Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE BLOOD PURGE 765chief of police in Munich; Fritz von Krausser whom the King of Bavariahad ennobled for bravery; Hans Hayn, old Free Corps fighter from theRossbach unit, one of Rohm's most intimate friends; Peter vonHeydebreck, who had lost an arm in the World War, later fought againstthe Poles in Upper Silesia and in honor of whom a Silesian city hadbeen named Heydebreck; Group Leader Wilhelm Schmidt; StaffAdjutant Reiner; Group Leader Koch; Group Leader Lasch, BrigadeLeader Kopp, Standarte Leader Uhl . . . and many many others.The endless salvos under which his friends fell dead were probablythe last thing of which Rohm was conscious in this world. For thesecond time in eleven years he was locked up in a cell in Stadel-heimprison. He had spent a short time there in 1923-24, because he hadplanned and led a military mutiny and street fight which caused manyfatal casualties; but his life had not been at stake then, he was sure ofthat. To dispel the boredom which was the worst feature of thatimprisonment he had written poems in hexameters; one of these wasdedicated to Ernst Haug, Hitler's chauffeur, whose sister, Jenny, hadbeen deserted by the Fuhrer after a long-drawn and tender affair.Possibly because Haug had been upset about this, Rohm exhorted him:Always be faithful to Adolf Hitler, our friend and great leader! Let thecowards trample you; our triumph will be the brighter.Now he was reaping the fruits of his loyalty: he was again inStadelheim, and his prospects were much more terrifying than the firsttime. The death which Rohm now faced with certainty was undeniablyhis own work on which he had spent a life marked by daring, cunning,energy, blood-thirstiness, and faith. So this was the purpose for whichhe had originated the armed political party, given it his soldiers andweapons, won the favors of the powers that be for its leader, pushed himinto a decisive position shortly before the putsch I This was the purposefor which, after the first collapse and the long years of painful failures,he had rebuilt his 'Brown Popular Army,' without which Hitler wouldnever have triumphed — to be murdered in an obscure cell! AdolfHitler, his creature, had given orders to leave a gun on the table of hiscreator,