Hitler's purges

Randy Black asked about a 1934 purge in Nazi Germany. Jim Tent explains: "It was almost assuredly referring to Hitler’s purge of his S.A. Storm Troopers, i.e. the Brownshirts who helped put him in power during the street fighting in the last years of the Weimar Republic. They were led by Ernst Roehm, Hitler’s old Army supporter and one of the few persons who referred to Hitler with the familiar “Du” form of address. He and the S.A. wanted to form a new kind of German Army, a kind of people’s militia with the “old comrades” forming the core of the new army. However, the traditionalist officers in the existing Reichswehr were appalled. They told Hitler that if Roehm got his way, then Germany would have a second-class army led by ruffians. If he wanted a first-class army, then he would have to back them, the traditional officer corps with its origins going back to Prussian and its ruling Junker class. Hitler accepted their advice and in the blood purge of June 30, 1934, he, Goering, Himmler, etc. rounded up hundreds, perhaps thousands of S.A. men, including Roehm, and had them shot. Hitler also used the occasion to settle some old scores with other political enemies such as retired General Schleicher, who was murdered along with his wife in their home by armed Nazis on that same night. However, this hardly amounted to a purge of the German officer corps. A few months later, in August 1934, President Hindenburg died, and Hitler took over his duties. He also required all German soldiers to take an oath of personal loyalty to him (not to Germany or to its now moribund constitution). In 1938, Hitler found ways to get rid of two of his top generals, Blomberg and Fritsch, and take over their posts as well. A few generals had talked about possible coups during the Rhineland remilitarization in March 1936, and again on the eve of the Austrian Anschluss in March 1938, but they did nothing overt, and Hitler never initiated any purge of officers. It was only after the failed July 20, 1944 assassination attempt that Hitler initiated a purge of German officers who had supported or were thought to support the attempted assassination. In all, circa 5,000 men and women are thought to have been murdered by the Nazis under Hitler’s orders, among them Erwin Rommel (even though Rommel was not a true conspirator). The above actions certainly demonstrate that Hitler was inclined to use his officer corps for his own purposes and to keep it on an increasingly tight leash. However, his actions pale in comparison to Stalin’s mass purges of the Soviet military in the late 1930s".