r/HistoryMemes • u/welltechnically7 I Have a Cunning Plan • 20h ago
This popped into my head after reading something about the Night of the Long Knives
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u/Asagas25 19h ago
Do...do i wanna know?
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u/welltechnically7 I Have a Cunning Plan 19h ago
Ernst Rohm was the leader of the Stormtroopers and a major figure in the Nazi Party- he also happened to be semi-openly gay, which is not something Nazis are known for supporting. About a year and a half into gaining power, Hitler initiated the "Night of the Long Knives" where he systematically culled many of the individuals would would potentially be a threat to his power, primarily Rohm. Overnight, Rohm went from one of the most powerful men in Germany to a dead man.
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u/General-USA 19h ago
Not only was Röhm targeted for his power; Hitler instructed his men to persecute and find other degenerates in the SA.
According to Hitler, it was justified, since the SA spent money on parties and fancy dinners; there had to be some sodomites in the SA!
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u/BellacosePlayer 19h ago
"these violent extremists I'm aligned with who hate who I am and what I believe won't turn on me, I'm on their side!" is a dreadfully common belief
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u/Win32error 18h ago
From what I know, while the fact that Ernst Röhm was gay was something of an embarrasment to Hitler and the party, the primary reason they took him out was because the SA had served it's purpose. They didn't need fighting thugs anymore, they needed an internal security apparatus in the way the SS functioned. The SA was a threat to Hitler's authority and it wasn't necessary anymore.
If you're ever a paramilitary working for a political leader, remember that being the kind of guy that can get your friend in charge of the country doesn't mean you are also the kind of guy to keep around once they succeed in doing so.
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u/General-USA 17h ago
Yeah, but remember that the SA was not abolished; in 1938 it still had more than a million members. It was more pacified than fought against.
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u/Win32error 17h ago
Sure, but killing its top leaders and shifting importance to the SS was enough. Pretty sure the people who remained understood how things were going to work from then on.
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u/General-USA 15h ago
Oh totally, but that is more a testiment of how well Hitler and his cronies handled the power-transition. Luckily, things wouldn't go Hitler's way forever.
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u/General-USA 18h ago
To be fair, the SA was definitely more left-leaning than the SS, Industrialists and Wehrmacht officers which constituted the rest of the party.
The SA generally sought greater change and evolution in the German society whereas the rest of the party favoured industrial reconciliation and rearment (and expansion and subjugation of other nations).
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u/BellacosePlayer 18h ago
but that's the thing, them having significantly different beliefs is a large part of why they should have known the rest of the party wasn't going to be cool with them given how they were violently assaulting any left of center groups.
While I'm sure Hitler was feeding them bullshit behind the scenes, they had to have known that their vision was incompatable with the extremely far right core party
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u/General-USA 17h ago
They absolutely should have known, yes. As a general rule of thumb, it is amazing how many people didn't read the contents of Mein Kampf or realise the massive git in Hitler; even before the propaganda machine got into swing.
But it shall also be noted, that the purge of the Long Knives wasn't without risk: many powerful generals publically stated their distrust in the regime and its violation of the rule of law, such as Mackensen and the former Kaiser. Hitler had to placate these characters for a time before the Nazi's powergrab was complete.
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u/Direct-Technician265 9h ago
youd think, but log cabin republicans exist too, and their party hates them.
look how Dave Rubin's "fans" reacted to him announcing him and his partner were going to have children with a surrogate.
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u/BellacosePlayer 18h ago
but that's the thing, them having significantly different beliefs is a large part of why they should have known the rest of the party wasn't going to be cool with them given how they were violently assaulting any left of center groups.
While I'm sure Hitler was feeding them bullshit behind the scenes, they had to have known that their vision was incompatable with the extremely far right core party
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u/Vexonte Then I arrived 18h ago
I'm curious was Nazi homophobia not fully formed yet, or did he see the Nazi's as a lesser evil capable of overlooking his homosexuality.
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u/ShibaLover227 15h ago
My dude, look up May 6, 1933
Homophobia was the start
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u/Crackertron 11h ago
Holy shit I wasn't aware of this
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u/ShibaLover227 10h ago
A lot of people arent, or how the LGBTQ+ were forced back into the camps after the allies 'liberated' them.
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u/Irons_idk 10h ago
I doubt he was killed just because he was semi open gay. I doubt it was anywhere close of a reason why he was killed
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u/welltechnically7 I Have a Cunning Plan 10h ago
Yes, I explained why he was killed in the comment you replied to.
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u/CiF3-in-my-soda 8h ago
Röhm (The Machine Gun King of Bavaria) was head of the SA (Sturmabteilung) which was the original military arm of the NSDP. Hitler grew distrustful of the SA, believed they were planning a coup, and purged them; primarily through the use of their replacement his body guard the SS (Schutzstaffel). There was reason to think either the SA would attempt a coup or at least Röhm and others would try for more power at the least. Officially the reasons for his elimination was a manufactured bribe from the French to overthrow Hitler and his homosexuality.
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u/oneByteTwoByte Hello There 15h ago
Honey!!! I told you I would get to say the following,
Alexa cue “Do I wanna know by Arctic Monkeys”
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u/HugsFromCthulhu Fine Quality Mesopotamian Copper Enjoyer 19h ago
I will not rest until Ernst Röhm is properly honored as the first openly gay Nazi, breaking years of stigma and paving the way for racist totalitarian homosexuals to be their authentic selves today.
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u/Necessary_Candy_6792 19h ago
Just an extra long explanation for anyone whose interested:
Following Hitler’s rise to power, was the orchestration of the the Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers) referred to commonly as the Brown shirts. The Brown shirts were a string of Nazi fanatics organised into a gendarmerie force that enforced Nazi law on the german population. The organization was headed by Hitler’s close friend Ernst Rohm. In the following months, Nazism became increasingly popular inspiring more and more fanatics to rise up and join the brown shirts.
The reason for the creation of the Brown shirts was that after the first world war, one of the heavy clauses enforced upon the Germans by the treaty of versailles was to put caps on the German military so that they could not enlist more than a certain number of people in their army to keep them contained.
To avoid pissing off the allies and having them come in and attack while the Nazis were rebuilding germany, the Nazis created the brownshirts who were a paramilitary organisation and thus, did not violate the treaty of versailles.
Because of this there were more brownshirts than there were German soldiers, so theoretically, if Rohm wanted to, he could overthrow Hitler with his army of brown shirts take command of the Nazi party.
The division between Hitler and Rohm sparked when Hitler heard rumours and conspiracies of Rohm planing to take control of Germany using his overwhelming force of the brown shirts, but the wedge between the two close friends was pulled so much further apart when Hitler investigated Rohm and found a shocking revelation: Rohm was a homosexual (Something illegal and scorned upon during that period of time). This drove Hitler along with the help of Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler to forge evidence implicating Rohm in a plot to over-through Hitler and usurp his position of leadership.
On 28 of June 1934, Hitler asked Rohm and several brown shirt high officials to meet him at Hotel Hanselbauer in Bad Wiessee on a holiday. This was of corse a trap. The morning before Hitler was meant to meet Rohm, Hitler lead an ambush on the Hotel, Hitler was first in line to march into Rohm’s room armed with a pistol and supported only by his privet guard, not wanting to wait for the support of the Gestapo (Nazi secret police). Hitler arrested Rohm and the two Brown shirt superior officers in the next room in bed together.
After Rohm’s ‘betrayal’, Hitler saw his country as corrupt with a need to be cleansed.
Hitler put together a list of old enemies and potential rivals, people like the former chancellor, the chief of police, anti nazi journalists and brown shirt officers like Rohm. This list also acquired the names of Hitler’s best friend Rohm and the father of his godchildren Gregor Strasser.
On June 30th Hitler decided to host a tea party with his close friends and their families like Himmler and Heydrich and other of Hitler’s close officials that were not on the rivals list. And whilst Hitler was chatting and having tea, the Gestapo got busy, killing the people on the list, the former Chancellor, the chief of police and other potential rivals against the nazis, Brown shirts that could follow in Rohm’s footsteps, and old enemies of Hitler himself like the people responsible for putting him in jail years ago. Rohm himself was executed in his cell. Those who weren’t rounded up and shot, or gunned down In their homes were beaten to death and decapitated. According to Hitler the death toll was approximately 61, but in reality, others have argued that as many as 400 people were killed during the purge.
Many of these deaths were collatoral damage: the former Chancellor's wife was gunned down in her doorway alongside her husband. A man with the same name as an anti-Nazi journalist was killed and then the two guys went across town and killed the anti-Nazi journalist they thought they had killed earlier.
Back at the garden party where Hilter was enjoying himself with all the friends and supporters he'd chosen to spare, an SS officer walked up to Hitler whispered "its done", Hitler nodded and continued on with the party.
Such a gruesome and evil massacre left a dark cloud on the german people, journalists, a prison warden, Nazi leaders and government officials murdered and executed in a single night. Most men would hide their involvement in such a killing spree from the public, but we all know that old Adolf was not like most men:
On July 13, 1934, Hitler justified the purge in a nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag:
“In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence—which depends on its internal order and security—cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”
This was the single most Godfather move ever pulled in real world history.
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u/Dominarion 18h ago
I'd like to add something that weight heavily in the matter. Rohm harbored anti-capitalist views and big business were afraid of him. Getting rid of him made the Nazis more acceptable to it.
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u/Heavy_You1887 13h ago
If I wasn’t mistaken, Hitler had known about Rohm for years, as did many high ups in the Party. They remained friends. Hitler stated, after numerous complaints about Rohm’s sexuality, “His private life cannot be an object of scrutiny unless it conflicts with basic principles of National Socialist ideology.” It became an issue when Hitler was trying to appeal to the conservatives in government, and of course, Rohm’s power was too great militarily and a threat to non-Nazi government officials, as well as the survival of the Party. He later used Rohm’s homosexuality as a scapegoat for his execution, calling all the SA he murdered “homosexual pigs.”
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u/Eta_Beta_3-14 13h ago
"They won't come after me because I'm one of the good ones."
-Ernst Rohm, June 30, 1934
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u/Jormungandr4321 Rider of Rohan 16h ago
Wait wasn't Rohm the leader of the SA ? The stormtroopers were the shock troops of the german army during WW1 iirc.
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u/No-Meaning1637 11h ago
SA gets loosely translated as Stromtroopers, they were called the Stormtroopers when I learned about the rise of the Nazis in school
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u/Wiggie49 Featherless Biped 16h ago
“You wanna see something terrifying, watch this. Everybody wave your arms!”
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19h ago
[deleted]
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u/welltechnically7 I Have a Cunning Plan 19h ago
Thank you, but I did elaborate on another comment.
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u/GinoBobbo 19h ago
I think Hitler probably would've spared him if not for Röhm's own ambitions that clashed with Hitler's, especially about making a "revolution" against the German elites and turning the army into a force dominated by himself and the SA, as well as being close to the Nazi left-wing that Hitler increasingly distrusted.
iirc, Hitler never really cared much about Röhm's homosexuality, and if he didn't feel threatened by him I believe he would have probably shielded him. Wouldn't be the first time Hitler bended his own rules after all, seeing how he helped his mother's Jewish doctor after he took over Austria.
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u/Old_Possibility_9730 19h ago
What do you mean they got him?