Sturmabteilung (SA)

The Sturmabteilung, or SA, was a paramilitary organization within the Nazi Party. It played an important role in Adolf Hitler‘s rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Nevertheless, the Sturmabteilung was dissolved after the purge of the Night of the Long Knives of June 30, 1934, when its chief, Ernst Röhm, was assassinated by members of a new force, the SS. The Sturmbabteilung’s men were also called "brownshirts" because of the color of their uniforms.

The term Sturmabteilung originally comes from the specialized assault troops used by the German Army which utilized the Hutier infiltration tactics during the Great War. By 1919, these tough World War I veterans had organized themselves in right-wing military units, called FreiKorps, to quell the communist uprisings that broke out throughout Germany after the war. Then they began to participate in political activities. The Sturmabteilung (SA) began when the Rollkommando was formed 1920 to protect the meetings held by the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP), the predecessor of the NationalSocialistische Deutsche ArbeiterPartei (NSDAP), or Nazi Party. In November 1920, the Rollkommando was organized into a new unit, the Turn- und Sportabteilung.

On November 4, 1921, the SA was formally established after a party meeting when a large number of Communists militants attempted to disrupt it but were beaten and thrown out by the men of the Turn- und Sportabteilung. At the end of 1921 there was a conflict between Röhm, one of the SA leaders, and Hitler. Ernst Röhm wanted to train the SA as a an army to intimidate opponents, but Hitler wanted to use the SA solely for propaganda. Röhm even began training parts of the SA according to his ideas, but Hitler quickly put a stop to this training.

In this period the chief of the Sturmabteilung was Hans Ulrich Klintzsch, who had succeeded Emil Maurice. Klintzsch left the command of the SA in May 1923 and was replaced by Hauptmann Hermann Göring, who reorganized the SA according to military lines. The SA participated in the November, 1923, Hitler’s Beerhall Putsch. When Adolf Hitler was released from prison in December 1924, he reorganized the Sturmabteilung and appointed Wolf Graf von Helldorf as its new chief. Because Ernst Röhm did not want to compete with Hitler, he left for Bolivia where he worked as a military adviser.

Helldorf was replaced by Felix von Pfeffer. But in 1930, when Hitler refused to give SA members seats in the German parliament (Reichstag), von Pfeffer resigned and the Führer temporary assumed command of the Sturmabteilung. Nevertheless, Hitler recalled Röhm from Bolivia, making him the new chief of the SA in January 1931. Under their Stabschef Ernst Röhm, the SA grew in importance within the Nazi power structure, initially growing in size to thousands of members. By 1934, the Sturmabteilung size was 3 million members, several times larger than the German Army.

The greatest single factor that led to the downfall of the SA was Röhm’s decision to challenge the German Generals. After Hitler had risen to power in 1933, Röhm tried to convince Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defense, a position held by the conservative Werner von Blomberg. Röhm wanted the SA to become the new German military, with himself as leader. Limited by the Treaty of Versailles to 100,000 soldiers, army leaders were concerned that they could be swallowed up by the much-larger SA. In January 1934, Röhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum which demanded that the SA should replace the army as the nation’s ground forces, and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA. President Paul von Hindenburg could not tolerate this, and threatened to impose martial law if Hitler did not act against Röhm.

After this ultimatum, Hitler ordered the arrest and subsequent execution of the leadership of the SA, which took place on June 30-July 2, 1934. Ernst Röhm, along with other SA leaders, was arrested and executed by a SS unit.