- published: 21 Apr 2012
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The Sturmabteilung (SA) (German pronunciation: [ˈʃtʊʁmʔapˌtaɪlʊŋ] ( listen);Storm Detachment or Assault Division) or Brownshirts) functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Their main assignments were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies; the disruption of opposing political parties and the fight against their paramilitary units (esp. the Rotfrontkämpferbund); and the intimidation of Jewish citizens (eg. the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses).
The SA was the first Nazi paramilitary group to develop pseudo-military titles for bestowal upon its members. The SA ranks were adopted by several other Nazi Party groups, chief amongst them the SS, itself originally a branch of the SA. SA men were often called "brownshirts" for the colour of their uniforms (similar to Benito Mussolini's blackshirts). Brown-coloured shirts were chosen as the SA uniform because a large batch of them were cheaply available after World War I, having originally been ordered during the war for colonial troops posted to Germany's former African colonies.
Horst Ludwig Wessel (October 9, 1907 – February 23, 1930) was a German Nazi activist and an SA-Sturmführer who was made a posthumous hero of the Nazi movement following his violent death in 1930. He was the author of the lyrics to the song "Die Fahne hoch" ("The Flag On High"), usually known as Horst-Wessel-Lied ("the Horst Wessel Song"), which became the Nazi Party anthem and, de facto, Germany's co-national anthem from 1933 to 1945. His passing also resulted in him becoming the "patron" for the Luftwaffe's 26th Destroyer Wing during World War II.
Wessel was born in Bielefeld in Westphalia, the son of Dr. Ludwig Wessel, a Lutheran minister at the Nikolaikirche, one of Berlin's oldest churches. Wessel's mother, Luise Margarete Wessel, also came from a family of Lutheran pastors, and Horst Wessel himself would remain a devout Lutheran throughout his life. The family lived in the nearby Judenstraße (the Jews' Street), which in mediaeval times had been the centre of Berlin's Jewish community. Wessel's father was a supporter of the monarchist German National People's Party (DNVP), and when he was 15, Wessel joined the DNVP youth group, the Bismarckjugend. He soon became a local leader, engaging in street battles with youth members of the Social Democratic Party and Communist Party.
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.