Night of the long knives

Battle of nieman river
Beer hall putsch speech
Hitler in 1924

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Kampfbund

1920s league of German nationalist groups

The Kampfbund ("Battle-league") was a league of nationalist fighting societies and the German National Socialist Party in Bavaria, Germany, in the 1920s. It included Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party (NSDAP) and its Sturmabteilung (SA), the Oberland League and the Bund Reichskriegsflagge. Hitler was its political leader,^[1] while Hermann Kriebel led its militia.

The league was created on 1–2 September 1923^[2] at Nuremberg, where Hitler joined other nationalist leaders to celebrate Sedantag, which marked the anniversary of the Prussian victory over France in 1870. The purpose was to consolidate and streamline their agendas and also prepare to take advantage of the split between Bavaria and the central government. The impetus for this consolidation was the declaration a few days earlier by the Berlin central government announcing the end to the resistance against the French occupation of the Ruhr, whose apparent capitulation infuriated the nationalists and freebooters. The Kampfbund conducted the Beer Ha

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Beer Hall Putsch (Munich Putsch)

Background

On November 8–9, 1923, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party led a coalition group in an attempt to overthrow the German government. This attempted coup d'état came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

They began at the Bürgerbräu Keller, a beer hall in the Bavarian city of Munich. Hitler and the Nazi Party aimed to seize control of the state government, march on Berlin, and overthrow the German federal government. They sought to establish a new government to oversee the creation of a unified Greater German Reich. In this new government, citizenship would be based on race.

The putsch failed and Bavarian authorities prosecuted nine participants, including Hitler. Despite its failure, the leaders ultimately redefined the putsch as a heroic effort to save the nation.

A Climate of National Instability

Throughout Germany, the first four years of the Weimar Republic were marred by economic woes, trauma at the loss of World War I, and humiliation at what many considered to be the excessively harsh terms of the Versaill

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862.60/105

The Consul General at Berlin (Messersmith) to the Secretary of State

No. 1489

Berlin, August 9, 1933.
[Received August 26.]

Sir: I have the honor to inform the Department that according to the newspapers of August 7 and 8, Dr. Ley, the head of the “Deutscher Arbeitsfront” has made a public statement to the effect that the “Kampfbund fuer gewerblichen Mittelstand” has been dissolved, and the functions which are to remain are to be incorporated in the so-called “Deutscher Arbeitsfront”, of which he is the head. This is in a way an epoch-making event in the history of the National-Socialist movement.

The “Kampfbund fuer gewerblichen Mittelstand” was created through an order of the present Chancellor, Mr. Hitler, in 1932, as leader of the Party. As I have informed the Department in previous despatches, it was to be the fighting organization of the German middle-class merchants and manufacturers. Its organization led to the creating of many similar “Kampfbunde” or fighting bodies, which were pressing the aims of individual sections of industry and trade. When the Nation