more men under arms than the constitutional forces of law and
order, made no secret of his ambitions. He wanted to become
defense minister himself. “It was obvious,” said Göring later, dis-
cussing this, “that we could not have suggested his name to
Hindenburg, as Röhm’s private life and sordid proclivities were
too well known.” Röhm had no intention of taking this lying
down. He and his cronies began muttering about staging a “sec-
ond revolution” after which General von Schleicher would
replace Hitler, Theo Croneiss would become air minister, and
the SA as a whole would replace the army.
Initially, Göring and Hitler saw no option but to appease
Röhm. In October Göring had allowed the SA to attach
“special agents” (Sonderbeauftragte) to his various offices and
agencies; and on December , Hitler had appointed Röhm a
Reich minister, and published a fulsome letter to him using
the familiar Du expressing his gratitude to the SA, “my
friends and comrades.” But then Röhm casually posted an SA
guard unit outside Göring’s ministry, and it became common
knowledge that the SA was buying up arms from abroad, al-
though Hitler had ruled definitely that only the regular army,
the Reichswehr, would be allowed to bear arms. At this point the
anti-Röhm coalition began to take shape. General von Blomberg,
his chief military assistant General von Reichenau, and the
commander in chief of the army, General Werner von Fritsch,
all let Göring know that they took a dim view of Röhm and the
SA.
Unquestionably, Göring himself was leader of the coalition
against Röhm. As he looked around for allies of the requisite
ruthlessness, his gaze fell upon Heinrich Himmler, the decep-
tively inoffensive-looking chief of the SS, the black-uniformed
élite bodyguard personally sworn to Hitler’s protection. With
his metal-rimmed eyeglasses, Himmler, ten years younger than