In Germany, June 1934 Hitler order a mission called ‘Operation Hummingbird’ also know as The ‘Night of the Long Knives’

In October 1929, the American Stock Market crashed. Germany had borrowed huge amounts of money from U.S. banks to repay the Versailles reparations. Suddenly, all the US banks wanted their money back. German taxes skyrocketed, and many Germans were forced to sell their homes and personal belongings. The German people were in a state of anger and despair. As Laurence Rees says [1]“Unemployment started to grow and effects were deep and bitter” Hitler took this opportunity to grab as much political power as possible. He crossed and recrossed the country, speaking up to three times a day. He blamed the economic situation on the Communists and Jewish traitors. He spoke before thousands of Germans, eager to follow his words.

The Nazis quickly gained power in the German parliament, the Reichstag. Hitler's promised to restructure the army pleased the military, and his promise of a stable government pleased business leaders. All these promises would create new jobs, pleasing the German public. Smaller anti-Semitic groups joined the Nazis, and by the 1930s, SA membership had swelled to 500,000. On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenberg chose Hitler as the new Chancellor of Germany. Even as he promised to protect the German constitution and its laws, Hitler was planning to overthrow the German republic.

To make sure they did well in the March, 1933 elections, the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag, and blamed a Dutch fanatic. Hitler swore to arrest "everyone responsible." He had drawn up a list of four thousand enemies, all of whom were put in jail for the fire. They were Communists, and some journalists, doctors, and lawyers. Hitler then convinced Hindenburg to sign a law "for the protection of the people and the state." This degree cancelled many civil rights, and placed all power in the hands of Hitler and the Nazi party. Hitler and his party now had the legal power to kill political dissent, to control the media, and to search and seize without warning or cause. Under military force, the German Reichstag was forced to pass another act which gave Hitler sole rights to decide new laws and alter the constitution.”

All Hitler had to do now was to kill everybody else in power to have full power in Germany. In June 1934 Hitler order a mission called ‘Operation Hummingbird’ also know as The ‘Night of the Long Knives’. This was when the Nazi executed about eighty-five people for political reasons. Most of the people killed were members of the SA (Strom Division) a Nazi paramilitary organization and others who had angered Hitler in the recent past in Nazi Germany.[2]

For all the power the Enabling Act gave Hitler, he still felt threatened by some in the Nazi Party. He was also worried that the regular army had not given him an oath of allegiance. Hitler knew that the army commanders looked down on him as he was only a corporal in their eyes. The Night of the Long Knives not only removed the SA leaders but also got Hitler the army’s oath that he so needed.

By the summer of 1934, the SA’s numbers had swollen to 2 million men. They were under the control of Ernst Rohm, a loyal follower of Hitler since the early days of the Nazi Party. The SA had given the Nazi’s an iron fist with which to disrupt other political parties meetings before January 1993. The SA was also used to enforce law after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1993. They were the muscle of the Nazi Party but there is no evidence that Rohm was ever planning anything against Hitler. However Rohm had made enemies within the Nazi Party. Himmler, Goering and Goebbels were angered by the power he had gained and convinced Hitler that this was a threat to his position.

In preparation for the purge both Himmler and his deputy Reinhardt Heydrich, Chief of the SS, assembled a file of manufactured evidence to suggest that Rohm had been paid twelve million marks by France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on June 24 that Rohm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government.

At about 4:30 on the morning of June 30, 1934, Hitler flew into Munich. He drove to the Bavarian Interior Ministry, where they had assembled leaders of an SA rampage in the city. Enraged, Hitler tore the medals off the shirt of Obergruppenführer Schneidhuberthe Chief of the Munich Police, for failing to keep order in the city on the previous night. Hitler told him that he would be shot. As the storm troopers were brought off to prison, Hitler assembled a large group of SS and regular police, and departed for the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Rohm and his followers were staying at Bad Wiessee, Hitler placed Rohm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest.

Meanwhile the SS arrested a number of SA leaders as they left for a planned meeting with Rohm. During the next 24 hours 200 other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiesse. At least 85 people were shot as soon as they were captured but Hitler decided to pardon Rohm because of his past services to the movement. However, after much pressure from Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Rohm should die.

The fact that no plot by Rohm to overthrow the regime ever existed did not prevent Hitler from denouncing the leadership of the SA as being involved in "the worst treachery in world history".

The regime did not limit itself to a purge of the SA. Having earlier imprisoned Social Democrats and Communists, Hitler used the occasion to move against conservatives he considered unreliable. This included Vice-Chancellor Papen. In Berlin, on Goring's personal orders, an armed SS unit stormed the Vice-Chancellery. Gestapo officers attached to the SS unit shot Papen's secretary without bothering to arrest him. The Gestapo arrested and later executed Papen's close friend Edgar Jung. The Vice-Chancellor himself was also arrested at the Vice-Chancellery.[3]

Franz von Papen

Hitler, Goring, and Himmler used the Gestapo against old enemies as well. Both Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as chancellor, and his wife were murdered at their home. Others killed included Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the former Bavarian state commissioner who crushed the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.

As the purge claimed the lives of so many important Germans, it could hardly be kept secret. At first, its architects seemed split on how to handle the event. Göring told police stations to burn "all documents concerning the action of the past two days" meanwhile, Goebbels tried to prevent newspapers from publishing lists of the dead, but at the same time used a July 2 radio address to describe how Hitler had narrowly prevented Röhm and Schleicher from overthrowing the government and throwing the country into turmoil. Then, on July 13, 1934, Hitler justified the purge in a nationally-broadcast speech to the Reichstag

The Night of the Long Knives represented a triumph for Hitler, and a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as "the supreme judge of the German people". It appeared that no law would constrain Hitler in his use of power. The Night of the Long Knives also sent a clear message to the public that even the most important Germans were not immune to arrest or even execution should the Nazis see them as a threat.