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Carniola

[[File:Borders of the Historical Habsburgian Lands in the Republic of Slovenia.png|thumb|right|300px|Traditional regions of Slovenia. 1. Littoral

2. Carniola: 2a Upper, 2b Inner, 2c Lower

3. Carinthia

4. Styria

5. Prekmurje]] Carniola (Kranjska;, Krain; Carniola; Krajna) is a historical region that comprised parts of present-day Slovenia. Although as a whole it does not exist anymore, Slovenes living within the former borders of the region still tend to identify with its traditional parts Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola (with the sub-part of White Carniola), and to a lesser degree with Inner Carniola. In 1991, 47% of the population of Slovenia lived within the borders of the former Duchy of Carniola.

Overview
The March of Carniola was a state of the Holy Roman Empire, established as an immediate territory in the 11th century. From the second half of the 13th century it was ruled by the Habsburgs and its capital was Ljubljana (Laibach); previous overlords had their seats in Kranj (Krainburg) and Kamnik (Stein), which are therefore sometimes referred to as its earlier capitals. In the 14th century the Duchy of Carniola was declared, a status which was formally recognised in the 16th century. As a hereditary possession of the Habsburgs (one of the so-called Erblande), Carniola was part of the Austrian Circle of the Empire from the early 16th century. Informally it was part of Inner Austria. It was subdivided into Upper, Lower, and Inner Carniola.

In 1804 it became part of the newly established Austrian Empire and in 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved. In 1809 it was ceded to the First French Empire, becoming part of the Illyrian Provinces; it was returned to Austria in 1815, forming part of the Kingdom of Illyria. In 1849 Illyria was dissolved and Carniola became a crown land in its own right; the three traditional subdivisions were also abolished. In 1867 it became part of Cisleithania, the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary. It remained so until 1918, when it seceded as part of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, becoming part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia); it ceased to exist de jure with the passing of the Vidovdan Constitution in 1921.

Nowadays, its territory (in the extent at its dissolution) is almost entirely located in Slovenia, except for a small part in Italy, around Fusine in Valromana. Carniola in its final form, established in 1815, encompassed 9904 km2. In 1914, before the beginning of World War I, it had a population of slightly under 530,000 inhabitants, of whom 95% were Slovenes.

Geography
The region was crossed by the Julian and Karavanken Alps. The highest mountain peaks are Nanos, 4200 ft; Vremščica, 3360 ft; Snežnik, 5900 ft; and Triglav, 9300 ft. The main rivers were the Sava, Tržič Bistrica, Kokra, Kamnik Bistrica, Sora, Ljubljanica, Mirna, Krka, and Kolpa rivers. Notable lakes included Black Lake (Črno jezero), Lake Bohinj, Lake Bled, and Lake Cerknica. Nearby is the Ljubljana Marsh, and a series of hot and mineral springs which can be found at Dolenjske Toplice, Šmarješke Toplice, and Izlake.

Agriculture thrived more in Upper Carniola than in Lower Carniola. The Vipava Valley was especially famous for its wine and vegetables, and for its mild climate. The average temperature was 56 °F in spring, 77 °F in summer, 59 °F in autumn, and 26 °F in winter.

In 1910 the main railroads were the Southern, Prince Rudolf, Bohinj, Kamnik, Lower Carniola, and Vrhnika railroads. The principal cities and towns in the region were Kamnik, Kranj, Tržič, Vrhnika, Vipava, Idrija, Turjak, Ribnica, Metlika, Novo Mesto, and Vače.

Overview
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Lombards settled in Carniola, followed by Slavs around the sixth century AD. As a part of the Holy Roman Empire, the area was successively ruled by Bavarian, Frankish and local nobility, and eventually by the Austrian Habsburgs almost continuously from 1335 to 1918, though beset by many raids from the Ottomans and rebellions by local residents against Habsburg rule from the 15th to the 17th centuries. From about 900 AD until the 20th century, Carniola's ruling classes and urban areas spoke German, while the peasantry spoke Slovene.

The capital of Carniola, originally located at Kranj (Krainburg), was briefly moved to Kamnik (Stein) and finally to the current capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana (Laibach).

Chronology

 * Fourth century: Germanic settlements of Herules (or Heruli).
 * Fifth century: Germanic settlements of Langobards (or Lombards).
 * Sixth century: Slovene settlements.
 * Eighth century: Carniola a part of the Empire of Charlemagne.
 * 10th century: Carniola a separate country.
 * 1278: Death of Ottokar II of Bohemia. Carniola absorbed in the Habsburg dominions.
 * 14th century: The province under Albert III.
 * 15th–16th centuries: Ravages of the Ottomans.
 * 1527–1564: Progress of the Reformation in Carniola.
 * 1564: Death of Ferdinand I. Carniola under the Archduke Charles. Religious persecutions begin.
 * 1763: Political administration of "Inner Austria" centralized at Graz.
 * 1790: Accession of Leopold II. Partial revival of autonomy.
 * 1797: First French invasion.
 * 1805: Second French invasion.
 * 1809: Treaty of Schönbrunn. Carniola under French rule.
 * 1814: Congress of Vienna. Carniola restored to Austria.

Antiquity and Middle Ages

Before the coming of the Romans (c. 200 BC), the Taurisci dwelt in the north of Carniola, the Pannonians in the southeast, the Iapodes or Carni, a Celtic tribe, in the southwest.

Carniola formed part of the Roman province of Pannonia; the northern part was joined to Noricum, the south-western and south-eastern parts and the city of Aemona to Venice and Istria. In the time of Augustus all the region from Aemona to the Kolpa River (Culpa) belonged to the province of Savia.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476), Carniola was incorporated into Odoacer's Kingdom of Italy, and then in 493, under Theodoric, it formed part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom. Between the upper Sava and the Soča rivers lived the Carni, and towards the end of the sixth century Slavs settled the region called by Latin writers Carnia, or Carniola meaning 'little Carnia'; i.e., part of greater Carnia. The Latin name was later borrowed into Slavic, becoming Kranjska, and into German as Chrainmark, Krain.

The new inhabitants, to whom modern historiography frequently refers to as Alpine Slavs, were subjected to the Avars, but around 623 they joined the Slavic tribal union of Samo. After Samo's death in AD 658, they fell again under the Avar rule, but most probably enjoyed partial autonomy.

March of Carniola
Carniola was governed by the Franks about the year 788, and was Christianized by missionaries from the Patriarchate of Aquileia and others. When Charlemagne established the margraviate of Friuli, he added to it a part of Carniola. After the division of Friuli, it became an independent margraviate, having its own Slavic margrave residing at Kranj, subject to the governor of Bavaria at first, and after 976 to the Dukes of Carinthia. Henry IV gave it to the Patriarch of Aquileia (1071) and it formed part of the Patriarchal State of Friuli.

Several sources from the High Middle Ages suggest that there was a common Carantanian (that is, Carinthian) identity that slowly vanished after the 14th century and was replaced by a regional Carniolan identity.

In the Middle Ages the Church held much property in Carniola, and thus in 974 in Upper and Lower Carniola the Bishop of Freising became in 974 a feudal lord of the town of Škofja Loka, the Bishop of Brixen held Bled and possessions in the Bohinj Valley, and the Bishop of Lavant received Mokronog.

Among secular potentates, the Dukes of Meran, Gorizia, Babenberg, and Zilli held possessions given to them in fief by the patriarchs of Aquileia. The dukes governed the province for nearly half a century.

Finally Carniola was given in fief with the consent of the patriarch to Frederick II of Austria, who obtained the title of duke in 1245. Frederick was succeeded by Ulrich III, Duke of Carinthia, who married Agnes of Andechs, a relative of the patriarch, and he endowed the churches and monasteries, established the government mint at the town of Kostanjevica, and finally (in 1268) willed to Ottokar II, King of Bohemia, all his possessions and the government of Carinthia and Carniola.

Duchy of Carniola
Ottokar was defeated by Rudolph I of Germany, and at the meeting at Augsburg in 1282, he gave in fief to his sons Albrecht and Rudolf the province of Carniola, but it was leased to Meinhard, count of Gorizia-Tirol. Duke Henry of Carinthia claimed Carniola; and the Dukes of Austria asserted their claim as successors to the Bohemian kingdom. When Henry died 1335 Jan, King of Bohemia, renounced his claims, and Albrecht, Duke of Austria, received Carniola; it was proclaimed a duchy by Rudolf IV, in 1364. Emperor Frederick III united Upper, Lower, and Central Carniola as Metlika and Pivka into one duchy. The union of the dismembered parts was completed by 1607.

French Intermezzo
French revolutionary troops occupied Carniola in 1797, and from 1805 to 1806. Under the Treaty of Vienna, Carniola became part of the Illyrian provinces of France (1809–1814), with Ljubljana as its capital, and Carniola formed a part of the new territory from 1809 to 1813. The defeat of Napoleon restored Carniola to Austrian Emperor Francis I, with larger boundaries, but at the extinction of the Illyrian Kingdom Carniola was confined to the limits outlined at the Congress of Vienna, 1815. From 1816 to 1849 Carniola was part of the Austrian Kingdom of Illyria with capital in Ljubljana.

Ecclesiastical history
In early Christian times the duchy was under the jurisdiction of the metropolitans of Aquileia (who became Patriarchs), Syrmium, and Salona. In consequence of the immigration of the pagan Slovenes, this arrangement was not a lasting one. After they had embraced Christianity in the seventh and eighth centuries Charlemagne conferred the major part of Carniola on the Patriarchate of Aquileia, and the remainder on the Diocese of Trieste. In 1100 that patriarchate was divided into five archdeaconries, of which Krain was one.

The diocese of Ljubljana or Laibach was established by Emperor Frederick III on 6 December 1461. It was directly subject to the pope. This was confirmed by a Bull of Pope Pius II, 10 September 1462. The new diocese consisted of part of Upper Carniola, two parishes in Lower Carniola, and a portion of Lower Styria and Carinthia; the remaining portion of Carniola was attached to Aquileia, later on to Gorizia and Trieste. At the redistribution of dioceses (1787 to 1791) not all the parishes in Carniola were included in the Diocese of Ljubljana, but this was accomplished in 1833, by taking two deaneries from the Diocese of Trieste, one from Gorizia, and one parish from the Diocese of Lavant, so as to include all the territory within the political boundaries of the crownland.

Austrian administration
The Austrian Empire reorganized the territory in 1849 as a duchy and a Cisleithanian crownland in Austria-Hungary known as the Duchy of Carniola. It was bounded on the north by Carinthia, on the north-east by Styria, on the south-east and south by Croatia, and on the west by Trieste, Goritza, and Istria; with area of 3,857 sqmi and population of 510,000. The capital, Ljubljana, was the see of a prince-bishop, population, 40,000; it was known to the Romans as Aemona, and was destroyed by Obri in the sixth century. Carniola was divided into Upper Carniola (Slovenian name: Gorenjska), Lower Carniola (Slovenian: Dolenjska), and Inner Carniola (Slovenian: Notranjska). Politically the province was divided into eleven districts consisting of 359 municipalities; the provincial capital was the residence of the imperial governor. The districts were: Kamnik, Kranj, Radovljica, the neighbourhood of Ljubljana, Logatec, Postojna, Litija, Krsko, Novo Mesto, Crnomelj, and Gotschee or Kocevje. There were 31 judicial circuits.

The duchy was constituted by rescript of 20 December 1860, and by imperial patent of 26 February 1861, modified by legislation of 21 December 1867, granting power to the home parliament to enact all laws not reserved to the imperial diet, at which it was represented by eleven delegates, of whom two elected by the landowners, three by the cities, towns, commercial and industrial boards, five by the village communes, and one by a fifth curia by secret ballot, every duly registered male twenty-four years of age has the right to vote. The home legislature consisted of a single chamber of thirty-seven members, among whom the prince-bishop sits ex-officio. The emperor convened the legislature, and it is presided over by the governor. The landed interests elected ten members, the cities and towns eight, the commercial and industrial boards two, the village communes sixteen. In 1907, instead of these rules, universal and equal suffrage for all men was introduced. The business of the chamber was restricted to legislating on agriculture, public and charitable institutions, administration of communes, church and school affairs, the transportation and housing of soldiers in war and during manoeuvres, and other local matters. The land budget of 1901 amounted to 3,573,280 crowns ($714,656).

Modern era
In 1918, the duchy ceased to exist and its territory became part of the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and subsequently part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). The western part of the duchy, with the towns of Postojna, Ilirska Bistrica, Idrija, and Šturje, was annexed to Italy in 1920, but was subsequently also included in Yugoslavia in 1947. Since 1991, the region has been part of an independent Slovenia.

title: Carniola


text:
Doric order

The Doric order is one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of the columns. Originating in the western Doric region of Greece, it is the earliest and, in its essence, the simplest of the orders, though still with complex details in the entablature above.

The Greek Doric column was fluted, and had no base, dropping straight into the stylobate or platform on which the temple or other building stood. The capital was a simple circular form, with some mouldings, under a square cushion that is very wide in early versions, but later more restrained. Above a plain architrave, the complexity comes in the frieze, where the two features originally unique to the Doric, the triglyph and gutta, are skeuomorphic memories of the beams and retaining pegs of the wooden constructions that preceded stone Doric temples. In stone they are purely ornamental.

The relatively uncommon Roman and Renaissance Doric retained these, and often introduced thin layers of moulding or further ornament, as well as often using plain columns. More often they used versions of the Tuscan order, elaborated for nationalistic reasons by Italian Renaissance writers, which is in effect a simplified Doric, with un-fluted columns and a simpler entablature with no triglyphs or guttae. The Doric order was much used in Greek Revival architecture from the 18th century onwards; often earlier Greek versions were used, with wider columns and no bases to them.

The ancient architect and architectural historian Vitruvius associates the Doric with masculine proportions (the Ionic representing the feminine). It is also normally the cheapest of the orders to use. When the three orders are superposed, it is usual for the Doric to be at the bottom, with the Ionic and then the Corinthian above, and the Doric, as "strongest", is often used on the ground floor below another order in the storey above.

Greek
In their original Greek version, Doric columns stood directly on the flat pavement (the stylobate) of a temple without a base. With a height only four to eight times their diameter, the columns were the most squat of all the classical orders; their vertical shafts were fluted with 20 parallel concave grooves, each rising to a sharp edge called an arris. They were topped by a smooth capital that flared from the column to meet a square abacus at the intersection with the horizontal beam (architrave) that they carried.

The Parthenon has the Doric design columns. It was most popular in the Archaic Period (750–480 BC) in mainland Greece, and also found in Magna Graecia (southern Italy), as in the three temples at Paestum. These are in the Archaic Doric, where the capitals spread wide from the column compared to later Classical forms, as exemplified in the Parthenon.

Pronounced features of both Greek and Roman versions of the Doric order are the alternating triglyphs and metopes. The triglyphs are decoratively grooved with two vertical grooves ("tri-glyph") and represent the original wooden end-beams, which rest on the plain architrave that occupies the lower half of the entablature. Under each triglyph are peglike "stagons" or "guttae" (literally: drops) that appear as if they were hammered in from below to stabilize the post-and-beam (trabeated) construction. They also served to "organize" rainwater runoff from above. The spaces between the triglyphs are the "metopes". They may be left plain, or they may be carved in low relief.

Spacing the triglyphs
The spacing of the triglyphs caused problems which took some time to resolve. A triglyph is centered above every column, with another (or sometimes two) between columns, though the Greeks felt that the corner triglyph should form the corner of the entablature, creating an inharmonious mismatch with the supporting column.

The architecture followed rules of harmony. Since the original design probably came from wooden temples and the triglyphs were real heads of wooden beams, every column had to bear a beam which lay across the centre of the column. Triglyphs were arranged regularly; the last triglyph was centred upon the last column (illustration, right: I.). This was regarded as the ideal solution which had to be reached.

Changing to stone cubes instead of wooden beams required full support of the architrave load at the last column. At the first temples the final triglyph was moved (illustration, right: II.), still terminating the sequence, but leaving a gap disturbing the regular order. Even worse, the last triglyph was not centered with the corresponding column. That "archaic" manner was not regarded as a harmonious design. The resulting problem is called the doric corner conflict. Another approach was to apply a broader corner triglyph (III.) but was not really satisfying.

Because the metopes are somewhat flexible in their proportions, the modular space between columns ("intercolumniation") can be adjusted by the architect. Often the last two columns were set slightly closer together (corner contraction), to give a subtle visual strengthening to the corners. That is called the "classic" solution of the corner conflict (IV.). Triglyphs could be arranged in a harmonic manner again, and the corner was terminated with a triglyph, though the final triglyph and column were often not centered. Roman aesthetics did not demand that a triglyph form the corner, and filled it with a half (demi-) metope, allowing triglyphs centered over columns (illustration, right, V.).

Temples
There are many theories as to the origins of the Doric order in temples. The term Doric is believed to have originated from the Greek-speaking Dorian tribes. One belief is that the Doric order is the result of early wood prototypes of previous temples. With no hard proof and the sudden appearance of stone temples from one period after the other, this becomes mostly speculation. Another belief is that the Doric was inspired by the architecture of Egypt. With the Greeks being present in Ancient Egypt as soon the 7th-century BC, it is possible that Greek traders were inspired by the structures they saw in what they would consider foreign land. Finally, another theory states that the inspiration for the Doric came from Mycenae. At the ruins of this civilization lies architecture very similar to the Doric order. It is also in Greece, which would make it very accessible.

Some of the earliest examples of the Doric order come from the 7th-century BC. These examples include the Temple of Apollo at Corinth and the Temple of Zeus at Nemea. Other examples of the Doric order include the three 6th-century BC temples at Paestum in southern Italy, a region called Magna Graecia, which was settled by Greek colonists. Compared to later versions, the columns are much more massive, with a strong entasis or swelling, and wider capitals.

The Temple of the Delians is a "peripteral" Doric order temple, the largest of three dedicated to Apollo on the island of Delos. It was begun in 478 BC and never completely finished. During their period of independence from Athens, the Delians reassigned the temple to the island of Poros. It is "hexastyle", with six columns across the pedimented end and thirteen along each long face. All the columns are centered under a triglyph in the frieze, except for the corner columns. The plain, unfluted shafts on the columns stand directly on the platform (the stylobate), without bases. The recessed "necking" in the nature of fluting at the top of the shafts and the wide cushionlike echinus may be interpreted as slightly self-conscious archaising features, for Delos is Apollo's ancient birthplace. However, the similar fluting at the base of the shafts might indicate an intention for the plain shafts to be capable of wrapping in drapery.

A classic statement of the Greek Doric order is the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, built about 447 BC. The contemporary Parthenon, the largest temple in classical Athens, is also in the Doric order, although the sculptural enrichment is more familiar in the Ionic order: the Greeks were never as doctrinaire in the use of the Classical vocabulary as Renaissance theorists or Neoclassical architects. The detail, part of the basic vocabulary of trained architects from the later 18th century onwards, shows how the width of the metopes was flexible: here they bear the famous sculptures including the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs.

Roman
In the Roman Doric version, the height of the entablature has been reduced. The endmost triglyph is centered over the column rather than occupying the corner of the architrave. The columns are slightly less robust in their proportions. Below their caps, an astragal molding encircles the column like a ring. Crown moldings soften transitions between frieze and cornice and emphasize the upper edge of the abacus, which is the upper part of the capital.

Roman Doric columns also have moldings at their bases and stand on low square pads or are even raised on plinths. In the Roman Doric mode, columns are not usually fluted; indeed, fluting is rare. Since the Romans did not insist on a triglyph covered corner, now both columns and triglyphs could be arranged equidistantly again and centered together. The architrave corner needed to be left "blank", which is sometimes referred to as a half, or demi-, metope (illustration, V., in Spacing the Columns above).

The Roman architect Vitruvius, following contemporary practice, outlined in his treatise the procedure for laying out constructions based on a module, which he took to be one half a column's diameter, taken at the base. An illustration of Andrea Palladio's Doric order, as it was laid out, with modules identified, by Isaac Ware, in The Four Books of Palladio's Architecture (London, 1738) is illustrated at Vitruvian module.

According to Vitruvius, the height of Doric columns is six or seven times the diameter at the base. This gives the Doric columns a shorter, thicker look than Ionic columns, which have 8:1 proportions. It is suggested that these proportions give the Doric columns a masculine appearance, whereas the more slender Ionic columns appear to represent a more feminine look. This sense of masculinity and femininity was often used to determine which type of column would be used for a particular structure.

Later periods reviving classical architecture used the Roman Doric until Neoclassical architecture arrived in the later 18th century. This followed the first good illustrations and measured descriptions of Greek Doric buildings. The most influential, and perhaps the earliest, use of the Doric in Renaissance architecture was in the circular Tempietto by Donato Bramante (1502 or later), in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome.

Modern
Before Greek Revival architecture grew, initially in England, in the 18th century, the Greek or elaborated Roman Doric order had not been very widely used, though "Tuscan" types of round capitals were always popular, especially in less formal buildings. It was sometimes used in military contexts, for example the Royal Hospital Chelsea (1682 onwards, by Christopher Wren). The first engraved illustrations of the Greek Doric order dated to the mid-18th century. Its appearance in the new phase of Classicism brought with it new connotations of high-minded primitive simplicity, seriousness of purpose, noble sobriety.

In Germany it suggested a contrast with the French, and in the United States republican virtues. In a customs house, Greek Doric suggested incorruptibility; in a Protestant church a Greek Doric porch promised a return to an untainted early church; it was equally appropriate for a library, a bank or a trustworthy public utility. The revived Doric did not return to Sicily until 1789, when a French architect researching the ancient Greek temples designed an entrance to the Botanical Gardens in Palermo.

Examples

 * Ancient Greek, Archaic
 * Temple of Artemis, Corfu, the earliest known stone Doric temple
 * Temple of Hera, Olympia
 * Delphi, temple of Apollo
 * The three temples at Paestum, Italy
 * Valle dei Templi, Agrigento, Temple of Juno, Agrigento and others
 * Temple of Aphaea

 * Ancient Greek, Classical
 * Temple of Zeus, Olympia
 * Temple of Hephaestus
 * Bassae, Temple of Apollo
 * Parthenon, Athens
 * Sounion, Temple of Poseidon

 * Renaissance and Baroque
 * The Tempietto by Donato Bramante, in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome
 * Palace of Charles V, Granada, 1527, circular arcade in the courtyard, under Ionic in the upper storey
 * Basilica Palladiana, in Vicenza, Andrea Palladio, 1546 on, arcade under Ionic above
 * Valladolid Cathedral, Juan de Herrera, begun 1589

 * Neoclassical and Greek Revival
 * Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1788
 * The Grange, Northington, 1804
 * Lord Hill's Column, Shrewsbury, England, 1814, 133 ft high
 * Neue Wache, Berlin, 1816
 * Royal High School, Edinburgh, completed 1829
 * Walhalla, Regensburg, Bavaria, 1842
 * Propylaea, Munich, 1854

 * United States
 * Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, 1824
 * Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, 1827, pedimented temple front with ten columns
 * Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial in Put-in-Bay, Ohio, is the world's tallest and most massive Doric column at 352 ft.
 * Harding Tomb in Marion, Ohio, is a circular Greek temple design with Doric columns.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Doric order


text:
Doric

Doric may refer to:

 * Doric, of or relating to the Dorians of ancient Greece
 * Doric Greek, the dialects of the Dorians
 * Doric order, a style of ancient Greek architecture
 * Doric mode, a synonym of Dorian mode, in musical scales
 * Doric dialect (Scotland)
 * Doric Club, a paramilitary organization which fought against the Lower Canada Rebellion
 * Doric Park, a park in Liverpool, England
 * Doric Organ, a 1960s Combo organ produced in Italy
 * Doric String Quartet, a string quartet based in the UK
 * SS Doric (1883), a British ocean liner operated by White Star Line
 * SS Doric (1923), another ship operated by White Star Line

title: Doric


text:
Talk:Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

Comment
Shouldn't this page have an English title, rather than a German one? Something like German Armed Forces High Command? I think that's the Wikipedia naming convention. jheijmans

 * While this is the general Wikipedia policy, I don't think it's justified in this case, as OKW is a the term used in most professional literature. Therefore, it appears to me that choosing the less known and less easily identifiable name is a disservice to Wikipedia. After all, if we don't translate such proper names as Entscheidungsproblem, I see no reason why we should translate OKW. --Uriyan

OK, I didn't know OKW was an accepted term (though I know words like Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe are - translating them will also be rather meaningless: "Army" and "Airforce"). jheijmans

 * Right. In fact, as response to the first comment, I was going to name specifically Luftwaffe. Kriegsmarine is another good example. In any case, as Uriyan said, it is the proper example. Also, take note of all the links on the other-language Wikipedias. They all link to another page of the exact same name (except the link to the Georgian one). D. F. Schmidt 01:23, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Regardless it needs translations within the texts. I prefer to see the english, with the German in parens, and even if it's wikilinked to a German title, use the english name.  But it is a good start. Auntieruth55 (talk) 00:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

High command of the armed forces
My German is far from perfect, but I believe "High Command of the Armed Forces" is closer to the original German than "Supreme Command of the Armed Forces". The former translation is reliably sourced and a search on Google for "High command of the armed forces Wehrmacht" turns up 1,500,000 results and "Supreme command of the armed forces Wehrmacht" turns up 200,000 results. I therefore took the liberty of changing the translation. Nicolas Perrault (talk) 18:30, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

SS was declared a criminal organization and adding more Info for the International Military Tribunal judgement
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/waffen-ss http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judorg.asp#ss Conclusions: The SS was utilised for the purposes which were criminal under the Charter involving the persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labour programme and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war. The defendant Kaltenbrunner was a member of the SS implicated in these activities. In dealing with the SS the Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS including the members of the Allgemeine SS, members of the Waffen SS, members of the SS Totenkopf Verbaende and the members of any of the different police forces who were members of the SS. The Tribunal does not include the so-called SS riding units. The Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsfuehrer SS (commonly known as the SD) is dealt with in the Tribunal's Judgment on the Gestapo and SD. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jack90s15 (talk • contribs) 03:39, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

October 2019 edit
Preserving here by providing this link; my rationale was: "remove 3rd level sub-departments that are not independently notable". K.e.coffman (talk) 21:22, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Oberkommando der Wehrmacht


text:
Multi-sport event

A multi-sport event is an organized sporting event, often held over multiple days, featuring competition in many different sports among organized teams of athletes from (mostly) nation-states. The first major, modern, multi-sport event of international significance was the Olympic Games, first held in modern times in 1896 in Athens, Greece, and inspired by the Ancient Olympic Games, one of a number of such events held in antiquity. Most modern multi-sport events have the same basic structure. Games are held over the course of several days in and around a "host city", which changes for each competition. Countries send national teams to each competition, consisting of individual athletes and teams that compete in a wide variety of sports. Athletes or teams are awarded gold, silver or bronze medals for first, second and third place respectively. Each game is generally held every four years, though some are annual competitions.

History
The Ancient Olympic Games, first held in 776 BC, was the precursor to the Modern Olympic Games, although its first edition only featured a footrace and the number of sporting competitions expanded at later editions.

There were several other "games" held in Europe in the classical era:

 * Panhellenic Games:
 * The Pythian Games (founded 527 BC) held in Delphi every four years
 * The Nemean Games (founded 516 BC) held in Argolid every two years
 * The Isthmian Games (founded 523 BC) held on the Isthmus of Corinth every two years
 * The Roman Games – Arising from Etruscan rather than purely Greek roots, the Roman Games deemphasized footraces and throwing. Instead, the Greek sports of chariot racing and wrestling, as well as the Etruscan sport of gladiatorial combat, took center stage.

Other multi-sport festivals emerged in the Middle Ages in Europe, including the Cotswold Olimpick Games in England in the 1600s, the Highland Games in Scotland, and the Olympiade de la République in France in the 1800s.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, athletes at multi-sport events were almost exclusively male. As international women's sport began to develop, events such as the Women's World Games and Olympics of Grace were held to allow women to engage in sport on the international stage. Though short-lived, events such as these led to greater inclusion of women at multi-sport events over the course of the 20th century.

Although the modern tradition commemorates the 1921 revolution, the Naadam festival in Mongolia is a continuation of ancient sporting practises amongst Mongolians. The three events of wrestling, horse racing and archery are thought to date back centuries and represent the three most important pursuits of a strong man in nomadic society. Alongside these sporting events there are other cultural activities such as dances and parades.

Audience
Since the establishment of the Olympics, most serial multi-sport events have been organized for specific audiences and participating countries or communities. These affiliations include:

 * Regional, such as the Asian Games and the Pan-American Games
 * Sub-Regional, such as the South Asian Games, Southeast Asian Games and the South American Games
 * Political, such as the Spartakiad and the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO)
 * Historic or historic cultural roots, such as the Commonwealth Games (for members of the Commonwealth of Nations) the Jeux de la Francophonie (for members of La Francophonie) and the Lusophone Games (for members of Community of Portuguese Language Countries)
 * Ethnocultural or ethnoreligious, such as the Pan-Armenian Games (for ethnic communities of Armenians both in Armenia and in other countries) and the Maccabiah Games (for communities of Jews of both ethnic and religious origins)
 * Religious, such as the Islamic Solidarity Games and the previously mentioned Maccabiah Games
 * Occupational, such as the Military World Games, the World Police and Fire Games, and the Universiade
 * Physical disabilities, such as the Paralympics and the Deaflympics
 * Intellectual disabilities, such as the Special Olympics World Games
 * Age, such as the World Masters Games, Commonwealth Youth Games, and the Senior Olympics
 * Gender and sexual orientation, such as the Women's Islamic Games and the Gay Games

Olympic Games
The first modern multi-sport event organised were the Olympic Games, organised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) (est. 1894) for the first time in 1896 in Athens, Greece. After some celebrations (1900, 1904), the Olympics became very popular nowadays. The number of sports, initially only a few, is still growing.

Paralympic Games
The Paralympic Games is the largest multi-sport event involving athletes with physical disabilities and is organized by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). Arranged for the first time in 1960 in Rome, Italy. The number of sports, initially only a few, is still growing.

Special Olympics
The first Special Olympics International Summer Games were held in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968. The most recent Special Olympics World Winter Games in Schladming, Austria involved 25 sports and approximately 2,277 athletes from 133 countries.

Others
At the beginning of the 20th century, another multi-sport event, the Nordic Games were first held. These Games were held in Scandinavia, and the sports conducted were winter sports such as cross-country skiing and speed skating. The Nordic Games were last held in 1926, after which the 1924 Winter Sports Week in Chamonix was declared the first Olympic Winter Games. In the 1920s, all kinds of other multi-sport events were set up. These were usually directed for a selected group of athletes, rather than everybody, which was the case with the Olympic Games. The Soviets organized the first Spartakiad in 1920, a communist alternative to the 'bourgeois' Olympic Games, and in 1922 the University Olympia was organizedor in Italy, the forerunner of the World University Games, meant for students only. Regional games were another kind of multi-sport event that was established, such as the Far Eastern Championship Games (1913), the Central American and Caribbean Games (1926) or the Pan American Games (1951).

List of international multi-sport competitions
The Olympic Games are still the largest multi-sport event in the world in terms of worldwide interest and importance (though no longer in participation), but several others also have significance.

Multi-sport events for non-Olympic sports

 * World Games, held first in 1981, stage many sports (though not all) that are not Olympic sports.
 * Mind Sports Olympiad, first held in 1997 for mind sports
 * World Mind Sports Games, first held in 2008 for games of skill (e.g. chess, go, etc.)
 * The X Games and Winter X Games, which highlight extreme action sports.
 * The FAI World Air Games, first held in 1997, is the premier international multi-discipline air sports event.

By occupation

 * Universiade, held first in 1959, for students at universities worldwide
 * Military World Games, held first in 1995, for military athletes from over 100 countries
 * World Police and Fire Games, began in 1985, for law enforcement officers and firefighters worldwide; third only to the World Masters Games and Summer Olympics in number of participants.

By organisation and language

 * Commonwealth Games, held first in 1930 (although a similar event was held in 1911) for all member states of the Commonwealth of Nations.
 * Commonwealth Youth Games, began in 2000.
 * Francophone Games, held first in 1989, for French-speaking nations and communities.
 * Lusophony Games, began in 2006, for Portuguese-speaking nations and communities.
 * Pan Arab Games, held first in 1953, for Arabic-speaking nations.
 * Islamic Solidarity Games, first held in 2005, for all member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
 * Women's Islamic Games, began in 1993.
 * By political and historical allegiance
 * Bolivarian Games, began in 1938, for countries liberated by Simón Bolívar
 * Games of the Small States of Europe, first held in 1985, for small states of Europe
 * Island Games, first held in 1985, for teams from several islands and other small territories
 * Goodwill Games, first held in 1986, originally held as an alternative after the boycotted Olympics of 1980 and 1984 (The last edition was held in 2001)
 * Spartakiad, a defunct event involving athletes from the Soviet Union
 * Games of the New Emerging Forces, a defunct event first held in 1963, for the so-called "Emerging Nations" (mainly newly independent socialist states)

By national origin/descent or ethnicity

 * Maccabiah Games, first held in 1932, for Jewish athletes worldwide.
 * Pan-Armenian Games, began in 1999.
 * Croatian World Games, began in 2006.

Other

 * Gay Games and World OutGames, first held in 1982 and 2006, for the worldwide gay community.
 * World Masters Games, first held in 1985, for mature athletes. Most participants of any multi-sport event, with approximately twice as many competitors as the Summer Olympics.
 * European Masters Games, first held in 2008, for mature athletes (generally for 30–35 years or older, dependent on the sport).

Regional events

 * African Games, held first in 1965, for all African nations
 * Afro-Asian Games, first held in 2003 in India.
 * Australasian Police and Emergency Services Games, both by regional and by occupations.
 * Baltic Sea Games, for all nations bordering Baltic Sea, first held in Estonia 1993, then in Lithuania 1997.
 * Island Games, for non-sovereign island communities of European nations, first held on the "Isle of Man" 1985.
 * Pan American Games, held first in 1951, for all nations of the Americas
 * Central American and Caribbean Games, held first in 1926, every 4 years for nations in the Caribbean, Central America and/or bordering the Caribbean Sea
 * Central American Games, held first in 1973, for nations in Central America
 * Caribbean Games, proposed to be held first in June 2009 for countries in the Caribbean Sea, was scheduled in Netherlands Antiles in May 2011. Rescheduled for 2013.
 * South American Games, held first in 1978, for nations in South America
 * Arafura Games, held first in 1991 and hosted in the Oceania region.
 * Asian Games, held first in 1951, for all Asian nations
 * Southeast Asian Games, held first in 1959, for nations in Southeast Asia
 * East Asian Games, for nations in East Asia
 * West Asian Games, for nations in West Asia
 * Central Asian Games, for nations in Central Asia
 * South Asian Games, for nations in South Asia
 * European Games, held first in 2015, for nations in Europe
 * European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF), for youth athletes from Europe, began in 1991 (summer) and 1993 (winter).
 * Mediterranean Games, held first in 1951, for all nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea
 * Pacific Games, held first in 1963 for countries around the South Pacific Ocean
 * Arctic Winter Games, held first in 1970, an international biennial celebration of circumpolar north and Arctic sports and culture
 * Indian Ocean Island Games, held first in 1979, for all islands in the Indian Ocean

National events

 * National Games of China, among the oldest national games with a history dating back to 1910
 * National Games of Colombia, held first in 1928
 * Korean National Sports Festival, held first in 1920 for all provinces in entire Korea, but later for provinces in South Korea
 * National Sports Festival of Japan
 * National Games of India, started in 1924 as "Indian Olympic Games"
 * Palarong Pambansa in the Philippines
 * Pekan Olahraga Nasional in Indonesia
 * Thailand National Games, started in 1967, Thailand Para National Games
 * Canada Games
 * SUKMA Games in Malaysia
 * State Games of America in the United States
 * AAU Junior Olympic Games in the United States, held first in 1967

Disability
Other Games are intended for handicapped or disabled athletes. The International Silent Games, first held in Paris in 1924, were the first Games for deaf athletes. The Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Games, K incepted in 1948 in England, were the first Games for wheelchair athletes. In 1960, the first Paralympic Games were held, connected with the Olympic Games. The Special Olympics World Games, for athletes with intellectual disabilities, were first held in 1968.

title: Multi-sport event


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Night of the Long Knives

The Night of the Long Knives, also called the Röhm purge or Operation Hummingbird (Unternehmen Kolibri), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm – the so-called Röhm Putsch.

The primary instruments of Hitler's action, which carried out most of the killings, were the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service (SD), and Gestapo (secret police) under Reinhard Heydrich. Göring's personal police battalion also took part in the killings. Many of those killed in the purge were leaders of the SA, the best-known being Röhm himself, the SA's chief of staff and one of Hitler's longtime supporters and allies. Leading members of the Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its leader Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Bavarian politician Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had helped suppress Hitler's Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The murders of SA leaders were also intended to improve the image of the Hitler government with a German public that was increasingly critical of thuggish SA tactics.

Hitler saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. He also wanted to appease leaders of the Reichswehr, the German military, who feared and despised the SA as a potential rival, in particular because of Röhm's ambition to merge the army and the SA under his own leadership. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. In Röhm's view, President Paul von Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933 had brought the Nazi Party to power, but had left unfulfilled the party's larger goals. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate German critics of his new regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, as well as to settle scores with enemies.

At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds, with high estimates running from 700 to 1,000. More than 1,000 perceived opponents were arrested. The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the military for Hitler. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazis, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extrajudicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his 13 July speech to the Reichstag.

Hitler and the Sturmabteilung (SA)

President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933. Over the following few months, during the so-called Gleichschaltung, Hitler dispensed with the need for the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a legislative body and eliminated all rival political parties in Germany, so that by the middle of 1933 the country had become a one-party state under his direction and control. Hitler did not exercise absolute power, however, despite his swift consolidation of political authority. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a highly respected veteran field marshal. While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army, a return to conscription, and a more aggressive foreign policy, the army continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime.

To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organization, remained somewhat autonomous within the party. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-World War I years. The Freikorps were nationalistic organizations primarily composed of disaffected, disenchanted, and angry German combat veterans utilized by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution when it appeared that there was a lack of loyal troops. A very large number of the Freikorps believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. Hence, the Freikorps were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic, which was born as a result of the November Revolution, and whose founders were contemptuously called "November criminals". Captain Ernst Röhm of the Reichswehr served as the liaison with the Bavarian Freikorps. Röhm was given the nickname "The Machine Gun King of Bavaria" in the early 1920s, since he was responsible for storing and issuing illegal machine guns to the Bavarian Freikorps units. Röhm left the Reichswehr in 1923 and later became commander of the SA. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties, especially those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Also known as the "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers", the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists. The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were more than 400 street battles, resulting in 82 deaths.

Hitler's appointment as chancellor, followed by the suppression of all political parties except the Nazis, did not end the violence of the stormtroopers. Deprived of Communist party meetings to disrupt, the stormtroopers would sometimes run riot in the streets after a night of drinking; they would attack passers-by and then attack the police who were called to stop them. Complaints of "overbearing and loutish" behaviour by stormtroopers became common by the middle of 1933. The Foreign Office even complained of instances where brownshirts manhandled foreign diplomats.

On 6 July 1933, at a gathering of high-ranking Nazi officials, Hitler declared the success of the National Socialist, or Nazi, seizure of power. Now that the Nazi Party had seized the reins of power in Germany, he said, it was time to consolidate its control. Hitler told the gathered officials, "The stream of revolution has been undammed, but it must be channelled into the secure bed of evolution."

Hitler's speech signalled his intention to rein in the SA, whose ranks had grown rapidly in the early 1930s. Hitler's task would not be simple, however, as the SA made up a large part of Nazism's most devoted followers. The SA traced its dramatic rise in numbers in part to the onset of the Great Depression, when many German citizens lost both their jobs and their faith in traditional institutions. While Nazism was not exclusively – or even primarily – a working-class phenomenon, the SA fulfilled the yearning of many unemployed workers for class solidarity and nationalist fervour. Many stormtroopers believed in the socialist promise of National Socialism and expected the Nazi regime to take more radical economic action, such as breaking up the vast landed estates of the aristocracy. When the Nazi regime did not take such steps, those who had expected an economic as well as a political revolution were disillusioned.

The action Hitler took would not only defang Röhm and the SA as a potential threat to Hitler's personal control of the Nazi Party, but would also serve to strengthen his relationship with the Wehrmacht – the German armed forces – which had long considered the SA to be their primary rival, the SA at times outnumbering the military in manpower.

The supporters of Ernst Röhm (Röhm-cult), like the Strasserists, formed one of the ideological factions of the Nazi Party at that time.

Conflict between the army and the SA
No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper, Edmund Heines, put it) than Röhm himself. Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper. Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.

Not content solely with the leadership of the SA, Röhm lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defence, a position held by the conservative General Werner von Blomberg. Although nicknamed the "Rubber Lion" by some of his critics in the army for his devotion to Hitler, Blomberg was not a Nazi, and therefore represented a bridge between the army and the party. Blomberg and many of his fellow officers were recruited from the Prussian nobility and regarded the SA as a plebeian rabble that threatened the army's traditional high status in German society.

If the regular army showed contempt for the masses belonging to the SA, many stormtroopers returned the feeling, seeing the army as insufficiently committed to the National Socialist revolution. Max Heydebreck, an SA leader in Rummelsburg, denounced the army to his fellow brownshirts, telling them, "Some of the officers of the army are swine. Most officers are too old and have to be replaced by young ones. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army."

Despite such hostility between the brownshirts and the regular army, Blomberg and others in the military saw the SA as a source of raw recruits for an enlarged and revitalized army. Röhm, however, wanted to eliminate the generalship of the Prussian aristocracy altogether, using the SA to become the core of a new German military. With the army limited by the Treaty of Versailles to one hundred thousand soldiers, its leaders watched anxiously as membership in the SA surpassed three million men by the beginning of 1934. In January 1934, Röhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum demanding that the SA replace the regular army as the nation's ground forces, and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA.

In response, Hitler met Blomberg and the leadership of the SA and SS on 28 February 1934. Under pressure from Hitler, Röhm reluctantly signed a pledge stating that he recognised the supremacy of the Reichswehr over the SA. Hitler announced to those present that the SA would act as an auxiliary to the Reichswehr, not the other way around. After Hitler and most of the army officers had left, however, Röhm declared that he would not take instructions from "the ridiculous corporal" – a demeaning reference to Hitler. While Hitler did not take immediate action against Röhm for his intemperate outburst, it nonetheless deepened the rift between them.

Growing pressure against the SA
Despite his earlier agreement with Hitler, Röhm still clung to his vision of a new German army with the SA at its core. By early 1934, this vision directly conflicted with Hitler's plan to consolidate power and expand the Reichswehr. Because their plans for the army conflicted, Röhm's success could come only at Hitler's expense. Moreover, it was not just the Reichswehr that viewed the SA as a threat. Several of Hitler's lieutenants feared Röhm's growing power and restlessness, as did Hitler. As a result, a political struggle within the party grew, with those closest to Hitler, including Prussian premier Hermann Göring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, and Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, positioning themselves against Röhm. While all of these men were veterans of the Nazi movement, only Röhm continued to demonstrate his independence from, rather than his loyalty to, Adolf Hitler. Röhm's contempt for the party's bureaucracy angered Hess. SA violence in Prussia gravely concerned Göring.

Finally, in early 1934, the growing rift between Röhm and Hitler over the role of the SA in the Nazi state led former chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher to start playing politics again. Schleicher criticized the current Hitler cabinet, while some of Schleicher's followers such as General Ferdinand von Bredow and Werner von Alvensleben started passing along lists of a new Hitler cabinet in which Schleicher would become vice-chancellor, Röhm minister of defence, Heinrich Brüning foreign minister and Gregor Strasser minister of national economy. The British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, who knew Schleicher and his circle well, wrote that Bredow displayed a "lack of discretion" that was "terrifying" as he went about showing the list of the proposed cabinet to anyone who was interested. Although Schleicher was in fact unimportant by 1934, increasingly wild rumours that he was scheming with Röhm to re-enter the corridors of power helped stoke the sense of crisis.

As a means of isolating Röhm, on 20 April 1934, Göring transferred control of the Prussian political police (Gestapo) to Himmler, who, Göring believed, could be counted on to move against Röhm. Himmler named his deputy Reinhard Heydrich to head the Gestapo on 22 April 1934. Himmler envied the independence and power of the SA, although by this time he and Heydrich had already begun restructuring the SS from a bodyguard formation for Nazi leaders (and a subset of the SA) into its own independent elite corps, one loyal to both himself and Hitler. The loyalty of the SS men would prove useful to both when Hitler finally chose to move against Röhm and the SA. By May, lists of those to be "liquidated" started to circulate amongst Göring and Himmler's people, who engaged in a trade, adding enemies of one in exchange for sparing friends of the other. At the end of May Brüning and Schleicher, two former chancellors, received warnings from friends in the Reichswehr that their lives were in danger and they should leave Germany at once. Brüning fled to the Netherlands while Schleicher dismissed the tip-off as a bad practical joke. By the beginning of June everything was set and all that was needed was permission from Hitler.

Demands for Hitler to constrain the SA strengthened. Conservatives in the army, industry and politics placed Hitler under increasing pressure to reduce the influence of the SA and to move against Röhm. While Röhm's homosexuality did not endear him to conservatives, they were more concerned about his political ambitions. Hitler remained indecisive and uncertain about just what precisely he wanted to do when he left for Venice to meet Benito Mussolini on 15 June. Before Hitler left, and at the request of Presidential State Secretary Otto Meißner, Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath ordered the German Ambassador to Italy Ulrich von Hassell – without Hitler's knowledge – to ask Mussolini to tell Hitler that the SA was blackening Germany's good name. Neurath's manoeuvre to put pressure on Hitler paid off, with Mussolini agreeing to the request (Neurath was a former ambassador to Italy, and knew Mussolini well). During the summit in Venice, Mussolini upbraided Hitler for tolerating the violence, hooliganism and homosexuality of the SA, which Mussolini stated were ruining Hitler's good reputation all over the world. Mussolini used the affair occasioned by the murder of Giacomo Matteotti as an example of the kind of trouble unruly followers could cause a dictator. While Mussolini's criticism did not win Hitler over to acting against the SA, it helped push him in that direction.

On 17 June 1934, conservative demands for Hitler to act came to a head when Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, confidant of the ailing Hindenburg, gave a speech at Marburg University warning of the threat of a "second revolution". According to his memoirs, von Papen, a Catholic aristocrat with ties to army and industry, privately threatened to resign if Hitler did not act. While von Papen's resignation as vice-chancellor would not have threatened Hitler's position, it would have nonetheless been an embarrassing display of independence from a leading conservative.

Heydrich and Himmler

In response to conservative pressure to constrain Röhm, Hitler left for Neudeck to meet with Hindenburg. Blomberg, who had been meeting with the president, uncharacteristically reproached Hitler for not having moved against Röhm earlier. He then told Hitler that Hindenburg was close to declaring martial law and turning the government over to the Reichswehr if Hitler did not take immediate steps against Röhm and his brownshirts. Hitler had hesitated for months in moving against Röhm, in part due to Röhm's visibility as the leader of a national militia with millions of members. The threat of a declaration of martial law from Hindenburg, the only person in Germany with the authority to potentially depose the Nazi regime, put Hitler under pressure to act. He left Neudeck with the intention of both destroying Röhm and settling scores with old enemies. Both Himmler and Göring welcomed Hitler's decision, since both had much to gain by Röhm's downfall – the independence of the SS for Himmler and the removal of a rival for the future command of the army for Göring.

In preparation for the purge, both Himmler and Heydrich assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid (EUR  in 2024) by France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on 24 June that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government (Röhm-Putsch). At Hitler's direction, Göring, Himmler, Heydrich, and Victor Lutze drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed. One of the men Göring recruited to assist him was Willi Lehmann, a Gestapo official and NKVD spy. On 25 June, General Werner von Fritsch placed the Reichswehr on the highest level of alert. On 27 June, Hitler moved to secure the army's cooperation. Blomberg and General Walther von Reichenau, the army's liaison to the party, gave it to him by expelling Röhm from the German Officers' League. On 28 June Hitler went to Essen to attend the wedding celebration and reception of Josef Terboven; from there he called Röhm's adjutant at Bad Wiessee and ordered SA leaders to meet with him on 30 June at 11:00. On 29 June, a signed article in Völkischer Beobachter by Blomberg appeared in which Blomberg stated with great fervour that the Reichswehr stood behind Hitler.

Purge

At about 04:30 on 30 June 1934, Hitler and his entourage flew to Munich. From the airport they drove to the Bavarian Interior Ministry, where they assembled the leaders of an SA rampage that had taken place in city streets the night before. Enraged, Hitler tore the epaulets off the shirt of SA-Obergruppenführer August Schneidhuber, the chief of the Munich police, for failing to keep order in the city the previous night. Hitler shouted at Schneidhuber and accused him of treachery. Schneidhuber was executed later that day. As the stormtroopers were hustled off to prison, Hitler assembled a large group of SS and regular police, and departed for the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Ernst Röhm and his followers were staying.

With Hitler's arrival in Bad Wiessee between 06:00 and 07:00, the SA leadership, still in bed, were taken by surprise. SS men stormed the hotel, and Hitler personally placed Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest.

The SS found Breslau SA leader Edmund Heines in bed with an unidentified eighteen-year-old male SA senior troop leader. Hitler ordered both Heines and his partner taken outside the hotel and shot. Goebbels emphasised this aspect in subsequent propaganda justifying the purge as a crackdown on moral turpitude. Meanwhile, the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Röhm and Hitler.

Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Röhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA. Arriving back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler addressed the assembled crowd. Consumed with rage, Hitler denounced "the worst treachery in world history". Hitler told the crowd that "undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements" would be annihilated. The crowd, which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest, shouted its approval. Hess, present among the assembled, even volunteered to shoot the "traitors". Joseph Goebbels, who had been with Hitler at Bad Wiessee, set the final phase of the plan in motion. Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Göring at 10:00 with the codeword Kolibri to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims. Sepp Dietrich received orders from Hitler for the Leibstandarte to form an "execution squad" and go to Stadelheim Prison where certain SA leaders were being held. There in the prison courtyard, the Leibstandarte firing squad shot five SA generals and an SA colonel. Those not immediately executed were taken back to the Leibstandarte barracks at Lichterfelde, given one-minute "trials", and shot by a firing squad.

Against conservatives and old enemies
The regime did not limit itself to a purge of the SA. Having earlier imprisoned or exiled prominent Social Democrats and Communists, Hitler used the occasion to move against conservatives he considered unreliable. This included Vice-Chancellor Papen and those in his immediate circle. In Berlin, on Göring's personal orders, an armed SS unit stormed the Vice-Chancellery. Gestapo officers attached to the SS unit shot Papen's secretary Herbert von Bose without bothering to arrest him first. The Gestapo arrested and later executed Papen's close associate Edgar Jung, the author of Papen's Marburg speech, and disposed of his body by dumping it in a ditch. The Gestapo also murdered Erich Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action, and a close Papen associate. Papen was unceremoniously arrested at the Vice-Chancellery, despite his insistent protests that he could not be arrested in his position as Vice-Chancellor. Although Hitler ordered him released days later, Papen no longer dared to criticize the regime and was sent off to Vienna as German ambassador.

Hitler and Himmler unleashed the Gestapo against old enemies, as well. Both Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as Chancellor, and his wife were murdered at their home. Others killed included Gregor Strasser, a former Nazi who had angered Hitler by resigning from the party in 1932, and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the former Bavarian state commissioner who had helped crush the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The murdered included at least one accidental victim: Willi Schmid, the music critic of the Münchner Neuste Nachrichten newspaper, whose name was confused with one of the Gestapo's intended targets. As Himmler's adjutant Karl Wolff later explained, friendship and personal loyalty were not allowed to stand in the way:

"Among others, a charming fellow [named] Karl von Spreti, Röhm's personal adjutant. He held the same position with Röhm as I held with Himmler. [He] died with words 'Heil Hitler' on his lips. We were close personal friends; we often dined together in Berlin. He lifted his arm in the Nazi salute and called out 'Heil Hitler, I love Germany.'"

Some SA members died saying "Heil Hitler" because they believed that an anti-Hitler SS plot had led to their execution. Several leaders of the disbanded Catholic Centre Party were also murdered in the purge. The Party had generally been aligned with the Social Democrats and Catholic Church during the rise of Nazism, being critical of Nazi ideology, but voting nonetheless for the Enabling Act of 1933 which granted Hitler dictatorial authority.

Kurt Lüdecke, a party associate of Röhm, was imprisoned but escaped after eight months in a concentration camp. He later wrote I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood-Purge, published in 1937 by Scribners of New York, United States.

Röhm's fate
Röhm was held briefly at Stadelheim Prison in Munich, while Hitler considered his future. On 1 July, at Hitler's behest, Theodor Eicke, Commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, and his SS adjutant Michael Lippert visited Röhm. Once inside Röhm's cell, they handed him a Browning pistol loaded with a single cartridge and told him he had ten minutes to kill himself or they would do it for him. Röhm demurred, telling them, "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself." Having heard nothing in the allotted time, they returned to Röhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance. Eicke and Lippert then shot Röhm, killing him. In 1957, the German authorities tried Lippert in Munich for Röhm's murder. Until then, Lippert had been one of the few executioners of the purge to evade trial. Lippert was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Aftermath
Given that the purge claimed the lives of so many prominent Germans, it could hardly be kept secret. At first, its architects seemed split on how to handle the event. Göring instructed police stations to burn "all documents concerning the action of the past two days". Meanwhile, Goebbels tried to prevent newspapers from publishing lists of the dead, but at the same time used a 2 July radio address to describe how Hitler had narrowly prevented Röhm from overthrowing the government and throwing the country into turmoil. Then, on 13 July 1934, Hitler justified the purge in a nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag:

"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this. In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. I gave the order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason, and I further gave the order to cauterise down to the raw flesh the ulcers of this poisoning of the wells in our domestic life. Let the nation know that its existence – which depends on its internal order and security – cannot be threatened with impunity by anyone! And let it be known for all time to come that if anyone raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot."

Wanting to present the massacre as legally sanctioned, Hitler had the cabinet approve a measure on 3 July that declared, "The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defence by the State." Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner, a conservative who had been Bavarian Justice Minister in the years of the Weimar Republic, demonstrated his loyalty to the new regime by drafting the statute, which added a legal veneer to the purge. Signed into law by Hitler, Gürtner, and Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, the "Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defence" retroactively legalized the murders committed during the purge. Germany's legal establishment further capitulated to the regime when the country's leading legal scholar, Carl Schmitt, wrote an article defending Hitler's 13 July speech. It was named Der Führer schützt das Recht ("The Führer Upholds the Law").

A special fund administered by SS General Franz Breithaupt was set up for the relatives of the murdered, from which they were cared for at the expense of the state. The widows of the murdered SA leaders received between 1,000 and 1,600 marks a month, depending on the rank of the murdered person. Kurt von Schleicher's stepdaughter received 250 marks per month up to the age of 21, and the son of General von Bredow received a monthly allowance of 150 marks.

Reaction
The army almost unanimously applauded the Night of the Long Knives, even though the generals Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow were among the victims. A telegram purportedly from the ailing Hindenburg, Germany's highly revered military hero, expressed his "profoundly felt gratitude", and congratulated Hitler for "nipping treason in the bud", although Hermann Göring later admitted during the Nuremberg trials that the telegram was never seen by Hindenburg, and was actually written by the Nazis. General von Reichenau went so far as to publicly give credence to the lie that Schleicher had been plotting to overthrow the government. In his speech to the Reichstag on 13 July justifying his actions, Hitler denounced Schleicher for conspiring with Röhm to overthrow the government; Hitler alleged both were traitors working in the pay of France. Since Schleicher was a good friend of the French Ambassador André François-Poncet, and because of his reputation for intrigue, the claim that Schleicher was working for France had enough surface plausibility for most Germans to accept it. François-Poncet was not declared persona non grata as would have been usual if an ambassador were involved in a plot against his host government.

The army's support for the purge, however, would have far-reaching consequences for the institution. The humbling of the SA ended the threat it had posed to the army, but, by standing by Hitler during the purge, the army bound itself more tightly to the Nazi regime. One retired captain, Erwin Planck, seemed to realize this: "If you look on without lifting a finger", he said to his friend, General Werner von Fritsch, "you will meet the same fate sooner or later." Another rare exception was Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who spoke about the murders of Schleicher and Bredow at the annual General Staff Society meeting in February 1935 after they had been rehabilitated by Hitler in early January 1935.

Rumours about the Night of the Long Knives rapidly spread. Although many Germans approached the official news of the events as described by Joseph Goebbels with a great deal of scepticism, many others took the regime at its word, and believed that Hitler had saved Germany from a descent into chaos. Luise Solmitz, a Hamburg schoolteacher, echoed the sentiments of many Germans when she cited Hitler's "personal courage, decisiveness and effectiveness" in her private diary. She even compared him to Frederick the Great, the 18th-century king of Prussia.

Others were appalled at the scale of the executions and at the relative complacency of many of their fellow Germans. "A very calm and easy going mailman," the diarist Victor Klemperer wrote, "who is not at all National Socialist, said, 'Well, he simply sentenced them.'" It did not escape Klemperer's notice that many of the victims had played a role in bringing Hitler to power. "A chancellor", he wrote, "sentences and shoots members of his own private army!" The extent of the massacre and the relative ubiquity of the Gestapo, however, meant that those who disapproved of the purge generally kept quiet about it.

Among the few exceptions were General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord and Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who started a campaign to have Schleicher rehabilitated by Hitler. Hammerstein, who was a close friend of Schleicher, had been much offended at Schleicher's funeral when the SS refused to allow him to attend the service and confiscated the wreaths that the mourners had brought. Besides working for the rehabilitation of Schleicher and Bredow, Hammerstein and Mackensen sent a memo to Hindenburg on 18 July setting out in considerable detail the circumstances of the murders of the two generals and noted that Papen had barely escaped. The memo went on to demand that Hindenburg punish those responsible, and criticized Blomberg for his outspoken support of the murders of Schleicher and Bredow. Finally, Hammerstein and Mackensen asked that Hindenburg reorganize the government by firing Baron Konstantin von Neurath, Robert Ley, Hermann Göring, Werner von Blomberg, Joseph Goebbels and Richard Walther Darré from the Cabinet. The memo asked that Hindenburg instead create a directorate to rule Germany, comprising the Chancellor (who was not named), General Werner von Fritsch as Vice-Chancellor, Hammerstein as Minister of Defense, the Minister for National Economy (also unnamed), and Rudolf Nadolny as Foreign Minister. The request that Neurath be replaced by Nadolny, the former Ambassador to the USSR, who had resigned earlier that year in protest against Hitler's anti-Soviet foreign policy, indicated that Hammerstein and Mackensen wanted a return to the "distant friendliness" towards the Soviet Union that existed until 1933. Mackensen and Hammerstein ended their memo with:

"Excellency, the gravity of the moment has compelled us to appeal to you as our Supreme Commander. The destiny of our country is at stake. Your Excellency has thrice before saved Germany from foundering, at Tannenberg, at the end of the War and at the moment of your election as Reich President. Excellency, save Germany for the fourth time! The undersigned Generals and senior officers swear to preserve to the last breath their loyalty to you and the Fatherland."

Hindenburg never responded to the memo, and it remains unclear whether he even saw it, as Otto Meißner, who decided that his future was aligned with the Nazis, may not have passed it along. It is noteworthy that even those officers who were most offended by the killings, like Hammerstein and Mackensen, did not blame the purge on Hitler, whom they wanted to see continue as Chancellor; they at most wanted a reorganization of the Cabinet to remove some of Hitler's more radical followers.

In late 1934–early 1935, Werner von Fritsch and Werner von Blomberg, who had been shamed into joining Hammerstein and Mackensen's rehabilitation campaign, successfully pressured Hitler into rehabilitating Generals von Schleicher and von Bredow. Fritsch and Blomberg suddenly now claimed at the end of 1934 that as army officers they could not stand the exceedingly violent press attacks on Schleicher and Bredow that had been going on since July, which portrayed them as the vilest traitors, working against the Fatherland in the pay of France. In a speech given on 3 January 1935, at the Berlin State Opera, Hitler stated that Schleicher and Bredow had been shot "in error" on the basis of false information, and that their names were to be restored to the honour rolls of their regiments at once. Hitler's speech was not reported in the German press, but the army was appeased by the speech. However, despite the rehabilitation of the two murdered officers, the Nazis continued in private to accuse Schleicher of high treason. During a trip to Warsaw in January 1935, Göring told Jan Szembek that Schleicher had urged Hitler in January 1933 to reach an understanding with France and the Soviet Union, and partition Poland with the latter, and Hitler had Schleicher killed out of disgust with the alleged advice. During a meeting with Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski on 22 May 1935, Hitler told Lipski that Schleicher was "rightfully murdered, if only because he had sought to maintain the Rapallo Treaty." The statements that Schleicher had been killed because he wanted to partition Poland with the Soviet Union were later published in the Polish White Book of 1939, which was a collection of diplomatic documents detailing German–Polish relations up to the outbreak of the war.

Former Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was in exile in Doorn, Netherlands, was horrified by the purge. He asked, "What would people have said if I had done such a thing?" Hearing of the murder of former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his wife, he also commented, "We have ceased to live under the rule of law and everyone must be prepared for the possibility that the Nazis will push their way in and put them up against the wall!"

SA leadership
Hitler named Viktor Lutze to replace Röhm as head of the SA. Hitler ordered him, as one prominent historian described it, to put an end to "homosexuality, debauchery, drunkenness, and high living" in the SA. Hitler expressly told him to stop SA funds from being spent on limousines and banquets, which he considered evidence of SA extravagance. Lutze did little to assert the SA's independence in the coming years, and the organization lost its power in Germany. Its membership plummeted from 2.9 million in August 1934 to 1.2 million in April 1938.

According to Albert Speer, "the Right, represented by the President, the Minister of Justice, and the generals, lined up behind Hitler ... the strong left wing of the party, represented chiefly by the SA, was eliminated."

Röhm was purged from all Nazi propaganda, such as The Victory of Faith, the Leni Riefenstahl film about the 1933 Nuremberg rally, which showed Röhm frequently alongside Hitler. A copy of the original film, before Röhm was edited out, was found in the 1980s in the German Democratic Republic's film archives.

Terminology
The term "long knives" as a metonym for treachery and violence had been used to describe the Treason of the Long Knives since this incident was recorded in the 9th century Historia Brittonum. This event reputedly occurred during the fifth century Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, when Vortigern and the British leaders were invited to discuss peace and the Saxon leader Hengist commanded his men to draw their Seax (the infamous long knives) and massacre the unarmed Britons. It would become known in Welsh as "twyll y cyllyll hirion" (Deceit of the long knives) (first recorded around 1587) and in English as the "Treachery/Plot/Treason of the long knives" (recorded around 1604). This story would be popularized across western Europe in the 12th century as part of the History of the Britons by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which introduced many of the Arthurian legends to Germany.

In the years preceding the purge, the term "long knives" had become a popular description of treachery in Germany and was used as a criticism of Nazi actions and deceitfulness.

However, the term was soon adopted by the Nazis themselves to invoke what they saw as justifiable and necessary measures taken by Germanic peoples against an enemy. In 1928, the popular Nazi song "Wetzt die langen Messer" (Sharpen the long knives) encourages the mass murder of Jews and the desecration of synagogues. The Nazi adoption of the phrase for an upcoming violent event was well known even to the foreign press, with the 2 August 1932 issue of The Times reporting that: "Prominent Nazi leaders have played upon the imaginations of their followers..with such phrases as 'the night of the long knives' and 'a vengeance for every Nazi killed'."

Also in 1932, the Nazi critic Carl von Ossietzky would use the term to describe the then unrealised plans for a violent uprising: "At the beginning of 1932 the Nazis seemed on the verge of a dictatorship, and the air was full of the stench of blood. By the end of it, Hitler's party had been shaken by a major crisis, and the long knives were put quietly back in their box while all the Führer kept out was a wary ear."

Before its execution, the purge's instigators referred to the plans under the codename Hummingbird (German: Kolibri), the word used to command execution squads into action on 30 June. However, soon after the purge Hitler himself named the events the "Night of the long knives" in his public speech on 13 July 1934 defending the actions (despite the violence taking place over several days).

Legacy
The Night of the Long Knives represented a triumph for Hitler, and a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as "the supreme leader of the German people", as he put it in his 13 July speech to the Reichstag. Hitler formally adopted this title in April 1942, thus placing himself above the reach of the law de jure and de facto. Centuries of jurisprudence proscribing extrajudicial killings were swept aside. Despite some initial efforts by local prosecutors to take legal action against those who carried out the murders, which the regime rapidly quashed, it appeared that no law would constrain Hitler in his use of power.

Years later, in November 1945, while being interviewed by psychologist Gustave Gilbert in his cell during the Nuremberg trials, Göring angrily justified the killings to Gilbert, "It's a damn good thing I wiped them out, or they would have wiped us out!"

In literature and the arts

 * The Damned (1969 film), dramatizes the Night of the Long Knives
 * "The Last Day of June 1934", 1974 song on Past, Present and Future (Al Stewart album)
 * A Night of Long Knives, 2010 novel by Rebecca Cantrell

title: Night of the Long Knives