Erich Klausener was a German Catholic politician and Catholic martyr in the "Night of the Long Knives", a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders.
Erich Klausener in 1933
Klausener's Monument in the cemetery of St. Matthias Church, Berlin
Klausener (Right) behind Prussian Interior Minister Albert Grzesinski (Centre) at the Constitutional Celebration of the Berlin Police in August 1929
Klausener circa 1928
The Night of the Long Knives, also called the Röhm purge or Operation Hummingbird, 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.
Kurt Daluege, chief of the Ordnungspolizei; Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS; and Ernst Röhm, head of the SA, August 1933
Hitler poses with a Nazi salute in Nuremberg with SA members in 1928. To his left is Julius Streicher, and standing beneath him is Hermann Göring.
SA leader Ernst Röhm in Bavaria in 1934
Franz von Papen, the conservative vice-chancellor who ran afoul of Hitler after denouncing the regime's failure to rein in the SA in his Marburg speech. The photo was taken in 1946 at the Nuremberg trials.
