I was reading in a book that Sepp Dietrich's name was on the list of those to be executed. In it, Sepp was informed of this by Hitler himself who had it removed. Does anyone have any info as to who put his name on the list and why? I find it odd that Hitler's closest and trusted 'paladin' would have been listed.
Sepp Dietrich was a SS leader. The action refered to as the 'Night of the Long Knives' was aimed at the senior leaders of the SA. Hitler approved the purge of those leaders as the most effective method of eliminating political rivals quickly. His body guards, the SS, were entrusted with arresting & killing the key leaders of the SA. Exactly where did you see this refrence to Dietrich being on a list? Quoting it might be usefull to answering your question. Some guesses I'll offer might be: 1. Dietrich was threatened with elimination if he did not throw in with Hitler & Co. 'Are with us or aginst us Sepp?' 2. Dietrich's name was on a early long list of possible enemies and was struck off as Hitler, Goering, Hess, Himmler & the others Hitler trusted identified the real enemies on a shorter list. Several of the SA leaders purged had been trusted palladins in the past, but times change. : (
The information was taken from the book 'Hitler's Gladiator' by Charles Messenger of which I am currently reading. There were some of the old guard who were eliminated on that night. But it did not state how Dietrich's name showed up on the list. Hitler did remove it and informed Dietrich after he was promoted for his part.
I think the names were put together by all the top nazis and in that case I would not wonder if Göbbels would have given , say, Göring´s name etc etc to put it as extreme as possible. So Hitler had a big job putting out several names as there were not only SA names, but also personal enemies included. It´s hard to say who and how many as the lists were quite probably destroyed later on. Also it is possible Hitler wanted to create competition and hatred among his top men, and that would mean perhaps Sepp´s name was not there at all, Adolf just wanted Sepp to trust him only.
There's no place like Rohm... (always surprises me that Hitler was actually present with a gun in his hand... strangely 'un-Adolfish', though I suppose as likely a creation of the Propaganda mechanism as anything.) We'll never know the bad blood expressed that day in true detail but it is interesting if Dietrich was on an earlier list as he was in command during much of the killing. As it was such a crunch point for the Nazi project, and bearing in mind the gangsterish atmosphere, I really wouldn't be surprised if, as Kai suggests, this was a rather crude message to someone expected to carry out the actual bloodletting. Cheers, Adam.
