Labour camps
Pogroms
Racial segregation
People[show]
Adolf Hitler
Joseph Goebbels
Heinrich Himmler
Hermann Göring
Gregor Strasser
Otto Strasser
Nazism outside of Germany[show]
American Nazi Party
Aria Party (Persia)
Arrow Cross Party (Hungary)
Azure Party (Persia)
Bulgarian National Socialist Workers Party
German American Bund
German National Movement in Liechtenstein
Greek National Socialist Party
South African Gentile National Socialist Movement
Hungarian National Socialist Party
Nasjonal Samling (Norway)
National Movement of Switzerland
National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands
National Socialist Bloc (Sweden)
National Socialist League (UK)
National Socialist Movement of Chile
National Socialist Movement
(United States)
National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark
National Unity Party (Canada)
Nazism in Brazil
Nationalist Liberation Alliance (Argentina)
SUMKA
Ossewabrandwag (South Africa)
World Union of National Socialists
Lists[show]
Books by or about Adolf Hitler
Nazi ideologues
Nazi Party leaders and officials
Nazi Party members
Speeches given by Adolf Hitler
SS personnel
Related topics[show]
Antisemitism
Denazification
Enabling Act of 1933
Fascism
Glossary of Nazi Germany
The Holocaust
Neo-Nazism
Völkisch movement
Zweites Buch
Category
Nazi Germany portal
v
t
e
The Night of the Long Knives (German: Nacht der langen Messer) was a purge in which the Nazi regime murdered at least 85 people for political reasons. This took place in Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934. Most of those killed were members of the Storm Division (SA) (German: Sturmabteilung), a Nazi paramilitary organization.
Contents
[hide]
1 Debate over number of victims
1.1 Official list of those killed
1.2 Estimates of people killed in addition to those on the official list
2 Partial list of victims
3 References
4 External links
Debate over number of victims[edit]
The precise number of victims of the Night of the Long Knives is disputed and will probably never be known with certainty. During the Purge itself official radio and newspaper reports only gave the names of 10 people killed (the six SA-leaders executed in Stadelheim Prison on June 30, Schleicher and his wife, Karl Ernst—who was wrongly reported to have been shot in Stadelheim, whereas in fact he was shot in the barracks of Hitler's Personal Guard Unit in Berlin Lichterfelde—and Ernst Röhm).
While the German newspapers avoided disclosing the names of further victims of the purge, in the weeks and months to follow, the international press would set out to detail a more comprehensive account of how many people had been killed between June 30 to July 2. They managed to present about 100 names of people allegedly killed, although a number of those eventually turned out to have survived, such as the former SA chief of Berlin Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf (who was actually one of the organizers of the purge - e.g. he warned Werner von Alvensleben, Schleicher's go-between to Hitler—but not Schleicher—to spend the fateful weekend at his hunting lodge; and was himself only killed after participating in the fateful 20th of July 1944 coup attempt.) and Adolf Morsbach, the head of the cosmopolitan-minded Akademischer Austauschdienst (Academic Exchange Programme), who had instead been sent to a Nazi concentration camp.
Official list of those killed[edit]
Immediately after the events of the purge the Gestapo compiled an official list of those killed at the order of Hitler himself who wished to gain an overall view on the number and identity of those killed in order to prepare the Reichstag speech in which he intended to present his interpretation of the occurrences of June 30 to July 2 to the German public and the world in general, and which he finally delivered on July 13. This "Gestapo List" comprised a total of 77 names.
In his Reichstag speech Hitler sub-divided those into 61 persons who had been shot during "the action"; allegedly 13 had died resisting arrest while three committed suicide. In his speech Hitler revealed the names of 11 of those 77 (Ferdinand von Bredow, Georg von Detten, Karl Ernst, Hans Hayn, Edmund Heines, Peter von Heydebreck, Ernst Röhm, Kurt von Schleicher, Gregor Strasser, and Julius Uhl).
However, the list of 77 was far from being complete: Hitler admitted that some excesses had taken place and stated that he had handed over the cases of several people who had been killed as part of unauthorized actions by subordinate organs to the authorities, who were supposed to implement a regular prosecution of the perpetrators. Among those cases who were at first subject to regular investigation and prosecution by the locally responsible Attorney Offices were those of the city clerk Kuno Kamphausen who was murdered at the order of an SS officer who bore a grudge against him for refusing to give a construction permission to his brother and the cases of four Jews and two Communists who were killed without permission from Berlin in the course of arbitrary actions by lower SS echelons in the province of Silesia. In September 1934 Heinrich Himmler—eager to shield his SS men from legal prosecution—managed to convince Hitler to change his mind on the latter six people, whose names as a consequence, were subsequently added to the official list whose killing was to be considered rightful and which now encompassed 83 names.
The list of 77 or 83 names respectively was kept in several copies—which were stored under lock and key—in the Ministry of Justice and the Gestapo Headquarters. After a law entitled "Gesetz über Maßnahmen der Staatsnotwehr" ("Law pertaining to the Measures of Self-Defense of the State") had been passed by the Reich Cabinet on July 3, which declared: "Die zur Niederschlagung hoch- und landesverräterischer Angriffe am 30. Juni, 1. und 2. Juli 1934 vollzogenen Maßnahmen sind als Staatsnotwehr rechtens" ("The measures taken to clamp down on the treasonous attacks of June 30th, July 1st and 2nd are rightful, due to having been acts of self-defense of the State.")[1] it was decided that the killing of everybody on that list was to be considered lawful and that therefore the police and Attorney Offices were prohibited from investigating and prosecuting anyone for those killings. The lists thus were used by the Ministry and the Gestapo as a referential tool which could be consulted to decide, whether requests of relatives and friends of those killed to be given information on the circumstances of death of their beloved ones, or requests to prosecute those responsible for their killing would be answered in the affirmative (people killed and not mentioned on the Gestapo list) or in the negative (people whose names were to be found on the list). The same applied to requests of other state authorities (especially police departments and Attorney Offices) who inquired at the Ministry of Justice or the Gestapo headquarters whether they should open and or continue investigation of a specific killing that had taken place on the three days from June 30 to July 2.
The official list of those killed was first published in 1964 by Heinrich Bennecke (1902-1972) in the appendix of his book Die Reichswehr und der "Röhm-Putsch".
Estimates of people killed in addition to those on the official list[edit]
Later research by historians has shown that in addition to those listed by the Gestapo a number of others also had been killed. Heinrich Bennecke complemented the names of the city clerk Kuno Kamphausen from Waldenburg and the music critic Willi Schmid to his reprint of the official Gestapo list, whereupon he concluded that at least 85 people were killed during the purge. Later, Hans Günther Richardi, in his study on the Dachau concentration camp, added the names of four inmates of Dachau (lawyer Julius Adler (1882–1934), worker Erich Gans (1908-1934), Walter Häbich and worker Adam Hereth (1897-1934)), claiming they were murdered by the SS during the purge. In 1993 Otto Gritschneder published a book on the post–World War II prosecution of those involved in the killings which lists 90 names of people killed (adding the doctor and Röhm associate Karl Günther Heimsoth to the list).[2]
Fritz Gerlich (1929)
Kurt von Schleicher in uniform, 1932
Herbert von Bose in early 1934
Willi Schmid in 1930
Gregor Strasser in 1928
Richard J. Evans states that at least 85 people were killed and more than 1,000 were arrested.[3] Ian Kershaw also cites the number of deaths at 85. Kershaw notes that "some estimates...put the total number killed at between 150 and 200."[4] William L. Shirer writes in his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that "The White Book of the Purge, published by émigrés in Paris claims 401 deaths, but lists only 116 of them. At the 1957 trial in Munich the figure 'more than 1,000' was used."[5] Both of those figures are much higher than the ones most historians of the period rely on, and that Shirer himself was not necessarily citing the figures as accurate, but was simply relaying them in his book. The most recent study on the matter lists by name 89 people who were definitely killed, as well as two other cases of whom it is unclear whether they were murdered during the events or slightly earlier or later.[6]
Partial list of victims[edit]
Otto Ballerstedt, former Chief of the "Bayernbund", a secessionist political group in Bavaria, responsible for putting Hitler in prison for a month in 1922 after he had physically attacked Ballerstedt during a rally
Fritz Beck, director of the Munich Students' Welfare Fund[7]
Herbert von Bose, associate of Franz von Papen
Ferdinand von Bredow, close associate of Kurt von Schleicher
Georg von Detten, member of the Reichstag, department chief of the highest SA-leadership
Karl Ernst, member of the Reichstag, leader of the SA-lower group East
Hans Joachim von Falkenhausen, chief of staff of Georg von Detten
Fritz Gerlich, newspaper journalist, editor of Munich's Catholic weekly (Der Gerade Weg) and publisher, Catholic Action[7]
Alexander Glaser, lawyer
Hans Hayn, member of the Reichstag, SA-group leader of Sachsen
Karl-Günther Heimsoth, physician, publicist, politician
Edmund Heines, SA-senior group leader in Breslau
Oskar Heines, younger brother of Edmund Heines
Peter von Heydebreck, member of the Reichstag, SA-group leader
Anton von Hohberg und Buchwald, SS Obergruppenführer, the only SS victim, killed on the orders of Obergruppenführer von dem Bach Zelewski
Edgar Julius Jung, lawyer, author of the "Marburg speech" of Franz von Papen, Catholic Action worker
Gustav Ritter von Kahr, former prime minister of Bavaria, Member of Triumvirate who ruled Bavaria during the Beer Hall Putsch
Dr. Kuno Kamphausen, architect, member of the Zentrum political party
Eugen von Kessel, former officer and police captain
Erich Klausener, leader of the police department in the Prussian ministry of internal affairs, president of Berlin's Catholic Action group.
Hans-Karl Koch, member of the Reichstag, SA-general in the group of Westmark
Fritz von Krausser, member of the Reichstag, chief the leading office of the OSAF
Adalbert Probst, the national director of the Catholic Youth Sports Association (German:Deutsche Jugendkraft-Sportverbands)
Hans Ramshorn, member of the Reichstag, SA-general in Oberschlesien and chief of police of Gleiwitz
Ernst Röhm, SA-chief of staff
Paul Röhrbein, SA-captain, leader of the first SA of Berlin
Erich Schiewek, SA-man from Breslau, accompanied Heines to Bad Wiessee as substitute adjutant
Kurt von Schleicher, former Chancellor of Germany
Elisabeth von Schleicher, wife of Kurt von Schleicher
Willi Schmid, the music critic of the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, a Munich newspaper (killed in a case of mistaken identity)
August Schneidhuber, member of the Reichstag, chief of police of Munich
Johann Konrad Schragmüller, member of the Reichstag, chief of police of Magdeburg
Emil Sembach, member of the Reichstag, ex-SS-general
Father Bernhard Stempfle, defrocked priest, former co-prisoner in Landsberg, Bavaria, and by few sources[who?] considered to have been one of the editors of Mein Kampf
Gregor Strasser, former high-ranking Nazi party member, father of Hitler's godchildren
Vogel, chauffeur of Ernst Röhm
Gerd Voß, lawyer
Jeanette Zweig, a Jewish woman from Hirschberg
Ernestine Zoref, Housewife and mistress to SA supporter Baron Paul Edmund von Hahn
The proprietor and head-waiter of the Bratwurst-Gloeckle in Munich, Röhm's favourite tavern, where Goebbels had met secretly with Röhm prior to the purge. Although the two men were not involved politically, it was deemed that they 'knew too much'.[8][9]
The list of victims was retrieved from the German Wikipedia unless otherwise stated.
References[edit]
Notes
Jump up ^ wikisource
Jump up ^ de:Otto Gritschneder: Der Führer hat sie zum Tode verurteilt, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37651-7.
Jump up ^ Evans, Richard (2005). The Third Reich in Power. Penguin Group. p. 39. At least eighty-five people are known to have been summarily killed without any formal legal proceedings being taken against them. Göring alone had over a thousand people arrested.
Jump up ^ Kershaw, Ian (1999). Hitler: 1889–1936 Hubris. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 517.
Jump up ^ Shirer, William J. (1960). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Simon and Schuster. pp. 221–222.
Jump up ^ Rainer Orth: Der SD-Mann Johannes Schmidt. Der Mörder des Reichskanzlers Kurt von Schleicher?, Marburg 2011, ps. 102–112. (ISBN 978-3828828728)
^ Jump up to: a b United Press (1934-07-05). "Hitler Issues Anti-Jewish Decree". The Pittsburgh Press. p. 1. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
Jump up ^ Bullock, Alan (1962), Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, London: Pelican, p. 297
Jump up ^ Manvell, Roger; Fraenkel, Heinrich (2010), Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, p. 134
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Bibliography
Evans, Richard (2005)The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin Group
Kershaw, Ian (1999) Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
Shirer, William L. (1960) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Victims of the Night of the Long Knives.
Victims of the Night of the Long Knives
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victims_of_the_Night_of_the_Long_Knives&oldid=812763111"
Categories:
Adolf Hitler
Deaths by firearm in Germany
LGBT history in Germany
Sturmabteilung
Nazi SS
Political and cultural purges
Victims of the Night of the Long Knives
Hidden categories:
Articles containing German-language text
All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases
Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2011
Articles needing additional references from July 2012
All articles needing additional references
Navigation menu
Personal tools
Not logged in
Talk
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Namespaces
Article
Talk
Variants
Views
Read
Edit
View history
More
Search
Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
In other projects
Wikimedia Commons
Languages
Deutsch
Français
Italiano
Magyar
Edit links
This page was last edited on 29 November 2017, at 18:37.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Cookie statement
Mobile view
Enable previews

key: html

type: local

value: div

attrs: id class

values: mw-page-base noprint

values: mw-head-base noprint

value: a

attrs: id class lang

values: firstHeading firstHeading en

values: siteSub noprint

values: jump-to-nav mw-jump

value: img

attrs: alt src width height class srcset data-file-width data-file-height

attrs: href class

attrs: href class title

attrs: href title

attrs: class style

value: td

value: tr

value: th

values: padding:0.2em 0.4em 0.2em;padding-top:0;font-size:145%;line-height:1.2em;padding-bottom:0; font-size:200%; font-weight:medium;

attrs: alt src width height srcset data-file-width data-file-height

values: padding:0.2em 0 0.4em;padding:0.8em 0 1.4em;

values: National Socialist German Students' League

values: The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

values:
/wiki/Ghettos_in_Nazi-occupied_Europe
mw-redirect
Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe

values: Forced labour under German rule during World War II

values:
/wiki/File:Otto_Strasser.jpg
image
Otto Strasser

values: font-size: 105%; padding: 0.2em 0px 0.4em; text-align: center; display: none; padding-left:1em; text-align:left;

values: Bulgarian National Socialist Workers Party

values: German National Movement in Liechtenstein

values: National Socialist Movement (United States)

values: National Socialist Workers' Party of Denmark

values: List of Nazi Party leaders and officials

attrs: alt src title width height srcset data-file-width data-file-height

values: Flag of the German Reich (1935–1945).svg

values:
/wiki/Portal:Nazi_Germany
mw-redirect
Portal:Nazi Germany

values: padding:0.3em 0.4em 0.3em;font-weight:bold;border-top: 1px solid #aaa; border-bottom: 1px solid #aaa;

values: float:right;clear:right;width:22.0em;margin:0 0 1.0em 1.0em;background:#f9f9f9;border:1px solid #aaa;padding:0.2em;border-spacing:0.4em 0;text-align:center;line-height:1.4em;font-size:88%

values: Edit section: Debate over number of victims

values:
/wiki/Wolf-Heinrich_Graf_von_Helldorf
mw-redirect
Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf

values:
/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp
mw-redirect
Nazi concentration camp

values: Edit section: Official list of those killed

values: Edit section: Estimates of people killed in addition to those on the official list

values: Hans Joachim von Falkenhausen (page does not exist)

values: Alexander Glaser (lawyer) (page does not exist)

values:
/wiki/Deutsche_Zentrumspartei
mw-redirect
Deutsche Zentrumspartei

values: Fritz von Krausser (page does not exist)

values: August Schneidhuber (page does not exist)

values: Johann Konrad Schragmüller (page does not exist)

values:
/wiki/Landsberg,_Bavaria
mw-redirect
Landsberg, Bavaria

values: The material near this tag possibly uses too-vague attribution or weasel words. (December 2011)

values: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch

values: Paul Edmund von Hahn (page does not exist)

values: International Standard Book Number (identifier)

values:
reflist mw-references-wrap
list-style-type: decimal;

values: Help:Introduction to referencing with Wiki Markup/1

values: plainlinks metadata ambox ambox-content ambox-Refimprove

values: commons:Category:Victims of the Night of the Long Knives

values: Category:Articles containing German-language text

values: Category:All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases

values: Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2011

values: Category:Articles needing additional references from July 2012

values: Category:All articles needing additional references

values: Discussion about edits from this IP address [ctrl-alt-n]

values: A list of edits made from this IP address [ctrl-alt-y]

values: You are encouraged to create an account and log in; however, it is not mandatory

values: You're encouraged to log in; however, it's not mandatory. [ctrl-alt-o]

values: Discussion about the content page [ctrl-alt-t]

values: p-namespaces navigation vectorTabs p-namespaces-label

values:
p-variants
navigation
vectorMenu emptyPortlet
p-variants-label

values: Past revisions of this page [ctrl-alt-h]

values: p-views navigation vectorTabs p-views-label

values:
p-cactions
navigation
vectorMenu emptyPortlet
p-cactions-label

values:
mw-wiki-logo
/wiki/Main_Page
Visit the main page

values:
/wiki/Main_Page
Visit the main page [ctrl-alt-z]
z

values: Featured content – the best of Wikipedia

values: Find background information on current events

values:
/wiki/Special:Random
Load a random article [ctrl-alt-x]
x

values: portal navigation p-navigation p-navigation-label

values: Guidance on how to use and edit Wikipedia

values: About the project, what you can do, where to find things

values: A list of recent changes in the wiki [ctrl-alt-r]

values: portal navigation p-interaction p-interaction-label

values: List of all English Wikipedia pages containing links to this page [ctrl-alt-j]

values: Recent changes in pages linked from this page [ctrl-alt-k]

values:
/wiki/Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard
Upload files [ctrl-alt-u]
u

values: A list of all special pages [ctrl-alt-q]

values: Permanent link to this revision of the page

values: Link to connected data repository item [ctrl-alt-g]

values: Printable version of this page [ctrl-alt-p]

values: portal navigation p-wikibase-otherprojects p-wikibase-otherprojects-label

values:
uls-settings-trigger
Language settings
0
button
true

values: Liste der im Zuge des sogenannten Röhm-Putsches getöteten Personen – German

values: Liste des victimes de la nuit des Longs Couteaux – French

values: Vittime della notte dei lunghi coltelli – Italian

values: A hosszú kések éjszakáján megölt személyek listája – Hungarian

values:
suggestions
display: none; font-size: 13px;

values: mediawiki ltr sitedir-ltr mw-hide-empty-elt ns-0 ns-subject page-Victims_of_the_Night_of_the_Long_Knives rootpage-Victims_of_the_Night_of_the_Long_Knives skin-vector action-view