Ernst Röhm

Sturmabteilung (SA) Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces Germany Germany 1887–1934 ✕ Murdered

Freikorps Epp veteran who built the Nazi SA and led it as chief of staff until he was killed in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934

A senior Freikorps Epp officer in the 1919 suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic, he led the SA, over a million strong, as chief of staff from 1931 to 1934.

Born in Munich, he joined the Bavarian Army in 1906 and was wounded three times in the First World War. Staying on as a Reichswehr captain, he became a senior officer of the Freikorps Epp that crushed the Munich Soviet Republic in 1919, and that year joined the German Workers’ Party, soon the Nazi Party, growing close to Hitler. His army connections gathered the right-wing militias that became the SA, and he took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Breaking with Hitler in 1925, he advised the Bolivian Army, then was recalled and made SA chief of staff in 1931. A Reich minister from 1933, he alarmed the army and Hitler by demanding a “second revolution” and an army built on the SA, and was shot by the SS in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.

Also known as: Ernst Julius Günther Röhm · Ernst Roehm

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