Editing Night of the Long Knives (section)

==Conflict between the army and the SA==
<!-- Commented out: [[File:DerSiegdesGlaubens.jpg|thumb|right|Poster for [[Der Sieg des Glaubens]] by Leni Riefenstahl in 1933]] -->
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-14393, Ernst Röhm crop.jpg|thumb|upright|SA leader [[Ernst Röhm]] in [[Bavaria]] in 1934]]
No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution" (as one prominent stormtrooper, [[Edmund Heines]], put it) than Röhm himself.{{sfn|Frei|1987|p=126}} Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich [[Beer Hall Putsch]], an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper.{{sfn|Frei|1987|p=13}} Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends.

Not content solely with the leadership of the SA, Röhm [[lobbying|lobbied]] Hitler to appoint him [[defence minister|Minister of Defence]], a position held by the conservative General [[Werner von Blomberg]].{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=24}} Although nicknamed the "Rubber Lion" by some of his critics in the army for his devotion to Hitler, Blomberg was not a Nazi, and therefore represented a bridge between the army and the party. Blomberg and many of his fellow officers were recruited from the [[Prussian nobility]] and regarded the SA as a [[Plebs|plebeian]] rabble that threatened the army's traditional high status in German society.{{sfn|Wheeler-Bennett|2005|pp=712–739}}

If the regular army showed contempt for the masses belonging to the SA, many stormtroopers returned the feeling, seeing the army as insufficiently committed to the National Socialist dictatorship. Max Heydebreck, an SA leader in [[Rummelsburg]], denounced the army to his fellow brownshirts, telling them, "Some of the officers of the army are swine. Most officers are too old and have to be replaced by young ones. We want to wait till Papa Hindenburg is dead, and then the SA will march against the army."{{sfn|Bessel|1984|p=97}}

Despite such hostility between the brownshirts and the regular army, Blomberg and others in the military saw the SA as a source of raw recruits for an enlarged and revitalized army. Röhm, however, wanted to eliminate the generalship of the Prussian aristocracy altogether, using the SA to become the core of a new German military. With the army limited by the [[Treaty of Versailles]] to one hundred thousand soldiers, its leaders watched anxiously as membership in the SA surpassed three million men by the beginning of 1934.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=22}} In January 1934, Röhm presented Blomberg with a memorandum demanding that the SA replace the regular army as the nation's ground forces, and that the Reichswehr become a training adjunct to the SA.{{sfn|Wheeler-Bennett|2005|p=726}}

In response, Hitler met Blomberg and the leadership of the SA and SS on 28 February 1934. Under pressure from Hitler, Röhm reluctantly signed a pledge stating that he recognised the supremacy of the Reichswehr over the SA. Hitler announced to those present that the SA would act as an auxiliary to the Reichswehr, not the other way around. After Hitler and most of the army officers had left, however, Röhm declared that he would not take instructions from "the ridiculous corporal"&nbsp;– a demeaning reference to Hitler.{{sfn|Evans|2005|p=26}} While Hitler did not take immediate action against Röhm for his intemperate outburst, it nonetheless deepened the rift between them.