The Night of the Long Knives () was a purge in which Adolf Hitler and the regime of Nazi Germany targeted members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, as well as past opponents of the party. At least 85 people were murdered in the purge, which took place between 30 June and 2 July 1934. Although most of those killed during the Night of the Long Knives were members of the SA, other victims included close associates of Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, several Reichswehr (German Army) generals – one of whom, Kurt von Schleicher, was formerly Chancellor of Germany – and their associates; Gregor Strasser, Hitler's former competitor for control of the Nazi Party; at least one person killed in a case of mistaken identity; and several victims killed because they "knew too much". The total number of victims is heavily disputed between historians; some estimates put the number in the hundreds. Debate over number of victims The precise number of victims is disputed and will probably never be known with certainty. During the Purge itself official radio and newspaper reports only gave the names of 10 people killed: the six SA-leaders executed in Stadelheim Prison on June 30; Kurt von Schleicher, a German general and a former Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, and his wife; Karl Ernst, who was wrongly reported to have been shot in Stadelheim, whereas in fact he was shot in the barracks of Hitler's Personal Guard Unit in Berlin Lichterfelde; and Ernst Röhm. While the German newspapers avoided disclosing the names of further victims of the purge, in the weeks and months to follow, the international press would set out to detail a more comprehensive account of how many people had been killed between June 30 to July 2. They managed to present about 100 names of people allegedly killed, although a number of those eventually turned out to have survived, such as the former SA chief of Berlin Wolf-Heinrich Graf von Helldorf (who was actually one of the organizers of the purge – e.g. he warned Werner von Alvensleben, Schleicher's go-between to Hitler – but not Schleicher – to spend the fateful weekend at his hunting lodge; and was himself only killed after participating in the fateful 20th of July 1944 coup attempt) and Adolf Morsbach, the head of the cosmopolitan-minded Akademischer Austauschdienst (Academic Exchange Programme), who had