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72 D Chapter Nineteen d nAzi ActionS On June 30,1934,a bomb exploded.Hitler decided to put a bloody end to what was reported tohimasanattemptonhislifebyhisownSA.Theinstigator,theführer’slong-standingcomrade Ernst Röhm,an extremely repulsive-looking individual and a homosexual,was among the SA members who fell victim to the executions that the führer himself had ordered.During the massacre that followed, the “Night of the Long Knives,” the Nazis rid themselves of as many known or suspected adversaries as possible. The count of those murdered, at random and in cold blood, was in the hundreds.Among the dead was Kurt von Schleicher, the former Reichschancellor, along with his wife, riddled by bullets in their Berlin suburban home. The previous week, the Schleichers had been our dinner guests. Late at night, a truck with armed SA had stopped in front of our house. They left after trampling through the rooms in search of “the baron.” It later became evident that my father, having left the same morning for Doorn, had missed the bloodbath by a few hours. In the afternoon following his return a few days later, while seated at his desk in the study, the telephone suddenly rang, and he motioned for me to take the call. Identifying myself by name as I had been taught, I heard a shrill voice, demanding to talk to“the Herr Baron,” who put the phone to his ear after just giving his name. I watched his face turn gray and, after half a minute, without uttering a single word, he put the receiver down. “That,” he said,“was Goering!” The fat man had called to warn my father that the next time he might not be so fortunate to escape his fate. Hermann Goering,as my father was well aware,had held a special grudge since the day my father had admonished him for showing up without an invitation at a Hohenzollern family gathering.The humiliated party dignitary,at the time President of the German Reichstag , had not taken this blow kindly. In revenge, Goering made it a habit to show up unannounced at the various Hohenzollern country properties in Germany, particularly the East Prussian estate of Rominten, which happened to be my father’s favorite hunting grounds. Some ten years later, after the imperial family had fallen out of grace, Goering, now Reichsmarschall ,tookpossessionof Rominten,eventuallystrippingitof preciouspaintings,carpets, furniture,and other valuables.He transferred the loot to Karinhall,his pompous home near Berlin, named after his deceased Swedish first wife, the Baroness Karin von Fock-Kantzow. They even Closed The Candy sTore 73 Of all the Nazi leaders, it was Hermann Goering for whom my father felt the coldest contempt. Here was a man from a decent family, a German Air Force officer decorated for bravery with the Pour le Mérite inWorldWar I,who should have known better than to team up with gangsters. Moreover, he had elevated himself to the position of a self-styled god, one who would determine who was Aryan and who was not. The voice I had heard on the telephone would continue to haunt me. A little more than one month later,onAugust 2,1934,Paul von Hindenburg died at age eighty-six.The last obstacle preventing a still somewhat restrained dictatorship from turning into open terror had been removed. Since no plan for a successor to replace the president had been made,his death meant that the führer was now the sole and undisputed ruler over Germany. He wasted no time in proclaiming that, beginning now, he alone represented the law.SoldierssworeallegiancetoAdolf Hitler.Germanyhadceasedtobeaconstitutionalstate. We were in Kreuth when the news broke about Hindenburg’s death. My poor father, who had just begun to recuperate after a week’s vacation, hastily threw a few things into a suitcase and rushed off to Doorn,sensing that,with Hindenburg gone,“her majesty”would now go berserk in her efforts at persuading Hitler to let her husband resume his place on the throne. His worst expectations were by far surpassed. While my father, as usual, succeeded in talking some sense into the old man, he knew from bitter experience that his sound advice would fly out the window as soon as he turned his back. Fate had more blows in store for us that year.My mother’s youngest brother,Eberhard, the one who rejected an officer’s career, had made it all the way to the top in the management of...

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