Night of the Long Knives

The Night of the Long Knives (German:  Nacht der langen Messer ), sometimes called Operation Hummingbird or, in Germany, the Röhm Putsch (German spelling: Röhm-Putsch), or sometimes mockingly Reichsmordwoche (Reich Murder Week), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political extra-judicial executions. Leading figures of the left-wing Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), along with its figurehead, Gregor Strasser, were killed, as were prominent conservative anti-Nazis (such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had suppressed Adolf Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923). Many of those killed were leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary Brownshirts.