The Night of the Long Knives, Part 2
The Barnes Review had for several years run chapters or portions of chapters from the books of Leon Degrelle as articles in its bi-monthly publication. As we have already discussed, Degrelle was a Belgian journalist, politician and founder of the Rexist Party, and then later a National Socialist and Waffen SS volunteer who during the War had worked his way up the ranks from Private to Colonel. Then in the last days of combat, he had apparently attained a rank of General, if indeed the promotion was legitimate. But we shall continue to call him a General. Last week we presented two such articles from Degrelle, The Civil War Within the German National Socialist Party and Röhm Continues to Push. This week we shall present the next two articles in the series, which are The Röhm Crisis Worsens and Last Millimeters of the Fuse.
As we saw last week, Ernst Röhm was an outspoken proponent of two ideas that were completely contrary to Adolf Hitler. First, he was a Marxist. However in the capacity in which he served the party, his economic philosophy was secondary to his work. More importantly, he strongly advocated the autonomy of the SA (the Sturmabteilung or Storm Detachment of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which was commonly called the Brownshirts) from the party itself, and once the NSDAP came to power he insisted upon the complete replacement of the Wehrmacht, the regular German army, with the SA. As we have seen Degrelle explain, the SA was designed as a paramilitary organization of men who were not formally trained as military officers and soldiers, but who were basically street-fighters, mixed with a number of thugs, and mostly patriotic defenders of the Party’s right to express itself and to hold meetings and rallies. The SA was formed out of necessity, as the violent communist thugs – Germany’s early Antifa – always sought to infiltrate and disrupt the events held by rival parties, and especially those of the political Right.