he SA made a showdown inevitable. As German Chancellor, the Fhrer could no longer afford to tolerate the disruptive Brownshirts; under the ambitious Rhm, the SA had grown to be an organization of three million men, and its unpredictable activities prevented Hitler from consolidating his shaky control of the Reich. He had to dispose of the SA to hold the support of his industrial backers, to satisfy party leaders jealous of the SA’s power, and most important, to win the allegiance of the conservative Army generals. Under pressure from all sides, and enraged by an SA plot against him that Heydrich had conveniently uncovered, Hitler turned the SS loose to purge its parent organization. They were too uncontrollable even for Hitler. They went about their business of terrorizing Jews with no mercy. But that is not what bothered Hitler, since the SA was so big, (3 million in 1933) and so out of control, Hitler sent his trusty comrade Josef Dietrich, commander of a SS bodyguard regiment to murder the leaders of the SA. The killings went on for two days and nights and took a tool of perhaps 200 “enemies o the state.” It was quite enough to reduce the SA to impotence, and it brought the Fhrer immediate returns. The dying President of the Reich, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, congratulated Hitler on crushing the troublesome SA, and the Army generals concluding that Hitler was now their pawn--swore personal loyalty to him. In April 1933, scarcely three months after Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, the Nazis issued a degree, ordering the compulsory retirement of “non-Aryans” from the civil service. This edict, petty in itself, was th...
