Between the night of Friday, June 30, 1934, and midday of Sunday, July 2, the men of the Gestapo and the SS assassinated more than a thousand persons. The SA were annihilated, but so too were murdered all those who at that moment were in the way of the Führer's plans, or Himmler's, Goering, or Goebbels. What was left of the SA was integrated into the Wehrmacht. They lost, of course, all their power in the universities.

A week went by before we learned that apocalypse had not touched Martin Heidegger. I will die without knowing why.

Röhm was arrested by Hitler himself. He put him in prison and had a pistol delivered to him so he could end his life. The extravagant and unhinged Führer of the Marxist wing of National Socialism turned down such a kind offering. Hours later, dark like his end, two SS entered his cell. Röhm began shouting them orders; absurd, belated, even pathetic. Without fuss, they riddled him with their bullets.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to know the exact number of dead that Saint Bartholomew night. Some venture 1,048 persons. Never, in a period less than 48 hours, had there been a killing like this. It was said: Hitler has gone too long without resolving the problem of the SA. It was said: he owed an acknowledgement to Röhm, a loyal man, a fierce warrior of the highest caliber. It was said: he feared that Röhm might reveal things that only he knew. Finally, it was said: Hitler's decision wasn't a decision, it was an explosion. And from that came the cruelty of the proceedings.

The Führer directed everything. Also the decision about the scope of the killings was his. He, he insisted, leading an invincible army, had arrested Röhm, at the end of a gun barrel, almost drilling him in the face. He held the gun in his right hand, as beautiful as the other hand. "You should just see his wonderful hands!" What didn't we see then, that very night of Saint Bartholomew? What did we deny seeing?

You could ask me. I, now, recently, have asked myself. Not then. Also, now I ask myself if Heidegger asked himself. Could it assassinate hundreds of people in less than 48 hours, a movement destined to incarnate the soul, the core values of the West and to revive the greatest of the first beginning, the greatest of classical Greece? I never learned Heidegger's answer to that question. But only one year later, in Freiburg, on again as the awe inspiring teacher he was, he spoke to us. He dictated the course of Introduction to Metaphysics and he spoke, less than a year after the massacre, of the truth and greatness of National Socialism.

Once again, I get ahead of myself, Martin. When I do, I simplify. The whole is more complex. Perchance, confronted by all this, we end up sheltering in the Master's original philosophical attitude, the only one: to question.

It doesn't matter, says Werner Rolfe. I swear that now you will never forget me.

Here we are, still. They have just taken Rainer's cadaver. I went up to the room where Maria Elizabeth, controlling her terror so that you might not suffer, waited, and I told her I had to accompany lieutenant Rolfe who, luckily, had been my companion in Marburg and swears he will return me alive. Maria Elizabeth doesn't say anything. She looks at me and, miraculously, I understand she has believed me. I leave with Werner Rolfe. A black Mercedes Benz waits for us. He get in the back seat and Rolfe says, simply, to headquarters. Less than half an hour later we are there. During the trip we didn't say anything. But Rolfe has much to tell me.

Close or distant, the gun shots and screams reach us.

Labels: The Shadow of Heidegger

¶ 3:55 AM