The Nazi Brownshirts, the SA , and its progeny the Nazi Blackshirts, SS, were Hitler’s private militia operating outside the protocols and chain of command of the regular German army. In practice they were both thuggish domestic para-military operations. After 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor and soon after when the Reichstag Fire occurred and he became dictator of Germany, the SA and SS were made legal governmental operations with near total governmental immunity regardless of what they did to politically opposing persons or groups and Jews.
In the 1920s and especially in the 1930s no Catholic or Lutheran Bishop saw it as a part of the duty of episcopal care to even warn his people of the danger of being forced to enter into grave evil they were placing themselves in by joining the SA or SS. Yet, the SA and SS were not acting sub rosa. The violent, hateful, and even murderous activities of the SA and SS against political enemies and Jews was in your face, brazenly public. But, Catholics and Lutherans were permitted to walk proudly in these paramilitary clubs as if they were joining the local soccer team. I suppose every Catholic and Lutheran Bishop {Catholics and Lutherans composed about 85% of the German population at that time] would give the same parsimonious and untruthful response, “It is not our task to tell our people they cannot enter into a legal, government approved operation or activity.” This response means that a Bishop or Bishops whose primary activity is the care of the souls given to him by Jesus to care for, to help save, who knows his people are going into pornographic movie house, or brothels where they are legal, has no spiritual or moral duty to warn them of the eternal dangers to their immortal souls that entering into such legal operation and activities presents? Such a response is just the self-exculpating twaddle of a fear full man or of fear full men.
Do take a moment and read a short history of the Brownshit and Blackshirts of Nazi Germany, considering the words of Ecclesiastes: “What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, ‘See, this is new!’ has already existed in ages that preceded us.” Then ask yourself, “What is the response of Nonviolent Christlike Love of friends and enemies then and now?
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
The Brownshirts: The Role of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in Nazi Germany
The SA were the Sturmabteilung, meaning ‘assault division’. The group were also known as the Brownshirts or Storm Troopers. It was a violent paramilitary group attached to the Nazi Party in pre-World War Two Germany.
Graham Land
28 Sep 2021
Hitler at an SA parade in Nuremberg in 1935
The SA, Hitler’s brownshirts, were instrumental in the Nazi’s rise to power but played a diminished role during the Second World War. The Brownshirts are infamous for their operation outside of the law and their violent intimidation of Germany’s liberal political population and Germany’s Jewish population throughout the 1920 and well into the 1930s. The Brownshirths, SA’s thuggish vigilantism, independence from the regular army, and terror tactics were largely responsible for bringing Hitler to the pinnacle of German governmental power in 1933
Hitler launches the SA
Hitler formed the SA in Munich in 1921, drawing membership from violent anti-leftist and anti-democratic former soldiers (including the Freikorps) in order to lend muscle to the young Nazi Party, using them like a private army to intimidate opponents. According to the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, the SA was ‘a group composed in large part of ruffians and bullies’.
Many of the SA were former soldiers, upset with the way they had been treated after World War One. Germany’s defeat in the war had come as a surprise to the German people, which led to a theory that the brave German army had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the politicians.
Many Germans hated the government for signing the armistice in November 1918 – and saw the government as the ‘November Criminals’. Hitler used these terms in many speeches to further turn people against the Government.
Speaking politics in public was potentially a dangerous matter at the time. Recognisable by their brown uniforms, similar to those of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, the SA functioned as a ‘security’ force at Nazi rallies and meetings, using threats and outright violence to secure votes and overcome Hitler’s political enemies. They also marched in Nazi rallies and intimidated political opponents by breaking up their meetings.
When fights broke out, the Weimar police appeared powerless, with law and order usually restored by the SA. This enabled Hitler to claim that the Weimar regime lacked leadership and power, and that he was the person who could restore Germany to law and order.
The Beer Hall Putsch
Ernst Röhm became the leader of the SA after taking part in the Beer Hall Putsch (also known as the Munich Putsch) in 1923, a failed coup against the Weimar government in which Hitler lead 600 Brownshirts into a meeting between the Bavarian Prime Minister and 3,000 businessmen.
Röhm had fought in the First World War, reaching the rank of captain, and later joined the Bavarian division of the Freikorps, a virulent right wing nationalist group active during the early years of the Weimar Republic.
The Freikorps, which officially came to an end in 1920, were responsible for the murder of prominent leftists like Rosa Luxemburg. Former members made up a large part of the initial ranks of the SA.
The growth of the Brownshirts
After the Beer Hall Putch, the SA was reorganised, and took part in violent street clashes with communists, and began to intimidate voters into voting for the Nazi Party. Its ranks swelled into the thousands during the 1920s and into the 1930s.
Though Röhm left the Nazi Party, and Germany, during the later half of the 1920s, he returned to lead the Brownshirts in 1931 and watched its numbers swell to 2 million within only 2 years – twenty times as large as the number of troops and officers in the regular German Army.
The vast increase in membership was aided by unemployed men joining up due to the effects of the Great Depression. The Depression had caused American banks to call-in all of their foreign loans (which had helped fund German industry) at very short notice, leading to a significant rise in unemployment. This encouraged people to turn to extreme political parties such as the Nazi’s, who appeared to offer simple solutions to their problems.
The architects of the Night of the Long Knives: Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and Hess
Image Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, 196509 / Public Domain
The 1932 Presidential Election
Intimidated by their thuggish behaviour, President Hindenburg refused to allow the SA onto the streets during the election, where he stood against Hitler. Hitler needed the SA on the streets to create chaos (which he could then control, in the eyes of the German public), but equally wanted to portray himself as adhering to the law. He therefore accepted Hindenburg’s requets and kept the SA off the streets for the election.
Despite Hitler losing, Hindenburg’s re-election ultimately would fail to prevent the Nazi’s from assuming power. Two successive federal elections later that year left the Nazi’s as the largest party in the Reichstag and anti-republic parties in the majority. Hindenburg thus appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. When Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler became absolute dictator of Germany under the title Führer.
The Night of the Long Knives
Although some of the conflicts between the SS and SA were based on rivalries of leaders, the mass of members had key socio-economic differences too, with SS members generally from the middle class, while the SA had its base among the unemployed and working class.
The SA’s violence against Jews and communists was unbridled, yet some of Ernst Röhm’s interpretations of Nazi ideology were literally socialistic and in opposition to Hitler’s, including supporting striking workers and attacking strike-breakers. Röhm’s ambition was that the SA should achieve parity with the army and the Nazi Party, and serve as the vehicle for a Nazi revolution in state and society, and carry out its socialist agenda.
Hitler’s main consideration was to ensure the loyalty to his regime of the German establishment. He could not afford to annoy businessmen or the army, and in his bid to secure powerful support and rise to power, Hitler sided with big business instead of Röhm and his pro-working class supporters.
On June 30, 1934 the Night of the Long Knives erupted in a bloody purge among the SA ranks, in which Röhm and all senior Brownshirts, either deemed too socialist or not loyal enough for the new Nazi Party, were arrested by the SS and eventually executed.
SA leadership was granted to Viktor Lutze, who had informed Hitler of Röhm’s seditious activities. Lutze headed the SA until his death in 1943.
The Night of the Long Knives removed all opposition to Hitler within the Nazi Party and gave power to the SS, ending the revolutionary period of Nazism.
The shrinking role of the SA
After the purge, the SA diminished both in size and importance, though it was still used for violent actions against Jews, notably Kristallnacht on the 9 – 10 November, 1938. After the events of Kristallnacht, the SS took over the position of the Brownshirts, who were then relegated to the role of a training school for the German military.
Mistrust of the SA by the SS prevented the Brownshirts from ever regaining a prominent role in the Nazi Party. The organisation was officially disbanded in 1945 when Germany fell to the Allied Powers.
After World War Two ended, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared that the SA had not been a criminal organisation. stating that effectively, after the Night of the Long Knives ‘the SA was reduced by the SS to the status of unimportant Nazi hangers-on’.
