DR. STAHMER: You talked about the Röhm revolt yesterday. Who was Röhm and of what did the revolt consist?
GÖRING: Röhm, from 1931, had been the Chief of Staff of the SA, that is to say, he was responsible for the SA to the Führer, who was himself the highest SA leader, and he led it in the Führer’s name.
The main controversy between Röhm and us was that Röhm, like his predecessor Pfeffer, wanted a stronger revolutionary way to be adopted, whereas the Führer, as I said earlier, had ordered a legal development, the final victory of which could be expected.
After the seizure of power Röhm desired, under all circumstances, to get hold of the Reich Defense Ministry. The Führer refused that point-blank, as he did not wish the Armed Forces to be conducted politically in any way, or to have any political influence brought to bear on the Armed Forces.
The contrast between the Armed Forces and the Röhm group—I am intentionally not speaking of a contrast between the Armed Forces and the SA, since there was none, but solely of this leadership group, which called itself at that time the SA Leadership and it actually was—was that Röhm wanted to remove the greater number of the generals and higher officers who had been members of the Reichswehr all this time, since it was his view that these officers did not offer a guarantee for the new State, because, as he expressed it, their backbone had been broken in the course of the years and they were no longer capable of being active elements of the new National Socialist State.
The Führer, and I also, had exactly the opposite point of view in this connection.
Secondly, the aims of the Röhm-minded people, as I should like to call them, were directed in a different direction, towards a revolutionary act; and they were opposed to what they called reaction. They definitely desired to adopt a more Leftist attitude. They were also sharply opposed to the Church and also very strongly opposed to the Jews. Altogether, and I refer only to the clique consisting of certain persons, they wished to carry out a revolutionary act. That Röhm placed all his people in leading positions in the SA and removed the decent elements, and misguided the decent SA people without their knowledge, is a well-known fact.
If encroachments did occur at that time, they always involved the same persons, first of all the Berlin SA leader, Ernst, secondly the Breslau leader, Heines, the Munich and Stettin leaders, et cetera. A few weeks before the Röhm Putsch a low-ranking SA leader confided in me that he had heard that an action against the Führer and his corps was being planned to replace the Third Reich as expeditiously as possible by a final Fourth Reich, an expression which these people used.
I myself was urged and begged to place outside my house not only guards from a police regiment but also to appoint an SA guard of honor. I had agreed, and later on I heard from the commander of these troops that the purpose of that guard of honor was to arrest me at a given moment.
I knew Röhm very well. I had him brought to me. I put to him openly the things which I had heard. I reminded him of our mutual fight and I asked him to keep unconditional faith with the Führer. I brought forward the same arguments which I have just mentioned, but he assured me that he naturally was not thinking of undertaking anything against the Führer. Shortly afterward I received further news to the effect that he had close connections with those circles who also were strongly opposed to us. There was, for instance, the group around the former Reich Chancellor Schleicher. There was the group around Gregor Strasser, the former member of the Reichstag and organizational leader of the Party, who had been excluded from the Party. These were groups who had belonged to the former trade unions and were rather inclined to the Left. I felt it my duty to consult the Führer now on this subject. I was astonished when he told me that he, too, already knew about these things and considered them a great threat. He said that he wished, however, to await further developments and observe them carefully.