on the tarmac, wearing their still-secret Luftwaffe uniform. “The
men are a good racial selection,” he commented.
At the Chancellery he told Göring that he had ordered the
execution of all Röhm’s senior henchmen but proposed to spare
his longtime friend Röhm, for old times’ sake. Göring gagged on
this sentimentality. All the next day, Sunday, July , he and
Himmler badgered Hitler to carry through the purge to its
ruthless and logical conclusion. When Darré arrived at Göring’s
ministry that Sunday afternoon, he found Göring and Himmler
still arguing with Hitler. Once, Hitler insisted on being put
through by phone to Röhm’s former deputy, Krausser (he had
consulted this distinguished cavalry officer two nights before).
Too late on Göring’s orders, Krausser had received his “Os-
car” at Lichterfelde a few hours earlier. By the time Milch ar-
rived at the ministry, from a leisurely sporting afternoon spent
at Berlin’s Karlshorst racetrack, the argument was over and
Röhm, too, had been shot to death in his Munich prison cell.
Eighty-four people were known to have been liquidated in
the purge. “Of course,” Göring airily conceded later, “in the
general excitement some mistakes were made.” There was the
unknown musician Willi Schmidt, gunned down in mistake for
Willi Schmid. And there was the air-force Pour le Mérite holder
Daniel Gerth, on whom Göring took compassion. This SA lieu-
tenant was driven off, like all the others, to Lichterfelde...
propped up before the SS firing squad... reprieved on
Göring’s orders... then shot an hour later.
Tabula rasa, a clean sweep. Hitler was out of his league in such
company. It dawned only slowly on their private staffs that
Göring and Himmler had duped their Führer completely, in
order to settle private scores. Brückner was present as Himmler
read out the final tally. Hitler was speechless with grief at some