Night of the Long Knives, 1934

By 1934, tension had grown between the leadership of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, and conservative military and political elites whose support Hitler still required. SA chief Ernst Röhm sought greater power for his organisation, while opponents portrayed him as a threat to the army and the Nazi state.

Beginning on 30 June, Hitler’s government arrested and killed Röhm, other SA leaders and a wider group of political enemies. The purge strengthened Hitler’s control, reassured the army and demonstrated that murder could be presented as an act of state necessity without independent legal restraint.

A Truth to Lie For incorporates the purge into its Berlin espionage plot. The violence witnessed by Hans Beckendorff forces characters close to the regime to confront the difference between political ambition and complicity in organised terror.