Ernst Röhm

Ernst Röhm was a German army officer, early Nazi activist and leader of the Sturmabteilung, or SA. He envisioned the SA as the basis of a revolutionary mass army and pressed for social and military changes that alarmed conservative elites and the regular armed forces.

Adolf Hitler ordered Röhm’s arrest and execution during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. The purge destroyed the SA leadership and strengthened Hitler’s alliance with the army and traditional power structures.

Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts culminates in the 1934 purge associated with the Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler destroys rivals including Ernst Röhm. Through the Dodd family’s diaries, letters and relationships, Larson presents an eyewitness history of foreign observers slowly recognising the character of Nazi rule.