The Night of the Long Knives

Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of Hitler’s bloody suppression of Ernst Roehm and his stormtroopers. There are many accounts on the web written long after the demise of the Third Reich, but it’s a lot harder to find contemporary reports in newspapers and magazines. Today, almost four decades after a man with vision laid the foundations of Project Gutenberg, a massive and ever-growing library of books is at our fingertips online. Perhaps the day will come when the newstands of bygone eras will be as accessible as the libraries are now. I hope so. Contemporary news accounts are often far from accurate, but they have the great virtue of being free of the “filtering” so often found in the ideological narratives that pass for “history” these days. One gains a great sense of perspective by occasionally escaping the political correctnesses and narratives of ones own time and immersing ones self in the political correctnesses and narratives of days gone by.