But Adolf is and always will be a civilian, an “artist,” a dreamer. Just leave me be, he thinks. Right now all he wants to do is sit up in the mountains and play God. And guys like us have to cool our heels, when we’re burning for action…. The chance to do something really new and great, something that will turn the world upside down—it’s a chance in a lifetime. But Hitler keeps putting me off. He wants to let things drift. Keeps counting on a miracle. That’s Adolf for you. He wants to inherit a ready-made army all set to go. He wants to have it knocked together by “experts.” When I hear that word I blow my top. He’ll make it National Socialist later on, he says. But first he’s turning it over to the Prussian generals. Where the hell is revolutionary spirit to come from afterwards? From a bunch of old fogies who certainly aren’t going to win the new war? Don’t try to kid me, the whole lot of you. You’re letting the whole heart and soul of our movement go to pot.37
What Röhm most wanted was to absorb the numerically smaller Reichswehr into his brown mass army and thereby create a National Socialist militia. It seems that Hitler had no intention whatever of letting him do this. The disagreement on the purpose of the SA was old, and Hitler continued to hold that the brown formations should carry out a political, not a military function. They were to be an enormous “Hitler shock troop,” not the cadres of a revolutionary army. Outwardly, however, he faked indecisiveness, obviously hoping to hit upon some compromise between Röhm’s ambitions and the claims of the Reichswehr. Undoubtedly he shared with Röhm a profound aversion, reinforced by his experiences of 1923, for the arrogant, stiff, monocle-wearing “old fogies,” and Himmler once heard him remark about the generals, “One day they’ll take a shot at me.”38 But their backing was indispensable if he were to consolidate his power. He kept in mind the great lesson of the November putsch, never again to get involved in open conflict with the armed forces. He attributed his defeat at that time to the opposition of the army, just as he attributed his success in 1933 to the support or at least the benevolent neutrality of the army leadership. Moreover, he would need their technical expertise for the rearmament program which he had already launched in the summer of 1933. In view of his expansionist plans, he knew there was no time to lose. Moreover, only the regular army possessed the offensive power that he required—a militia such as Röhm had in mind was, strictly speaking, an instrument of defense.
Yet Hitler must have been pleasantly surprised by the way top army men behaved toward him. In Defense Minister von Blomberg and in the new chief of staff, Colonel Walther von Reichenau, he found two partners who, for different reasons, were entirely amenable to his wishes.
Blomberg was an enthusiast by temperament. He had in turn subscribed to democracy, anthroposophy, the idea of a Prussian socialism, then “something close to Communism”—this after a trip to Russia—and finally been drawn more and more to authoritarian ideas until he succumbed to Hitler’s blandishments. In 1933, Blomberg later avowed, he had been vouchsafed things he no longer could have hoped for: faith, veneration for a man, and complete dedication to an idea. A friendly remark of Hitler’s, a contemporary source tells us, could bring tears to his eyes; and Blomberg used to say that a cordial handshake of the Fuhrer’s could cure him of colds.39
Reichenau was of a different stamp: a sober man with a Machiavellian turn of mind who kept his ambitions free from emotion. He quickly decided that he could make use of Nazism to further his personal career and the power of the army. At the proper moment the Nazis could be tamed, he thought. As intelligent as he was coolheaded, by nature decisive, sometimes to a fault, he was the almost perfect embodiment of the modern, technically trained and socially unbiased army officer who unfortunately carried his lack of prejudices to moral categories also. At a meeting of army commanders in February, 1933, he opined that the general breakdown could be stemmed only by dictatorship. This thesis so well suited Hitler’s purposes that he must have asked himself why he should turn down the proffered allegiance of the military experts in favor of the troublesome Röhm. Among his intimates he tended to make fun of these “bandylegged SA men who think they’re the material for a military elite.”
Hitler’s usual way of handling his enemies was to play them off against each other and let them fight it out between them. But in this case he was fairly frank about which side he favored. It is true that he constantly whipped up the SA’s militant activism and would, for example, exhort the storm troopers: “Your whole life will be nothing but struggle. From struggle you came; do not hope for peace today or tomorrow.” His appointment of Röhm to the cabinet on December 1 and his remarkably cordial letter of thanks to the chief of staff at the end of the year were widely interpreted, within the SA, as an official blessing. Nevertheless, he repeatedly assured the army that it was and would remain the sole armed force in the nation. And his decision at the beginning of the new year to reintroduce compulsory military service within the framework of the army ran counter to all Röhm’s plans for a vast militia. But Röhm continued to believe that Hitler was, as always, playing some deep game and secretly agreed with him now as he supposedly had in the past.
Consequently, Röhm decided that he was being blocked by some of Hitler’s advisers. Accustomed to overcoming all difficulties by frontal assault, he resorted to noisy invective and heavy pressure. He called Hitler a “weakling” who had fallen into the hands of “stupid and dangerous creatures.” But he, Röhm, was going to “free him from those fetters.” And while the SA began posting armed guards around its headquarters, Röhm sent a memorandum to the Ministry of Defense declaring the defense of the country was the “domain of the SA” and leaving the army the sole task of military training. Incessantly speechmaking and fulminating, he thus gradually set the stage on which his destiny was to be played out. At the beginning of January, 1934, only a few days after Hitler had thanked his chief of staff and intimate friend in such warm words for his services, the Chancellor ordered Rudolf Diels, chief of the secret state police office (the incipient Gestapo) to gather incriminating documents on “Herr Röhm and his friendships” and also on the SA’s terroristic activities. “This is the most important assignment you have ever received,” he told Diels.
Meanwhile, the army had not been idle. Röhm’s memorandum had made it plain to the Reichswehr leaders that there was no midcourse: Hitler would have to choose between themselves and the SA. Ostentatiously meeting the Nazis halfway, early in February Blomberg directed that the “Aryan clause” be applied to the officer corps and made the swastika the official symbol of the armed forces. Army Commander in Chief General von Fritsch justified this step on the grounds that it would “give the Chancellor the necessary impetus against the SA.”40
In fact, Hitler now found himself forced to take an unambiguous position. On February 2 he delivered an address to the gauleiters assembled in Berlin. The speech both reflected his perplexities at the time and constituted a noteworthy statement of principles. The minutes of the meeting record:
The Führer stressed… that those who go on saying the Revolution isn’t over yet are fools… and continued that in the movement we have people who by revolution mean nothing but a permanent state of chaos….