They were both surprised by the kiss and where it led. Willi lay on Lola’s bed later, his head resting on his arms. He watched Lola’s silhouette on the curtain as she washed herself at the sink. She stooped and rose and turned, raising her arms and legs. She’s dancing, a strange, exotic, wonderful dance, he thought, as he fell asleep.
Operation Hummingbird
The Black Parrot Cabaret dance floor was filled with gyrating, sweaty dancers. The orchestra was playing an uptempo version of ‘42nd Street.’ Storm trooper Lieutenant Walter Kempf was wriggling his hands into the pants of a pretty boy named Bobby, when the hard steel of a Luger on his neck stopped him cold.
An hour later Walter found himself being marched into a walled courtyard with other men who had been rounded up in the city. Some wore brown uniforms; others were in suits or pajamas or whatever they had been wearing when they were arrested. Walter wore a tuxedo. The men were lined up in front of a brick wall. They weren’t the first; you could smell the spent gunpowder in the air.
Walter shouted his last words, ‘Heil Hitler!’ just as the command ‘Fire!’ came. The bodies were dragged away, and the next group of men was lined up and shot. It went on that way through much of the night.
In the early morning as the rising sun was burning away the fog, a half dozen black cars sped into Bad Wiessee, a picturesque village halfway to the Austrian border. Adolf Hitler stepped from the lead car while SS men spilled out of the others and ran into the Hanslbauer Hotel.
Ernst Röhm and his comrades were mostly sleeping after a night of carousing. They were torn from their beds and dragged into the garden where most were shot. For the Führer their homosexuality was yet another abomination that made this action, Operation Hummingbird, necessary.
Röhm was taken back to Munich. ‘I’ve been with the Führer longer than any of you,’ he shouted. ‘If I’m to be killed, let Adolf do it himself.’ Instead he was offered a pistol. When he refused to do the right thing, it was done for him. All over Germany Hitler’s enemies were being arrested and executed.
Hitler had decided it was time to rein in his storm troopers. These thugs and brawlers had played a big part in bringing him to power, but there were too many of them now, and they were out of control. What is more, Ernst Röhm, the head storm trooper, had been pushing for a ‘second revolution.’
‘The Party needs to take on the capitalists,’ he said. ‘To do more for working people. After all, we’re National Socialists, aren’t we?’ His followers cheered. But Hitler needed the capitalists – he needed their money so there wouldn’t be any socialism.
Röhm also wanted to get the regular army under his control. ‘The damned generals,’ he reminded Hitler, ‘they’re always getting in our way. They hate you. We need to come down hard on them.’
‘I know, Ernst,’ said the Führer.
‘They’re treacherous, arrogant shitheads, Adi. You’ve never trusted them. Believe me, they’re plotting your downfall.’ He and Hitler had been friends since the very beginning, so he could talk to the Führer that way.
‘Ernst, I said I know! But you can’t seem to understand that I need the generals on my side. If they wanted to, they could turn things against me in a minute.’
‘You’ve heard what they call you, haven’t you? “The Bohemian corporal?”’
‘Damn it, Ernst, that’s enough!’ Röhm never knew when to shut up.
Adolf Hitler had been chancellor for barely a year. His hold on power was shaky. If he was going to survive, now was the moment to consolidate his power. Having the army high command behind him was essential. Unfortunately for Röhm, he was not.
Operation Hummingbird was a stunning success. Several thousands of Hitler’s enemies, great and small, were done away with in one night. And amazingly, Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s doddering president, who had been contemptuous of Hitler, now showered him with praise and thanked him for his courage and decisiveness in this murderous undertaking. Even General von Blomberg, Hitler’s defense minister, grateful that his rival Röhm was out of the picture, congratulated the Führer and swore his allegiance and the army’s.
Willi heard about the killings on the BBC and then from Bergemann. Willi might have been a target if they had known where to find him. Bergemann was shaken. This was how those who got in Hitler’s way were going to be dealt with from now on.
The killings were on the front pages of newspapers all over Germany. Margarete Horvath lowered the paper she had been reading and turned to her husband. ‘What does it mean, Benno? How is this even possible here in Germany?’
Benno Horvath stood gazing out the tall window at Munich, the city he loved but no longer understood. In the small park across the street the magnolias were in bloom. He listened to the sound of children laughing as they chased one another about. Red, white, and black Nazi flags fluttered in the summer breeze. The sun was warm on his face and the same breeze that riffled the flags lifted the curtains beside him. For a moment he had the sensation that it was he and not the
