Sepp Dietrich earned his place at Hitler's right hand with murder. By 1934 the SA — the huge brownshirt militia that had helped bring the Nazis to power — had become a threat, its leadership pressing for a "second revolution" the army and the elites feared. Hitler chose to destroy it. On 30 June 1934, in the purge remembered as the Night of the Long Knives, the SS shot the SA's leaders and settled scores with other enemies across Germany, killing perhaps a hundred or more without trial. Dietrich, commanding Hitler's Leibstandarte, led one of the firing squads. The purge broke the SA, bound the army to Hitler, and raised the SS — and men like Dietrich — to new power. It also announced that the regime would now simply kill whoever stood in its way.

K&C's figure shows Dietrich in the black pre-war SS parade uniform — the dress that, as the copy notes, went into storage for good once the shooting war began in 1939 and field-grey took over. He is the companion to K&C's other portrait of him, the greatcoated Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, and belongs with the regiment he built and led, the Leibstandarte, and the leader he began as chauffeur and bodyguard to, Adolf Hitler. In an SS display he is the archetype of the loyal Nazi enforcer, rewarded for the blood on his hands.

Model: LAH254 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set