In March 1933, a couple of weeks after the Reichstag fire, Cartellieri's diary entries disclose a heartfelt optimism, with regard to the new régime, "... that our so-called revolution in 1918, this dumb, criminal, and above all unnecessary revolution will be undone". His initial assumption was that the Hitler government was simply a transitional arrangement: "You have to go along with [Hitler]", he wrote in his diary on 1 May 1933, "because of its failure would deliver only collapse and Bolshevism. Perhaps he'll come to grief in Russia ... so long as we hold on to the current government. That would be for the best". For many people the so-called Röhm-Putsch ("Night of the long knives") on the night of 30 June/1 July 1934 came as an unwelcome eye-opener. In effect, it amounted to the murder, on the orders of Adolf Hitler, of the entire leadership of the Sturmabteilung, a Nazi paramilitary organisation that might constitute a future threat to the government. The killings had been performed without any judicial sentencing or other court involvement. Even though it constituted what subsequent generations would identify as a terrorist act by the government, Cartellieri's diary entries show no appreciation of the gravity of what had been done: he welcomed the "decision" and hoped that the outcome would be "a major improvement in general conditions".