“Good. Assign a man to the station with a detail. Arrest them as they arrive. Execute them all.” He looked down at the spreading red stain on the marble floor. “And clean this mess up. Get rid of the ones that are here now.”
“Yes,
Hitler raised his hand in a hurried salute as he walked out the door. Heydrich took three men and went to the conference room where the six SA officers were under house arrest. He opened the doors leading to the courtyard and grabbed a young lieutenant by the arm and shoved him out the door.
“Heydrich, what on earth is happening?”
“You have been condemned to death by the Fuhrer.”
“Why, for God’s sakes? We are not guilty of anything!”
“The charge is treason.
Later in the day, Hitler sat behind his desk in Brown House, arms stretched out and resting on his desk. In front of him was Eicke’s death list. Vierhaus had been checking off the names throughout the day.
Himmler had ordered one hundred and fifty SA cadets and another hundred brownshirt leaders taken to the old military jail outside Berlin and the death squads went to work. Every fifteen minutes, five storm troopers or cadets were led from their cells and marched or dragged screaming to the red-brick prison wall outside. Their shirts were torn off, a circle was marked on their chests, and they were executed by ten SS sharpshooters. That grisly work done, the bodies were tossed into metal-lined meat trucks and hauled to a small village down the road from the barracks. There the bodies were cremated and the ashes scattered in the wind.
Check..
A Bavarian who had helped foil the Beer Hall Putsch eleven years before but was opposed to the annexation of Bavaria to the rest of Germany, was taken out into a swamp and beaten to death with a pickax.
Check.
A music critic who was an outspoken socialist was hanged in his basement and shot four times. His death was listed as a suicide.
Check.
An ex-storm trooper named Grunstadt, who had once been Hitler’s personal bodyguard before becoming
“This is a mistake,” he screamed. “Call the Fuhrer. I was his bodyguard!”
“I am
They threw him in a small lake and smoked cigarettes as they watched him drown.
Check.
General Kurt von Bredow, who had been an aide to General Schleicher during the Beer Hall Putsch, left his house at seven thirty to take his dachshund, Gretchen, for her morning walk. He carried the puppy outside and as he stooped down to attach the leash to her collar, a black Mercedes pulled up in front of the building.
“General von Bredow?” one of them asked.
“Yes?”
The three men raised their pistols and fired in unison. A dozen bullets ripped through von Bredow’s body.
Check.
Gustav von Kahr, seventy-three, who had also suppressed the 1923 putsch, was found in a swamp near Munich, hacked to death with a pickax.
Check.
Check..
Check.
By dusk, the SS death squads led by Goring and Himmler in Berlin had crossed over 1,500 names from Eicke’s list. The Munich operation had slaughtered over 300 more. Before nightfall, almost every name on Eicke’s list was crossed out.
Hitler leaned back in his chair and nodded slowly to Vierhaus.
“Done and done,” he said with relief.
Only Rohm was left.
In the basement of Stadelheim prison, Rohm sat on an iron cot. He was sweating heavily and had taken off his shirt. His barrel chest was black with wet, matted hair. He looked up as the cell door swung open and Vierhaus entered. He handed Rohm copies of newspapers with sketchy accounts of Hummingbird. He laid a loaded pistol on top of the paper.
“The Fuhrer gives you one more chance to make your peace,” Vierhaus said.
Rohm looked up at Vierhaus and laughed.
