title: Scott Weiland

text: In 2005, Weiland and his son Noah were featured on comedian David Spade's "The Showbiz Show with David Spade" during a comedy sketch about discouraging music file sharing. Noah has a line during the sketch in which he asks a little girl, "Please buy my daddy's album so I can have food to eat."


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland was a Notre Dame Fighting Irish football fan, as his stepfather is an alumnus. In September 2006, Weiland performed at the University of Notre Dame's Legends Restaurant on the night before a football game. He sang several of his solo songs as well as "Interstate Love Song" and a cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". In a 2007 interview with "Blender magazine", Weiland mentioned that he was raised a Catholic.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Mary Forsberg Weiland's autobiography "Fall to Pieces" was co-written with Larkin Warren and released in 2009. Scott Weiland's autobiography, "Not Dead & Not for Sale", co-written with David Ritz, was released May 17, 2011.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In a November 2012 interview with "Rolling Stone", Weiland revealed that he was engaged to Jamie Wachtel, whom he met during the 2011 filming of his music video for "I'll Be Home for Christmas". Weiland and Wachtel married on June 22, 2013, at their Los Angeles home.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In late 2020, Scott's son Noah Weiland debuted his new band Suspect208, which also features Slash's son London Hudson on drums and Robert Trujillo's son Tye Trujillo on bass. Their debut song "Long Awaited' was described by "Wall of Sound" as being reminiscent of "Purple-"era Stone Temple Pilots.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 1995, Weiland was convicted of buying crack cocaine. He was sentenced to one year of probation. His drug use did not end after his sentence, but increased, and he moved into a hotel room for two months, next door to Courtney Love, where she said he "shot drugs the whole time" with her.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In a 2005 interview with "Esquire", Weiland said that while performing in his first bands as a teenager, his drinking "escalated" and he began using cocaine for the first time, which he referred to as a "sexual" experience.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In December 2007, Weiland was arrested and charged with DUI, his first arrest in over four years (since October 27, 2003). On February 7, 2008, Weiland checked into a rehabilitation facility and left in early March.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland's younger brother Michael died of cardiomyopathy in early 2007. The Velvet Revolver songs "For a Brother" and "Pills, Demons, & Etc" from the album "Libertad" are about Michael. Weiland said in an interview with MTV News in November 2008 that several songs on ""Happy" in Galoshes" were inspired by the death of his brother and his separation from Mary Forsberg. In the same article, MTV News reported that Weiland had not done heroin since December 5, 2002. Weiland also admitted that he went through "a very short binge with coke" in late 2007.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In April 2015, online footage from a show raised questions about the health of Weiland, who appeared to be zoned out and giving a bizarre performance. A representative for Weiland asserted that lack of sleep, several drinks and a faulty earpiece were to blame, not drugs. In June 2015, Weiland claimed that he had been off drugs for 13 years. His response was directed towards comments made by Filter's frontman Richard Patrick, who claimed Weiland was using drugs and that his fans were pushing him closer to death by "sticking up for" him.


title: Scott Weiland

text: After Weiland's death, the tour manager for the Wildabouts, Aaron Mohler, said, "A lot of times I've seen Scott do coke so he could drink more."


title: Scott Weiland

text: Shortly after his death, Jamie Weiland, Scott's third wife, acknowledged that her husband was drinking heavily before he left on his band's last tour, but that he promised her that he would "get it together". She accompanied him on the tour for a week in November and said that Scott was "just killing it" onstage, "every night taking it up a notch".


title: Scott Weiland

text: It has also been revealed that Weiland had hepatitis C, which he may have acquired from intravenous drug use.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Weiland was found dead, at age 48, on his tour bus on December 3, 2015, in Bloomington, Minnesota, while on tour with the Wildabouts. The band's scheduled gig that evening in nearby Medina, Minnesota, had been cancelled several days earlier. They were still planning to play the next night in Rochester, Minnesota. Police searched Weiland's tour bus and confirmed there were small amounts of cocaine in the bedroom where Weiland was discovered dead. Police also found prescription drugs, including Xanax, Buprenorphine, Ziprasidone, Viagra, and sleeping pills on the tour bus. Additionally, two bags of cocaine were found and a bag of a green leafy substance. Tommy Black, bassist for the Wildabouts, was arrested by police for speeding and running red lights while driving the tour bus, on suspicion of possession of cocaine, although the charges against him were later dropped.


title: Scott Weiland

text: Despite the discovery of drugs, no underlying cause of death was immediately given. The medical examiner later determined Weiland's death was the result of an accidental overdose of cocaine, alcohol, and methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA). In its report, the examiner's office also noted Weiland's atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, history of asthma, and prolonged substance abuse.


title: Scott Weiland

text: News of Weiland's death quickly spread throughout the Internet, with many of his musical peers, including his former band members, along with fans and music critics throughout the world, sharing their condolences, tributes, and memories. A day following his death, his former bandmates in Stone Temple Pilots issued a statement saying that he was "gifted beyond words" but acknowledging his struggle with substance abuse, calling it "part of [his] curse."


title: Scott Weiland

text: A quiet funeral for Weiland was held at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on December 11, 2015, in Los Angeles. Members of both Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver attended. Chris Kushner, the wife of Velvet Revolver guitarist Dave Kushner, wrote on her Instagram page following the funeral, "A very sad day when (you) bury a friend. He was a good man. Don't believe everything (you) read. Remember, we were all there." Weiland's body was cremated. Mary Forsberg and the two children were not in attendance, later having a private ceremony in honor of Weiland.


title: Scott Weiland

text: In the wake of Weiland's death, several other artists paid tribute to the singer by covering Stone Temple Pilots tunes in concert, including Life of Agony, Saint Asonia, Umphrey's McGee, Candlebox, Halestorm, and Pop Evil, among others, while Chris Cornell dedicated a performance of "Say Hello 2 Heaven" by Temple of the Dog to the singer.


title: Scott Weiland

text: On the Smashing Pumpkins' website, Billy Corgan praised Weiland, saying: "It was STP's third album ("Tiny Music... Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop)," that had got me hooked, a wizardly mix of glam and post-punk, and I confessed to Scott, as well as the band many times, how wrong I'd been in assessing their native brilliance. And like Bowie can and does, it was Scott's phrasing that pushed his music into a unique, and hard to pin down, aesthetic sonicsphere. Lastly, I'd like to share a thought which, though clumsy, I hope would please Scott In Hominum. And that is if you asked me who I truly believed were the great voices of our generation, I'd say it were he, Layne, and Kurt."


title: Scott Weiland

text: In 2018, Guns N' Roses with Slash and Duff, honored Weiland during the Not in This Lifetime... Tour by covering the Velvet Revolver hit song "Slither".


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: Escape from Tarkov is a multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video game in development by Battlestate Games for Windows. The game is set in the fictional Norvinsk region, where a war is taking place between two private military companies (United Security "USEC" and the Battle Encounter Assault Regiment "BEAR"). Players join matches called "raids" in which they fight other players and bots for loot and aim to survive and escape.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: The developers of "Escape from Tarkov" refer to the game as a realistic and hardcore first-person shooter, survival video game that borrows elements from massively multiplayer online games. In its current state, "Escape from Tarkov" incorporates three different modes for the players to play: online PMC raids, Scav (short for "scavenger") raids, and a temporary offline mode. In these raids, players can choose to play solo or in groups and spawn on one side of a variety of maps to choose from in the game. Once in-game, the players are given an extraction point on the other side of the map, and must fight against other players and non-player characters to reach that point in order to escape. In addition to these standard extractions, players are also given the opportunity to use "optional" extraction points near the middle of the map, but in order to do so you must meet various requirements per extract such as paying roubles (the primary in-game currency), not having a backpack, or having certain items equipped on their character. In addition to combat, players can also find loot in these maps such as firearms, equipment, and armor, and, once extracted, can store their loot in a stash to use in future raids or can be sold to other players in a virtual flea market if having a "found in raid" status.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: When players die in a raid, they lose everything, including loot and the equipment they brought into the raid. Players can insure weapons and equipment they brought in which enables that gear to be returned to them if not taken by other players. In scavenger raids (known as scav runs) players are given a random set of equipment, instead of items from their personal stash, and enter a raid that is already in progress at a random location. After finishing a scavenger raid, there is a cooldown timer until the mode becomes available again for the player. Each raid lasts between 15 and 45 minutes depending on the map, and may contain up to 14 players.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: While not in a raid, players can sell unwanted loot to traders or other players via the flea market and purchase new equipment. These traders also task the player with completing quests which increase their trader loyalty, enabling access to more items and quests. Players have an upgradeable "Hideout" living area, which is an underground bomb shelter that – once upgraded with scavenged or purchased materials – gives the players in-game bonuses. These bonuses include reducing the cooldown timer to play as a Scav, increasing experience gained, and the ability to craft items.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: "Escape from Tarkov"s gameplay has been compared to military simulation games such as the "ARMA" series. Weapons can be built by the player by customizing all its constituent parts, such as selecting the dust cover, grip, stock and scope, a degree of complexity uncommonly seen in the first-person shooter genre. They can equip their character with military equipment including armored vests, armored rigs, and ballistic helmets.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: In-game, the player has fine-grained control over their character's movement speed and crouch height. To check how much ammunition is still in their weapon requires checking the magazine manually – no on-screen counter is provided. The game also has a health system, whereby each of the character's limbs has hit points. Taking damage requires specific types of medical supplies to address wounds, such as bandages for bleeding. The game models realistic ballistics, including features such as ricochets and bullet penetration.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: Scavenging items from containers and bodies takes time, as each item is revealed individually while the player searches. The player must also monitor their energy and hydration levels over the course of a raid.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: "Escape from Tarkov" is set in the fictional city of Tarkov, the capital of the Norvinsk Special Economic Zone in Northwestern Russia between the years 2015 and 2026. Political scandals and collapse of corporations have resulted in the social breakdown of Tarkov and warring factions have turned the city into a shell of itself with sections of the city being under control of aggressive locals called "scavs". Streets of Tarkov as of March 2020 is a location under development and was planned to come out sometime in 2021. A free-roam option that would combine all the locations into one is also planned, providing open-world gameplay.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: There are two PMC factions for players to choose in the game: United Security (USEC), a Western-based company hired by a corporation known as TerraGroup to cover up the company's illegal activities, and BEAR, a company created by the Russian government to investigate these activities. Each faction has its own gameplay advantages as well as unique cosmetics. For example, USEC-based players are specialized in Western or NATO-based firearms, while BEAR-players specialize in Russian firearms.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: The primary opposing, playable NPC faction is the Scavs, which are aggressive locals of Tarkov that are hostile to both BEAR and USEC. There are Normal Scavs (scavengers), Cultists, Scav Raiders, Rogues, and Scav Bosses. Normal Scavs have low tier gear and weapons, and are the primary AI opponent and playable on a cooldown timer. Cultists, Scav Raiders, and Bosses have better equipment than Normal Scavs, each having a different artificial intelligence behavior and each specializing in a specific location in Tarkov. The Rogues are a group of ex-USEC PMC operatives who have decided to band together to control the water treatment plant on the Lighthouse map. Scav Raiders are a group of ex-USECs and BEARs who banded together, they spawn on the maps Reserve and Labs when extractions are switched on. They can have high tier gear and modded weapons. Cultists have a chance to spawn on the maps Customs, Factory, Shoreline or Woods between 22:00 and 06:00 in game time. They can carry good gear and high-tier keys. Battlestate Games is known to change the spawn rates and maps on which these factions appear during events.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: "Escape from Tarkov" began development in 2012. Battlestate Games lead developer Nikita Buyanov stated that he and the staff gained their experience through working at Absolutsoft on their previous work "Contract Wars". Both "Escape from Tarkov" and "Contract Wars" are set in what the developers refer to as the Russia-2028 universe. Some development staff also have experience from real-world military experience, with one being a former Spetsnaz operator.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: Over the course of the game's beta period the developers have released regular game updates, including new features, maps, characters, and equipment. These updates sometimes come with a reset of players' in-game progression ("wipe").


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: The game has faced issues with cheaters and real money trading – the practice whereby players sell in-game currency for real-world money, violating the game's license agreement. In 2020 the developers cracked down on the practice of purchasing currency by trading expensive items with other players in-game, warning players to avoid "constant distribution of items in raids to other players". This caused confusion among players, as concerns were raised about the boundaries of legitimate item trading.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: Battlestate Games have stated that "Escape from Tarkov" would be a traditional full purchase release without any free-to-play or microtransaction elements. There is a possibility of a release on Steam sometime after the game's official release in addition to downloadable content. The early-access version of the game is released in four editions (Standard, Left Behind, Prepare for Escape, and Edge of Darkness), with each increasing edition having more starting equipment and a larger stash for the player to use than the previous.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: "Escape from Tarkov" was launched as a closed alpha game that was first made available to select users on 4 August 2016. Battlestate Games then announced that the game would go into its extended alpha stage on 28 December 2016, which would available to select users who preordered the game. This is the stage where Battlestate released the game in four preorder tiers, with the Edge of Darkness edition guaranteeing players access to the alpha build. All players who had access were subject to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and video coverage of the gameplay via streaming was limited to a few select players until 24 March 2017, when the NDA was lifted.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: The game entered closed beta on 28 July 2017, being made available to all players no matter the pre-order edition they purchased. It received a substantial spike in popularity in early 2020 on Twitch, when a promotional event took place providing players with in-game items for watching streams. The increase in popularity led to server issues and long matching times. The game hit its peak concurrent player count of 200,000 in May 2020, following the release of a major update.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: The developers have also published a live-action miniseries, titled "Raid", first released on 29 March 2019 on YouTube. The first episode has been viewed more than five million times. The "Raid" video series ended with a total of five episodes with the latest being published on 25 February 2021.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: Battlestate Games has been accused of abusing YouTube's DMCA system to remove negative videos of "Escape from Tarkov". YouTube user "Eroktic" released a video accusing Battlestate Games of leaking user information, resulting in Battlestate Games issuing DMCAs on 47 YouTube videos posted by the user, two of which were removed for allegedly spreading false information and the rest for spreading "negative hype". While Battlestate Games initially stated that they had only used DMCA claims on one user, it was later revealed that another YouTuber had received claims – both reported losing viewership and income as a result. The Battlestate Games Twitch account was temporarily banned in December 2019 after an employee pointed an empty gun at his head and pulled the trigger while streaming on the website.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: In a 2016 interview, one of the game's developers stated that there would be no women or playable female characters in the game because "women can't handle that amount of stress. There's only place for hardened men in this place." After apologising for the previous comments, Battlestate Games clarified their position in 2020, stating that while the employee's comments did not reflect the company's position or opinion as a whole, there would be no playable female characters due to "game lore and more importantly, the huge amount of work needed with animations, gear fitting, etc." Battlestate Games also stated that the employee would be reprimanded for his comments.


title: Escape from Tarkov

text: In a 2018 preview of the closed beta, Heather Alexandra commented, "Tarkov is punishing, but there's a lot of fun to be found in mastering its complexities and slowly becoming a hardened mercenary." In "PC Gamer", Steven Messner described the game as unearthing "a new vein of potential for online shooters", and commented positively on the way the game's systems lead players to value their equipment and recall stories about how they were acquired.


title: Asteroid City

text: Asteroid City is an upcoming American romantic comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson. The cast has been described as being "larger than most other Anderson films that are ensemble in nature." It is set to be released by Focus Features in the United States for a limited release on June 16, 2023, before opening wide on June 23.


title: Asteroid City

text: In 1955, students and parents from across the country gather for scholarly competition, rest/recreation, comedy, drama, and romance at a Junior Stargazer convention held in a fictional American desert town.


title: Asteroid City

text: In September 2020, it was revealed Wes Anderson would be writing and directing a romance film, which he would produce alongside Jeremy Dawson and Steven Rales for American Empirical Pictures and Indian Paintbrush. By February 2021, Michael Cera and Jeff Goldblum entered negotiations to star in the director's next film, which was now described as being about a "group of brainy teenagers." Tilda Swinton was the first person to officially join the cast, doing so in June 2021.


title: Asteroid City

text: Principal photography, originally set for Rome, took place in Spain between August and October 2021. Several sets in Chinchón, Madrid, resembling a desert landscape and a mock train station, were used for the shoot. Cast member Fisher Stevens said the film would include "the wildest cast since "The Bridge on the River Kwai"" and that the cast and crew "were all bubbled together in a hotel, which was an old monastery."


title: Asteroid City

text: The film's title was revealed by Bill Murray to be "Asteroid City" at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2021. Alexandre Desplat composed the film's score in his sixth collaboration with Anderson. In July 2022, it was announced that Focus Features would distribute the film, reuniting them with Anderson after "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012). It was also revealed Murray would not be in the film as initially reported as a result of contracting COVID-19 before he could shoot his scenes.


title: Asteroid City

text: The film is scheduled for a limited release in the United States on June 16, 2023, before expanding to a wide release on June 23.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Ukrainian Air Force () is the air force of Ukraine and one of the five branches of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Its headquarters are in the city of Vinnytsia. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, many aircraft were left in Ukrainian territory. Ever since, the Ukrainian Air Force has been downsizing and upgrading its forces. The main inventory of the air force still consists of Soviet-made aircraft. As of 2007, 36,300 personnel and 225 aircraft were in service in the Ukrainian Air Force and Air Defense forces.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Since Ukrainian independence in 1991, the air force has suffered from chronic underinvestment, leading to the bulk of its inventory becoming mothballed or otherwise inoperable. Despite this, Ukraine still possesses the world's 27th largest air force and the seventh largest air force in Europe, largely due to the ability of its domestic defense industry Ukroboronprom and its Antonov subsidiary to maintain its older aircraft.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Ukrainian Air Force participated in the war in Donbas. Following the 5 September 2014 ceasefire, the air force was suspended from carrying out missions in the contested areas of Donbas. Since February 2022, the Air Force has been engaged in constant combat operations in the face of the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The role of the Air Force is to protect the air space of Ukraine. The objectives are: obtaining operational air superiority, delivering air strikes against enemy units and facilities, covering troops against enemy air strikes, providing air support to the Land Forces and the Navy, disrupting enemy military and state management, disrupting enemy communications, and providing air support by reconnaissance, air drops, and troops and cargo transportation.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In peace-time, this is carried out by flying air-space control missions over the entire territory of Ukraine (603,700 square km), and by preventing air space intrusion along the aerial borders (totaling almost 7,000 km, including 5,600 km of land and 1,400 km of sea). Over 2,200 service personnel and civilian employees of the Air Force, employing 400 items of weapons and equipment, are summoned daily to perform defense duties.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: On average, the Ukrainian radar forces detect and track more than 1,000 targets daily. As a result, in 2006 two illegal crossings of the state border were prevented and 28 violations of Ukrainian air space were prevented. Due to such increased strengthening of air space control, the number of air space violations decreased by 35% compared to the previous year, even though the amount of air traffic increased by 30%.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The roots of Ukrainian military aviation are in the autumn 1917 creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic Air Fleet, headed by former commander of the Kyiv Military District Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Pavlenko. Previously, while in Russian service in World War I, Pavlenko was in charge of air security of the Russian Stavka.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Sometimes in 1918 the West Ukrainian People's Republic created its own aviation corps with the Ukrainian Galician Army headed by Petro Franko, a son of renown Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko. In 1918 he organized an aviation school of the Ukrainian Galician Army Command Center which was active until 1920.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Among the airplanes used by the Ukrainian aviation in this period were Belgium-built SPAD S.VIIs. The Ukrainian Galician Army used Nieuport 17 biplanes.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Ukrainian Air Force was established on 17 March 1992, in accordance with a Directive of the General Staff Chief of the Armed Forces. The headquarters of the 24th Air Army of the Soviet Air Force in Vinnytsia served as the basis to create the Air Force headquarters. Also present on Ukrainian soil were units of the former Soviet 5th, 14th, and 17th Air Armies, plus five regiments (185th, 251st, 260th, 341st Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiments and 199th Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment) of the 46th Air Army, Long Range Aviation. In addition, the 161st Maritime Fighter Aviation Regiment, at Limanskoye in Odessa Oblast, came under Ukrainian control. It had formerly been part of the 119th Maritime Fighter Aviation Division of the Black Sea Fleet.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The new Air Force inherited the (201st Heavy Bomber Aviation Division) of Tupolev Tu-160 'Blackjack' which were based at Pryluky. Discussions with Russia concerning their return bogged down. The main bone of contention was the price. While Russian experts, who examined the aircraft at Pryluky in 1993 and 1996, assessed their technical condition as good, the price of $3 billion demanded by Ukraine was unacceptable. The negotiations led to nowhere and in April 1998, Ukraine decided to commence scrapping the aircraft under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Agreement. In November, the first Tu-160 was ostentatiously chopped up at Pryluky.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In April 1999, immediately after NATO began air attacks against Serbia, Russia resumed talks with Ukraine about the strategic bombers. This time they proposed buying back eight Tu-160s and three Tu-95MS models manufactured in 1991 (those in the best technical condition), as well as 575 Kh-55MS missiles. An agreement was eventually reached and a contract valued at $285 million was signed. That figure was to be deducted from Ukraine's debt for natural gas. A group of Russian military experts went to Ukraine on 20 October 1999 to prepare the aircraft for the trip to Engels-2 air base. Between November 1999 and February 2001 the aircraft were transferred to Engels. One Tu-160 remains on display in Poltava.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Ukraine also had Tupolev Tu-22s, Tupolev Tu-22Ms and Tupolev Tu-95s for a period after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 106th Heavy Bomber Aviation Division, part of the 37th Air Army operated some of them. However, these have all been scrapped, apart from a handful displayed in museums. TU-16 and TU-22M bombers were among the aircraft destroyed under the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. It has been reported that Tu-16s based with the 251st Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment at Belaya Tserkov were dismantled in 1993. By 1995, the IISS Military Balance 1995/96 listed no Tu-22 Blinders in service, though a listing for one division HQ and two regiments of Tu-22M Backfires remained in the Military Balance from 1995/96 to 2000/01.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: From 24 January 1992, after the collapse of the USSR, 28th Air Defense Corps, previously subordinate to 2nd Air Defence Army was transferred under the 8th Air Defence Army of Ukraine. Units stationed in Moldova were transferred to the Moldovan Armed Forces (275th Guards Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade, battalions and companies from the 14th Radio-Technical Brigade). There were about 67,000 air defense troops in 1992. The headquarters of the Ukrainian Air Defence Forces was formed on the basis of HQ 8th Air Defence Army.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: There were also three air defence corps: the 28th (Lviv), 49th (Odessa), and 60th (Dnipropetrovsk). Holm reports that all three air defence corps were taken over by Ukraine on 1 February 1992, and that the 28th ADC became the Western AD Region on 1 June 1992. The first issue of the "Military Balance" after the Soviet collapse, 1992–93, listed one Air Defence army, 270 combat aircraft, and seven regiments of Su-15s (80), MiG-23s (110) and MiG-25s (80).


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: By March 1994 "Air Forces Monthly" reported three air defence regions: the Southern with the 62nd and 737th Fighter Aviation Regiments, the Western with the 92nd (transferred from 14th Air Army and based at Mukachevo), 179th, and 894th Fighter Aviation Regiments (from 28th AD Corps/2nd Air Defence Army), and the Central with the 146th (Vasilkov), 636th (Kramatorsk, seemingly disbanded 1996 and its Su-15s broken up for scrap), and 933rd Fighter Aviation Regiments. The Military Balance 95/96 said that six fighter regiments had been disbanded. (p. 71)


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In March 1994 the 14th Air Army became the 14th Air Corps, and on 18 March 1994 the 5th Air Army was redesignated the 5th Air Corps. The two air corps remained active in 1996: the 14th in the Carpathian MD and the 5th in the Odessa MD, which by that time incorporated the former Kyiv MD area. The long-range bomber division at Poltava was still operational, reporting directly to Air Force headquarters. This division headquarters was probably the 13th Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Division.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Soviet Army has kept the forces dedicated to national air defence (Soviet Air Defence Forces) independent from and equal in status to the Soviet Air Forces. The units dedicated to the air defence of the ground formations were also kept separate from the Air Defence Forces and integrated into the Ground Forces. During the Soviet period the air defence of the Ukrainian SSR was provided as follows:


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In 1992 the newly independent Ukrainian State took over control over the three AD corps and retained the Ukrainian Air Defence Forces as a separate armed service, equal in status to the Ground Forces, Air Forces and the Navy. The 8th Separate Army of Air Defence was redesignated as the Air Defence Forces of Ukraine ("Вiйська Противоповiтряної оборони України") and the 28th Corps AD was subordinated to it. The ADTU existed as a separate service from 1992 to 2004, when they were merged with the Air Forces of Ukraine (literally Military Aviation Forces or "Вiйськово-Повiтрянi Сили") to form the present-day unified Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine ("Повiтрянi Сили Збройних Сил України").


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Since 1991's Ukrainian independence the Air Force has suffered from chronic underinvestment, leading to the bulk of its inventory becoming mothballed or otherwise becoming inoperable.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The structural reorganization of the Air Force had set as goals for itself the sufficient reduction in the total number of command and control levels, and increasing the efficiency of command and control processes. The reorganization of command and control elements of the air force is still underway. The first step of this organization was to transition from the existing air commands to the Command and Control and warning center systems.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: This will not only help eliminate duplications at the command and control levels, but will also contribute to an increased centralization of the command and control system, the multi-functionality of the command and control elements, and effectiveness of response to the change of air conditions. 2006 saw the definition of the functions and tasks, organization and work of the C2 and Warning Center as well as the mechanism of interaction with the establishment of the Air Operations Center and Joint Operational Command. During the command and staff exercise one of the Air Force Commands has in effect performed control of "C2 and Warning Center – formation (unit)" level.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The An-24 and An-26 aircraft, as well as the S-300 and Buk M1 anti-aircraft systems, have been continually modernized, and their service life has been extended. An organizational basis and technological means for modernizing MiG-29, Su-24, Su-25, Su-27, L-39 has been produced. Given sufficient funding from the Verkhovna Rada, the Defense Industrial Complex of Ukraine, in cooperation with foreign companies and manufacturers, is capable of fully renewing the aircraft arsenal of the Ukrainian armed forces.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In 2005, the UAF was planning to restructure in an effort to improve efficiency. Ukraine was planning to put more advanced jet aircraft into service. Possibly buying newer SU-27s and MiG-29s from Russia. The plans were, that from approximately 2012, Ukraine would have to either take bold steps to create a new combat aircraft or purchase many existing combat aircraft. Due to the lack of funding, technical modernization was continually postponed. The Ukrainian air-force continued to use armament and military equipment which functioned mainly thanks to so-called ‘cannibalization’ (obtaining spare parts from other units), thus gradually depleting their total capabilities. Faced with the threat of losing military capability, initiating the process of technical modernization became a necessity.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In 2006, many aging weapons and equipment were decommissioned from combat service by the Air Force. This presented an opportunity to use the released funds to the modernization of various items of aviation and anti-aircraft artillery weapons and equipment, radio communication equipment, and flight maintenance equipment, as well as an improvement of Air Force personnel training.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In 2011 International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that Ukraine's Air Force includes one Sukhoi Su-24M regiment, 5 regiments with Mikoyan MiG-29s and Sukhoi Su-27, one regiment with Sukhoi Su-25, two squadrons with Sukhoi Su-24MR, three transport regiments, some support helicopter squadrons, one helicopter training regiment, and some air training squadrons with L-39 Albatros. The IISS said they were grouped into the 5th and 14th Aviation Corps, the 35th Aviation Group, which is a multi-role rapid reaction formation, and a training aviation command. The IISS assesses the overall force size as 817 aircraft of all types and 43,100 personnel. The aviation corps had actually be reorganised into regional air commands in about 2004. Russian sources list three aviation groups (West, South, and Center).


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The automated systems of collection, processing and transmission of radio information have been adopted as a component part of the Automated Command and Control System for aviation and air defense. Operational service testing of the circular surveillance radar station has also been completed. Prototypes of high-precision weapons systems, electronic warfare devices, and navigation equipment have been created and developed for state testing.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Following the Revolution of Dignity and subsequent March 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the following violence and insurgency in east Ukraine, Ukraine tried to increase its defence spending and capabilities - with returning equipment to service being a key part of the spending drive.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: During the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea the air force did not fight but lost several aircraft to Russia; most were returned to Ukraine. The air force has taken part in the conflict against the 2014 insurgency in Donbas. During this conflict it has lost several planes and helicopters. Wall Street Journal published USA embassy in Kyiv report that Ukraine lost 19 planes and helicopters in the period 22 April - 22 July 2014. According to an unverified October 2015 report by Swiss technology company RUAG the Air Force had lost nearly half of its (combat) aircraft (since early 2014). RUAG believed that 222 of the Air Force's 400 aircraft had been lost.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Since 12 July 2014 the Ukrainian Air Force has been put on full combat alert. Around this date the Air Forces started restoring its former military airfields in Voznesensk, Buyalyk and Chervonohlynske (both in Odessa Oblast).


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Ukraine inherited a large inventory of aircraft from the Soviet Union, these were mostly decommissioned and stored as the nation had little use or funding to keep a large fleet active. In 2014, the air force announced that it will be bringing back 68 aircraft that have been in reserve since the collapse of the Soviet Union, including the Tupolev Tu-141 reconnaissance drone. In April 2014 two MiG-29 aircraft were restored. In August a decommissioned An-26 transport aircraft was also restored to active service by a volunteer group. On 5 January 2015 the air force received another 4 newly restored airplanes, two MiG-29s and two Su-27s, as well as two Mi-8 and Mi-2 helicopters.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: As a result of the war in Donbas the government of Ukraine has realized the importance of drone surveillance in locating enemy troops and recommissioned 68 Soviet era Tu-141 drones to be repaired. Analysts point out that despite being designed in 1979 the Tu-141 has a powerful camera, it likely uses similar airborne radar and infrared sensor as the Soviet-era Su-24 which would make it prone to jamming by Russian forces as they use the same equipment.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: A crowd funding project for a "people's drone" was also conducted. The goal was to collect funds to purchase an already functioning American or Israeli drone. However, Ukrainian designers and engineers were able to build their own model based on the commercially available DJI Phantom 2 drone.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In October 2014, students from Ivano-Frankivsk designed their own drone to be used in the war in Donbas. The newly build drone has the ability to broadcast footage live, unlike the Tu-141 which relies on film that must be recovered. The drone was built from off the shelf components and funded by volunteers. The drone was also stated to have an operational ceiling of 7,000 meters, a range of 25 kilometers, and cost about US$4,000 to build.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Ukroboronprom has received an order for ₴2.5 million ($166,000) to refit several Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships part of which included fitting them with night vision capabilities. The Mi-24 proved to be highly vulnerable to Russian separatist attacks during the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. With the exception of captured aircraft in Crimean airbases the Mi-24 had the highest loss rate of all aircraft in Ukraine's inventory, with 5 being shot down and 4 damaged during the conflict.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: On Thursday, 24 February 2022, the Air Force began to respond to the advance of Russian Aerospace Forces planes and materiel towards Ukrainian skies as part of the country's invasion by the Russian Armed Forces.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Russian Defence Ministry has claimed that over 100 air defence systems and over 90 aircraft have been disabled or destroyed as of 6 March 2022. No official figures from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry were immediately available. According to US defense officials, UKAF still has 56 operational fighter jets as of 11 March 2022.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In April 2022, an unspecified country has offered parts to help Ukraine restore 20 aircraft to operational usage, US defence official claimed.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: On 19 September, US Air Force General James B. Hecker said that Russia has lost 55 military aircraft due to being shot down by Ukrainian air defences since the start of the invasion. He credits this success to the Ukrainian use of SA-11 and SA-10 air defence systems. As the US doesn't have these systems getting new missiles from European allies is a "big ask" from Kyiv. Russian airplanes have increased their operations due to the 2022 Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensive. The tally went to 55 after the UK MoD stated that it believed that some 4 Russian jets had been downed by Ukraine over the last 10 days. This was due to a number of factors including changing front lines, or the fact that they were under pressure to provide closer ground support. He further claimed that Ukrainian Air Force is at "about 80%" of its pre-invasion strength after 7 months of combat.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: As part of ongoing 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War, the following numbers may be outdated. Last reliable information of the number of Ukrainian Airforce operational aircraft came from December 2021; during the ongoing conflict, losses and technical reffiting and donations may have changed the reported numbers.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21, Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23, Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25, Mikoyan MiG-27, Sukhoi Su-17, Sukhoi Su-15, Yakovlev Yak-28, Tupolev Tu-160, Tupolev Tu-95, Tupolev Tu-22M, Tupolev Tu-22, Tupolev Tu-16, Tupolev Tu-154 and the Tupolev Tu-134.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Anti-Aircraft Defense Missile Artillery Forces within the Air Force became predominant after the 2004 merger of the Air Force and the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces. It allowed the Armed Forces of Ukraine to adopt the tri-service structure, common to most modern armed forces in the world.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Air Defense Missile Forces of the Ukrainian Air Force performs key tasks in the protection of Ukraine's sovereignty and the inviolability of its borders and air space. It has clearly defined functions in both peacetime and wartime, is intended to prevent any enemy air and missile strikes, to defend the most important administrative, political and industrial centers and other vital objects of importance, to aid in the concentration of Army and Navy units, to intercept enemy aircraft and other military objects, and to protect against enemy ballistic and cruise missile strikes.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Ukrainian Air Force Command is based in the city of Vinnytsia. After the collapse of the USSR and the independence of its constituent republics it was organised on the basis of the Soviet Air Force's 24th Air Army of the High Command with an Operational Purpose ("24-я воздушная армия Верховного Главного командования оперативного назначения") ("24-я ВА ВГК" ("ОН")). Ukrainian air force structure after the establishment of Air Command East on 23 January 2017:


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Ukrainian Air Force Command ("Командування повітряних сил України") (Military Unit [MU] А0215), Vinnytsia.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Task Force of Crimea peninsula is under the control of the Russian Armed Forces. On 8 April 2014 an agreement had been reached between Russia and Ukraine "for the withdrawal of an undisclosed number of Ukrainian aircraft seized in Crimea".


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Training activities have taken on a qualitatively new character due to their complexity, including the simultaneous employment of all branches of the Air Force aviation, anti-aircraft artillery and radar troops in close teamwork with units of other armed services of the Armed Forces. Operational and combat training has included the following activities:


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: In early September 2007, the Ukrainian Air Force conducted the most large-scale training of its aircraft to date. As the Defense Minister of Ukraine, Anatoliy Hrytsenko stated, "The most large-scale, during the whole 16 years of the Ukrainian independence, training of fighting aircraft, which defends our air space, was carried out during September 4–5". According to him, they fulfilled 45 battle launches of air-to-air missile, out of them 22 during the day and 23 at night. 35 pilots confirmed their high skills during the training. Hrytsenko stressed that 100% of air targets were hit.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: The Kharkiv State Aircraft Manufacturing Company has developed the KhAZ-30 ultralight trainer for the Ukrainian Airforce. The aircraft is designed for elementary pilot training as an introductory aircraft before recruits move on the more advanced Aero L-39 Albatros trainer.


title: Ukrainian Air Force

text: Ukrainian Air Force pilots received specialist training to shoot down cruise missiles. Something that has become important as the war has progress. The same tactics are used for intercepting drones. Pilots using their infrared search and track to detect cruise missiles and drones by their heat signature. They were trained to do this using simulators. Where most cruise missiles fly low and are hard to detect, Russian cruise missiles leave a heat signature from their “conventional two-circuit jet engines”. President Zelenskyy has singled out the 204th Tactical Aviation Brigade for praise in shooting down drones. As surface to air missiles run out the fighters are called upon to do more work.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The Night of the Long Knives (German: ), or the Röhm purge (German: "Röhm-Putsch"), also called Operation Hummingbird (German: "Unternehmen 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 political extrajudicial executions intended to consolidate his power and alleviate the concerns of the German military 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".


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The primary instruments of Hitler's action, which carried out most of the killings, were the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) paramilitary force under Himmler and its Security Service (SD), and Gestapo (secret police) under Reinhard Heydrich. Göring's personal police battalion also took part in the killings. 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 leftist-leaning Strasserist faction of the Nazi Party, including its figurehead 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 suppressed Hitler's Munich 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 that was increasingly critical of thuggish SA tactics.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Hitler saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his newly gained political power. He also wanted to appease leaders of the "Reichswehr", the German military, who feared and despised the SA as a potential rival, in particular because of Röhm's ambition to merge the army and the SA under his own leadership. Additionally, Hitler was uncomfortable with Röhm's outspoken support for a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth. In Röhm's view, President Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933, had brought the Nazi Party to power, but had left unfulfilled the party's larger goals. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate German critics of his new regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, as well as to settle scores with old enemies.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds, with high estimates running from 700 to 1,000. More than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested. The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the military for Hitler. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazis, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extrajudicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. The Night of the Long Knives was a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as the supreme administrator of justice of the German people, as he put it in his 13 July speech to the Reichstag.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to the purge as "Hummingbird" (German: ), the codeword used to send the execution squads into action on the first day of the purge. Before the purge, the phrase "Night of the Long Knives" in German referred to acts of vengeance.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933. Over the next few months, during the so-called "Gleichschaltung", Hitler dispensed with the need for the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic as a legislative body and eliminated all rival political parties in Germany, so that by the middle of 1933 the country had become a one-party state under his direction and control. Hitler did not exercise absolute power, however, despite his swift consolidation of political authority. As chancellor, Hitler did not command the army, which remained under the formal leadership of Hindenburg, a highly respected veteran field marshal. While many officers were impressed by Hitler's promises of an expanded army, a return to conscription, and a more aggressive foreign policy, the army continued to guard its traditions of independence during the early years of the Nazi regime.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: To a lesser extent, the "Sturmabteilung" (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organization, remained somewhat autonomous within the party. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the "Freikorps" movement of the post-World War I years. The "Freikorps" were nationalistic organizations primarily composed of disaffected, disenchanted, and angry German combat veterans founded by the government in January 1919 to deal with the threat of a Communist revolution when it appeared that there was a lack of loyal troops. A very large number of the "Freikorps" believed that the November Revolution had betrayed them when Germany was alleged to be on the verge of victory in 1918. Hence, the "Freikorps" were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic, which was born as a result of the November Revolution, and whose founders were contemptuously called "November criminals". Captain Ernst Röhm of the "Reichswehr" served as the liaison with the Bavarian Freikorps. Röhm was given the nickname "The Machine Gun King of Bavaria" in the early 1920s, since he was responsible for storing and issuing illegal machine guns to the Bavarian Freikorps units. Röhm left the "Reichswehr" in 1923 and later became commander of the SA. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia used by Hitler to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties, especially those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Also known as the "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers," the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists. The violent confrontations between the two contributed to the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were more than 400 street battles, resulting in 82 deaths.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Hitler's appointment as chancellor, followed by the suppression of all political parties except the Nazis, did not end the violence of the stormtroopers. Deprived of Communist party meetings to disrupt, the stormtroopers would sometimes run riot in the streets after a night of drinking; they would attack passers-by and then attack the police who were called to stop them. Complaints of "overbearing and loutish" behaviour by stormtroopers became common by the middle of 1933. The Foreign Office even complained of instances where brownshirts manhandled foreign diplomats.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: On 6 July 1933, at a gathering of high-ranking Nazi officials, Hitler declared the success of the National Socialist, or Nazi, seizure of power. Now that the NSDAP had seized the reins of power in Germany, he said, it was time to consolidate its control. Hitler told the gathered officials, "The stream of revolution has been undammed, but it must be channelled into the secure bed of evolution."


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Hitler's speech signalled his intention to rein in the SA, whose ranks had grown rapidly in the early 1930s. Hitler's task would not be simple, however, as the SA made up a large part of Nazism's most devoted followers. The SA traced its dramatic rise in numbers in part to the onset of the Great Depression, when many German citizens lost both their jobs and their faith in traditional institutions. While Nazism was not exclusively – or even primarily – a working-class phenomenon, the SA fulfilled the yearning of many unemployed workers for class solidarity and nationalist fervour. Many stormtroopers believed in the socialist promise of National Socialism and expected the Nazi regime to take more radical economic action, such as breaking up the vast landed estates of the aristocracy. When the Nazi regime did not take such steps, those who had expected an economic as well as a political revolution were disillusioned.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The action Hitler took would not only defang Röhm and the SA as a potential threat to Hitler's personal control of the Nazi Party, but would also serve to strengthen his relationship with the Wehrmacht – the German armed forces – which had long considered the SA to be their primary rival, and which at times outnumbered the military in manpower.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper, Edmund Heines, put it) than Röhm himself. Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper. Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Not content solely with the leadership of the SA, Röhm lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defence, a position held by the conservative General Werner von Blomberg. Although nicknamed the "Rubber Lion" by some of his critics in the army for his devotion to Hitler, Blomberg was not a Nazi, and therefore represented a bridge between the army and the party. Blomberg and many of his fellow officers were recruited from the Prussian nobility and regarded the SA as a plebeian rabble that threatened the army's traditional high status in German society.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: If the regular army showed contempt for the masses belonging to the SA, many stormtroopers returned the feeling, seeing the army as insufficiently committed to the National Socialist revolution. Max Heydebreck, an SA leader in Rummelsburg, denounced the army to his fellow brownshirts, telling them, "Some of the officers of the army are swine. Most officers are too old and have to be replaced by young ones. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army."


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Despite such hostility between the brownshirts and the regular army, Blomberg and others in the military saw the SA as a source of raw recruits for an enlarged and revitalized army. Röhm, however, wanted to eliminate the generalship of the Prussian aristocracy altogether, using the SA to become the core of a new German military. With the army limited by the Treaty of Versailles to one hundred thousand soldiers, its leaders watched anxiously as membership in the SA surpassed three million men by the beginning of 1934. In January 1934, Röhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum demanding that the SA replace the regular army as the nation's ground forces, and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: In response, Hitler met Blomberg and the leadership of the SA and SS on 28 February 1934. Under pressure from Hitler, Röhm reluctantly signed a pledge stating that he recognised the supremacy of the Reichswehr over the SA. Hitler announced to those present that the SA would act as an auxiliary to the Reichswehr, not the other way around. After Hitler and most of the army officers had left, however, Röhm declared that he would not take instructions from "the ridiculous corporal" – a demeaning reference to Hitler. While Hitler did not take immediate action against Röhm for his intemperate outburst, it nonetheless deepened the rift between them.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Despite his earlier agreement with Hitler, Röhm still clung to his vision of a new German army with the SA at its core. By early 1934, this vision directly conflicted with Hitler's plan to consolidate power and expand the Reichswehr. Because their plans for the army conflicted, Röhm's success could come only at Hitler's expense. Moreover, it was not just the Reichswehr that viewed the SA as a threat. Several of Hitler's lieutenants feared Röhm's growing power and restlessness, as did Hitler. As a result, a political struggle within the party grew, with those closest to Hitler, including Prussian premier Hermann Göring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, "Reichsführer-SS" Heinrich Himmler, and Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, positioning themselves against Röhm. While all of these men were veterans of the Nazi movement, only Röhm continued to demonstrate his independence from, rather than his loyalty to, Adolf Hitler. Röhm's contempt for the party's bureaucracy angered Hess. SA violence in Prussia gravely concerned Göring.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Finally, in early 1934, the growing rift between Röhm and Hitler over the role of the SA in the Nazi state led former chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher to start playing politics again. Schleicher criticized the current Hitler cabinet, while some of Schleicher's followers such as General Ferdinand von Bredow and Werner von Alvensleben started passing along lists of a new Hitler cabinet in which Schleicher would become vice-chancellor, Röhm minister of defence, Heinrich Brüning foreign minister and Gregor Strasser minister of national economy. The British historian Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, who knew Schleicher and his circle well, wrote that Bredow displayed a "lack of discretion" that was "terrifying" as he went about showing the list of the proposed cabinet to anyone who was interested. Although Schleicher was in fact unimportant by 1934, increasingly wild rumours that he was scheming with Röhm to re-enter the corridors of power helped stoke the sense of crisis.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: As a means of isolating Röhm, on 20 April 1934, Göring transferred control of the Prussian political police (Gestapo) to Himmler, who, Göring believed, could be counted on to move against Röhm. Himmler named his deputy Reinhard Heydrich to head the Gestapo on 22 April 1934. Himmler envied the independence and power of the SA, although by this time he and Heydrich had already begun restructuring the SS from a bodyguard formation for Nazi leaders (and a subset of the SA) into its own independent elite corps, one loyal to both himself and Hitler. The loyalty of the SS men would prove useful to both when Hitler finally chose to move against Röhm and the SA. By May, lists of those to be "liquidated" started to circulate amongst Göring and Himmler's people, who engaged in a trade, adding enemies of one in exchange for sparing friends of the other. At the end of May, Brüning and Schleicher, two former chancellors, received warnings from friends in the "Reichswehr" that their lives were in danger and they should leave Germany at once. Brüning fled to the Netherlands while Schleicher dismissed the tip-off as a bad practical joke. By the beginning of June everything was set and all that was needed was permission from Hitler.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Demands for Hitler to constrain the SA strengthened. Conservatives in the army, industry and politics placed Hitler under increasing pressure to reduce the influence of the SA and to move against Röhm. While Röhm's homosexuality did not endear him to conservatives, they were more concerned about his political ambitions. Hitler remained indecisive and uncertain about just what precisely he wanted to do when he left for Venice to meet Benito Mussolini on 15 June. Before Hitler left, and at the request of Presidential State Secretary Otto Meißner, Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath ordered the German Ambassador to Italy Ulrich von Hassell – without Hitler's knowledge – to ask Mussolini to tell Hitler that the SA was blackening Germany's good name. Neurath's manoeuvre to put pressure on Hitler paid off, with Mussolini agreeing to the request (Neurath was a former ambassador to Italy, and knew Mussolini well). During the summit in Venice, Mussolini upbraided Hitler for tolerating the violence, hooliganism and homosexuality of the SA, which Mussolini stated were ruining Hitler's good reputation all over the world. Mussolini used the affair occasioned by the murder of Giacomo Matteotti as an example of the kind of trouble unruly followers could cause a dictator. While Mussolini's criticism did not win Hitler over to acting against the SA, it helped push him in that direction.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: On 17 June 1934, conservative demands for Hitler to act came to a head when Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, confidant of the ailing Hindenburg, gave a speech at Marburg University warning of the threat of a "second revolution." According to his memoirs, von Papen, a Catholic aristocrat with ties to army and industry, privately threatened to resign if Hitler did not act. While von Papen's resignation as vice-chancellor would not have threatened Hitler's position, it would have nonetheless been an embarrassing display of independence from a leading conservative.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: In response to conservative pressure to constrain Röhm, Hitler left for Neudeck to meet with Hindenburg. Blomberg, who had been meeting with the president, uncharacteristically reproached Hitler for not having moved against Röhm earlier. He then told Hitler that Hindenburg was close to declaring martial law and turning the government over to the Reichswehr if Hitler did not take immediate steps against Röhm and his brownshirts. Hitler had hesitated for months in moving against Röhm, in part due to Röhm's visibility as the leader of a national militia with millions of members. However, the threat of a declaration of martial law from Hindenburg, the only person in Germany with the authority to potentially depose the Nazi regime, put Hitler under pressure to act. He left Neudeck with the intention of both destroying Röhm and settling scores with old enemies. Both Himmler and Göring welcomed Hitler's decision, since both had much to gain by Röhm's downfall – the independence of the SS for Himmler and the removal of a rival for the future command of the army for Göring.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: In preparation for the purge, both Himmler and Heydrich assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid (EUR in 2022) by France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on 24 June that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government (). At Hitler's direction, Göring, Himmler, Heydrich and Victor Lutze drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed. One of the men Göring recruited to assist him was Willi Lehmann, a Gestapo official and spy. On 25 June, General Werner von Fritsch placed the "Reichswehr" on the highest level of alert. On 27 June, Hitler moved to secure the army's cooperation. Blomberg and General Walther von Reichenau, the army's liaison to the party, gave it to him by expelling Röhm from the German Officers' League. On 28 June Hitler went to Essen to attend the wedding celebration and reception of Josef Terboven; from there he called Röhm's adjutant at Bad Wiessee and ordered SA leaders to meet with him on 30 June at 11:00. On 29 June, a signed article in "Völkischer Beobachter" by Blomberg appeared in which Blomberg stated with great fervour that the "Reichswehr" stood behind Hitler.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: At about 04:30 on 30 June 1934, Hitler and his entourage flew to Munich. From the airport they drove to the Bavarian Interior Ministry, where they assembled the leaders of an SA rampage that had taken place in city streets the night before. Enraged, Hitler tore the epaulets off the shirt of "Obergruppenführer" August Schneidhuber, the chief of the Munich police, for failing to keep order in the city the previous night. Hitler shouted at Schneidhuber and accused him of treachery. Schneidhuber was executed later that day. As the stormtroopers were hustled off to prison, Hitler assembled a large group of SS and regular police, and departed for the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Ernst Röhm and his followers were staying.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: With Hitler's arrival in Bad Wiessee between 06:00 and 07:00, the SA leadership, still in bed, were taken by surprise. SS men stormed the hotel, and Hitler personally placed Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The SS found Breslau SA leader Edmund Heines in bed with an unidentified eighteen-year-old male SA senior troop leader. Hitler ordered both Heines and his partner taken outside the hotel and shot. Goebbels emphasised this aspect in subsequent propaganda justifying the purge as a crackdown on moral turpitude. Meanwhile, the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Röhm and Hitler.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Röhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA. Arriving back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler addressed the assembled crowd. Consumed with rage, Hitler denounced "the worst treachery in world history". Hitler told the crowd that "undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements" would be annihilated. The crowd, which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest, shouted its approval. Hess, present among the assembled, even volunteered to shoot the "traitors". Joseph Goebbels, who had been with Hitler at Bad Wiessee, set the final phase of the plan in motion. Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Göring at 10:00 with the codeword to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims. Sepp Dietrich received orders from Hitler for the "Leibstandarte" to form an "execution squad" and go to Stadelheim Prison where certain SA leaders were being held. There in the prison courtyard, the "Leibstandarte" firing squad shot five SA generals and an SA colonel. Those not immediately executed were taken back to the "Leibstandarte" barracks at Lichterfelde, given one-minute "trials", and shot by a firing squad.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The regime did not limit itself to a purge of the SA. Having earlier imprisoned or exiled prominent Social Democrats and Communists, Hitler used the occasion to move against conservatives he considered unreliable. This included Vice-Chancellor Papen and those in his immediate circle. In Berlin, on Göring's personal orders, an armed SS unit stormed the Vice-Chancellery. Gestapo officers attached to the SS unit shot Papen's secretary Herbert von Bose without bothering to arrest him first. The Gestapo arrested and later executed Papen's close associate Edgar Jung, the author of Papen's Marburg speech, and disposed of his body by dumping it in a ditch. The Gestapo also murdered Erich Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action, and a close Papen associate. Papen was unceremoniously arrested at the Vice-Chancellery, despite his insistent protests that he could not be arrested in his position as Vice-Chancellor. Although Hitler ordered him released days later, Papen no longer dared to criticize the regime and was sent off to Vienna as German ambassador.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Hitler and Himmler unleashed the Gestapo against old enemies, as well. Both Kurt von Schleicher, Hitler's predecessor as Chancellor, and his wife were murdered at their home. Others killed included Gregor Strasser, a former Nazi who had angered Hitler by resigning from the party in 1932, and Gustav Ritter von Kahr, the former Bavarian state commissioner who crushed the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Kahr's fate was especially gruesome. His body was found in a wood outside Munich; he had been hacked to death, apparently with pickaxes. The murdered included at least one accidental victim: Willi Schmid, the music critic of the newspaper, whose name was confused with one of the Gestapo's intended targets. As Himmler's adjutant Karl Wolff later explained, friendship and personal loyalty were not allowed to stand in the way:


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Some SA members died saying "Heil Hitler" because they believed that an anti-Hitler SS plot had led to their execution. Several leaders of the disbanded Catholic Centre Party were also murdered in the purge. The Party had generally been aligned with the Social Democrats and Catholic Church during the rise of Nazism, being critical of Nazi ideology, but voting nonetheless for the Enabling Act of 1933 which granted Hitler dictatorial authority.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Röhm was held briefly at Stadelheim Prison in Munich, while Hitler considered his future. On 1 July, at Hitler's behest, Theodor Eicke, Commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, and his SS adjutant Michael Lippert visited Röhm. Once inside Röhm's cell, they handed him a Browning pistol loaded with a single cartridge and told him he had ten minutes to kill himself or they would do it for him. Röhm demurred, telling them, "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself." Having heard nothing in the allotted time, they returned to Röhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance. Eicke and Lippert then shot Röhm, killing him. In 1957, the German authorities tried Lippert in Munich for Röhm's murder. Until then, Lippert had been one of the few executioners of the purge to evade trial. Lippert was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Given that the purge claimed the lives of so many prominent Germans, it could hardly be kept secret. At first, its architects seemed split on how to handle the event. Göring instructed police stations to burn "all documents concerning the action of the past two days". Meanwhile, Goebbels tried to prevent newspapers from publishing lists of the dead, but at the same time used a 2 July radio address to describe how Hitler had narrowly prevented Röhm and Schleicher from overthrowing the government and throwing the country into turmoil. Then, on 13 July 1934, Hitler justified the purge in a nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag:


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Wanting to present the massacre as legally sanctioned, Hitler had the cabinet approve a measure on 3 July that declared, "The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defence by the State." Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner, a conservative who had been Bavarian Justice Minister in the years of the Weimar Republic, demonstrated his loyalty to the new regime by drafting the statute, which added a legal veneer to the purge. Signed into law by Hitler, Gürtner, and Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, the "Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defence" retroactively legalized the murders committed during the purge. Germany's legal establishment further capitulated to the regime when the country's leading legal scholar, Carl Schmitt, wrote an article defending Hitler's 13 July speech. It was named "Der Führer schützt das Recht" ("The Führer Upholds the Law").


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: A special fund administered by SS General Franz Breithaupt was set up for the relatives of the murdered, from which they were cared for at the expense of the state. The widows of the murdered SA leaders received between 1,000 and 1,600 marks a month, depending on the rank of the murdered person. Kurt von Schleicher's stepdaughter received 250 marks per month up to the age of 21, and the son of General von Bredow received a monthly allowance of 150 marks.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The army almost unanimously applauded the Night of the Long Knives, even though the generals Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow were among the victims. A telegram purportedly from the ailing Hindenburg, Germany's highly revered military hero, expressed his "profoundly felt gratitude", and congratulated Hitler for "nipping treason in the bud", although Hermann Göring later admitted during the Nuremberg trials that the telegram was never seen by Hindenburg, and was actually written by the Nazis. General von Reichenau went so far as to publicly give credence to the lie that Schleicher had been plotting to overthrow the government. In his speech to the Reichstag on 13 July justifying his actions, Hitler denounced Schleicher for conspiring with Röhm to overthrow the government; Hitler alleged both were traitors working in the pay of France. Since Schleicher was a good friend of the French Ambassador André François-Poncet, and because of his reputation for intrigue, the claim that Schleicher was working for France had enough surface plausibility for most Germans to accept it. François-Poncet was not declared "persona non grata" as would have been usual if an ambassador were involved in a plot against his host government.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The army's support for the purge, however, would have far-reaching consequences for the institution. The humbling of the SA ended the threat it had posed to the army but, by standing by Hitler during the purge, the army bound itself more tightly to the Nazi regime. One retired captain, Erwin Planck, seemed to realize this: "If you look on without lifting a finger", he said to his friend, General Werner von Fritsch, "you will meet the same fate sooner or later." Another rare exception was Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who spoke about the murders of Schleicher and Bredow at the annual General Staff Society meeting in February 1935 after they had been rehabilitated by Hitler in early January 1935.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Rumours about the Night of the Long Knives rapidly spread. Although many Germans approached the official news of the events as described by Joseph Goebbels with a great deal of scepticism, many others took the regime at its word, and believed that Hitler had saved Germany from a descent into chaos. Luise Solmitz, a Hamburg schoolteacher, echoed the sentiments of many Germans when she cited Hitler's "personal courage, decisiveness and effectiveness" in her private diary. She even compared him to Frederick the Great, the 18th-century king of Prussia.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Others were appalled at the scale of the executions and at the relative complacency of many of their fellow Germans. "A very calm and easy going mailman," the diarist Victor Klemperer wrote, "who is not at all National Socialist, said, 'Well, he simply "sentenced" them.'" It did not escape Klemperer's notice that many of the victims had played a role in bringing Hitler to power. "A chancellor", he wrote, "sentences and shoots members of his own private army!" The extent of the massacre and the relative ubiquity of the Gestapo, however, meant that those who disapproved of the purge generally kept quiet about it.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Among the few exceptions were General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord and Field Marshal August von Mackensen, who started a campaign to have Schleicher rehabilitated by Hitler. Hammerstein, who was a close friend of Schleicher, had been much offended at Schleicher's funeral when the SS refused to allow him to attend the service and confiscated the wreaths that the mourners had brought. Besides working for the rehabilitation of Schleicher and Bredow, Hammerstein and Mackensen sent a memo to Hindenburg on 18 July setting out in considerable detail the circumstances of the murders of the two generals and noted that Papen had barely escaped. The memo went on to demand that Hindenburg punish those responsible, and criticized Blomberg for his outspoken support of the murders of Schleicher and Bredow. Finally, Hammerstein and Mackensen asked that Hindenburg reorganize the government by firing Baron Konstantin von Neurath, Robert Ley, Hermann Göring, Werner von Blomberg, Joseph Goebbels and Richard Walther Darré from the Cabinet. The memo asked that Hindenburg instead create a directorate to rule Germany, comprising the Chancellor (who was not named), General Werner von Fritsch as Vice-Chancellor, Hammerstein as Minister of Defense, the Minister for National Economy (also unnamed), and Rudolf Nadolny as Foreign Minister. The request that Neurath be replaced by Nadolny, the former Ambassador to the USSR, who had resigned earlier that year in protest against Hitler's anti-Soviet foreign policy, indicated that Hammerstein and Mackensen wanted a return to the "distant friendliness" towards the Soviet Union that existed until 1933. Mackensen and Hammerstein ended their memo with:


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Hindenburg never responded to the memo, and it remains unclear whether he even saw it, as Otto Meißner, who decided that his future was aligned with the Nazis, may not have passed it along. It is noteworthy that even those officers who were most offended by the killings, like Hammerstein and Mackensen, did not blame the purge on Hitler, whom they wanted to see continue as Chancellor; they at most wanted a reorganization of the Cabinet to remove some of Hitler's more radical followers.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: In late 1934–early 1935, Werner von Fritsch and Werner von Blomberg, who had been shamed into joining Hammerstein and Mackensen's rehabilitation campaign, successfully pressured Hitler into rehabilitating Generals von Schleicher and von Bredow. Fritsch and Blomberg suddenly now claimed at the end of 1934 that as army officers they could not stand the exceedingly violent press attacks on Schleicher and Bredow that had been going on since July, which portrayed them as the vilest traitors, working against the Fatherland in the pay of France. In a speech given on 3 January 1935, at the Berlin State Opera, Hitler stated that Schleicher and Bredow had been shot "in error" on the basis of false information, and that their names were to be restored to the honour rolls of their regiments at once. Hitler's speech was not reported in the German press, but the army was appeased by the speech. However, despite the rehabilitation of the two murdered officers, the Nazis continued in private to accuse Schleicher of high treason. During a trip to Warsaw in January 1935, Göring told Jan Szembek that Schleicher had urged Hitler in January 1933 to reach an understanding with France and the Soviet Union, and partition Poland with the latter, and Hitler had Schleicher killed out of disgust with the alleged advice. During a meeting with Polish Ambassador Józef Lipski on 22 May 1935, Hitler told Lipski that Schleicher was "rightfully murdered, if only because he had sought to maintain the Rapallo Treaty." The statements that Schleicher had been killed because he wanted to partition Poland with the Soviet Union were later published in the Polish White Book of 1939, which was a collection of diplomatic documents detailing German–Polish relations up to the outbreak of the war.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Former Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was in exile in Doorn, Netherlands, was horrified by the purge. He asked, "What would people have said if I had done such a thing?" Hearing of the murder of former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his wife, he also commented, "We have ceased to live under the rule of law and everyone must be prepared for the possibility that the Nazis will push their way in and put them up against the wall!"


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Hitler named Viktor Lutze to replace Röhm as head of the SA. Hitler ordered him, as one prominent historian described it, to put an end to "homosexuality, debauchery, drunkenness, and high living" in the SA. Hitler expressly told him to stop SA funds from being spent on limousines and banquets, which he considered evidence of SA extravagance. Lutze did little to assert the SA's independence in the coming years, and the organization lost its power in Germany. Its membership plummeted from 2.9 million in August 1934 to 1.2 million in April 1938.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: According to Albert Speer, "the Right, represented by the President, the Minister of Justice, and the generals, lined up behind Hitler ... the strong left wing of the party, represented chiefly by the SA, was eliminated."


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Röhm was purged from all Nazi propaganda, such as "The Victory of Faith", the Leni Riefenstahl film about the 1933 Nuremberg rally, which showed Röhm frequently alongside Hitler. A copy of the original film, before Röhm was edited out, was found in the 1980s in the German Democratic Republic's film archives.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: Following the purge, "Night of the Long Knives" entered English as an expression for treacherous violence or the ruthless removal of opponents or unwanted associates.


title: Night of the Long Knives

text: The Night of the Long Knives represented a triumph for Hitler, and a turning point for the German government. It established Hitler as "the supreme leader of the German people", as he put it in his 13 July speech to the Reichstag. Hitler formally adopted this title in April 1942, thus placing himself above the reach of the law "de jure" and "de facto". Centuries of jurisprudence proscribing extrajudicial killings were swept aside. Despite some initial efforts by local prosecutors to take legal action against those who carried out the murders, which the regime rapidly quashed, it appeared that no law would constrain Hitler in his use of power. Years later, in November 1945, while being interviewed by psychologist Gustave Gilbert in his cell during the Nuremberg trials, Göring angrily justified the killings to Gilbert, "It's a damn good thing I wiped them out, or they would have wiped us out!"


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter and film director. Born in New York City, he developed a passion for writing at an early age. Sorkin has earned an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: His works include the Broadway plays "A Few Good Men", "The Farnsworth Invention", and "To Kill a Mockingbird", as well as the television series "Sports Night" (1998–2000), "The West Wing" (1999–2006), "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" (2006–07), and "The Newsroom" (2012–14)"." He wrote the film screenplay for the legal drama "A Few Good Men" (1992), the comedy "The American President" (1995), and several biopics including "Charlie Wilson's War" (2007), "Moneyball" (2011), and "Steve Jobs" (2015). For writing 2010's "The Social Network", he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. Sorkin made his directorial film debut with crime drama "Molly's Game" (2017), and continued directing with the historical legal drama "The Trial of the Chicago 7" (2020), and the show business drama "Being the Ricardos" (2021).


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: As a writer, Sorkin is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". These sequences consist of single tracking shots of long duration involving multiple characters engaging in conversation as they move through the set; characters enter and exit the conversation as the shot continues without any cuts.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a copyright lawyer who had fought in WWII and put himself through college on the G.I. Bill; both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). Sorkin took an early interest in acting. During childhood, his parents took him to the theatre to see shows such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "That Championship Season".


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin attended Scarsdale High School where he became involved in the drama and theatre club. In the eighth grade, he played General Bullmoose in the musical "Li'l Abner". At Scarsdale High, he served as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years, and graduated in 1979.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: In 1979, Sorkin attended Syracuse University. In his freshman year, he failed a class that was a core requirement, which caused a setback because he wanted to be an actor, and the drama department did not allow students to take the stage until they completed the core classes. Determined to do better, he returned for his sophomore year, and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre. Recalling the influence of theatre teacher Arthur Storch, Sorkin said: "Arthur's reputation as a director, and as a disciple of Lee Strasberg, was a big reason why a lot of us went to S.U. [Syracuse University]... 'You have the capacity to be so much better than you are', he started saying to me in September of my senior year. He was still saying it in May. On the last day of classes, he said it again, and I said, 'How?', and he answered, 'Dare to fail'. I've been coming through on his admonition ever since".


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin moved to New York City where he spent much of the 1980s as a struggling, sporadically-employed actor who worked odd jobs, such as delivering singing telegrams, driving a limousine, touring Alabama with the children's theatre company Traveling Playhouse, handing out fliers promoting a hunting-and-fishing show, and bartending at Broadway's Palace Theatre. One weekend, while house-sitting for a friend, he found an IBM Selectric typewriter, started typing, and "felt a phenomenal confidence and a kind of joy that [he] had never experienced before in [his] life".


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: He continued writing and eventually put together his first play, "Removing All Doubt," which he sent to his former theatre teacher, Arthur Storch, who was impressed. In 1984, "Removing All Doubt" was staged for drama students at his alma mater, Syracuse University. After that, he wrote "Hidden in This Picture" which debuted off-off-Broadway at Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in New York City in 1988. The quality of his first two plays earned him a theatrical agent. Producer John A. McQuiggan saw the production of "Hidden in This Picture" and commissioned Sorkin to turn the one-act into a full-length play called "Making Movies".


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin was inspired to write his next play, a courtroom drama called "A Few Good Men", from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. Deborah told Sorkin that she was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend a group of Marines who came close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre. He and his roommates had purchased a Macintosh 512K; when he returned home, he would transcribe the story and notes onto the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts for "A Few Good Men".


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: In 1988, Sorkin sold the film rights for "A Few Good Men" to producer David Brown before it premiered, in a deal that was reportedly "well into six figures". Brown had read an article in "The New York Times" about Sorkin's one-act play "Hidden in This Picture," and found out Sorkin had a play called "A Few Good Men" that was having Off Broadway readings. Brown produced "A Few Good Men" on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. It starred Tom Hulce and was directed by Don Scardino. After opening in late 1989, it ran for 497 performances. Sorkin continued writing "Making Movies" and in 1990 it debuted Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, produced by John A. McQuiggan, and again directed by Don Scardino. Meanwhile, Brown was producing for TriStar Pictures, and tried to interest them in adapting "A Few Good Men" into a film, but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star actor involvement. Brown later received a phone call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment who was anxious to make the film. Rob Reiner, a Castle Rock producing partner, opted to direct.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin worked under contract for Castle Rock Entertainment, where he befriended colleagues William Goldman and Rob Reiner, and met his future wife Julia Bingham, who was one of Castle Rock's business affairs lawyers. Sorkin wrote several drafts of the script for "A Few Good Men" in his Manhattan apartment, learning the craft from a book about screenplay format. He then spent several months at the Los Angeles offices of Castle Rock, working on the script with director Rob Reiner. William Goldman (who regularly worked under contract at Castle Rock) became his mentor and helped him to adapt his stage play into a screenplay. The film, directed by Reiner, starred Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon, and was produced by Brown. "A Few Good Men" was released in 1992 and was a box office success, grossing $243 million worldwide.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Goldman also approached Sorkin with a story premise, which Sorkin developed into the script for the thriller "Malice". Goldman oversaw the project as creative consultant while Sorkin wrote the first two drafts. However, he had to leave the project to finish the script for "A Few Good Men", so screenwriter Scott Frank stepped in and wrote two drafts of the "Malice" screenplay. When production on "A Few Good Men" was completed, Sorkin resumed working on "Malice" right through the final shooting script. Harold Becker directed the 1993 thriller, which starred Nicole Kidman and Alec Baldwin. "Malice" had mixed reviews; Vincent Canby in "The New York Times" described the film as "deviously entertaining from its start through its finish". Critic Roger Ebert gave it 2 out of 4 stars, and Peter Travers in a 2000 "Rolling Stone" review summarized it as having "suspense but no staying power".


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin's last screenplay under Castle Rock was "The American President;" once again he worked with William Goldman who served as a creative consultant. It took Sorkin several years to write the screenplay for "The American President", which started off at 385-pages; it was eventually reduced to a standard shooting script of around 120 pages. The film, also directed by Reiner, was critically acclaimed; Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" described it as "genial and entertaining if not notably inspired", and believed its most interesting aspects were the "pipe dreams about the American political system and where it could theoretically be headed". "A Few Good Men", "Malice" and "The American President" grossed approximately $400 million worldwide.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: In the second half of the 1990s, Sorkin worked as a script doctor. He wrote some quips for Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in 1996's "The Rock". He worked on "Excess Baggage", a 1997 comedy about a girl who stages her own kidnapping to get her father's attention, and rewrote some of Will Smith's scenes in "Enemy of the State". Sorkin collaborated with Warren Beatty on several scripts, one of which was 1998's "Bulworth". Beatty, known for occasionally personally financing his film projects through pre-production, also hired Sorkin to rewrite a script titled "Ocean of Storms" which never went into production. At one point, Sorkin sued Beatty for proper compensation for his work on the "Ocean of Storms" script; once the matter was settled, he resumed working on the script.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin conceived the idea to write about the behind-the-scenes happenings on a sports show while residing at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles writing the screenplay for "The American President". He would work late, with the television tuned into ESPN, watching continuous replays of "SportsCenter". The show inspired him to try to write a feature film about a sports show but he was unable to structure the story for film, so instead he turned his idea into a television comedy series. "Sports Night" was produced by Disney and debuted on the ABC network in fall of 1998.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin fought with ABC during the first season over the use of a laugh track and a live studio audience. The laugh track was widely decried by critics as jarring, with Joyce Millman of "Salon" magazine describing it as "the most unconvincing laugh track you've ever heard". Sorkin commented that: "Once you do shoot in front of a live audience, you have no choice but to use the laugh track. Oftentimes [enhancing the laughs] is the right thing to do. Sometimes you do need a cymbal crash. Other times, it alienates me." The laugh track was gradually dialed down and was removed by the end of the first season. Sorkin was triumphant in the second season when ABC agreed to his demands, unburdening the crew of the difficulties of staging a scene for a live audience and leaving the cast with more time to rehearse. Although "Sports Night" was critically acclaimed, ABC canceled the show after two seasons due to low ratings. Sorkin entertained offers to continue the show on other television channels, but declined all the offers because they were dependent on his involvement and he was already working on "The West Wing".


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: Sorkin conceived the political drama "The West Wing" in 1997 when he went unprepared to a lunch with producer John Wells; in a panic he pitched to Wells a series centered on the senior staff of the White House, using leftover ideas from his script for "The American President". He told Wells about his visits to the White House while doing research for "The American President", and they found themselves discussing public service and the passion of the people who serve. Wells took the concept and pitched it to NBC, but was told to wait due to the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. There was a concern that television audiences would not be able to take a series about the White House seriously. A year later, other networks started showing interest in "The West Wing." NBC decided to give the project the green-light despite their previous reluctance. The pilot debuted in the fall of 1999 and was produced by Warner Bros. Television.


title: Aaron Sorkin

text: "The West Wing" garnered nine Primetime Emmy Awards for its debut season, making the series a record holder for most Emmys won by a series in a single season at the time. Following the awards ceremony, there was a dispute about the acceptance speech for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. "The West Wing" episode "In Excelsis Deo" won, which was awarded to Sorkin and Rick Cleveland, but "The New York Times" reported that Sorkin ushered Cleveland off the stage before he could say a few words. The story behind "In Excelsis Deo" is based on Cleveland's father, a Korean War veteran who spent the last years of his life on the street, as Cleveland explained in an essay titled "I Was the Dumb Looking Guy with the Wire-Rimmed Glasses". Sorkin and Cleveland continued their dispute in a public web forum at Mighty Big TV in which Sorkin explained that he gives his writers "Story By" credit on a rotating basis "by way of a gratuity" and that he had thrown out Cleveland's script and started from scratch. Sorkin eventually apologized to Cleveland. Cleveland and Sorkin also won the at the 53rd Writer Guild of America Awards for "In Excelsis Deo".