June 30th 1934, the date German freedoms and the rule of civilised law died at the hands of Adolf Hitler. In the hours that became known as the "The Night of the Long Knives" he murdered his way to dictatorship. Under his stewardship, a string of pitiless assassins worked for 48 hours to purge all who might contest him for absolute power or threaten to reveal his unsavoury past. At that terrible moment, Adolf Hitler went from being viewed as just another power-monger within a chaotic political machine, to a brutal dictator. It was a prelude to the holocaust.