“Having obtained absolute power by the first revolution, Hitler proposed to build his Third Reich piecemeal with the counsel of conservative advisers. This policy did not meet with the approval of the revolutionary elements in the party, who were concentrated in the Storm Troops (Brown Shirts) detachments, and who could not conceal their chagrin when their leader ignored the socialistic parts of his program… The Storm Troopers frequently have been the source of trouble to Hitler. As a frankly revolutionary movement in its early days, the National Socialist cause attracted many officers of the old Imperial Army, who found their former occupation gone, and could not settle down to the humdrum pursuits of civil life – men such as Ernst Röhm, who wandered from one illegal anti-republican association after another…”
It wouldn’t take long for the press corps to understand that Hitler’s true intentions that evening were not simply to erase his debt to the Brown Shirts but to secure absolute political and military control throughout Germany. As for the body count, the total number of victims is heavily debated between historians; some estimates place the number in the hundreds.
