Night of the Long Knives

The **Night of the Long Knives** (German: ) or "**Operation Hummingbird**" () was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany. It happened between 30 June and 2 July 1934 when the Nazi regime executed at least 90 people and an estimated 200 for political reasons. Most of those killed were members of the "Storm Troopers" (SA) (German: ).

Adolf Hitler moved against the SA and its leader, Ernst Röhm, because he saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his power. Hitler also wanted to forestall any move by leaders of the Reichswehr, the German military, who both feared and despised the SA, to curtail his rule, especially since Röhm made no secret of his ambition to absorb the Reichswehr with himself at its head. Adolf Hitler also killed them because they were becoming difficult to control and he was worried that they would branch off and want independence to carry out more radical ideas.

Finally, Hitler used the purge to go against conservative critics of his regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, and to settle scores with old enemies, such as Kurt von Schleicher. Ernst Röhm was arrested on June 30 by the SS (lead by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and deputy SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich) and was killed by General  Josef Sepp Dietrich,Theodor Eicke and Michael Lippert .
## Official list of those killed 
However, the list of 77 was far from being complete: Hitler admitted that some excesses had taken place and stated that he had handed over the cases of several people who had been killed as part of unauthorized actions by subordinate organs to the authorities, who were supposed to implement a regular prosecution of the perpetrators. Among those cases who were at first subject to regular investigation and prosecution by the locally responsible Attorney Offices were those of the city clerk Kuno Kamphausen who was murdered at the order of an SS officer who bore a grudge against him for refusing to give a construction permission to his brother and the cases of four Jews and two Communists who were killed without permission from Berlin in the course of arbitrary actions by lower SS echelons in the province of Silesia. In September 1934, Heinrich Himmler – eager to shield his SS men from legal prosecution – managed to convince Hitler to change his mind on the latter six people, whose names as a consequence, were subsequently added to the official list whose killing was to be considered rightful and which now encompassed 83 names.

The list of 77 or 83 names respectively was kept in several copies – which were stored under lock and key – in the Ministry of Justice and the Gestapo Headquarters. After a law entitled "Gesetz über Maßnahmen der Staatsnotwehr" ("Law pertaining to the Measures of Self-Defense of the State") had been passed by the Reich Cabinet on July 3, which declared: "Die zur Niederschlagung hoch- und landesverräterischer Angriffe am 30. Juni, 1. und 2. Juli 1934 vollzogenen Maßnahmen sind als Staatsnotwehr rechtens" ("The measures taken to clamp down on the treasonous attacks of June 30th, July 1st and 2nd are rightful, due to having been acts of self-defense of the State.") it was decided that the killing of everybody on that list was to be considered lawful and that therefore the police and Attorney Offices were prohibited from investigating and prosecuting anyone for those killings. The lists thus were used by the Ministry and the Gestapo as a referential tool which could be consulted to decide, whether requests of relatives and friends of those killed to be given information on the circumstances of death of their beloved ones, or requests to prosecute those responsible for their killing would be answered in the affirmative (people killed and not mentioned on the Gestapo list) or in the negative (people whose names were to be found on the list). The same applied to requests of other state authorities (especially police departments and Attorney Offices) who inquired at the Ministry of Justice or the Gestapo headquarters whether they should open and or continue investigation of a specific killing that had taken place on the three days from June 30 to July 2.

The official list of those killed was first published in 1964 by Heinrich Bennecke (1902–1972) in the appendix of his book *Die Reichswehr und der "Röhm-Putsch"*.

## Estimates of people killed in addition to those on the official list 
Later research by historians has shown that in addition to those listed by the Gestapo a number of others also had been killed. Heinrich Bennecke complemented the names of the city clerk Kuno Kamphausen from Waldenburg and the music critic Willi Schmid to his reprint of the official Gestapo list, whereupon he concluded that at least 85 people were killed during the purge. Later, Hans Günther Richardi, in his study on the Dachau concentration camp, added the names of four inmates of Dachau (lawyer Julius Adler (1882–1934), worker Erich Gans (1908–1934), Walter Häbich and worker Adam Hereth (1897-1934)), claiming they were murdered by the SS during the purge. In 1993 Otto Gritschneder published a book on the post–World War II prosecution of those involved in the killings which lists 90 names of people killed (adding the doctor and Röhm associate Karl Günther Heimsoth to the list).

Richard J. Evans states that at least 85 people were killed and more than 1000 were arrested. Ian Kershaw also cites the number of deaths at 85. Kershaw notes that "some estimates...put the total number killed at between 150 and 200." William L. Shirer writes in his *Rise and Fall of the Third Reich*, that "*The White Book of the Purge*, published by émigrés in Paris claims 401 deaths, but lists only 116 of them. At the 1957 trial in Munich the figure 'more than 1,000' was used." Both of those figures are much higher than the ones most historians of the period rely on, and that Shirer himself was not necessarily citing the figures as accurate, but was simply relaying them in his book. The most recent study on the matter lists by name 89 people who were definitely killed, as well as two other cases of whom it is unclear whether they were murdered during the events or slightly earlier or later.

## List of The Victims
## References
### Inline citations
### General references
* Evans, Richard (2005)*The Third Reich in Power*. New York: Penguin Group
* Kershaw, Ian (1999) *Hitler: 1889–1936: Hubris*. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
* Shirer, William L. (1960) *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich*. New York: Simon and Schuster

## Other websites 
* Victims of the Night of the Long Knives