Rise of the Nazis (2019) s01e02 Episode Script

1
It's January 1933
and Germany has a new Chancellor.
He refuses to engage
in the boring day-to-day detail
of running a country.
He has no interest in the opinions
of experts and refuses
to read briefings.
Instead, he tasks his team
with a simple assignment.
Destroy democracy
and make him dictator.
Destroying democracy will take
just six months.
To piece together how it happened,
historians and experts have examined
this period, each from a different
individual perspective.
You cajole, you influence,
you manipulate.
They'll take us inside the minds
of those that fought fascism
They realised these people
are after your head.
They want to annihilate you
from existence altogether.
..and the Nazis themselves.
Himmler genuinely believed
that he would create a racially pure
Germany, where the Aryan race
would reign supreme.
The moments when history hung
in the balance and the world's worst
atrocities could have
been prevented.
Mass murder was no problem.
But it was important
to be socially acceptable.
Do people care about the truth?
At the start of 1933,
Hitler is the Chancellor of Germany,
the equivalent of Prime Minister.
But he still has a Parliament
beneath him that could block him
..a head of state
who could fire him
..and a legal system that could
prosecute the Nazis
if they break the law.
So, Hitler now wants those below him
to dismantle the German state,
pitting senior Nazis
against each other.
Hitler allowed his subordinates
to fight it out amongst themselves,
even encouraged it, because he
believed in a Darwinian principle,
or what he understood
as the Darwinian principle,
of the survival of the fittest.
Hitler's regime was a mass
of competing individuals,
and competing centres of power,
which Hitler deliberately kept
competing with one another.
He believed that if he appointed
three people to do the same job,
the most ruthless, the most Nazi,
the most able one
would come to the top.
Hermann Goring has ambitions
to be a big wheel,
second, perhaps, to Hitler.
He needs to be noticed.
People often ask me,
"You've written a biography
"of Goring, did you ever fall
in love with your subject?"
You know, people who write
biographies generally do.
And I always say, "No, I never fell
in love with my subject."
He's so different from
the other leading Nazis.
You know, he is jovial,
amusing, flamboyant,
likes the good life.
He'll have a good joke, he has
a drink, his picture is often
in popular magazines.
He is the kind of person
who nowadays would invite
Hello Magazine in
to look at his house.
But, on the other hand,
he is callous, brutal, ambitious.
This is a man, who, at the end,
signs the order in July 1941
for the Final Solution
to the Jewish question.
The Nazis' first move
appears democratic.
Hitler calls a general election
to try to get
more seats in Parliament.
Goring sees an opportunity
to impress Hitler
by delivering victory.
But, to do that, he'll need to
take on the Social Democrats
and the Communists.
The Communist leader
is Ernst Thalmann.
Ernst Thalmann is definitely
a charismatic guy and he's a leader
of the German Communist Party,
which was the largest communist
party outside of Soviet Russia.
And he is red as hell.
He speaks to a deep sense
of resentment and anger
amongst the German working classes.
Goring hates Marxism
and everything it represents.
He's a German patriot.
He's very committed to Germany,
with a capital G.
He thinks the left
will destroy Germany,
it will do to Germany what
the Bolsheviks did to Russia.
While the communists are preparing
to fight an election,
Goring has other ideas.
He wants to arrest them
and lock them up.
But to arrest the democratically
elected opposition,
Goring will need
a very good reason.
So, he plays on public fears,
casting the communists
as enemies of the people.
Then he raids the Communist Party
HQ, looking for evidence
of a violent uprising.
Well, of course, they find
plenty of Marxist literature
which is about the revolution.
That's what Marxism is,
it's about having a revolution.
But there isn't any hard and fast
evidence of a Communist coup
or revolutionary plan.
And they don't find the smoking gun.
Even though he'd put in all this
work to demonising communists,
presenting them
as an existential threat,
he can't say he's found evidence
that an armed uprising is imminent.
He's got to say the armed
uprising has started,
and that's where
the Reichstag Fire comes in.
Goring's working late in his
office when, suddenly, people
rush in and tell him,
"The Reichstag's on fire."
Goring gets up and rushes
to the building.
In fact, he tries to enter
the building until he's restrained.
Here's the Reichstag,
where he holds office,
if you like,
is going up in flames.
A photographer captures
Hitler and Goring
after they rush to the scene.
Goring knows this is exactly
the opportunity he needs.
"Communists, they've done this,
I've told you they were going
"to do it. If you wanted proof
of the threat posed by communism,
"here it is,
the flames in front of you."
Hitler finally endorses completely
what it is that Goring is doing.
We're going to wipe out
these vermin.
Communists have had it.
For Goring, it's a moment of
real political excitement.
He makes the most of it.
He is the one who is
going to act, boldly,
decisively, he's going
to be Hitler's fixer.
Goring has the green light to round
up the Nazis' political opponents.
To provide the muscle,
he teams up with the Nazis'
paramilitary wing,
the Storm Troopers.
Commanded by the brawling,
brutal adventurer, Ernst Rohm.
Ernst Rohm was a trained officer.
Very stern and very rough.
Rohm was a ruthless fighter
against democracy.
We have to get rid of this kind
of political system
to fight these, what they called,
inner enemies -
communists, social democrats.
It was quick.
Immediate.
The scale of this operation
..is insane.
4,000 communists arrested
in one night.
And it was traumatic.
Suddenly, the communists realised
these people are after your heads,
and they don't just want to squeeze
you out of the electoral terrain,
they want to annihilate you
from existence altogether.
For Goring, the violence
he unleashes doesn't seem
to worry him very much.
There's that famous Goring comment,
"You can't make an omelette
without breaking eggs.
You don't have
a normal moral compass.
You know, you can't
do this to people.
He has an inverted moral compass.
What the communists
are doing is wicked,
and what they're doing is restoring
order and protecting Germany.
And that's moral.
Social networks, political networks,
networks of publishing
were evaporated overnight.
Bear in mind, this is all
still happening during
an election campaign.
The next day, the arrests continue.
Hitler moves to make them
appear legal.
He goes to the head of state,
President Hindenburg,
convincing him to sign
the Reichstag Fire Decree.
It gives the Nazis
emergency powers
..to arrest and imprison
without charge,
to restrict civil liberties,
ban free speech,
and the right to protest.
Within weeks,
over 25,000 arrests made.
Many are beaten and tortured.
Ernst Thalmann escapes.
But one of his comrades
is captured and is tortured,
and his hiding place is given up.
Your leadership is being arrested.
Your active campaigners,
your activists are all being
taken up by the state.
Where do you go?
In a climate of fear,
just under 44% of Germans vote Nazi.
Less than three weeks later,
the Nazis push the Enabling Act
through Parliament,
a law that suspends democracy,
allowing Hitler to govern
without needing approval
from Parliament.
All this is signed off
by President Hindenburg.
I suspect Hindenburg is feeling
he's getting backed into a corner.
The Reichstag burns,
Hitler is able to persuade
not only Hindenburg,
but a large proportion
of the German population
that this is the first sign
of communist insurrection.
I mean, it was, if you like,
almost the birth certificate
of the Nazi regime,
with all its horrors.
With the Reichstag suspended,
the first laws are passed
to restrict the freedoms of Jews.
A Jewish baker is found dead,
a swastika carved into his chest.
Goring gets his reward.
More power and more prestige.
He is Prussia Minister
of the Interior,
Germany's most powerful state.
He's given control
of the Air Force and becomes master
of the German forests.
He'll get new uniforms,
a country estate and a pet lion.
But, whilst Goring has managed to
lock up
the Nazis' political rivals
..the next step of Germany's
moral dissent is taken by someone
further down the pecking order.
In a regional office in Munich
is the relatively unknown
Heinrich Himmler.
In early 1933, Himmler wants to
cultivate links with Hitler
to get known by Hitler
more and more.
Himmler wants power,
but, in early 1933,
it doesn't look likely at all
that Himmler will ever rise
to the top of the Nazi party.
Himmler looked completely
boring, unmanly.
Uncharismatic, dull, pedantic,
bespectacled nerd.
This photograph is really emblematic
of Himmler's personality
as a really insecure man who feels
that he doesn't have much
of a soldierly, masculine face,
so he needs to cover his chin.
Himmler's view of Goring
was initially quite negative,
because he thought that
Goring was old guard,
that Goring was baroque,
that Goring was the direct rival.
For Goring, Himmler's not somebody
he is yet going to be aware of
as a potential rival or a threat.
He becomes a very big figure,
of course,
later on in the dictatorship.
Himmler is head of the SS,
a paramilitary group of fanatical
Nazis who see themselves
as Hitler's most loyal soldiers.
The black-shirted, jack-booted SS
is very much a product
of Himmler's ideas.
Aryan supremacy, hatred of
parliamentary democracy,
the dispensation of violence
against anyone standing in the way
of the Nazis.
Extreme anti-Semitism.
He was a micro-manager.
SS members had to seek Himmler's
permission if they wanted to marry.
His ambition is to make
the SS the central institution
in Nazi Germany in charge
of political repression.
More conservative Nazis believed
that the best way to control
political opponents was by using
the law to lock them up.
Himmler thought that even more
radical measures were required.
Himmler now follows Goring's lead,
and he uses new laws to start
arresting Nazi opponents.
The instrument Himmler used
was called, euphemistically,
protective police custody.
Protective police custody meant
that prisoners could be locked up
in the hundreds of thousands
over the course of 1933,
without having the chance
to speak to a judge,
without having the chance
to speak to a lawyer.
Himmler used protective police
custody quite indiscriminately
to extend his power,
to extend the power of the SS.
Then Himmler needs somewhere
to put all these prisoners.
And he's found
a solution to that, too.
Himmler gives a press conference.
In his dull voice,
the topic of this press conference
is the opening of a camp
where political prisoners
can be re-educated.
He says that this camp
has a capacity of about 5,000.
He claims that rabble-rousers
who are subverting the power
of the state would be housed there.
Especially communists,
social democrats, trade unionists.
He says that law and order
will reign supreme within this camp.
The camp's in
the small town of Dachau.
Himmler and the SS
are quickly taking control
of Bavaria's justice system.
But right at the bottom
of that system is someone
who is about to fight back.
Josef Hartinger was a 39-year-old
deputy prosecutor.
Part of this generation
that was going to make
a strong, democratic Germany.
People talk about Oskar Schindler,
he saved 1,000 lives.
And if there'd been 1,000 people
like Schindler,
there never would have been
a Holocaust.
Well, had there been 100 people
like Josef Hartinger,
not only would there not have been
a Holocaust,
there may not have been
a Third Reich.
Hartinger is sitting at his desk,
shortly after 9:00 in the morning.
His phone rings.
There's a call from
the concentration camp in Dachau,
that four detainees have been shot
trying to escape.
Under Germany's criminal code,
it is Hartinger's job
as deputy state prosecutor
to investigate the deaths.
So, he sets off to Dachau,
with medical examiner, Moritz Flamm.
Hartinger knows there's
a detention centre there.
The fact that someone tried
to escape is certainly
a possibility.
But he's not going to
assume anything, let's see
what it looks like
when we get there.
There's a big wall there
with an iron gate
in front of it.
He sees several Storm Troopers,
these brown uniforms,
with black SS kepis on.
And firearms.
What he doesn't see
is actually more important.
He doesn't see any Bavarian police.
They wear these green uniforms,
and the SS had been assigned
as auxiliaries
to the Bavarian police.
So, SS men there, but no police.
The camp itself is a former
munitions facility,
overgrown, boarded up buildings.
Fairly desolate.
And he sees these prisoners
being marched around in groups.
They drive up to
the commandant's headquarters,
and the camp commandant is there.
Wackerle, he's a poster boy SS man.
Blonde-haired, blue-eyed,
black uniform, shiny boots.
And here you have Josef Hartinger,
this slightly paunchy,
middle-aged, balding guy.
The commandant leads
Hartinger and Flamm
to where the prisoners died.
He explains that the four men
were on a work detail,
but they tried to escape,
running for the trees.
They were shot from a distance
after ignoring the guards'
commands to stop.
He's taken to a shed,
where the bodies have simply
been thrown on the ground
like slaughtered animals.
And Hartinger looks at this
and just says
.."This is not the way
you treat a human being."
What kind of people are these,
that would do this to someone?
Hartinger and Flamm,
as they are going back,
are kind of reviewing
everything that was there.
The treatment of these three bodies,
of these dead young people,
Wackerle himself.
And, then, as Hartinger said
was most troubling of all,
he said, "How is it that all four
of these men were Jews?"
And he says, "There is
something very wrong here.
"And we are going to fix it.
"We will set this right."
Hartinger vows to bring murder
charges against the Dachau SS.
But this means
going up against Himmler,
just as his power is growing.
Because, for Himmler,
Dachau is only the beginning.
And he's slowly bringing every state
in Germany under SS control.
Himmler takes up a considerable
amount of his time to travel,
to schmooze.
He knew how to flatter them.
He would talk in a soft voice,
he would appear polite.
He offers them an honorary rank
in the SS, which gave them the right
to wear a smart SS uniform.
Many Nazi and state leaders
at that time are extremely vain,
so, they are more than pleased
when someone like Himmler makes them
an honorary member of what is
turning out to be the elite corps
of the National Socialist state.
He would place people into his debt
by giving them expensive gifts.
To win people over for his cause,
he believed that he had to be
a decent human being.
Being decent meant, for example,
to kiss the hand of a woman.
But being decent could also mean
the mass murder of millions of Jews.
Himmler is extremely methodical
..calculating
..and patient.
Himmler is amassing a police empire
controlled by the SS
..turning the SS into one of
the most powerful institutions
in the Nazi state.
At Dachau, Hartinger is doing
some detective work.
Examining the bodies,
he discovers the prisoners were shot
in the back of the head.
It's clear the men have been
systematically murdered
because they are Jews.
Dr Flamm looks at Wackerle
and he says,
"Your guards are very good shots
with their pistols."
And Hartinger expands his inquiries,
investigating reported suicides,
and other failed escape attempts
at Dachau.
Hartinger and Flamm keep driving
back out to Dachau,
collecting evidence
..taking depositions in
a very careful, methodical way.
Forensic details, name, age,
profession, the SS men responsible.
Hartinger said,
"I could see the hatred
"in the SS officers' eyes."
One of the detainees allegedly
had committed suicide
by hanging himself.
But when Flamm does the autopsy,
it turns out that the man
in fact had been beaten to death
and then his corpse was hanged.
Another one, the SS guard had shot
allegedly from eight to ten metres.
But, when Flamm
conducts the autopsy,
it turns out he had been shot
point-blank.
This is late May.
He finally has two cases
that can demonstrate
that these people were murdered.
Hartinger has the evidence
to implicate
the Commandant of Dachau
in the murders.
Charges that could ruin
Himmler's plans.
But it's more than trying to bring
a single SS man to justice.
He knows Wackerle
is ordering these killings,
but Wackerle is ultimately
a deputy of Heinrich Himmler.
And I think Hartinger is out
to indict the entire system.
Himmler's fear is that
investigations by the legal system,
by state prosecutors, will reveal
the horrific truth about Dachau.
That Dachau is not a camp
where political prisoners
are being detained,
are being re-educated,
that Dachau is a place of murder,
that Dachau is a place of savage
brutality and murderous violence.
This is Himmler's fear.
Now Hartinger takes
the file to his boss.
"I finally have everything we need,
the indictments are ready to sign."
And his boss
looks at him and says
.."I'm not signing.
"I'm not signing anything."
And Hartinger's just stunned.
Hartinger's boss,
the senior prosecutor
..is under Himmler's spell.
Hartinger, at that moment,
is left with a choice.
He has a wife and a five-year-old
daughter, he has his whole career
ahead of him by simply
doing what his boss says.
This is over.
Step back from it.
He knows what's right,
and he knows what's wrong.
And that's what actually
matters to him.
And he goes back to his office
..and he starts writing.
It's an astonishing act.
And, at that moment, Hartinger is
truly alone in the world.
Hartinger's file is taken
to the investigating judge.
And it goes up the chain
to the Governor of Bavaria.
But, at the same time,
Hartinger's boss tips off Himmler
about what's going on.
Himmler is presented with evidence
that Josef Hartinger has filed
investigations against
Dachau SS guards.
If news of the murders
at Dachau break,
Himmler is facing a huge problem.
The SS does not have the right,
under German law,
to kill political opponents.
So, Himmler needs to find a strategy
to ensure that these legal
investigations do not go anywhere.
The investigations started
by Hartinger seem like a threat
to the SS, as its power base
is rapidly increasing,
not only in Bavaria,
but also across Germany.
Himmler has to react rather swiftly.
He must try even harder to give
the concentration camps
under SS control
an even stronger legal veneer.
As Hartinger's file heads
up the chain of command,
Himmler tries to fix the problem.
Films like this one
make people believe
that concentration camps
are humanely run.
Whilst, in secret, the SS
finds more elaborate ways
to cover up new murders.
And Dachau's commandant,
Wackerle, is fired.
Hartinger's file
goes all the way to Berlin.
Those at the top of the justice
system can see that what's happening
at Dachau is illegal.
The astonishing thing is Hartinger
expects that he could be killed.
And he isn't.
More astonishing is that
the killings stop in Dachau
for the entire month of June,
for the entire month of July.
So, Hartinger, at that point,
assumes that he actually
has scored a victory.
He's won this.
It was this fight between him
and the Commandant,
between the power of the Nazis
and the power of the law,
and, ultimately,
Hartinger won that battle.
Thanks to Hartinger,
German law has a chance
to shut down Dachau.
But Himmler has one more
lever to pull.
Hitler is not someone
who is accustomed
to regular habits at work.
He doesn't have a systematic
manner of governing.
Lunch was often served with a delay
of two hours because the Nazi leader
had got out of bed so late.
It would have been, I think,
pretty boring to be in his company.
Because he just went on, and on,
and on, in endless monologues.
Hitler didn't like bureaucratic
detail, to read too many files.
Hitler thought he was above the law.
The law was a series of artificial
restrictions on his freedom
of action, on behalf of Germany.
He was expressing
the soul and the inner wishes
of the German people.
Of course, as defined by himself.
Himmler found out very quickly
how to read Hitler's personality,
how to please Hitler,
how to work with Hitler.
Himmler would have very rarely dared
to interrupt Hitler.
And, then, towards the end
of their conversations,
which weren't really conversations
but monologues by Hitler talking
at Himmler, Himmler would
have made a proposal.
Himmler knows exactly which button
to push with Hitler.
Himmler, cleverly,
exploits Hitler's dislike
for the judiciary,
disregard for legal norms
and values, legal constraints
on Nazi power.
Himmler also knows that Hitler
lives in fear of assassination,
even convinced his kitchen staff
is trying to poison him.
Sensing an opportunity
to impress Hitler,
Himmler provides him with
hand-picked SS men to act
as a personal bodyguard,
showing Hitler there is now one man
and one organisation
above all others that he can trust
without question.
Himmler's main characteristic
was his unconditional
loyalty to Hitler.
Remember, he's a very young man.
He's only in his early 30s
when the Nazis come to power.
And Hitler used to refer
to Heinrich Himmler
as "the loyal Heinrich,"
"der treue Heinrich."
He ran the SS as an organisation
that was well structured
and well set up.
And this got the approval of Hitler.
He was very much inclined to give
Himmler what he wanted.
Himmler managed to persuade Hitler
to make sure that no SS member
would end up behind prison bars
for torturing and killing
prisoners at Dachau.
And to block the legal
investigations.
Hartinger, his plan
has been compromised.
All the evidence
that he has collected,
the forensic reports,
eyewitness testimony,
the deposition.
All of this evidence
is in the hands of the Nazis.
And Hartinger's lost all of it.
It ends up in Munich,
they don't know what to do with it,
so, the head Nazi there literally
just opens his desk drawer,
puts the files in there,
closes it and locks it.
And that was that.
At Dachau, the killing of Jewish
prisoners starts up again.
Except, now, no-one complains.
German law is becoming meaningless.
By managing the crisis
created by the Dachau murders,
Himmler proves himself to be
an extremely skilful operator.
He proves himself to be a brilliant
Nazi, as perverse as this may sound,
and Hitler is almost certainly
impressed by this.
Now Himmler and the SS feel
emboldened to use utmost violence
to kill concentration camp
prisoners.
Himmler and the SS know that what
they are doing is not legal
under the prevailing
German criminal code.
But the ultimate source of the law
for Himmler and the SS,
what is right,
what is wrong, is Hitler.
The Nazis are transforming
German life.
Women are encouraged
to abandon their careers
and become mothers and housewives.
Newspapers can no longer
criticise the government.
A new ministry for propaganda sells
Hitler's vision to the public.
Meanwhile, Himmler is now
at top table.
And not everyone
appreciates his rise.
For Goring, Himmler
suddenly becomes a figure
that has to be taken seriously.
And, so, he's got to be
pretty wary of Himmler.
Goring's grip may well
be under threat.
But Goring is making
some moves of his own,
designed to ensure that no-one
can move against him
without him knowing.
Goring has created
the Research Bureau,
a top-secret surveillance
organisation that uses
new phone-tapping technology.
It starts with only a few men,
but it will go on
to employ thousands.
Goring signs off on every wiretap,
and reads the transcripts.
He gets a kind of pleasure from it.
He's amused by it,
amused by what people say about him,
of course, and quite entertained.
But, at the same time, of course,
he's a reasonably
vengeful politician,
he doesn't forget the kind of things
people say about him.
There is one famous occasion
where he calls in
a number of heads
of big business and says,
"You know, I want you to do this."
And they say, "No, no,
we don't want to do this."
And he says,
"Well, you've got to do this,
"because I've got tape recordings
here of your meetings,
"and these tape recordings
are very incriminating.
"So, you either do what I tell you,
or you're in trouble."
One politician who bad-mouths
the Nazis is found dead.
To act on the information gathered
by the Research Bureau,
a new branch of the secret
police is created -
the Gestapo.
The Gestapo use a new measure -
preventative arrest -
to disappear Jewish people,
gay people, intellectuals,
and anyone suspected
of anti-Nazi feeling.
Himmler feels that the Gestapo
should be brought under his control.
Part of his plan to take over
all German police.
But getting his hands on Goring's
secret police won't be easy.
Himmler sees Goring as a rival
to Himmler's master plan
to put all German police forces
across all states under his control.
Himmler very much thinks that Goring
is stepping onto SS territory,
onto Himmler's own territory,
by setting up the Gestapo.
It is very difficult for Himmler
to simply say to Goring,
"I want to take over the Gestapo"
because Goring is not known
as someone who
gives up power easily.
Imagine a scene where Himmler,
trying to schmooze Goring
into giving him control
over the Gestapo.
For Goring, control of the police
force in Prussia and the Gestapo
is very important.
Goring doesn't really
have any other roles
that are particularly significant,
and so he's very keen
that he be able
to retain this position.
Goring clearly communicates
to Himmler
that Himmler should
mind his own business.
Goring doesn't compromise.
So Himmler starts developing some
personal animosity against Goring.
They do not agree at all.
Goring is going to be a very
difficult person to dislodge.
And, so, Hitler's inner circle
are at each other's throats,
whilst also trying to impress him.
This internal conflict
within the Nazi party will soon
reach a bloody conclusion.
But, for Hitler, whilst his aims
are being achieved,
this rivalry will
seem insignificant.
And, with his team dismantling
the system for him,
he can just sit back and watch.
Hitler spends increasing amounts
of time in his summer retreat
in the Alps, in Berchtesgaden.
He retreats there sometimes
for weeks or even months on end.
He spends a lot of time,
far into the night,
watching old movies,
does not get up particularly early
in the morning.
And, of course, he has
a relationship with Eva Braun,
whom he keeps absolutely secret
from the rest of the world.
In just six months
from becoming Chancellor
..Hitler has destroyed
the political opposition
..opened Dachau
..subverted the legal system
..created the Gestapo
..and begun to pollute the minds
of the German people
with the Nazis' racist doctrine
of anti-Semitism.
And there are lessons for us
to learn from that crisis.
How easily you can move to a stage
of totalitarian dictatorship.
Democracy is fragile,
because in order for it to be truly
democratic, in the purest sense,
it leaves itself open to being
taken over by fundamentally
anti-democratic forces.
Democracies require, first of all,
popular support and popular belief
in institutions, such as a free
press, an independent judiciary,
and democratic elections.
The echoes that we find
in our own time of the Nazis'
seizure of power are in
a number of different areas.
Emergency powers, for example,
emergency decrees,
state of emergency,
that allowed them to put their own
plans into action without
any serious opposition.
The rise of the Nazis
was not inevitable.
There were many warning signs.
Democracy was a relatively
new form of political rule
in the 1920s and 1930s.
People simply didn't know
that the institutions of democracy,
that democracy, as such,
was extremely frail,
that democracy constantly
needed defending.
And this is a story
that is still worth retelling,
a story that institutions,
the institutions of democracy,
should not be taken for granted.
That democracy needs vigorous
defence against forces
of the populist far right.
Hitler can't actually call himself
the leader until Hindenburg,
the President, is dead.
Rohm was too powerful.
Hitler feared this kind of power.
Himmler hopes very much that Hitler
will finally act and eliminate Rohm.