The ‘Röhm affair’ is the name given to a politically motivated murder operation perpetrated by the Nazi state leadership at the end of June/beginning of July 1934 which targeted the leadership of the Storm Battalion of the Nazi Party – or SA for short – under Ernst Röhm, along with other ‘undesirable’ individuals. The affair is to be seen against the background of the ‘national revolution’ which began in early 1933. As the Nazi organization with the largest membership, the SA claimed state positions and functions for itself after the ‘seizure of power’. In particular, the SA leadership around Ernst Röhm propagated the idea that the ‘revolution’ was not yet over and that the SA should take on military functions – in competition with the then much smaller Reichswehr. This conflict between the army and the party militia had been smoldering since February 1934, while from April 1934 onwards Hermann Göring had evidence gathered about the SA’s plans for a putsch – as well as proof of Röhm’s homosexuality. Hitler announced to the Reichswehr leadership that he would take action against the SA leadership and had the latter travel to a meeting in Bad Wiessee. In a concerted nationwide operation carried out on June 30, 1934, the SS – having planned a reckoning of its own – arrested not only members of the SA leadership but also numerous personalities who were considered to be opponents.
More than 90 people were murdered on June 30, 1934 or immediately afterwards, mainly on the grounds of Berlin-Lichterfelde cadet prison, at Dachau Concentration Camp and at Munich-Stadelheim Prison, while some were murdered in their homes. In Stadelheim, an SS detachment murdered SA leaders Röhm, Hans Hayn, Edmund Heines, Peter von Heydebreck, Wilhelm Schmid, August Schneidhuber and Hans Erwin von Spreti-Weilbach. Numerous people belonging to Röhm’s inner circle were killed at Dachau Concentration Camp, including Karl Zehnter, the landlord of the Munich restaurant Nürnberger Bratwurstglöckl. But the murder operation was also directed against members of the opposition or people with whom the Nazi leadership wanted to settle accounts, such as the head of Catholic Action, Erich Klausener, in Munich Fritz Beck, the head of the student union in Munich, Catholic journalist Fritz Gerlich, and former Bavarian State Premier Gustav von Kahr. The murders were subsequently declared legal under the ‘Act on Measures of State Emergency Defense’ of July 3, 1934. From then on the SA no longer had any significant political role to play within the Nazi state.
