Page 48 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 35

his toys like a big, fat, spoilt child.” the things he had paraded before his
guests were “all mere toys to satisfy his varying moods” and everything in
his bison enclosure was, as he proudly proclaimed, “Germanic.” “and then
i remembered there were other toys, less innocent, though winged, and
these might someday be launched on their murderous mission in the same
childlike spirit and with the same childlike glee.” this last sentence was
44
eerily prophetic.
the dramatic events of June 30, 1934, now known as the Night of the
long Knives, reinforced Phipps’s forebodings about the Nazi regime. that
day Hitler’s henchmen murdered at least seventy-seven senior officials in
the National socialist Party and several former political leaders such as Gen-
eral Kurt von schleicher, a right-winger who had briefly served as chancel-
lor in 1932. the leader of the “conspiracy” quelled by Hitler was said to have
been ernst röhm, who headed the sa, or Brownshirts, whom he was eager
to integrate into the regular army. if röhm had succeeded, the army and its
leadership would have been markedly weakened.
Consequently, the minister of war, General Werner von Blomberg, the
commander in chief of the armed forces and a lackey of Hitler, was only too
eager to be rid of röhm. He saw to it that the reichswehr supplied the ss,
which played a key role in the massacre, with weapons and the means of
transportation.
röhm had been a close comrade of Hitler ever since the early 1920s, but
he did not hide his sense of superiority to the Führer, who had served as a
mere corporal in World War i. Hitler, on the other hand, feared that incor-
poration of the sa into the army would alarm France long before Germany
was strong enough to keep the French at bay. in addition, Hitler feared that
röhm wanted to take over the reins of the Nazi Party.
Phipps immediately understood that with this mass murder Hitler had
“killed several birds with one stone.” He had rooted out disaffection in
his ranks, pleased many Germans who could not abide “moral perverts”—
röhm was a homosexual—and disposed of several people who “knew too
much about past events, especially the reichstag fire.” and, of course, he
put the army, crucial for Hitler’s future foreign policy moves, in his debt.
Phipps speculated that fruitful consequences might result from this action.
the Nazis might now turn to “more and more normal methods of govern-
ment.” But he considered it more likely that the consequences of this “act of
barbarism” would be further government violence. in murdering some of
his “oldest and closest associates,” Hitler had set a “dangerous precedent”
that did not augur well for Germany’s political future. in fact, at about this