Gustav Ritter von Kahr in the context of "Upper Bavaria"

The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, General Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the period of the Weimar Republic. Inspired by Benito Mussolini's March on Rome, Hitler's goal was to use Munich as a base for a march against Germany's national government in Berlin.

The putsch began on the evening of 8 November, when Hitler and a contingent of approximately six hundred Sturmabteilung (SA) members marched on the beer hall Bürgerbräukeller, where Gustav Ritter von Kahr—the Minister-President of Bavaria who had banned some of Hitler's previous planned gatherings—was delivering a speech. As the SA surrounded the hall, Hitler entered, fired a shot into the ceiling, and claimed that the Bavarian government had been overthrown and that the national revolution had begun. The following day, approximately two thousand Nazis marched on the Feldherrnhalle, in the city centre, but were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 15 Nazis, four police officers, and one bystander. Hitler escaped immediate arrest and was spirited off to safety in the countryside. After two days, he was arrested and charged with treason.

The Night of the Long Knives (German: Nacht der langen Messer [ˈnaxt dɛɐ̯ ˈlaŋən ˈmɛsɐ] ), also called the Röhm purge or Operation Hummingbird (German: Aktion Kolibri), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler, urged on by Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a series of extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the German military's concerns about the role of Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazis' paramilitary organization, known colloquially as "Brownshirts". Nazi propaganda presented the murders as a preventive measure against an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Röhm—the so-called Röhm Putsch.

The primary instruments of Hitler's action were the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service (SD), and the Gestapo (secret police) under Reinhard Heydrich, which between them carried out most of the killings. Göring's personal police battalion also took part. Many of those killed in the purge were leaders of the SA, the best-known being Röhm himself, the SA's chief of staff and one of Hitler's longtime supporters and allies. Leading members of the Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its leader Gregor Strasser, were also killed, as were establishment conservatives and anti-Nazis, such as former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Bavarian politician Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had helped suppress Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The murders of SA leaders were also intended to improve the image of the Hitler government with a German public increasingly critical of thuggish SA tactics.