In the summer of 1934 Adolf Hitler planned and conducted the most ruthless purge of his thirteen-year period as leader of Germany. The victims were not political opponents but friends, colleagues and fellow fascists who had helped the Nazi Party in its rise to power. The Night of the Long Knives broke the back and the will of the Sturmabteilung, the SA, the brawling street thugs who had bludgeoned political opposition into submission. The SA’s ruthless bullyboy tactics played no small part in Hitler’s establishment of a dictatorship that was to influence affairs in Germany - and the world - throughout the 1930s and beyond. AUTHOR: Phil Carradice is a poet, novelist and historian. He has written over fifty books, the most recent being The Call-up: A Study of Peacetime Conscription in Britain and Napoleon in Defeat and Captivity. He presents the BBC Wales history programme The Past Master and is a regular broadcaster on both TV and radio. A native of Pembroke Dock, he now lives in the Vale of Glamorgan but travels extensively in the course of his work. Educated at Cardiff University and at Cardiff College of Education, Phil is a former head teacher but now lives as a full-time writer and is regarded as one of Wales’s best creative writing tutors. He writes extensively for several Pen & Sword military history series including ‘Cold War 1945-1991’ and ‘A History of Terror’.
60 b/w illustrations