Night of the Long Knives

June 21, 2004
Hitler's June 1934 purge of the Storm Troopers (the SA)—known as the Night of the Long Knives—did indeed change the world, eliminating SA head Ernst Röhm and other "enemies of the party" and consolidating Hitler's power. But the events of that night take up only a few chapters of Maracin's account. Much of the rest of the book describes the background of the Nazi Party's key players—Hitler, Göring, Himmler, for example—whose lives are already well known. The final section of the book details the last days of WWII. Maracin, a freelance writer who relies exclusively on secondary sources, is accurate in his account of events—as he points out, the Nazis were probably responsible for the Reichstag fire that later served as their excuse to launch the purge—but he fails to provide any new information or perspective, and his analysis is too often superficial. For example, the leading Nazis, he writes, "were essentially all losers" none of whom could "satisfactorily earn a living as a civilian for a sustained period of time." B&w photos.