"Dragon's Teeth" is the most celebrated novel of this Upton Sinclair series, as it won the "Pulitzer Prize for the Novel" in 1943. This book covers 1929-1934, with a special emphasis on the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930s. The Night of the Long Knives (German: Nacht der langen Messer (help•info)) or "Operation Hummingbird", or, more commonly used in Germany "Röhm-Putsch" was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political executions. Most of those killed were members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary Brownshirts. Adolf Hitler moved against the SA and its leader, Ernst Röhm, because he saw the independence of the SA and the penchant of its members for street violence as a direct threat to his power. He also wanted to conciliate leaders of the Reichswehr, the official German military who both feared and despised the SA—in particular Röhm's ambition to absorb the Reichswehr into the SA under his own leadership. Finally, Hitler used the purge to attack or eliminate critics of his regime, especially those loyal to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, and to settle scores with old enemies. At least 85 people died during the purge, although the final death toll may have been in the hundreds,[2][3] and more than a thousand perceived opponents were arrested.[2] Most of the killings were carried out by the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), the regime's secret police. The purge strengthened and consolidated the support of the Reichswehr for Hitler. It also provided a legal grounding for the Nazi regime, as the German courts and cabinet quickly swept aside centuries of legal prohibition against extra-judicial killings to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime. Before its execution, its planners sometimes referred to it as "Hummingbird" (German: Kolibri), as that was the codeword used to set the execution squads in motion on the day of the purge.[4] The codename for the operation appears to have been chosen arbitrarily. The phrase "Night of the Long Knives" in the German language predates the massacre itself, and it also refers generally to acts of vengeance. To this day, Germans still use the term "Röhm-Putsch" ("Röhm coup d’état") to describe the event, as that was the term the Nazi regime used at the time, despite its overall false implication that the murders were necessary to forestall a coup. To emphasise this, German authors often use quotation marks or write about the so-called Röhm-Putsch.[5] The novel Dragon's Teeth, written in 1942 by Upton Sinclair, won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1943. Set in the period 1929 to 1934, it covers the Nazi takeover of Germany during the 1930s. It is the third of Upton Sinclair's World's End series of eleven novels about Lanny Budd, a socialist, art expert, and "red" son of an American arms manufacturer. Back of the novel : In the first book/volume of the series Lanny Budd had met a family of Dutch Jews. By the time this book/volume happens his half-sister has married one of their sons. In the climax at the end of this volume Lanny involves himself in springing the other son from Nazi arrest/jail, and gets caught up in the Blood Purge on June 30, 1934/July 2, 1934.