Ernst R hm
Ernst Röhm (or Roehm) (November 28, 1887 — July 1, 1934) was a German military officer, decorated in World War I. At the end of the war, he founded the "Freikorps", a militia in Munich. In 1920, he became a Nazi-party member and the Freikorps became Hitler's Brownshirts - the Sturmabteilung (SA).
Rise and fall of the SA
The main function of the SA was to protect the party leadership and to disrupt the other parties' political meetings. They helped to make the Nazis more powerful than the other parties on the Munich scene. However, when Hitler began to campaign for the chancellorship of Germany, he began to marginalize the SA in order to improve his image and in response to criticisms by establishment conservatives. While Hitler had been personally rather fond of Röhm he came under pressure to reduce his influence. German military leaders were unhappy with the proposal of Röhm that the German army be absorbed into a larger SA, and the industrialists that supported Hitler were concerned over Röhm's socialist leanings.
Many members of the Nazi party viewed Röhm and some other SA leaders with distaste because they were reportedly homosexuals.
The final draw came in 1934, just before President Hindenburg's death. As the president lay dying, many groups began to plot in order to place their own respective candidates in the presidential seat. According to William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a strong group of conservatives wanted the return of Crown Prince Wilhelm, the son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, to Germany as President. Hitler, wanting to avoid this, met with the main military chiefs on the destroyer Deutschland and promised to begin rearming Germany in exchange for their support of his candidacy as president. As a bonus, he also promised them to get rid of Röhm. This led to his execution without trial during the purge of the SA during the so called Night of the Long Knives (30 June-1 July, 1934), which was legalized after the fact in the Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense on 13 July.
See also
