The 30th of January 1933. Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany bringing
an end to German democracy. A critical component of the Führer’s rise to power is
the Sturmabteilung or the SA, a paramilitary organization associated with the Nazi Party,
now counting more than 3 million members. Soon its leader Ernst Röhm will start to demand the
removal of German elites from power and their replacement with fanatical Nazis. However, Hitler
needs the support of these elites—particularly the military leadership—to consolidate power
and ultimately sees the SA as a threat. During the Night of the Long Knives he purges the SA,
effectively ending their political and military power. One of its leading men is Karl Ernst.
Karl Ernst was born on the 1st of September 1904 in
Berlin then part of the German Empire. His father was a cavalryman who after the First
World War worked as a bodyguard of Friedrich Flick – an extremely wealthy industrialist
whose enterprises were instrumental in Nazi Germany's rearmament efforts.
After completing elementary school, between 1918 and 1921 Karl Ernst took a commercial
apprenticeship as an export merchant. He then worked as a hotel bellboy,
a bouncer at a gay nightclub as well as a commercial clerk in Berlin and Mainz. In
1923 he entered the Sturmabteilung – the SA – the Nazi paramilitary
force also known as the Storm Troopers or the "Brownshirts" for the color of their uniform.
In the aftermath of the First World War which ended in 1918, Freikorps,
or independent paramilitary units, proliferated across Germany. Composed primarily of World War
I veterans returning from the war, the Freikorps fought against communists and
other groups they believed were responsible for German defeat. By 1921, approximately 400,000
men were involved in paramilitary groups. One of these groups was the Gymnastics and
Sports Division in Bavaria, which was later renamed the Sturmabteilung or SA.
The SA was associated with the German Workers’ Party,
which in turn was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazis.
The SA’s primary responsibilities were to serve as Adolf Hitler’s security detail,
provide military support to enforce Hitler’s orders, and prevent the functioning of opposing
parties, by whatever means necessary. One of the SA’s first organized activities was the Munich
Beer Hall putsch which took place on 8–9 November 1923 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a
coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. The plotters hoped to march
on Berlin to launch a national revolution but the insurrection failed miserably. Units of the Munich
police force clashed with Nazi stormtroopers as they marched into the city center. The two
groups exchanged fire, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazi Party members and four police
officers. This attempted coup d'état came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Its ringleaders,
including Adolf Hitler, were arrested. Hitler was convicted of high treason and
sentenced to five years in prison. However, he only served eight months of his sentence.
After Hitler was released from jail, the SA was formally reestablished in February 1925. In 1926,
6,000 Storm Troopers participated in the Nazi Party rally in Weimar.
By 1930, however, the SA had grown to 60,000 members. With the devastating economic effects
of the Great Depression, the SA grew quickly, reaching 77,000 members by January 1931; 221,000
by November 1931; 445,000 by August 1932; and 3 million by April 1934,
once Hitler was in power. At this time, it significantly outnumbered the German army.
From 1927 to March 1931 Karl Ernst belonged to the supreme SA leadership in Munich.
As the SA grew, the organization continued to embrace violence.
Storm Troopers aggressively interfered with the meetings of opposing political parties,
fought in the streets with other paramilitaries, influenced elections, and intimidated Jews, Roma,
Communists, and Social Democrats—groups they believed were “enemies of Germany.” For example,
in March 1933 brownshirts in Königsburg ransacked the office of local Social Democrats,
beat one of the Social Democrats to death, and then used the office as a torture location.
Under Ernst Röhm, the SA not only grew, but also became much better organized. However,
Röhm’s position was weakened by his homosexuality and he was dependent on Hitler's personal support.
Röhm's appointment was opposed from the beginning by some in the SA who saw it
as cementing the subordination of the SA to the Nazi Party's political wing.
His homosexuality was seized upon by those who disagreed with the organizational reforms but
could not openly criticize Hitler without breaking with Nazism. Hitler said that the personal life
of a Nazi was only a concern for the party if it contradicted the fundamental principles of Nazism.
In 1931, the leader of the Berlin SA, Walther Stennes, rebelled against the SA leadership and
declared that he and his followers would "never serve under a notorious homosexual
like Röhm and his Pupenjungen meaning “male prostitutes". Among these so called
Röhm’s prostitutes” also belonged Karl Ernst. The internal opposition to Röhm intensified
in February 1931 when Hitler replaced Stennes with Paul Schulz, who promoted
two suspected homosexuals, Edmund Heines and Karl Ernst, within the Berlin SA. Rumor had
it that Ernst was only promoted because of an intimate relationship with Paul Röhrbein,
a friend of Röhm's who was not a member of the party or SA. Many Berlin SA personnel disagreed
with these appointments, complaining about the "Röhm-Röhrbein-Ernst Triple Alliance",
which was perceived as a homosexual clique. Karl Ernst was generally called
"Frau von Röhrbein" meaning “ Mrs. Röhrbein” because of his long-standing
relationship with Paul Röhrbein, who had helped him to rise within the party.
On the night of 26th of June 1931, a Nazi named Walter Bergmann was arrested at a Berlin pub where
he had found Ernst and Röhrbein together. Bergmann shouted, "Look at these parasites on the party,
these Pupenjungen, these damned sodomizers who let the party's reputation go to hell."
Even though Ernst gave his word of honor not to be homosexual, he was said to have
participated in orgies organized on yacht of Erik Hanussen, a Jewish charlatan and clairvoyant who
lent Karl Ernst as well as other high-ranking Nazis substantial sums of money but despite
Hanussen’s generosity, Ernst would participate in his murder which took place 2 years later.
On the evening of the 12th of September 1931, Karl Ernst, together with a radical Nazi antisemite,
Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorff organized a riot in Kurfürstendamm,
one of the most famous avenues in Berlin, during which about 1000 SA men physically attacked Jews
leaving the synagogue and passers-by with slogans such as "Jews, die" and "Beat the Jews dead!"
In December 1931 Ernst became an adjutant to the SA group in Berlin as an SA OberFührer
and from July 1932 to March 1933 he led the SA subgroup Berlin East.
After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came into power in January 1933. On the night of the 27th
of February 1933 the Reichstag building - burned down due to arson. The Nazi leadership and its
German Nationalist coalition partners exploited the fire to persuade President Paul von Hindenburg
that Communists were planning a violent uprising to derail Germany’s "national renewal" and that
emergency legislation was needed to prevent this. Commonly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree,
the resulting act “For the Protection of the People and State” abolished a number
of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship. The decree suspended the
right to assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other constitutional protections,
including all restraints on police investigations. It has been suggested that it was Karl Ernst who,
with a small party of stormtroopers, passed through a passage from the Palace of the President
of the Reichstag, and set the Reichstag building on fire on the night of 27 February 1933 but the
consensus of nearly all historians is that Marinus van der Lubbe was the one who set the fire.
After Adolf Hitler became a chancellor, many political leaders, including President Paul von
Hindenburg and Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, feared that the SA had become too powerful.
The SA continued to provide key support to the Nazi regime as it consolidated its power into a
dictatorship in 1933. However, the SA leadership had demands to “finish” the Nazi revolution.
Röhm’s plan was for the SA to absorb and replace the German military. This behavior became a source
of embarrassment and discomfort for Hitler in his dealings with the traditional German nationalist
elites. The SA leadership sought to remove the elites from power and replace them with fanatical
Nazis. However, Hitler, Nazi Party leadership, and the leadership of the SS, at the time a formation
of the SA, understood that the Nazi regime needed to work with the traditional elites as they would
need their support to consolidate power and prepare the nation for a war of expansion.
As early as April 1934, Himmler and Heydrich began to conspire with
Göring to persuade Hitler to eliminate Röhm. In June 1934, in preparation for the purge
known as the Night of the Long Knives, both Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich,
chief of the SS Security Service, assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest
that Röhm had been paid 12 million Reichs Marks, 60 million usd in today’s value, by the government
of France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on the
24th of June that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government.
At Hitler's direction, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich
drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed.
Meanwhile, President von Hindenburg, the leadership of the Reichswehr,
and Hitler’s conservative coalition partners, including Vice-Chancellor
Franz von Papen, issued warnings about the increasingly radical Nazi regime.
If the “revolutionary elements” of the Nazi regime were not brought under control, the army leaders
threatened to overthrow the Hitler government and place the country under martial law.
Despite radical rhetoric, neither Röhm nor his top commanders ever planned to
seize power in Germany. Hitler considered Röhm one of his few
friends and procrastinated over the decision. Tension, meanwhile,
increased towards the end of spring 1934. The plot against Röhm took on a more defined shape.
Hitler tasked Himmler and the SS with carrying out the purge. On the 28th of June Hitler
ordered Röhm to assemble the top SA leaders at a Bavarian spa in Bad Wiessee. SS units,
commanded by Dachau concentration camp commandant Theodor Eicke, surprised the SA leaders on the
morning of the 30th of June. They transported them to Munich’s Stadelheim prison. There,
SS men shot most of the SA leaders. Hitler remained indecisive about Röhm’s fate
until the 1st of July. On that day—on Hitler’s order—Eicke shot Röhm in his cell. All evidence
suggests that Röhm was loyal to Hitler until the very end, despite Nazi claims otherwise.
The SS murdered the top SA leaders both in Munich and around the country and it
also took the opportunity to eliminate several other political opponents such
as General Kurt von Schleicher - Hitler’s predecessor as Chancellor.
They mostly targeted right-wing nationalists,
as well as former supporters whom they believed betrayed the Nazis. Among those
the SS killed between the 30th of June and the 2nd of July was also Karl Ernst.
On the 30th of June, he planned to travel from Bremerhaven to Madeira on a ship,
where he intended to spend his honeymoon. On that day, when he wanted to board the
ship together with his bride and his friend Martin Kirschbaum, who had financed the passage for him,
he was arrested on the basis of an arrest warrant arriving from Berlin. Previously,
Ernst had been sought in Berlin in vain. After his arrest, he was brutally beaten and handed over to
an SS commando led by Kurt Gildisch, one of Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguards who together with his
men brutally tortured and interrogated Ernst. Gildisch together with Ernst then traveled to
Berlin in a special plane and after arriving at the central airport of Tempelhof, he was taken to
the SS barracks in Berlin. Karl Ernst was 29 years old when he was shot on the the 30th of June 1934
by a firing squad consisting of the members of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler which was Hitler's
personal bodyguard unit, responsible for guarding the Führer's person, offices, and residences.
His death certificate put the time of death at 9:37 am. His shooting had been reported
on the radio a few hours earlier as having been carried out. Since Ernst considered himself the
victim of an unfortunate mistake right up to the end, he died with the Nazi salute on his lips.
Although the assertion was made several times that Ernst's wife had also been murdered,
it is not correct. She was released from protective custody on the14th of
July 1934 and then lived in Berlin, dying in 1982.
At Hitler’s request, the German parliament declared the killings legal after the fact, based
on a false accusation that Röhm and his commanders had planned to overthrow the government.
In his speech to the Reichstag on the 13th of July justifying his actions,
Hitler alleged that both Schleicher and Röhm were traitors working in the pay of France.
This purge demonstrated the Nazi regime’s willingness to go outside of the law to
commit murder as an act of state for the perceived survival of the nation.
On the 1st of August 1934, one day before President Hindenburg's death,
Hitler’s cabinet passed the "Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich," which
stipulated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of the president – head of state - would
be abolished and its powers merged with chancellor - head of government - under the title of Führer.
On the second of August 1934, two hours after Hindenburg's death,
Hitler proclaimed himself the Führer of Germany and claimed absolute power.
There were no tears shed for Karl Ernst.
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