The Greatest Challenge to Hitler's Survival

The greatest challenge to Hitler's survival during the early years of

the Third Reich came from his own brown-shirted storm troopers, the SA

(Sturmabteilung) led by Chief of Staff, Ernst Röhm.

The battle-scarred Röhm was a decorated World War I combat officer and

a post-war street-brawler who had been with Hitler from the start.

Röhm's jack-booted storm troopers were largely responsible for putting

Hitler in power. On the front lines of the Nazi political revolution,

they had risked their necks battling Communists for control of the

streets and squashed anyone who stood in Hitler's way.

However, by the beginning of 1934, a full year after Hitler's seizure

of power, things had changed. The SA's usefulness as a violent

revolutionary force had effectively ended. To maintain his position as

dictator of Germany, Hitler now needed the support of the all-powerful

German General Staff with its 100,000-strong Army which had the power

to crush his dictatorship whenever it pleased.

The big problem for Hitler was that Röhm and his arrogant young

Brownshirts fancied themselves as the nucleus of new "people's army"

that would replace the traditional Germany Army - similar to

Napoleon's revolutionary army.

This put them in direct conflict with the General Staff. They were

threatening to end a centuries-old way of life in Germany. The General

Staff was a class unto itself, featuring men of wealth and privilege,

many of whom could trace their lineages back to Germany's medieval

warrior-princes. During his rise to power, Hitler had earned their

support by repeatedly assuring them he would restore them to their

former glory by breaking ...

... middle of paper ...

...ed SS dagger.

The Brownshirts ceased to be a threat to Hitler and over time all but

disappeared into the regular Army after Hitler re-introduced military

conscription. But Germany now had a new and even bigger threat,

Himmler's black-coated SS. Absolutely loyal to Hitler, they would kill

anyone on command and would become the Führer's personal instrument of

terror on a continental scale as well as a gigantic military force.

Now, in the summer of 1934, there was only one man who stood between

Adolf Hitler and absolute power in Germany. And that man, 87-year-old

President Paul von Hindenburg, lay dying at his country estate. For

several weeks, everyone awaited the Old Gentleman's demise with a

nagging sense of uncertainty over what it might mean for Germany's

future. Hitler, however, knew exactly what it would mean.