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

764 DER FUEHRERthings, publicly branded them as lies, admitted them among his intimates,excused and justified them — and the fact that Rohm hadcompelled him to do this was probably his most heinous crime inHitler's innermost thoughts. He, the 'miracle,' 'the instrument of higherpowers,' was dishonored by his own instrument — this was probably thetreason which Hitler could not forgive his chief of staff.Dishonored by his instrument? Actually he was dishonored byhimself. True, Hitler had not shared Rohm's particular depravity in aphysical sense, but he had been the chosen leader of these depravedmen; to them he owed his greatness. Yes, he was the product and thecreature of decay and degeneration, a flame kindled from foul gases.These had been his 'elite.' And it was the painful memory of his ownweakness, now doomed in the person of Rohm and his arrested clique,that he ordered sent to the Stadelheim prison near Munich.On the morning of the same June 30, Goring and Himmler struck inBerlin. The police commandos for special services, led by Wecke,thundered on motorcycles and trucks — making a detour to mislead theadversary — from Lichterfelde via Tempelhof into Berlin, surroundedthe S.A. headquarters and penetrated inside without encounteringresistance. A few minutes later, when Goring arrived, he found the S.A.leaders standing with arms upraised in front of Wecke's riflemen; he ranthrough the rooms on every floor, pointing at individuals and shouting:'Arrest him . . . arrest him ... arrest him....' Those whom he did not pointout were free and returned to life. The arrested men were taken toLichterfelde in Wecke's trucks. In the course of the morningapproximately one hundred and fifty prisoners were herded there.Within the walls of Lichterfelde and Stadelheim, and to a lesser extentat several other places, there now began a massacre which surpassed inhorror the May, 1919, executions in Munich, which Hitler had helped toorganize; it was probably the most hideous incident in modern Germanhistory. In Munich, Walter Buch directed the executions. He shouted:'The Fuhrer wills it. Heil Hitler! Fire!' A fourfold salvo thundered, andagainst the wall fell: August Schneidhuber, ex-Colonel, nowObergruppenfuhrer and