Why did SA rebell to Hitler?

[kashash]

Hello I came across the SS motto "deine Ehre heißt Treue" and found it originated when SA rebelled to Hitler but SS remained to its loyalty so it sprung up me to the question why did SA rebelled to Hitler in April 1931?

[pavel michalek]

Hello,

the SA was trained to obtain the ruling power for the Nazi Party by an Coup d'État. Hitler however gained his power by regular election and was fully satisfied with it. SA felt not the same way and it´s leadership were calling for an revolution. In the same time Hitler needed support of the army and the higher class of Germany, which didn´t favour the SA´s revolutionary intensions and there Hitler made decision later known as the ''Night of the Long Knifes''.

Pavel

[kashash]

That's very well explained thank you!

[Oberhessin]

There are more reasons.
Walter Stennes was held out of power, real power in the party. Geobbels and he were enemies, both wanted to be regional leaders, and Stennes was this kind of person, Goebbels proclaimed to be, but never was: a soldier. Then the proletarian SA and parts of the regular party members were not very fond of the new and expensive "Braune Haus" in Munich, to which the whole party had to pay for. Think of the time, some people did not know ho to feed their families, were without any job and Hitler build his noveau rich Palazzo.

[CHRISCHA]

Hello.

To elaberate further on the above,

Rohm had a vision for the SA to become the new army of Germany with the existing army (officially 100,000 strong) to be the cadre of this new force.

This SA army would be the driving force of Germany on every level.

The army had a large influence that Hitler needed, to support him. Remember, Hitler wasn't in as strong a position politicaly in the early 1930's as compared to a couple of years later. An officer putsch was a real threat which would have had the sympathy of many mainstream thinking Germans.

The SA was the socialist force of the national socilaist movement. (A term beefsteak SA man was coined, brown on the outside, red in the middle). The rank and file were ex-soldiers and working class with socialist tendancies (obviously there were many exceptions).
Rohm absolutely saw the next revolution going further with Hitler as a potential victim.

Hope this helps as an addition to the previous replies.

Regards,
Chris.

[phylo_roadking]

the SA was trained to obtain the ruling power for the Nazi Party by an Coup d'État. Hitler however gained his power by regular election and was fully satisfied with it.

That's very well explained thank you!

It is however not actually correct. Hitler didn't gain power by regular election - since Hindenburg took over rule by poresidential decree in 1930, there was no direct link between the result of elections in Germany and who became Chancellor....or rather, who Hindenburg asked to become Chancellor, and THEN try to forge a caolition majority in the Reichstag. Hindenburg refused Hitler's "demand" to be selected to form a Cabinet several times during 1932...and the NSDAP's shre of the vote was shrinking again by the end of 1932.

However, there had been several failed attempts to form a stable government in 1932 - von Papen's first failed Chancellorship, and the Kurt von Schliecher's; von Schliecher was one of the cabal of army officers who identified which parts of the Weimar Constitution Hindenburg could use to rule by decree in 1932....but he was wholly without representation in the Reichstag, and attempted to put together a "rainbow coalition" - but failed.

In the meantime, there were covert negotiations between Hitler and von Papen, and the latter went to Hindenburg with a "packaged solution" as we'd call it - von Papen's SDPs would hold most positions in a Cabinet where although Hitler was Chancellor, there were only two other NSDAP members; von Papen sold this to the President as a way of harnessing the NSDAP's popular support but really restricting Hitler's power as Chancellor.

In other words - Hitler got himself into power NOT by regular elections, but as part of some political manouvering that other parties thought was designed to limit him!

After this - Hitler encouraged the SA to start breaking down law and order, and existing social patterns in Germany over the next few months...with the idea of taking control of the country in a way and at levels he could not YET do as Chancellor - until the Enabling Laws appeared But the process started to go astray....VERY much in the same was as Mao's Cultural Revolution got out of control in China....and in suppressing the SA, Hitler very much replaced them with the SS and himself in control of the aspects of newly-Nazi Germany that the SA had managed to take control of for a time.

[J. Duncan]

Good analysis Phylo...I too always believed that Hitler did not win by an "election" but rather that he won a popular sentiment on the streets, gaining for himself the necessary "muscle" needed to be taken seriously by those at the top of the political structure. Saying that Hitler won by election is misleading and can lead one to believe that his coming to power was like how presidents get elected in America. Not so, as the German political structure is much different than the United States.
Hitler cut deals with the big industrialists, promising to save Germany from the menace of Bolshevism thereby protecting their business. He gave a keynote address to them at some hotel? (1932?) Maybe Phylo can help me to remember the name? Anyway, he got most of their support and the money rolled into his Party coffers. Many Nazis were also elected to the Reichstag, and they became enough of a majority to cause some disturbances and get their way. Hitler was appointed by Hindenburg under the advice of von Papen who thought to better "control" him. Hindenburg was by then quite old and senile, and Hitler outfoxed them all...I remember reading in a book (one of the Time-Life series: "The Third Reich: Storming to Power")that Hindenburg was attacked for doing this by none other than Erich Ludendorff, who wrote that Hindenburg had given the country over to a madman.
I like Phylo's analogy to the Maoist cultural revolution (a view I had not considered), using his radical and violent SA to clean up the streets and subdue the Socialists and Communists. When compared with the French or Russian Revolutions, this was on the whole quite bloodless (the Nazis prided themselves on this point)...Hitler later had to purge his Brown Battallions at the behest of the reactionary and conservative forces of the army, who felt they had gone far enough, especially since Röhm had set his sights on becoming the chief of staff of a new "people's army" ...this was intolerable to the old warlord aristrocats, having a homosexual freebooter at the top (Hindenburg refused to shake the man's hand).
Hitler had his "elections" and plebiscites later, only after he had firmly gotten in the saddle and controlled most of the levers of power.
* I remembered the speech in 1932! It was the Düsseldorf meeting of the Industry Club.

[phylo_roadking]

I like Phylo's analogy to the Maoist cultural revolution (a view I had not considered), using his radical and violent SA to clean up the streets and subdue the Socialists and Communists.

If you read Philip Metcalfe's "1933" (Metcalfe's book, based on the diaries of a number of notable protagonists of and witnesses to the period, is a classic...and sadly the only one to come from him, he died a few years later from cancer; God knows what other gems we might have got from him http://www.amazon.com/1933-Philip-Metcalfe/dp/093296687X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1327790710&sr=8-2 ), you'll see there are remarkable similarities, particularly in how Hitler refers to the behaviour of the SA - being the "leaders of his NSDAP revolution" and being "the force that will tear down the old ways of doing things". It's the SA for instance that roamed Berlin and other cities, beating up bystanders for not giving the Nazi salute to passing Swastikas etc. ...thus impressing the "Nazi" way of doing things and behaving on people.

When compared with the French or Russian Revolutions, this was on the whole quite bloodless (the Nazis prided themselves on this point)...

Yes, the Nazis did....but the SA, now off the leash - whether intentionally or not - were anything but bloodless, tho' the degree of separation and divergence allowed Hitler to claim that the violence wasn't down to HIM It was the SA, not the NSDAP, that was rounding up allsorts for all sorts of "offences" (or none at all!) and throwing them in all the new, SA-run concentration camps, for instance....

Hitler later had to purge his Brown Battallions at the behest of the reactionary and conservative forces of the army, who felt they had gone far enough

He ALSO got much respect and kudos (in the modern sense) from the average German for curbing the excesses of the SA as they affected them. Hitler was thus seen as rescuing Germany from ALL the bad things that had gone on for many years - including the SA

[KarlReissman]

Ernst Röhm´s inscription in 1933. I think these kind of writings got Hitler to relize, how dangerous SA and Röhm will be.

[J. Duncan]

Yes. Quite right Phylo. Much of the Nazi praise for a bloodless coup came only in retrospect, that is, after the SA had been castrated. The SA with it's basement "wild camps" was somewhat akin to the Cheka in Russia, which for a time was out of control in it's bloodlust (some accounts speak of people being sawed in half while alive - Bertrand Russell: "The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism") but later gave way to a more orderly OGPU. Göring said to G. M. Gilbert : "The SA. Now there's the bloody revolutionists for you!"

One of the things the Bolshevists did (quite ingenious if you ask me) is that they took the worst elements of the prison populations and put them to work in the Cheka. The SA (considered the "worst scum" by high society people) were used to do the dirty jobs of bashing faces and intimidating the populace. I see your point very clearly. Hitler first uses the SA to do his more dirty work, then gets to be the hero for later purging it.

The SA of 1933 (as you say) can be looked at as being a force quite outside the confines of Hitler and the NSDAP. Hitler had several times struggled trying to control it prior to the assumtion of power (the Stennes Putsch and the general attitude of rebellion due to Hitler's committment to acquring power "legally").