Sturmabteilung-SA
สเติร์มอับไทลุงหรือกองกำลังจู่โจม(Assault Division)
ก่อตั้งในปี 1920-ปลดประจำการปี 1945
เป็นหน่วยที่ขึ้นตรงกับพรรคนาซี และเป็นหน่วยที่ทำให้ฮิตเลอร์ขึ้นสู่อำนาจ ในปี 1920 ถึงช่วงปี 1930 ทำหน้าที่หลักๆคือปกป้อง อดอร์ฟ ฮิตเลอร์จากการถูกทำร้ายจากพรรคตรงกันข้าม
intimidating Jewish citizens (e.g. the
Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses).
The SA was the first Nazi paramilitary group to develop pseudo-military titles for bestowal upon its members. The
SA ranks were adopted by several other Nazi Party groups, chief amongst them the
SS, itself originally a branch of the SA. SA men were often called "
brownshirts" for the colour of their
uniforms (similar to
Benito Mussolini's
blackshirts). Brown-coloured shirts were chosen as the SA uniform because a large batch of them were cheaply available after
World War I, having originally been ordered during the war for
colonial troops posted to
Germany's former African colonies.
[1]
The SA became disempowered after
Adolf Hitler ordered the "
Blood purge" of 1934. This event became known as the
Night of the Long Knives.
The SA was effectively superseded by the SS, although it was not
formally dissolved and banned until after the Third Reich's final
capitulation to the
Allied powers in 1945.
Rise
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
Hutier infiltration tactics. Instead of large mass assaults, the
Sturmabteilung were organised into small
squads of a few soldiers each. The first official German
Stormtrooper
unit was authorized on 2 March 1915; the German high command ordered
the VIII Corps to form a detachment to test experimental weapons and
develop tactics which could break the deadlock on the
Western Front. On 2 October 1916,
Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff ordered all German armies in the west to form a battalion of stormtroops.
[2] They were first used during the German Eighth Army's siege of
Riga, and again at the
Battle of Caporetto. Wider use followed on the Western Front in March 1918, where Allied lines were successfully pushed back tens of kilometers.
The DAP (
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or
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,
[3] and 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 April 1920.
The precursor to the SA had acted informally and on an
ad hoc
basis for some time before this. Hitler, with an eye always 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 on 16 October 1919. Some 70 people attended, and a second
such meeting was advertised for 13 November in the Eberlbrau beer hall.
Some 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 24 February, he announced
the party's
Twenty-Five Point program
at a mass meeting of some 2000 persons at the Hofbräuhaus. Protesters
tried to shout Hitler down, but his army friends, armed with rubber
truncheons, ejected the dissenters. The basis for the SA had been
formed.
[4]
A permanent group of party members who would serve as the
Saalschutz Abteilung (hall defense 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
Ordnertruppen around this time.
[5] More than a year later, on 3 August 1921, Hitler redefined the group as the "Gymnastic and Sports Division" of the party (
Turn- und Sportabteilung), perhaps to avoid trouble with the government.
[6]
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 and
Communists. By September 1921 the name
Sturmabteilung was being used informally for the group.
[7] Hitler was the official head of the Nazi Party by this time.
[8]
On 4 November 1921 the Nazi Party held a large public meeting in the
Munich Hofbräuhaus. After Hitler had spoken for some time the meeting
erupted into a melee in which a small company of SA thrashed the
opposition. The Nazis called this event
Saalschlacht (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.
[7]
The leadership of the SA passed from Maurice to the young
Hans Ulrich Klintzsch in this period. He had been a naval officer and a member of the
Ehrhardt Brigade of
Kapp Putsch fame and was, at the time of his assumption of SA command, a member of the notorious
Organisation Consul (OC).
[9] The Nazis under Hitler were taking advantage of the more professional management techniques of the military.
[7]
In 1922, the Nazi Party created a youth section, the
Jugendbund, for young men between the ages of 14 and 18 years. Its successor, the
Hitler Youth, remained under SA command until May 1932.
From April 1924 until late February 1925 the SA was known as the
Frontbann to try to circumvent
Bavaria's ban on the Nazi Party and its organs (instituted after the abortive
Beer Hall putsch of November 1923). Members of the SA were, throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, often involved in street fights called
Zusammenstöße (collisions) with socialist groups and members of the Communist Party (KPD). Under their popular leader,
Stabschef Ernst Röhm,
the SA grew in importance within the Nazi power structure, initially
growing in size to thousands of members. However, in the early 1930s as
the Nazis evolved from an extremist political party to the unquestioned
leaders of the government, the SA was no longer needed for its original
purpose: the acquisition of political power and the suppression of the
enemies of the Party. An organization that could inflict more subtle
terror and total obedience was needed, and the SA (which had been born
out of street violence and beer hall brawls) was simply not capable of
doing so. The SA also posed a threat to the Nazi leadership and to
Hitler's goal of co-opting the
Reichswehr
to his ends, as Röhm's ideal was to fold the "antiquated" German Army
into a new "people's army", the SA. By 1933, the younger SS was no
longer the mere bodyguard of Hitler and showed itself more suited to
carry out Hitler's policies thereby taking over the previously held
roles of the SA.
Fall
After Hitler took power in 1933, the SA became increasingly eager for
power and saw themselves as a replacement for the German Army, then
limited by law to no more than 100,000 men. This angered the regular
army (
Reichswehr) and led to tension with other leaders within
the party, who saw Röhm's increasingly powerful SA as a threat to the
current party leadership. Originally an adjunct to the SA, the
Schutzstaffel (SS) was placed under the control of
Heinrich Himmler in part to restrict the power of the SA and their leaders.
[11]
Although some of these conflicts were based on personal rivalries,
there were also key socio-economic conflicts between the SS and SA. SS
members generally came from the
middle class, while the SA had its base among the unemployed and
working class.
Politically speaking, the SA were more radical than the SS, with its
leaders arguing the Nazi revolution had not ended when Hitler achieved
power, but rather needed to implement socialism in Germany (see
Strasserism).
Furthermore, the defiant and rebellious culture encouraged before the
seizure of power had to give way to a community organization approach
such as canvassing and fundraising, which was resented by the SA as
Kleinarbeit, "little work," which had normally been performed by women before the seizure of power.
[12]
In 1933, General
Werner von Blomberg, the Minister of Defence, and General
Walther von Reichenau, the chief of the
Reichswehr's
Ministerial Department, became increasingly concerned about the growing
power of the SA. Ernst Röhm had been given a seat on the National
Defence Council and began to demand more say over military matters. On 2
October 1933, Röhm sent a letter to Reichenau that said: "I regard the
Reichswehr
now only as a training school for the German people. The conduct of
war, and therefore of mobilization as well, in the future is the task of
the SA."
[13]
Blomberg and von Reichenau began to conspire with
Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler against Röhm and the SA. Himmler asked
Reinhard Heydrich
to assemble a dossier on Röhm. Heydrich recognized that in order for
the SS to fully gain national power the SA had to be broken.
[14] He manufactured evidence that suggested that Röhm had been paid 12 million marks by the French to overthrow Hitler.
Hitler liked Ernst Röhm and initially refused to believe the dossier
provided by Heydrich. Röhm had been one of his first supporters and,
without his ability to obtain army funds in the early days of the
movement, it is unlikely that the Nazis would have ever become
established. The SA under Röhm's leadership had also played a vital role
in destroying the opposition during the elections of 1932 and 1933.
However, Adolf Hitler had his own reasons for wanting Röhm removed.
Powerful supporters of Hitler had been complaining about Röhm for some
time. The generals were fearful of Röhm's desire to have the SA, a force
of over three million men, absorb the much smaller German Army into its
ranks under his leadership.
[14] Further, reports of a huge cache of weapons in the hands of SA members gave the army commanders even more concern.
[14]
Industrialists, who had provided the funds for the Nazi victory, were
unhappy with Röhm's socialistic views on the economy and his claims that
the real revolution had still to take place. Matters came to a head in
June 1934 when President von Hindenburg, who had the complete loyalty of
the army, informed Hitler that if he did not move to curb the SA then
Hindenburg would dissolve the Government and declare
martial law.
[15]
Hitler was also concerned that Röhm and the SA had the power to
remove him as leader. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler played on this
fear by constantly feeding him with new information on Röhm's proposed
coup. A masterstroke was to claim that
Gregor Strasser,
whom Hitler hated, was part of the planned conspiracy against him. With
this news Hitler ordered all the SA leaders to attend a meeting in the
Hanselbauer Hotel
[16] in
Bad Wiessee.
On 30 June 1934, Hitler, accompanied by the
Schutzstaffel (SS), arrived at
Bad Wiessee
where he personally placed Ernst Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders
under arrest. Over the next 48 hours, 200 other senior SA officers were
arrested on the way to Wiessee. Many were shot as soon as they were
captured but Hitler decided to pardon Röhm because of his past services
to the movement. On 1 July after much pressure from Hermann Göring and
Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Röhm should die. Hitler insisted
that Röhm should first be allowed to commit suicide. However, when Röhm
refused, he was killed by two SS officers,
Theodor Eicke and
Michael Lippert.
[17] The names of eighty-five victims are known; however, estimates place the total number killed at between 150 and 200 persons.
[18] While some Germans were shocked by the killing, many others saw Hitler as the one who restored "order" to the country.
[19]
Goebbels's propaganda highlighted the "Röhm-Putsch" in the days that
followed. The homosexuality of Röhm and other SA leaders was made public
to add "shock value"
[19]
even though the sexuality of Röhm and other named SA leaders had
actually been known by Hitler and other Nazi leaders for years.
[19]
After the purge
After the
Night of the Long Knives, the SA continued to exist under the leadership of
Viktor Lutze, but the group was largely placated and significantly downsized.
[20] However, attacks against the Jews escalated in the late 1930s and the SA was a main perpetrator of the actions.
In November 1938, after the murder of German diplomat
Ernst vom Rath by
Herschel Grynszpan
(a Polish Jew), the SA were used for "demonstrations" against the act.
In violent riots, members of the SA shattered the storefronts of about
7,500 Jewish stores and businesses, hence the appellation
Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) to the events.
[21] Jewish homes were ransacked throughout Germany. This
pogrom damaged, and in many cases destroyed, about 200
synagogues
(constituting nearly all Germany had), many Jewish cemeteries, more
than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores. Some Jews were beaten
to death and more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to
concentration camps.
[22]
Thereafter, the SA became overshadowed by the SS, and by 1939 had
little remaining significance in the Nazi Party. With the start of World
War II in September 1939, the SA lost most of its remaining members to
military service in the
Wehrmacht (armed forces).
[23] Later, an attempt was made to form an SA combat division on similar lines to the
Waffen-SS, the result being the creation of the
Feldherrnhalle SA-Panzer Division.
[citation needed]
In 1943, Viktor Lutze was killed in an automobile accident and leadership of the group was assumed by
Wilhelm Schepmann.
Schepmann did his best to run the SA for the remainder of the war,
attempting to restore the group as a predominant force within the Nazi
Party and to mend years of distrust and bad feelings between the SA and
SS.
The SA officially ceased to exist in May 1945 when Nazi Germany collapsed. The SA was banned by the
Allied Control Council shortly after Germany's capitulation. In 1946, the
International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg formally judged the SA not to be a
criminal organization.
[24]
In the modern age, several
Neo-Nazi
groups claim to be continued extensions of the SA, with terms such as
"stormtrooper" and "brown shirt" common in Neo-Nazi vocabulary, although
these groups are often loosely organized with separate agendas.
Leaders
The
leader of the SA was known as the
Oberster SA-Führer, translated as Supreme SA-Leader. The following men held this position:
In September 1930, to quell the
Stennes Revolt and to try to ensure the personal loyalty of the SA to himself, Hitler assumed command of the entire organization and remained
Oberster SA-Führer for the remainder of the group's existence to 1945. The day-to-day running of the SA was conducted by the
Stabschef-SA (SA Chief of Staff). After Hitler's assumption of the supreme command of the SA, it was the
Stabschef-SA who was generally accepted as the Commander of the SA, acting in Hitler's name. The following personnel held the position of
Stabschef-SA:
Organization
The SA not only instigated street violence against Jews, Communists and Socialists, it also enforced
boycotts against Jewish-owned business, such as this one in
Berlin on 1 April 1933.
The SA was organized throughout
Germany into several large formations known as
Gruppen. Within each
Gruppe, there existed subordinate
Brigaden and in turn existed
regiment-sized
Standarten.
SA-Standarten operated out of every major German city and were split into even smaller units, known as
Sturmbanne and
Stürme.
Vehicle command flag for the
Stabschef SA, 1938–1945
The command nexus for the entire SA operated out of
Stuttgart and was known as the
Oberste SA-Führung.
The SA supreme command had many sub-offices to handle supply, finance,
and recruiting. Unlike the SS, however, the SA did not have a medical
corps nor did it establish itself outside of Germany, in occupied
territories, once
World War II had begun.
The SA also had several military training units, the largest of which was the
SA-Marine which served as an auxiliary to the
Kriegsmarine (German Navy) and performed
search and rescue operations as well as harbor defense. Similar to the
Waffen-SS wing of the SS, the SA also had an armed military wing, known as
Feldherrnhalle. These formations expanded from regimental size in 1940 to a fully-fledged armored corps
Panzerkorps Feldherrnhalle in 1945.
Maxims
- "Terror must be broken by terror"[26]
- "All opposition must be stamped into the ground"[26]
See also
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