Sturmabteilung

The Sturmabteilung ([ˈʃtʊʁmʔapˌtaɪlʊŋ] ^ⓘ; SA; lit. 'Storm Division' or 'Storm Troopers') was the original paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany. It played a significant role in Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Roter Frontkämpferbund of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and intimidating Romani, trade unionists, and especially Jews.

The SA were colloquially called Brownshirts (Braunhemden) because of the colour of their uniform's shirts, similar to Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts. The official SA uniform was a brown shirt with a brown tie. The colour came about because a large shipment of Lettow-shirts, originally intended for the German colonial troops in Germany's former East Africa colony but which never reached its destination because of naval blockades, was purchased in 1921 by Gerhard Roßbach for use by his Freikorps paramilitary unit. They were later used for his Schill Youth organization in Salzburg, and in 1924 were adopted by the Schill Youth in Germany. The "Schill Sportversand" then became the main supplier for the SA's brown shirts. The SA developed pseudo-military titles for its members, with ranks that were later adopted by several other Nazi Party groups.

After Hitler rose to Nazi Party leadership in 1921, he formalized the party's militant supporters into the SA as a group that was to protect party gatherings. In 1923, owing to his growing distrust of the SA, Hitler ordered the creation of a bodyguard unit, which was abolished after the failed Beer Hall Putsch later that year. Not long after Hitler's release from prison, he ordered the creation of another bodyguard unit in 1925 that ultimately became the Schutzstaffel (SS). During the Night of the Long Knives (die Nacht der langen Messer) purge in 1934, the SA's then-leader Ernst Röhm was arrested and executed. The SA continued to exist but lost almost all its influence and was effectively superseded by the SS, which took part in the purge. The SA remained in existence until after Nazi Germany's final capitulation to the Allies in 1945, after which it was disbanded and outlawed by the Allied Control Council.

The term Sturmabteilung predates the founding of the Nazi Party in 1919. Originally it was applied to the specialized assault troops of Imperial Germany in World War I who used infiltration tactics based on being organized into small squads of a few soldiers each. The first official German stormtrooper unit was authorized on March 2, 1915, on the Western Front. The German high command ordered the VIII Corps to form a detachment to test experimental weapons and develop tactics that could break the deadlock on the Western Front. On October 2, 1916, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff ordered all German armies in the west to form a battalion of stormtroopers.^{[page needed]} They were first used during the 8th Army's siege of Riga, and again at the Battle of Caporetto. Wider use followed on the Western Front in the German spring offensive in March 1918, when Allied lines were successfully pushed back tens of kilometers.

The DAP (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, German Workers' Party) was formed in Munich in January 1919, and Adolf Hitler joined it in September of that year. His talents for speaking, publicity and propaganda were quickly recognized. By early 1920 he had gained authority in the party, which changed its name to the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers' Party) in February 1920. The party's executive committee added "Socialist" to the name over Hitler's objections, to help the party appeal to left-wing workers.

The precursor to the Sturmabteilung had acted informally and on an ad hoc basis for some time before this. Hitler, with an eye to helping the party to grow through propaganda, convinced the leadership committee to invest in an advertisement in the Münchener Beobachter (later renamed the Völkischer Beobachter) for a mass meeting in the Hofbräuhaus, to be held in Munich on October 16, 1919. Some 70 people attended, and a second such meeting was advertised for November 13 in the Eberl-Bräu beer hall, also in Munich. About 130 people attended; there were hecklers, but Hitler's military friends promptly ejected them by force, and the agitators "flew down the stairs with gashed heads". The next year on February 24, he announced the party's Twenty-Five Point program at a mass meeting of some 2,000 people at the Hofbräuhaus. Protesters tried to shout Hitler down, but his former army companions, armed with rubber truncheons, ejected the dissenters. The basis for the SA had been formed.

A permanent group of party members, who would serve as the Saalschutzabteilung (meeting hall protection detachment) for the DAP, gathered around Emil Maurice after the February 1920 incident at the Hofbräuhaus. There was little organization or structure to this group. The group was also called the "Stewards Troop" (Ordnertruppen) around this time. More than a year later, on August 3, 1921, Hitler redefined the group as the "Gymnastic and Sports Division" of the party (Turn- und Sportabteilung), perhaps to avoid trouble with the government. It was by now well recognized as an appropriate, even necessary, function or organ of the party. The future SA developed by organizing and formalizing the groups of ex-soldiers and beer-hall brawlers who were to protect gatherings of the Nazi Party from disruptions from Social Democrats (SPD) and Communists (KPD), and to disrupt meetings of the other political parties. By September 1921 the name Sturmabteilung (SA) was being used informally for the group. Hitler was the official head of the Nazi Party by this time.

The Nazi Party held a large public meeting in the Munich Hofbräuhaus on November 4, 1921, which attracted many Communists and other enemies of the Nazis. After Hitler had spoken for some time, the meeting erupted into a mêlée in which a small company of SA thrashed the opposition. The Nazis called this event the Saalschlacht (transl. Meeting hall battle), and it assumed legendary proportions in SA lore with the passage of time. Thereafter, the group was officially known as the Sturmabteilung.