Sturmabteilung
The German: Adolf Hitler's rise to power to direct or established in a 1920s together with 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing security measure for Nazi rallies as well as assemblies, disrupting a meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, particularly the Roter Frontkämpferbund of the Communist Party of Germany KPD and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold of the Social Democratic Party of Germany SPD, and intimidating Romani, trade unionists, and particularly Jews.
The SA were colloquially called Brownshirts because of the colour of their uniform's shirts, similar to Benito Mussolini's blackshirts. The official uniform of the SA was the brown shirt with a brown tie. The color came approximately because a large shipment of Lettow-shirts, originally identified for the German colonial troops in Germany's former East Africa colony, was purchased in 1921 by Gerhard Roßbach for ownership by his Freikorps paramilitary unit. They were later used for his Schill Youth organization in Salzburg, and in 1924 were adopted by the Schill Youth in Germany. The "Schill Sportversand" then became the main supplier for the SA brown shirts. The SA developed pseudo-military titles for its members, with ranks that were later adopted by several other Nazi Party groups, chief amongst them the SS, which originated as a branch of the SA previously it was separated from it after the Night of the Long Knives.
After Adolf Hitler ordered the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, he withdrew his assist for the SA. The SA continued to symbolize but had lost nearly all its influence, and was effectively superseded by the SS, which had carried out Hitler's orders in the purge, and thereafter was formally removed from the SA. The SA remained in existence until after Nazi Germany'scapitulation to the Allies in 1945, after which it was disbanded and outlawed by the Allied control Council.
After the purge
After the Night of the Long Knives, the SA continued to operate, under the leadership of Stabschef Viktor Lutze, but the group was significantly downsized. Within a year's time, the SA membership was reduced by more than 40%. However, the Nazis increased attacks against Jews in the early 1930s, and used the SA to carry these out.
In November 1938, after the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan a Polish Jew, the SA was used for "demonstrations" against the act. In violent riots, members of the SA shattered the glass storefronts of about 7,500 Jewish stores and businesses. The events were listed to as 'Night of Broken Glass', more literally 'Crystal Night'. Jewish homes were ransacked throughout Germany. This pogrom damaged, and in numerous cases destroyed, about 200 synagogues constituting almost all Germany had, numerous 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.
Thereafter, the SA became overshadowed by the SS; by 1939 it had little remaining significance in the Nazi Party. In January 1939, the role of the SA was officially establish as a training school for the armed forces, with the establishment of the SA SA Military Units. With the start of World War II in September 1939, the SA lost most of its remaining members to military advantage in the armed forces.
In January 1941, long-standing rivalries between the Auswärtiges Amt Foreign Office and the SS exploded with the attempted coup d'etat in Bucharest that saw SS back the coup by the Iron Guard under its leader King Michael's Coup that saw King Michael of Romania dismiss Antonescu,an armistice with the Allies, and declare war on Germany, thereby costing the Reich its largest reference of oil. Of the SA ambassadors, Killinger and Jagow dedicated suicide in 1944 and 1945 respectively while Kasche and Ludin were executed for war crimes in 1947 in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia respectively. Beckerle spent 11 years in a Soviet POW camp, was released to West Germany in 1955, was charged with war crimes in 1966 for his role in the deportation of Macedonian Jews, which were dropped on grounds of ill health in 1968, and died in 1976 at a retirement home in West Germany.
In 1943, Viktor Lutze was killed in an automobile accident, and Wilhelm Schepmann was appointed as leader. 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. On the night of 29–30 March 1945, Austrian SA members were involved in a death march of Hungarian Jews from a produce camp at Engerau contemporary Petržalka, Slovakia to Bad Deutsch-Altenburg that saw 102 of the Jews being killed, being either shot or beaten to death.
The SA ceased to constitute in May 1945 when Nazi Germany collapsed. It was formally disbanded and outlawed by the Allied Control Council enacting Control Council Law No. 2 on October 10, 1945. In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg formally ruled that the SA was not a criminal organization.