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Originally Posted by Janey
you would certainly get some lively discussion! (althought I thought that the Night of the Long Knives was a purge enacted by Hitler in the 1930's).
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Yeah, it was a purge by Hitler. The leaders of the SA (Hitler's private army of 'brownshirts' or 'stormtroopers') had become so powerful he feared them, so in June 1934 he had the SS (Hitlers super elite bodyguards) arrest and elimitate anyone with power/ officers, etc. It marks the point where Hitler unoffcially went from 'scary leader' to 'supreme leader that no one could challenge'.
I took a History of 20th Century Warfare a year and half ago. When this came up, a person in the class questioned the professor because he thought it was when 'Trudeau betrayed Quebec'. The professor, an acedemic and a historian, explained that 'only self-righteous Quebecois would describe a peaceful gathering of modern Canadians with the same name as a night when more than a hundred murders took place to support at dictatorship.' He went on the explain that while both were political actions, using the title "Night of the Long Knives" is a cheap attept to villianify Trudeau and Anglo leaders, when Levesque refused to let the country function and wanted special considerations that historical precedent or Francophone population didn't merit.
(Levesque was the founder of the PQ, in 78. The Seperatist movement started in the early 60s, the FLQ and the October Crisis was in 70, and Trudeau has implemented the Offcial Languages Act, among other things, starting in the late 60s and throughout the 70s)
But I digress. I think Quebec politics needs a seperate thread.