Power struggles among these “National Socialists” (the meaning of the word ‘Nazi’) were as lethal as the genocidal plans they carried out against Jews, Slavs, and others.
Even before they grabbed power in the German government in early 1933, they were plotting against each other within the National Socialist party. The narratives of these conspiracies are quite complex.
In 1930, for example, Kurt von Schleicher, a high officer in the German Army, sought to exploit the Nazis for his own political purposes. Schleicher himself was not a National Socialist, but thought that he could form a strategic alliance with them in order to further his career as he transitioned from military officer to civilian politician. Schleicher also assumed that he could keep the National Socialists under his control.
Schleicher chose Ernst Röhm (sometimes mentioned as ‘Rohm’ or ‘Roehm’ in texts) as his first contact within the Nazi organization. Schleicher thought perhaps to make a deal along these lines: he could offer Röhm a chance to have increased status as a military leader, by merging the German Army with Röhm’s National Socialist hoodlums, or by placing the German Army under them. In return, Röhm might be able to offer Schleicher decisive political influence among the Nazis.
Thus Schleicher planned that he could simultaneously use the National Socialists to advance his career and keep them under his control. This would turn out to be a disastrous mistake on Schleicher’s part.
Seeking ways to connect with Röhm, Schleicher used a mutual acquaintance and military officer, Franz Halder, to establish a working relationship. If Schleicher was not a Nazi, Halder went one step further, and was strongly opposed to the Nazis. Yet, oddly, Halder had a good working relationship with Röhm.
Years later, after both Röhm and Schleicher were dead, Halder would be active in underground conspiracies against Hitler. Halder would survive the war and be recognized for his anti-Nazi activity. Recounting how these machinations unfolded in 1930, several years before the actual Nazi seizure of power, historian T.N. Dupuy writes:
The first Nazi approached by Schleicher was Ernst Röhm, who had been an infantry captain during the war and had later served in the Free Corps movement. Having become a follower and close friend of Hitler, Röhm had been made the head of the paramilitary force which Hitler had created as early as 1921 - the Sturmabteilung (SA) or Storm Troops - and had been able to make good use of his military training and experience in developing this SA into an effective, disciplined force supporting the political aims of the party. Over the years Röhm had retained a personal friendship with an old Army colleague and fellow Bavarian, Lieutenant Colonel Franz Halder, of the General Staff. Halder was no Nazi, and was never in the slightest involved in the rumors and scandals of homosexual activities in which Röhm was implicated. Whether or not Schleicher met Röhm through Halder is not clear; in any event the lieutenant colonel seems to have sat in on some of the secret meetings between the former captain and the lieutenant general.
In early 1934, after the National Socialists been controlling Germany for almost a year, another officer, Werner von Fritsch, became concerned about precisely what Schleicher and Röhm hoped to achieve: some connection, be it merger or subordination, between the German Army and the Nazi thugs.
Fritsch occupied his influential position in the military as a successor to Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, who was adamantly opposed to Hitler and the National Socialists. Fritsch was also a successor to Hans von Seeckt, who was opposed to the National Socialists, having worked against their 1923 Putsch attempt, and yet was in some ways sympathetic to their goals.
But among some of Fritsch’s other predecessors in the officer ranks were those willing to support the Nazis. Werner von Blomberg, for example, was a high-ranking officer who would later occupy the civilian office of Minister of War while retaining his military commission as an officer (a most unusual arrangement), and who was an enthusiastic supporters of Hitler and the National Socialists. Walther von Reichenau, another high-ranking officer, was actually a member of the Nazi party.
Most senior officers in the German army regarded the Nazis as uncouth and vulgar. Even the few officers, like Blomberg and Reichenau, who encouraged the Nazis, felt that the thuggish behavior of Röhm’s vandals should never have any official cooperation with, much less control over, the army. These men retained a sense of honor about being a military officer, and naively felt that the Nazis would respect, or at least allow, such ethical behavior to continue.
Blomberg and Reichenau, while seduced into supporting the Nazis, were active in taking steps to prevent the SA from merging or controlling the army. In early 1934, they were part of an effort to persuade Hitler that there should be an internal purge within the National Socialist movement, and that Hitler would have to abandon his friend Röhm. They convinced Hitler that Röhm would have to be among those murdered in the purge.
Thus it was that Hitler gave order to have his close personal friend, a man who had faithfully served Hitler and the Nazi party for almost fifteen years, murdered. Historian Trevor Nevitt Dupuy writes:
Fritsch’s principal concern about the Nazis at this time was Röhm’s persistent effort to carry out the scheme he had so often discussed with Schleicher: to amalgamate the Army and the SA into a new German Army, which Röhm would dominate. Aside from the dangerous dilution which such a merger would cause in the superb quality of the small Army which Fritsch had inherited from Seeckt and Hammerstein, the idea of Röhm and his gangster and blatantly homosexual associates as participating members of the Army High Command was totally unacceptable to Fritsch - and even to such pro-Nazi alumni of the General Staff as Blomberg and Reichenau.
Thus, in the bloodthirsty ambition of National Socialism, internal struggles between Nazi leaders sometimes used non-Nazis, and even those opposed to Naziism, as unwitting pawns in vicious and deadly power plays.
