Night of the Long Knives

In an effort to consolidate power, Adolf Hitler ordered a purge of his political enemies on June 30, 1934. This event is called the Night of the Long Knives, also called Operation Hummingbird, and was a series of extrajudicial executions, which is a euphemism for assassination. Extrajudicial means outside the courts. At the encouragement of Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler ordered the assassination, basically, of people who disagreed with him, and people whose voices or influences he wanted to silence. The spin they put on this event was that this was a preventative measure against an alleged imminent coup by the paramilitary organization, Sturmabteilung. (German is not my first language.) Sturmabteilung or SA, also known colloquially as the Brown Shirts. Granted, the Brown Shirts had gotten a bit full of themselves and were getting out of hand, and perhaps the leader of the SA encouraged that. He hadn't tamed it down anyway, so the Brown Shirts had become a legitimate concern. But it wasn't just Brown Shirts they eliminated on the Night of the Long Knives. They disposed of some of the more left leaning Nazis, establishment conservatives, outright anti Nazis, and perhaps even a few people against whom Hitler simply held a grudge. Basically, Hitler used the Purge to attack or eliminate German critics of his new regime, and to settle scores with old enemies. This is not a government one wants. We're pretty sure that at least 85 people were assassinated, although the actual number may be as high as 700 to a thousand. In addition, over a thousand of Hitler's opponents were arrested. Sure enough, the Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for Germany, unfortunately not for the better.