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Ernst Rohm, the leader of Hitler’s storm troopers known as the SA, was assassinated on June 30, 1934. Rohm was openly homosexual. June 28, 1934 marked the beginning of a five day event known as “The Night of Long Knives” or the “Blood Purge.” This hideous endeavor was sanctioned by Hitler after he received erroneous information from Heinrich Himmler that Rohm was trying to usurp power from the Fuhrer. Himmler, who was extremely homophobic, despised Rohm as he was his rival for Hitler’s esteem. Himmler also wanted to expand the fledgling SS and in order to do so had to dismantle to powerful SA. The only means by which to do this was for Rohm to be eliminated. As Rohm had long been Hitler’s closest ally and the Chancellor was indifferent to his homosexuality, Himmler had to concoct a scheme to enrage the Fuhrer. He manufactured evidence that supported his claim that Rohm was trying to undermine Hitler’s authority. This was the catalyst needed for Hitler to order Rohm’s assassination. Rohm, along with three hundred other men, was murdered in Munich in the summer of 1934; Himmler became the second most powerful man in Hitler's regime.<ref>Plant, ''The Pink Triangle'', 54-64. These pages contain Plant’s theory on political motivation along with a detailed description of the “Night of Long Knives.” It is important to understand that Rohm’s assassination was politically motivated and not due to his homosexuality.</ref>
Less than three weeks after orchestrating the murder of Rohm, Himmler held sole control of the newly independent SS. Also during that period, Hitler issued a directive that all homosexuals were to be expelled from the ranks of the SA and SS. He delivered a statement to the people of Germany stating that he would like “every mother to be able to offer her son to the SA, the Party, or the Hitler Youth without the fear that he might become morally or sexually depraved.”<ref>Geoffrey J. Giles, “The Institutionalization of Homosexual Panic in the Third Reich,” in ''Social Outsiders in Nazi N a z i Germany'', edited by Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, 233-255. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 236.</ref> Prior to the Rohm assassination, Hitler had little to say about gays and lesbians, but with Himmler’s urging and the constant obsession of pro-natalistic thinking, the issue became more prevalent to the Fuhrer and heightened measures were taken to stamp out homosexuality.
On February 18, 1937, Himmler voiced his disgust with the relatively high number of homosexual cases within his own ranks. He naively declared that there were “eight to ten cases a year” of homosexual activity within the SS.<ref>Austin</ref> His tolerance had worn out thus prompting him to proclaim that any member of the SS participating in such an act was to be publically degraded, sent to prison, and finally transported to a concentration camp where he would be “shot….while attempting to escape.”<ref>Austin</ref> Four years prior to this declaration, Himmler rejected the fascist notion that all traits and behaviors were genetic and thought scientists were wrong in their theories that homosexuality was congenital. He wrongly believed that 98% of those who had participated in a homosexual act were seduced and that the issue was resolvable through discipline and hard labor.<ref>Giles, 243.</ref>
