Night of the Long Knives

The Night of the Long Knives which is also known as "Operation Hummingbird" was a purge that the fascists in Hitler's Germany carried out to eliminate those they considered their opponents.

Those eliminated in the purge were felt to represent a "socialist cabal" who could have been a Fifth Column in the fascist state. Among those killed was Hitler's former close ally Ernst Rohm, leader of the Brownshirts (Sturmabteilung, or SA)