Ernst Röhm (28.11.1887 Munich – 1.7.1934 Munich)

Ernst Röhm was the third child of the senior railway inspector Julius Röhm and his wife Emilie. In 1906, he passed his ‘Abitur’ (similar to high school diploma) in Munich and joined the Bavarian Army as an officer cadet. During the First World War , Röhm was initially deployed on the Western Front, where he was wounded several times. He then served in various staff roles, ultimately with the rank of Captain.

In 1919, he took part in the formation of the Epp Free Corps. After the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic, he was briefly chief of staff to the city commander. In this position, he was instrumental in building up the citizens’ militias, a militia made up of civilians. Röhm continued these efforts in his subsequent position as “weapons officer“ of the Epp Brigade, which was integrated into the Reichswehr. One of its tasks was to conceal weapons prohibited under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles from the investigations of the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control and to keep them ready for the members of the citizens’ militias. After the defense force was disbanded in 1921, he took over the ‘Feldzeugmeisterei’ (Office of General of the Artillery) and now equipped other right-wing paramilitary units, which had taken the place of the citizens’ militias, with weapons. Because of this activity, he was known as the “machine gun king of Bavaria“.

Röhm had already joined the German Labor Party in 1919. He may have arranged the agreement according to which, in August 1921, members of the illegal Organization Consul took over the “military“ training of the Nazi Party’s “Turn- und Sportabteilung” (“Gymnastic and Sports Division“), which later became the SA, in order to transform it into a paramilitary unit. In the following years, from his position in the Reichswehr, he pursued further “militarization“ of the SA on a massive scale and integrated it into a front of right-wing extremist paramilitary organizations. At the beginning of 1923, Röhm initiated the amalgamation of the right-wing extremist paramilitary groups into the ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Vaterländischen Kampfverbände’ (Working Group of Patriotic Combat Associations). SA, ‘Bund Oberland‘ and the paramilitary organization ‘Reichsflagge’, of which Röhm was deputy chairman, formed the active core of the working group. Again on Röhm’s initiative, these three associations formed the German Combat League in September 1923, and Röhm succeeded in transferring the “political leadership“ of this organization to Hitler, which on the one hand was on a collision course with the Bavarian government, but on the other was involved through the Reichswehr and police in preparations for an armed operation against the left-wing governments in central Germany and against the Reich government. In September 1923, Röhm took his leave of the Reichswehr and devoted himself entirely to the Combat League and the new paramilitary association ‘Reichskriegsflagge’, which was created by splitting off from the ‘Reichsflagge’. At the head of the ‘Reichskriegsflagge’, Röhm played an important role in the Hitler Putsch and received a prison sentence for this - albeit only five months.

During the period when the Nazi Party was banned, he founded the “Frontbann“, a substitute organization for the SA. After the re-establishment of the Nazi Party, however, he was unable to reach an agreement with Hitler on the reintegration of this organization into the NSDAP, as Hitler rejected Röhm’s concept of a paramilitary association and wanted to limit the future SA to the tasks of an auxiliary force of the party. After unfruitful attempts to establish his own economic existence, Röhm went to Bolivia in 1928 as a military instructor.

When he returned to Germany in late 1930, the SA was in a major conflict with the party leadership. Hitler took over the command of the SA himself and appointed Röhm “Supreme Chief of Staff“ of the SA. In this position, Röhm advanced the enlargement of the party troops, which had over 400,000 members at the start of 1933, without, however, relinquishing his initial military ambitions. A fundamental conflict with Hitler was thus inevitable. After the Nazis came to power, the question of the Storm Troopers’ future role remained unresolved.

Röhm continued to expand the organization and, under the watchword of continuing the “NS revolution“, aimed to provide the SA, with an eventual membership of approximately 4.5 million men, with extensive autonomy and access to governmental functions. When he was appointed Reich Minister without portfolio in November 1933, he pursued plans for the establishment of an independent “SA Ministry“. In particular, he pursued the concept of an SA militia, which was to act as an independent armed body alongside the Reichswehr and the police. This brought him into conflict with the Reichswehr leadership, which was committed to building an army of conscripts and could count on Hitler’s support.

In the spring of 1934, the conflict between Röhm and Hitler over the future role of the SA in the Nazi regime intensified into a severe crisis. Hitler finally ended the conflict by deposing Röhm and his followers on June 30, 1934 and having numerous SA leaders murdered. Röhm himself was shot in Munich-Stadelheim Prison on July 1 by the commandant of Dachau Concentration Camp, Theodor Eicke, on Hitler’s orders. In his later public justification of the murder, Hitler made particular use of Röhm’s homosexuality, which had been known since 1932 at the latest through a press publication and which he had not taken offense at since then.