Sturmabteilung

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Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox militant organization

The Template:Lang (Template:IPA; SA; Template:Lit or 'Storm Troopers') was the original paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany. It played a significant role in Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially 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 especially Jews.

The SA were colloquially called Brownshirts (Template:Lang) because of the colour of their uniform's shirts, similar to Benito Mussolini's Blackshirts. The official uniform of the SA was a brown shirt with a brown tie. The color came about because a large shipment of Lettow-shirts, originally intended for the German colonial troops in Germany's former East Africa colony,Template:Sfn was purchased in 1921 by Gerhard Roßbach for use 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.<ref>Roßbach, Gerhard (1950). Mein Weg durch die Zeit. Erinnerungen und Bekenntnisse. Weilburg/Lahn : Vereinigte Weilburger Buchdruckereien.</ref> The "Schill Sportversand" then became the main supplier for the SA's brown shirts. The SA developed pseudo-military titles for its members, with ranks that were later adopted by several other Nazi Party groups.

Following Hitler's rise to Nazi Party leadership in 1921, he formalized the party's militant supporters into the SA as a group that was to protect party gatherings. In 1923, owing to his growing distrust of the SA, Hitler ordered the creation of a bodyguard unit, which was ultimately abolished after the failed Beer Hall Putsch later that year. Not long after Hitler's release from prison, he ordered the creation of another bodyguard unit in 1925 that ultimately became the Template:Lang (SS). During the Night of the Long Knives (Template:Lang) purge in 1934, the SA's then-leader Ernst Röhm was arrested and executed. The SA continued to exist but lost almost all its influence and was effectively superseded by the SS, which took part in the purge. The SA remained in existence until after Nazi Germany's final capitulation to the Allies in 1945, after which it was disbanded and outlawed by the Allied Control Council.

Rise

The term Template:Lang predates the founding of the Nazi Party in 1919. Originally it was applied to the specialized assault troops of Imperial Germany in World War I who used infiltration tactics based on being organized into small squads of a few soldiers each. The first official German stormtrooper unit was authorized on March 2, 1915, on the Western Front. The German high command ordered the VIII Corps to form a detachment to test experimental weapons and develop tactics that could break the deadlock on the Western Front. On October 2, 1916, Template:Lang Erich Ludendorff ordered all German armies in the west to form a battalion of stormtroopers.Template:Sfn Template:Page needed They were first used during the 8th Army's siege of Riga, and again at the Battle of Caporetto. Wider use followed on the Western Front in the German spring offensive in March 1918, when Allied lines were successfully pushed back tens of kilometers.

The DAP (Template:Lang, German Workers' Party) was formed in Munich in January 1919, and Adolf Hitler joined it in September of that year. His talents for speaking, publicity and propaganda were quickly recognized.Template:Efn By early 1920 he had gained authority in the party, which changed its name to the NSDAP (Template:Lang or National Socialist German Workers' Party) in February 1920.Template:Sfn The party's executive committee added "Socialist" to the name over Hitler's objections, to help the party appeal to left-wing workers.Template:Sfn

The precursor to the Template:Lang had acted informally and on an ad hoc basis for some time before this. Hitler, with an eye to helping the party to grow through propaganda, convinced the leadership committee to invest in an advertisement in the Template:Lang (later renamed the Template:Lang) for a mass meeting in the Template:Lang, to be held in Munich on October 16, 1919. Some 70 people attended, and a second such meeting was advertised for November 13 in the Template:Lang beer hall, also in Munich. About 130 people attended; there were hecklers, but Hitler's military friends promptly ejected them by force, and the agitators "flew down the stairs with gashed heads". The next year on February 24, he announced the party's Twenty-Five Point program at a mass meeting of some 2,000 people at the Hofbräuhaus. Protesters tried to shout Hitler down, but his former army companions, armed with rubber truncheons, ejected the dissenters. The basis for the SA had been formed.Template:Sfn

File:Hitler 1928 crop.jpg

Hitler and Hermann Göring with SA stormtroopers in front of Frauenkirche, Nuremberg in 1928

A permanent group of party members, who would serve as the Template:Lang (meeting hall protection detachment) for the DAP, gathered around Emil Maurice after the February 1920 incident at the Hofbräuhaus. There was little organization or structure to this group. The group was also called the "Stewards Troop" (Template:Lang) around this time.Template:Sfn More than a year later, on August 3, 1921, Hitler redefined the group as the "Gymnastic and Sports Division" of the party (Template:Lang), perhaps to avoid trouble with the government.<ref>William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) p. 42</ref>Template:Sfn It was by now well recognized as an appropriate, even necessary, function or organ of the party. The future SA developed by organizing and formalizing the groups of ex-soldiers and beer-hall brawlers who were to protect gatherings of the Nazi Party from disruptions from Social Democrats (SPD) and Communists (KPD), and to disrupt meetings of the other political parties. By September 1921 the name Template:Lang (SA) was being used informally for the group.Template:Sfn Hitler was the official head of the Nazi Party by this time.Template:Efn

The Nazi Party held a large public meeting in the Munich Hofbräuhaus on November 4, 1921, which attracted many Communists and other enemies of the Nazis. After Hitler had spoken for some time, the meeting erupted into a mêlée in which a small company of SA thrashed the opposition. The Nazis called this event the Template:Lang (Template:Translation), and it assumed legendary proportions in SA lore with the passage of time. Thereafter, the group was officially known as the Template:Lang.Template:Sfn

The leadership of the SA passed from Maurice to the young Hans Ulrich Klintzsch in this period. He had been a naval officer and a member of the [[Marinebrigade Ehrhardt|Template:Lang Brigade]], which had taken part in the failed Template:Lang attempted coup. When he took over command of the SA, he was a member of the notorious Organisation Consul (OC).Template:Efn The Nazis under Hitler began to adopt the more professional management techniques of the military.Template:Sfn

In 1922, the Nazi Party created a youth section, the Template:Lang, for young men between the ages of 14 and 18 years. Its successor, the Hitler Youth (Template:Lang or HJ), remained under SA command until May 1932. Hermann Göring joined the Nazi Party in 1922 after hearing a speech by Hitler. He was given command of the SA as the Template:Lang in 1923.Template:Sfn He was later appointed an SA-Template:Lang (general) and held this rank on the SA rolls until 1945.

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 147-0503, Nürnberg, Horst Wessel mit SA-Sturm.jpg

The SA unit in Nuremberg, 1929

From April 1924 until late February 1925, the SA was reorganized into a front organization known as the Template:Lang to circumvent Bavaria's ban on the Nazi Party and its organs. (This had been instituted after the abortive Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923). While Hitler was in prison, Ernst Röhm helped to create the Template:Lang as a legal alternative to the then-outlawed SA. In April 1924, Röhm had also been given authority by Hitler to rebuild the SA in any way he saw fit. When in April 1925 Hitler and Ludendorff disapproved of the proposals under which Röhm was prepared to integrate the 30,000-strong Template:Lang into the SA, Röhm resigned from all political movements and military brigades on May 1, 1925. He felt great contempt for the "legalistic" path the party leaders wanted to follow and sought seclusion from public life.Template:Sfn Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s, members of the SA were often involved in street fights, called Template:Lang (collisions), with members of the Communist Party (KPD). In 1929, the SA added a Motor Corps for better mobility and a faster mustering of units.Template:Sfn It also acquired an independent source of funds: royalties from its own Sturm Cigarette Company. Previously, the SA had been financially dependent on the party leadership, as it charged no membership fees;Template:Sfn Template:Sfn the SA recruited particularly among the many unemployed in the economic crisis.<ref name=berlin>Template:Cite news</ref> The SA used violence against shops and shopkeepers stocking competing cigarette brands; it also punished any SA member caught with non-Sturm cigarettes.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Sturm marketing was also used to make military service more appealing. Cigarettes were sold with collectible sets of images of historical German army uniforms.Template:Sfn

File:SA Sturm Cigarette Company ad.jpg

Marketing for the SA's Sturm Cigarette Company also promoted military service.Template:Sfn

In September 1930, as a consequence of the Stennes revolt in Berlin, Hitler assumed supreme command of the SA as its new Template:Lang. He sent a personal request to Röhm, asking him to return to serve as the SA's chief of staff. Röhm accepted this offer and began his new assignment on January 5, 1931. He brought radical new ideas to the SA and appointed several close friends to its senior leadership.

Previously, the SA formations were subordinate to the Nazi Party leadership of each Template:Lang. Röhm established new Template:Lang that had no regional Nazi Party oversight. Each Gruppe extended over several regions and was commanded by a SA-Template:Lang who answered only to Röhm or Hitler. Under Röhm as its popular leader and Template:Lang (Staff Chief), the SA grew in importance within the Nazi power structure and expanded to have thousands of members. In the early 1930s, the Nazis expanded from an extremist fringe group to the largest political party in Germany, and the SA expanded with it. By January 1932, the SA numbered approximately 400,000.Template:Sfn

Many of these stormtroopers believed in the strasserist promise of nazism. They expected the Nazi regime to take more radical economic action, such as breaking up the vast landed estates of the aristocracy, once they obtained national power.Template:Sfn By the time Hitler assumed power in January 1933, SA membership had increased to approximately 2,000,000—twenty times as large as the number of troops and officers in the Template:Lang (German Army).<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref>

Fall

File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-P049500, Berlin, Aufmarsch der SA in Spandau.jpg

The SA unit in Berlin in 1932

After Hitler and the Nazis obtained national power, the SA leadership also became increasingly eager for power. By the end of 1933, the SA numbered more than 3 million men, and many believed they were the replacement for the "antiquated" Template:Lang. Röhm's ideal was to absorb the army (then limited by law to no more than 100,000 men) into the SA, which would be a new "people's army". This deeply offended and alarmed the professional army leaders and threatened Hitler's goal of co-opting the Template:Lang. The SA's increasing power and ambitions also posed a threat to other Nazi leaders.Template:Sfn Originally an adjunct to the SA, the Template:Lang (SS) was placed under the control of Heinrich Himmler, in part to restrict the power of the SA and their leaders.Template:Sfn The younger SS had evolved to be more than a bodyguard unit for Hitler and demonstrated that it was better suited to carry out Hitler's policies, including those of a criminal nature.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

File:SA knife 5.jpg

SA knife

Although some of the conflicts between the SS and SA were based on personal rivalries of leaders, the mass of members had key socio-economic differences and related conflicts. SS members generally came from the middle class, while the SA had its base among the unemployed and working class. Politically speaking, the SA was more radical than the SS, with its leaders arguing the Nazi revolution had not ended when Hitler achieved power, but rather needed to implement Strasserism in Germany. Hitler believed that the defiant and rebellious culture encouraged before the seizure of power had to give way to using these forces for community organization. But the SA members resented tasks such as canvassing and fundraising, considering them Template:Lang ("little work"), which had typically been performed by women before the Nazi seizure of power.<ref>Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 87</ref> Template:Lang, the first Gestapo chief, estimated that in 1933 Berlin, 70 percent of new SA recruits were former Communists.Template:Sfn

In 1933, General Werner von Blomberg, the Minister of Defence, and General Walter von Reichenau, the chief of the Template:Lang's Ministerial Department, became increasingly concerned about the growing power of the SA. Röhm had been given a seat on the National Defence Council and began to demand more say over military matters. On October 2, 1933, Röhm sent a letter to Reichenau that said: "I regard the Template:Lang now only as a training school for the German people. The conduct of war, and therefore of mobilization as well, in the future is the task of the SA."Template:Sfn

Blomberg and von Reichenau began to conspire with Göring and Himmler against Röhm and the SA. Himmler asked Reinhard Heydrich to assemble a dossier on Röhm. Heydrich recognized that for the SS to gain full national power, the SA had to be broken.Template:Sfn He manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid 12 million marks by French agents to overthrow Hitler. Hitler liked Röhm and initially refused to believe the dossier provided by Heydrich. Röhm had been one of his first supporters and, without his ability to obtain army funds in the early days of the movement, it is unlikely that the Nazis would have ever become established. The SA under Röhm's leadership had also played a vital role in destroying the opposition during the elections of 1932 and 1933.

Night of the Long Knives

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File:WWII, Europe, Germany, "Nazi Hierarchy, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess", The Desperate Years p143 - NARA - 196509.jpg

The architects of the purge: Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, and Hess. Only Himmler and Heydrich are absent.

Hitler had his own reasons for wanting Röhm removed. Some of his powerful supporters had been complaining about Röhm for some time. The generals opposed Röhm's desire to have the SA, a force of by then over three million men, absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks under his leadership.Template:Sfn Since the officers had developed the Reichswehr as a professional force of 100,000, they believed that it would be destroyed if merged with millions of untrained SA thugs.<ref name="gunther1940">Template:Cite book</ref> Furthermore, the army commanders were greatly concerned about reports of a huge cache of weapons in the hands of SA members.Template:Sfn Industrialists, who had provided the funds for the Nazi victory, were unhappy with Röhm's socialistic views on the economy and his claims that the real revolution had still to take place. President Hindenburg informed Hitler in June 1934 that if a move to curb the SA was not forthcoming, he would dissolve the government and declare martial law.Template:Sfn

Hitler was also concerned that Röhm and the SA had the power to remove him as leader. Göring and Himmler played on this fear by constantly feeding Hitler with new information on Röhm's proposed coup. A masterstroke was to claim that Gregor Strasser, whom Hitler felt had betrayed him, was part of the planned conspiracy against him. With this news, Hitler ordered all the SA leaders to attend a meeting in the Hanselbauer Hotel<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in Template:Lang.

On June 30, 1934, Hitler, accompanied by SS units, arrived at Bad Wiessee, where he personally placed Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest. Over the next 48 hours, 200 other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiessee. Many were shot and killed as soon as they were captured, but Hitler decided to pardon Röhm because of his past services to the movement. On July 1, after much pressure from Göring and Himmler, Hitler agreed that Röhm should die. Hitler insisted that Röhm should first be allowed to commit suicide. When Röhm refused to do so, he was shot by two SS officers, Theodor Eicke and Michael Lippert.Template:Sfn Though the names of 85 victims are known, estimates place the total number killed at between 150 and 200 men, the rest of whom remain unidentified.Template:Sfn

Some Germans were shocked by the executions, but many others perceived Hitler to have restored "order" to the country. Goebbels' propaganda highlighted the "Röhm-Putsch" in the days that followed. The homosexuality of Röhm and other SA leaders was made public to add "shock value", although Hitler and other Nazi leaders had known for years about the sexuality of Röhm and other named SA leaders.Template:Sfn

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%.Template:Sfn 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 referred to as Template:Lang ('Night of Broken Glass', more literally 'Crystal Night').<ref>GermanNotes, Template:Cite web</ref> Jewish homes were ransacked throughout Germany. This pogrom damaged, and in many cases destroyed, about 200 synagogues (constituting nearly all Germany had), many 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.<ref>The deportation Template:Webarchive of Template:Lang Jews to [[Dachau concentration camp|Template:Lang concentration camp]] (Template:Lang Photo Archives 57659)</ref>

Thereafter, the SA became overshadowed by the SS; by 1939 it had little remaining significance in the Nazi Party, though it was never formally disbanded and continued to exist until the war ended. In January 1939, the role of the SA was officially established as a training school for the armed forces, with the establishment of the SA Template:Lang (SA Military Units).Template:Sfn With the start of World War II in September 1939, the SA lost most of its remaining members to military service in the Template:Lang (armed forces).Template:Sfn

In January 1941, long-standing rivalries between the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office) and the SS exploded with the attempted coup d'état in Bucharest that saw SS back the coup by the Iron Guard under its leader Horia Sima against the Prime Minister, General Ion Antonescu, while the Auswärtiges Amt together with the Wehrmacht backed Antonescu. In the aftermath of the coup, the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop made an effort to curb the power of the SS to conduct a foreign policy independent of the Auswärtiges Amt. Taking an advantage of the long-standing rivalries between the SS and the SA, in 1941, Ribbentrop appointed an assemblage of SA men to head the German embassies in Eastern Europe, with Manfred Freiherr von Killinger going to Romania, Siegfried Kasche to Croatia, Adolf-Heinz Beckerle to Bulgaria, Dietrich von Jagow to Hungary, and Hanns Ludin to Slovakia in order to ensure that there would be minimal co-operation with the SS.Template:Sfn The role of the SA ambassadors was that of "quasi-Reich governors" as they aggressively supervised the internal affairs of the nations they were stationed in, making them very much unlike traditional ambassadors.Template:Sfn The SA leaders ambassadors fulfilled Ribbentrop's hopes in that all had distant relations with the SS, but as a group they were notably inept as diplomats with Beckerle being so crude and vulgar in his manners that King Boris III almost refused to allow him to present his credentials at the Vrana Palace.Template:Sfn As the ambassador in Bratislava, Ludin arranged the deportation of 50,000 Slovak Jews to Auschwitz in 1942.Template:Sfn On 23–24 August 1944, Killinger notably bungled the German response to King Michael I's Coup that saw King Michael I of Romania dismiss Antonescu, sign an armistice with the Allies, and declare war on Germany, thereby costing the Reich its largest source of oil.Template:Sfn Of the SA ambassadors, Killinger and Jagow committed 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.Template:Sfn 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 work camp at Engerau (modern Petržalka, Slovakia) to Bad Deutsch-Altenburg that saw 102 of the Jews being killed, being either shot or beaten to death.Template:Sfn

The SA ceased to exist 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg formally ruled that the SA was not a criminal organization.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Leadership

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File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-15282A, Ernst Röhm.jpg

Ernst Röhm, SA Chief of Staff, 1931–1934

The leader of the SA was known as the Template:Lang, translated as Supreme SA-Leader. The following men held this position:

Emil Maurice (1920–1921)Template:Sfn
Hans Ulrich Klintzsch (1921–1923)
Hermann Göring (1923)Template:Sfn
None (1923–1925)Template:Efn
Franz Pfeffer von Salomon (1926–1930)Template:Sfn
Adolf Hitler (1930–1945)Template:Sfn

In September 1930, to quell the Stennes Revolt and to try to ensure the personal loyalty of the SA to himself, Hitler assumed command of the entire organization and remained Template:Lang for the remainder of the group's existence until 1945. The day-to-day running of the SA was conducted by the Template:Lang (SA Chief of Staff), a position Hitler designated for Ernst Röhm.Template:Sfn After Hitler's assumption of the supreme command of the SA, it was the Template:Lang who was generally accepted as the Commander of the SA, acting in Hitler's name. The following personnel held the position of Template:Lang:

Otto Wagener (1929–1931)
Ernst Röhm (1931–1934)
Viktor Lutze (1934–1943)
Max Jüttner (acting, May–August 1943)
Wilhelm Schepmann (1943–1945)Template:Sfn

Organization

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File:Sturmabteil graphic.svg

SA organizationTemplate:Citation needed

The SA was organized into several large regional Template:Lang ("Groups"). The group leader answered only to the Template:Lang or Hitler.Template:Sfn Each Template:Lang was made up of subordinate Template:Lang ("Brigades").Template:Sfn Subordinate to the Template:Lang were the smaller regiment-sized Template:Lang.Template:Sfn Template:Lang operated in every major German city and were split into even smaller units, known as Template:Lang and Template:Lang.

The command nexus for the entire SA was the Template:Lang, located in Stuttgart. The SA supreme command had many sub-offices to handle supply, finance and recruiting.

The SA also had several military training units. The largest was the Template:Lang, which served as an auxiliary to the Template:Lang (German Navy) and performed search and rescue operations as well as harbor defense. The SA also had an "army" wing, similar to the Waffen-SS, known as Template:Lang. This formation expanded from regimental size in 1940 to a fully-fledged armored corps (Template:Lang) in 1945. As for units formed outside of Germany, after the success of the invasion of Poland in 1939, an SA unit, "Great Government" was formed. The units were renamed SA Wehrschützen-Bereitschaften in 1942. The title was abbreviated to SA Wehrbereitschaften, thereafter.Template:Sfn

Organization structure August 1934–1945

Template:Lang (Supreme SA-Command & Control)
Template:Lang (Group): consisting of several brigadesTemplate:Efn
Template:Lang: 3 to 9 Template:Lang
Template:Lang (Standard, regiment sized unit): 3 to 5 Template:Lang
Template:Lang (Storm jurisdiction, battalion-sized unit): 3 to 5 Template:Lang
Template:Lang (Storm, company sized sub-unit): 3 to 4 Template:Lang
Template:Lang (Troop, platoon-sized sub-unit): 3 to 4 Template:Lang
Template:Lang (section): 1 or 2 Template:Lang (squads or teams)
Template:Lang (squad or team): 4 to 8 SA-Men
Template:Lang (SA-Man/SA-Trooper)

"Beefsteaks" within the ranks

Template:See also In his 1936 Hitler: A Biography, German historian Konrad Heiden remarked that within the SA ranks, there were "large numbers of former Communists and Social Democrats" and that "many of the storm troops were called 'beefsteaks' – brown outside and red within."Template:Sfn The influx of non-Nazis into the Template:Lang membership was so prevalent that SA men would joke that "In our storm troop there are three Nazis, but we shall soon have spewed them out."Template:Sfn

The number of "beefsteaks" was estimated to be large in some cities, especially in northern Germany, where the influence of Gregor Strasser and Strasserism was significant.Template:Sfn The head of the Gestapo from 1933 to 1934, Rudolf Diels, reported that "70 percent" of the new SA recruits in the city of Berlin had been communists.Template:Sfn This is evidenced further by historians, "As for the prior youth group memberships, nearly half of the SS members and nearly one-third of the instant stormtroopers were with the Free Corps, vigilantes, or militant veterans' groups during their first 25 years of life. They also came in disproportionate numbers from left-wing youth groups such as the Socialist or Communist Youth or the Red Front (RFB)."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Some have argued that since most SA members came from working-class families or were unemployed, they were more amenable to Marxist-leaning socialism, expecting Hitler to fulfill the 25-point National Socialist Program.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> However, historian Template:Lang reports that the repeated efforts by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to appeal to the working-class backgrounds of the SA were "doomed to failure", because most SA men were focused on the nationalistic cult of Hitler and destroying the "Marxist enemy", a term that was used to identify both the KPD and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).Template:Sfn

The "beefsteak" name also referred to party-switching between Nazi and Communist party members, particularly involving those within the SA ranks.