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

766 DER FUEHRERfor him to commit suicide with — he had been given ten minutes to dothis. Rohm declared that 'Adolf himself should do the dirty work,' andlet the ten minutes pass. Then the door opened, and from outside bulletswere pumped into the cell until Rohm was dead. He was buried in theprison yard; the exact spot is unknown.While this went on, about one hundred and fifty top S.A. leadersawaited their death at Lichterfelde. They had been locked up in a coalcellar of the Cadet School; one of them who escaped by accident hasprovided us with an account of the events, from which the followingdetails are drawn.At intervals of about fifteen minutes, four names were called out; thismeant death for the four men named within a few minutes. The mood ofthe prisoners was not really dejected. Most of them realized that thesewere definitely their last hours of life. The whole thing lasted twentyfourhours, and there was a night's pause. It took all that time to slay thehundred and fifty men, except for five or six who were pardoned at thelast minute. Many of them tried to be gay, and sometimes succeeded; atcertain moments the whole group was in a solemn frame of mind; butwith one exception there were no nervous breakdowns.The prisoners had a completely false idea of the general situation andthe reasons for which they were being murdered. It did not occur tothem that they were to be shot by Hitler's orders; on the contrary, theybelieved that their supreme Leader was imprisoned like themselves,perhaps already dead, a victim of the 'reactionaries' among whom theycounted Goring and Goebbels.These doomed men in their coal cellar had a curious instinct fordestiny. Whose name would be called out next, whose turn was it to beslaughtered? They tried to guess; in three or four cases they guessedright. From a window in the cellar those who still remained behind sawtheir comrades being led to a wall across the yard. Those who werebeing marched away kept their eyes on the window. The men in thecellar looked into the eyes of their departing comrade; this was a lastcharitable service which they rendered each other by silent agreement, acomforting exchange of glances during the last two minutes thatseparated life from death.The victims were stood in a row against the wall. An S.S. man