Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE BLOOD PURGE 753they did not. After the Gera speech, the higher S.A. leaders seem tohave discussed at great length Hitler's irresolution and lack of insight.Doubtless Rohm and his comrades thought about ways of compellingtheir Leader to make a decision; as Rohm put it, this time they wouldnot be satisfied with 'Adolf's tears.'The strife between the armed gangs not only separated- the S.A. fromthe rest of the National Socialist party, it also divided the SA.themselves into a group gathered under Rohm's peculiar leadership andother slighted and dissatisfied groups which were by no means alwaysmorally better. Among these latter elements was the Obergruppenfuhrerof Hanover, a certain Viktor Lutze, an ex-officer severelywounded in the World War and one-eyed. Lutze was an intimate friendof Goebbels's who had brought Hitler himself to his home. Anothermalcontent was Count Helldorf, that former intimate friend of Rohm's,who had since quarrelled with him because Rohm had not sufficientlyprotected him from the unfavorable publicity which followed themurder of Hanussen. Whether the reports brought to Hitler by Lutze andHelldorf were of major or only of secondary importance will perhaps beestablished at some future date; at any rate, among Rohm's intimates,Helldorf was the only one to have survived him and to have even beengiven an honorable promotion.When these groups got ready for the fight, this meant — among otherthings — that they had drawn up lists of persons to be 'liquidated' themoment action began. During the long-drawn-out years of strugglebefore 1933 there had been time to prepare such lists. The variousfractions of the party had noted the names and addresses of theirenemies, and the enemies of one group were not necessarily the enemiesof another; the enemies of the supreme S.A. leadership were notnecessarily those whom Reinhard Heydrich had singled out in the nameof the S.S. Reich leadership; Hess's 'liaison staff' and Goring had quitedifferent lists of their own. In some places bloodthirsty fanatics hadcompiled endless fists of proscripts; in others, following orders fromabove, only a few inevitable victims had been designated. Personalfeuds often proved fatal. There were lists of various kinds, of persons tobe eliminated under any circumstances and of persons to be eliminatedonly under certain