EDIT: for the non-historians among us, this was Ernst Röhm, head of the Nazi Brownshirts (SA), a paramilitary organization used to primarily cause havoc amongst the population and competing political parties, but also in charge of protection details for high ranking NSDAP officials, later replaced by the SS when Hitler had him murdered due to lack of trust.
Fun fact: historians call Hitler’s purge of Ernst Röhm and other brownshirts “The Night of the Long Knives”. Ironically enough, Hitler used that expression in a post-purge speech in which he claimed that Röhm had himself been planning a night of the long knives assassination of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Quite unintentionally, the expression came to be used to describe Hitler’s actions.
EDIT: for the non-historians among us, this was Ernst Röhm, head of the Nazi Brownshirts (SA), a paramilitary organization used to primarily cause havoc amongst the population and competing political parties, but also in charge of protection details for high ranking NSDAP officials, later replaced by the SS when Hitler had him murdered due to lack of trust.
Fun fact: historians call Hitler’s purge of Ernst Röhm and other brownshirts “The Night of the Long Knives”. Ironically enough, Hitler used that expression in a post-purge speech in which he claimed that Röhm had himself been planning a night of the long knives assassination of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Quite unintentionally, the expression came to be used to describe Hitler’s actions.