Hitler's Valkyrie by David R L Litchfield

Author:David R L Litchfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750951616
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

5

BAVARIAN RHAPSODY

* * *

1934–36

* * *

Somewhere between fear and sex is passion.

Somewhere between God and the Devil.

Jeanette Winterson

On 30 June 1934 the Nazi Party exploded in an orgy of brutal political cleansing that became known as the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler had decided that mass assassinations were the only way to solve what he was persuaded to believe was a planned coup against him by the SA, its leader Ernst Röhm and other political opponents who were dragged from their beds and without any form of trial were either immediately or subsequently executed.

The SA was the Nazi Party’s original, largely working-class paramilitary organisation which, after Hitler had gained dictatorial power over Germany, became redundant. But with 3 million armed members, dangerously sympathetic to the party’s socialist roots, with ambitions to take over the existing army, they could indeed have been considered a threat, even while there was no evidence of any planned coup. They were superseded by the more middle-class SS, which had no political agenda and owed its allegiance to the Führer alone.

Unity, who was quite obviously determined to immerse herself in a mystical celebration of ritualised violence, could not have arrived in Germany at a better time. The mood was perfectly reflected in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Ernst Jünger’s Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (Combat as an internal experience): ‘Death, where is thy sting / Hell, where is thy victory?’ It sounded like a quote from William Blake, but is in fact from Corinthians.

* * *

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.