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Ernst Röhm (or Roehm) (November 28, 1887 — July 1, 1934) was a German military officer and most recognized commander of the Nazi Stroomtroopers, known as the Sturmabteilung.
Early Nazi years
Röhm served as a Captain in World War I and, following the end of the war in 1919, he joined the Epp Freikorps, one of the many private militias that began appearing in Munich as a result of a distate for the Weimar Republic. In 1920, he became a Nazi-party member and helped organize the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi stormtroopers. In 1923, after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Röhm spent 15 months in prison during which time he became a close and personal friend to Adolf Hitler.
In 1924, after Röhm was released from prison, he worked with Hitler to refound the Nazi Party however this grew to several intense differences between the two. Röhm resigned from the Nazi Party in 1925 and went to Bolivia to serve as a military advisor. The German government sponsored Röhm's position, and he was promoted to Oberst in the German Reichswehr.
Stormtrooper commander In 1930, Adolf Hitler personally assumed command of the stormtroopers as the new Oberste SA-Führer. Hitler sent a personal request to Röhm to return to Germany upon which Röhm was offered the position as Stabschef (Chief of Staff) of the entire Sturmabteilung. Röhm did so in 1931 and began to introduce radical new ideas into the SA and also began staffing the senior SA leadership with his close friends and personal associates. Rumors also abounded that the SA command staff sponsored homosexual parties and Röhm's conduct as the Stabschef was soon under heavy criticism.
Denouncement and death 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 by Röhm that the German army be absorbed into a larger SA, and the industrialists that supported Hitler were concerned over Röhm's socialist leanings.
In spite of the pressure applied on him, Hitler postponed his decision to do away with his favourite right-hand man to the very end. He appealed desperately to Röhm not to press for a socialist 'revolution' that would lead to an upheaval of Germany at all levels. Only when the differences were irreconcilable and things were getting dangerously out of hand did Hitler finally make up his mind that Röhm must go.
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 armoured ship 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. One of Röhm's famous quote before death is "All revolutions devour their own children".
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