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Night of the long knives

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This Ballantine Illustrated concentrates on internal politics rather than military battles. Using the same combination of photos and readable prose, the book tells the gruesome tale of when Hitler decided to strike against his own. With the German military fearing the rising power of the SA - the street-brawling Nazi brownshirts - Hitler decided to wipe out the SA leadership and thus win the army's loyalty. If such course required murdering dozens of loyal backers and his closest friend Ernst Rohm (head of the SA), so be it. Readers see how Hitler and his dreaded SS and Gestapo struck on the morning of June 30, 1934. SA leaders were shot on the spot, or dragged out of bed and off to prison (to be dispatched soonafter). Hitler also used the opportunity to murder political opponents like General Von Schleicher and his wife, Gustav Ritter von Kahr (who crushed the 1923 Beer Hall Putcsch), Erich Klausener of Catholic Action, etc. In the face of such bloodshed many Germans looked the other way, offered foolish praise, or were intimidated to silence. As in other brutal police states, the Revolution had eaten its children. Soon, soldiers would swear a loyalty oath not to Germany but to Hitler, and the ugly future course was set. This gruesome account shows what happened.