Two months later, the military changed its oath of service. This purge became known as the Night of the Long Knives. They also murdered other old enemies with whom the regime had a score to settle, such as General Kurt von Schleicher, who had preceded Hitler as Chancellor. The military did not intervene on June 30, 1934, when the SS murdered Röhm and many of the SA’s top officials. Consequently, in 1934, military leaders agreed to support Hitler’s undermining of the SA’s power and the elimination of much of its leadership in exchange for a guarantee of their status as the sole national military organization. Röhm wanted the SA to replace the professional military as a people’s army. However, the SA ( Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troopers), under the control of Ernst Röhm, posed a threat to the army. They fired on Hitler and his fellow insurrectionists rather than joining them. They did not support his attempted coup, the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. The often conservative leadership of the German military initially saw Adolf Hitler as a radical and as a political upstart. The German army (or Heer) was the most complicit as a result of being on the ground in Germany’s eastern campaigns, but all branches participated. In addition, the war and genocidal policy were inextricably linked. The military’s complicity extended not only to the generals and upper leadership but also to the rank and file. The German military participated in many aspects of the Holocaust: in supporting Hitler, in the use of forced labor, and in the mass murder of Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis. Long after the war, a myth persisted claiming the German military (or Wehrmacht) was not involved in the Holocaust and other crimes associated with Nazi genocidal policy. German Military Participation in the Holocaustĭuring World War II, the German military helped fulfill Nazism's racial, political, and territorial ambitions.
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