June 30, 1934

Night of the Long Knives

The Night of the Long Knives purge begins

Despite the singular name it ran three days — and it opened with Hitler walking into a Bavarian resort hotel at dawn to arrest the sleeping SA leadership.

Dawn, 30 June 1934, at Bad Wiessee

Early on 30 June 1934, Hitler and an SS-police party surprised Ernst Röhm and the assembled senior SA leaders at the Hanselbauer hotel in Bad Wiessee, arrested them and transported many to Munich's Stadelheim prison.

Six senior SA officers were shot at Stadelheim that day. Killing orders were carried out in Berlin, Dachau and elsewhere by the SS, the Gestapo and Göring's police apparatus.

Not only the SA

The victims reached well past the stormtroopers: former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his wife, the former Nazi rival Gregor Strasser, the Catholic leader Erich Klausener and Gustav Ritter von Kahr.

Röhm survived the first day. Hitler decided his fate on 1 July, and the Dachau commandant Theodor Eicke and Michael Lippert shot him in his Stadelheim cell after he refused to kill himself.

A law written after the fact

Hitler ordered the operation stopped in the early hours of 2 July. The total killed remains uncertain because killings were concealed and surviving lists are incomplete; the German Historical Museum estimates about 200.

On 3 July the cabinet enacted a one-article law retroactively declaring the measures of 30 June and 1–2 July lawful “state self-defense.”

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

The dates and main sequence are well established, but the total number murdered remains uncertain because killings were concealed and surviving lists are incomplete.
“At least 85” is a commonly repeated documented minimum; the German Historical Museum estimates about 200, and some scholarship gives roughly 150–200. A precise final total is not supportable.