Stennes Revolt
Encyclopedia
The Stennes Revolt, led by Walter Stennes (1895–1989), the Berlin commandant of the Sturmabteilung
(SA), erupted in the summer of 1930 and again in the spring of 1931. The revolt arose from internal tensions and conflicts within the Nazi Party (NSDAP), particularly between the party organization headquartered in Munich
and Hitler
on the one hand, and the SA and its leadership on the other hand.
, a subordinate body whose function was to foster the NSDAP's expansion and development. The SA's proper functions, in Hitler's view, were political ones such as protecting Nazi meetings from disruption by protesters, disrupting meetings of the NSDAP's adversaries, distributing propaganda
, recruiting, marching in the streets to propagandize by showing support for the Nazi cause, political campaigning, and brawling with Communists in the streets. He did not advocate the SA's functioning as a military
or paramilitary
organization.
Many in the SA itself—including the leadership—held a contrary, and more glorious, view of the SA's role. To them, the SA was a nascent military organization: the basis for a future citizen-army on the Napoleonic model, an army which would, ideally, absorb the Reichswehr
and displace its outmoded Prussian concepts with "modern" Nazi ideals.
elections had taken place in 1928 and the next elections were scheduled for 1932.
Unfortunately for the course of German democracy, the Mueller government
imploded in late March 1930 over the seemingly arcane issue of the amount of employer contributions to unemployment insurance.
Its successor, the Bruening government
, was unable to obtain a parliamentary majority for its own financial reform bill, which was rejected by the Reichstag on 16 July 1930. Bruening asked Hindenburg to invoke Article 48 in order to promulgate the bill as an emergency decree. Hindenburg did so and the Reichstag promptly repudiated the bill on 18 July 1930, thereby invalidating the presidential decree under the Constitution. Bruening thereupon asked Hindenburg to dissolve parliament and call for new elections, which were scheduled for 14 September 1930.
Stennes complained that advancement within the SA was improperly based upon cronyism and favoritism rather than upon merit. He also objected to the general law-abiding approach that Hitler
had adopted after the Beer Hall Putsch
, and he and his men chafed under the Hitlerian order to terminate street attacks upon Communists and Jews. The SA also wanted three secure places on the NSDAP list for the upcoming Reichstag elections. In addition, he complained that the SA members under his command were not being paid sufficiently.
The SA had developed a list of seven demands. On 7 August 1930, Goebbels
met with Stennes and other SA officers in Berlin. Stennes demanded the three ballot slots and threatened a "palace revolution" otherwise, claiming that he would resign and take 80% of Berlin SA (some 15,000 men) with him.
Hitler had already heard the SA demands from Franz Pfeffer von Salomon
, the SA's supreme commander; had rejected Pfeffer's demands outright, had told him to "get lost" and had called him a "mutineer." Hitler ignored the Stennes initiative and did not grant Stennes an audience when Stennes came to Munich to try to meet with him. The request for the ballot slots was consistently denied.
On 27 August Stennes threatened Goebbels again: he wanted the three Reichstag seats, more money for the SA and more political power in the movement. Hitler again refused to take it seriously. Pfeffer had resigned by this time, and Hitler assured Goebbels would send the SA Chief of Staff, Otto Wagener
, to fix things in the SA for Goebbels.
Stennes decided that action was needed to make a statement. Accordingly, the Berlin SA refused to provide protection for Goebbels at his Sportpalast
speech on 30 August 1930, and his men paraded instead in Wittenbergplatz
, demonstrating against Goebbels. Goebbels turned to the SS, who provided the necessary security and protection at the meeting and who were then assigned to protect the Gau office in Berlin.
The SA then stormed the Gau office on the Hedemannstrasse, injuring the SS men and wrecking the premises. Goebbels was shocked at the extent of the damage done and notified Hitler, who left the Wagner Festival
at Bayreuth and flew immediately to Berlin.
Hitler talked to Stennes and to groups of SA the next day, urging them to follow his leadership. He redefined the issue in different and simpler terms: Was the SA entirely loyal to Hitler under the Führerprinzip
, or not? Then on the following day, he convened a meeting of some 2000 SA and announced he was personally taking over as Supreme Leader of the SA and SS (thus becoming Partei- und Oberster SA-Führer) The SA cheered and were delighted that their Leader was finally giving them the recognition they felt they deserved. Hitler also had Stennes read a declaration increasing SA funding. A special levy (20 pfennig) would be made on party dues to pay for it.
The crisis was over for the time being. The SA members, it appeared, did not truly want to fight with Hitler or contest his leadership, but only sought treatment that they considered correct in light of their mission and the overall mission of the NSDAP. However, the band-aid applied by Hitler would not suffice to remove the underlying structural issue that conditioned the Party-SA relationship: What was the SA's role and, in particular, what would that role be if the party actually succeeded in gaining the political power it sought?
and offered him effective command of the SA, as its Chief of Staff. Röhm returned to Germany from his self-imposed exile in South America and promptly reorganized the SA, removing control of Silesia
from Stennes.
Meanwhile, Stennes continued to complain; he noted that the SA in Breslau were not able to turn out for inspection in February 1931 because they lacked footwear. He also complained about Röhm's return to run the SA, objecting to the Chief of Staff's homosexuality.
Even more troubling, the strategy of taking power by force was advocated by Stennes in February articles published in Der Angriff. This was disturbing to the Nazi leadership as it contravened Hitler's strategy of gaining power through constitutional means only and forswearing violence as a means to power. And Hitler had very publicly announced his "reliance on legality only" in the Leipzig trial of the young Reichswehr officers in September 1930, in perfect timing for the fall elections and with an eye towards the attendant propaganda value, and had sworn on the witness stand and under oath that the party had forsaken violent and illegal means as a path to power.
On 20 February 1931 Hitler issued a decree making the SA subordinate to the party organization at the Gau level. Stennes mildly protested to Röhm by letter, raising also the plight of unemployed SA men. On February 26, Röhm forbade the SA from taking part in street battles and also forbade its leaders from speaking in public.
On 28 March 1931 Brüning
, employing Hindenburg
's emergency powers under Article 48, issued an emergency degree requiring all political meetings to be registered and requiring all posters and political handouts to be subject to censorship. The decree also delegated wide powers to Brüning to curb "political excesses." Of course, the SA objected to the decree. Nevertheless, Hitler—whose party had recently achieved an astonishing electoral victory in the September 1930 Reichstag elections and whose "policy of legality" appeared to be paying dividends in the economic misery of the depression—ordered strict compliance. Stennes refused.
. Pro-Stennes versions of the newspaper appeared on April 1 and 2.
Hitler instructed Goebbels to take whatever means were necessary to put down the revolt. This time, the Berlin police were called to expel the SA intruders from the party's offices.
Goebbels and Goering purged the SA in Berlin and environs. Since all money for SA was dispensed through the Gau headquarters, it was a simple matter to cut this off and the lack of funding caused the rebellion to collapse. Stennes was expelled from the party.
In an article by Hitler in the Völkischer Beobachter
he justified Stennes' expulsion, referring to him as a "salon socialist." Hitler's editorial demanded that all SA men choose between Stennes and Hitler, declaring that the mutinous Stennes was a conspirator against National Socialism.
Hitler demonstrated his confidence in the SS by his replacement of Stennes with an SS man. Himmler later commented that "we are his favorite and have never let him down."
Stennes had following among leftist oriented SA in Berlin, Pomerania, Mecklenburg and Silesia. When he left the SA and NSDAP he founded the National Socialist Combat Movement of Germany (Nationalsozialistische Kampfbewegung Deutschlands, NSKD) and made connection with Otto Strasser
and Captain Ehrhardt, ex-leader of the defunct Viking Bund. He recruited about 2000 SA men from Berlin and elsewhere along with 2000 Ehrhardt followers, and the leaders protested that the "NSDAP has abandoned the revolutionary course of true national socialism" and will become "just another coalition party."
The revolt illustrated Hitler's consistent approach to solving intraparty frictions: resort to the Führerprinzip
, rather than address the underlying problems which motivated the tension. Here, those underlying structural problems simply remained dormant for several years, and the inherent tensions between the party and the SA would only grow under the able SA leadership of Röhm, whose ambitions certainly were higher than those of Stennes. The real resolution of the Nazi dilemma would have to wait until the Reichswehr
forced the issue in the summer of 1934, when, with the SA growing restless and Hindenburg on his deathbed, Hitler responded with the murderous Night of the Long Knives
. Stennes himself escaped retribution. Having left Germany in 1933, he worked as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek
until 1949, when he returned to Germany. Later it was alleged that he also served as a Soviet agent.
Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
(SA), erupted in the summer of 1930 and again in the spring of 1931. The revolt arose from internal tensions and conflicts within the Nazi Party (NSDAP), particularly between the party organization headquartered in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
and Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
on the one hand, and the SA and its leadership on the other hand.
Background
The role and purpose of the SA within National Socialism was still unsettled in 1930. Hitler viewed the SA as serving strictly political purposesPolitics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, a subordinate body whose function was to foster the NSDAP's expansion and development. The SA's proper functions, in Hitler's view, were political ones such as protecting Nazi meetings from disruption by protesters, disrupting meetings of the NSDAP's adversaries, distributing propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, recruiting, marching in the streets to propagandize by showing support for the Nazi cause, political campaigning, and brawling with Communists in the streets. He did not advocate the SA's functioning as a military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
or paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
organization.
Many in the SA itself—including the leadership—held a contrary, and more glorious, view of the SA's role. To them, the SA was a nascent military organization: the basis for a future citizen-army on the Napoleonic model, an army which would, ideally, absorb the Reichswehr
Reichswehr
The Reichswehr formed the military organisation of Germany from 1919 until 1935, when it was renamed the Wehrmacht ....
and displace its outmoded Prussian concepts with "modern" Nazi ideals.
The call for elections
ReichstagReichstag (Weimar Republic)
The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...
elections had taken place in 1928 and the next elections were scheduled for 1932.
Unfortunately for the course of German democracy, the Mueller government
Hermann Müller (politician)
' , born in Mannheim, was a German Social Democratic politician who served as Foreign Minister , and twice as Chancellor of Germany under the Weimar Republic...
imploded in late March 1930 over the seemingly arcane issue of the amount of employer contributions to unemployment insurance.
Its successor, the Bruening government
Heinrich Brüning
Heinrich Brüning was Chancellor of Germany from 1930 to 1932, during the Weimar Republic. He was the longest serving Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, and remains a controversial figure in German politics....
, was unable to obtain a parliamentary majority for its own financial reform bill, which was rejected by the Reichstag on 16 July 1930. Bruening asked Hindenburg to invoke Article 48 in order to promulgate the bill as an emergency decree. Hindenburg did so and the Reichstag promptly repudiated the bill on 18 July 1930, thereby invalidating the presidential decree under the Constitution. Bruening thereupon asked Hindenburg to dissolve parliament and call for new elections, which were scheduled for 14 September 1930.
SA demands: August 1930
Members of the SA in Berlin, led by Stennes, had for some time been voicing objections to the policies and purposes of the SA, as those had been defined by Hitler. These SA members saw their organization as a revolutionary group, the vanguard of a socialist order that would overthrow the hated Republic by force.Stennes complained that advancement within the SA was improperly based upon cronyism and favoritism rather than upon merit. He also objected to the general law-abiding approach that Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
had adopted after the Beer Hall Putsch
Beer Hall Putsch
The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed attempt at revolution that occurred between the evening of 8 November and the early afternoon of 9 November 1923, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, and other heads of the Kampfbund unsuccessfully tried to seize power...
, and he and his men chafed under the Hitlerian order to terminate street attacks upon Communists and Jews. The SA also wanted three secure places on the NSDAP list for the upcoming Reichstag elections. In addition, he complained that the SA members under his command were not being paid sufficiently.
The SA had developed a list of seven demands. On 7 August 1930, Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
met with Stennes and other SA officers in Berlin. Stennes demanded the three ballot slots and threatened a "palace revolution" otherwise, claiming that he would resign and take 80% of Berlin SA (some 15,000 men) with him.
Hitler had already heard the SA demands from Franz Pfeffer von Salomon
Franz Pfeffer von Salomon
Franz Pfeffer von Salomon was the first commander of the SA after its 1925 restoration, which followed its temporary abolition in 1923 after the abortive Beer Hall Putsch....
, the SA's supreme commander; had rejected Pfeffer's demands outright, had told him to "get lost" and had called him a "mutineer." Hitler ignored the Stennes initiative and did not grant Stennes an audience when Stennes came to Munich to try to meet with him. The request for the ballot slots was consistently denied.
On 27 August Stennes threatened Goebbels again: he wanted the three Reichstag seats, more money for the SA and more political power in the movement. Hitler again refused to take it seriously. Pfeffer had resigned by this time, and Hitler assured Goebbels would send the SA Chief of Staff, Otto Wagener
Otto Wagener
Otto Wagener was a German major general and, for a period, Adolf Hitler's economic advisor.- Biography :An industrialist's son, Wagener was born in Durlach, graduated from Gymnasium and then became an army officer...
, to fix things in the SA for Goebbels.
Stennes decided that action was needed to make a statement. Accordingly, the Berlin SA refused to provide protection for Goebbels at his Sportpalast
Berlin Sportpalast
The Berliner Sportpalast was a multi-purpose winter sport venue and meeting hall in the Schöneberg section of Berlin. Depending on the type of event and seating configuration, the Sportpalast could hold up to 14,000 people and was for a time the biggest meeting hall in the German capital...
speech on 30 August 1930, and his men paraded instead in Wittenbergplatz
Wittenbergplatz
Wittenbergplatz is a square in the western part of Berlin, Germany, within the district of Schöneberg near the border with Charlottenburg.It was laid out between 1889 and 1892 and named after the storming of the town of Wittenberg on 14 February 1814 by Prussian troops under General Bogislav...
, demonstrating against Goebbels. Goebbels turned to the SS, who provided the necessary security and protection at the meeting and who were then assigned to protect the Gau office in Berlin.
The SA then stormed the Gau office on the Hedemannstrasse, injuring the SS men and wrecking the premises. Goebbels was shocked at the extent of the damage done and notified Hitler, who left the Wagner Festival
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
at Bayreuth and flew immediately to Berlin.
Hitler talked to Stennes and to groups of SA the next day, urging them to follow his leadership. He redefined the issue in different and simpler terms: Was the SA entirely loyal to Hitler under the Führerprinzip
Führerprinzip
The Führerprinzip , German for "leader principle", prescribes the fundamental basis of political authority in the governmental structures of the Third Reich...
, or not? Then on the following day, he convened a meeting of some 2000 SA and announced he was personally taking over as Supreme Leader of the SA and SS (thus becoming Partei- und Oberster SA-Führer) The SA cheered and were delighted that their Leader was finally giving them the recognition they felt they deserved. Hitler also had Stennes read a declaration increasing SA funding. A special levy (20 pfennig) would be made on party dues to pay for it.
The crisis was over for the time being. The SA members, it appeared, did not truly want to fight with Hitler or contest his leadership, but only sought treatment that they considered correct in light of their mission and the overall mission of the NSDAP. However, the band-aid applied by Hitler would not suffice to remove the underlying structural issue that conditioned the Party-SA relationship: What was the SA's role and, in particular, what would that role be if the party actually succeeded in gaining the political power it sought?
Spring of 1931
Although he had made himself Supreme Commander of the SA, Hitler had no interest in running the SA; organization and administration bored him, and he had neither interest nor aptitude for them. His talents lay in propaganda and oratory. He summoned Ernst RöhmErnst Röhm
Ernst Julius Röhm, was a German officer in the Bavarian Army and later an early Nazi leader. He was a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung , the Nazi Party militia, and later was its commander...
and offered him effective command of the SA, as its Chief of Staff. Röhm returned to Germany from his self-imposed exile in South America and promptly reorganized the SA, removing control of Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
from Stennes.
Meanwhile, Stennes continued to complain; he noted that the SA in Breslau were not able to turn out for inspection in February 1931 because they lacked footwear. He also complained about Röhm's return to run the SA, objecting to the Chief of Staff's homosexuality.
Even more troubling, the strategy of taking power by force was advocated by Stennes in February articles published in Der Angriff. This was disturbing to the Nazi leadership as it contravened Hitler's strategy of gaining power through constitutional means only and forswearing violence as a means to power. And Hitler had very publicly announced his "reliance on legality only" in the Leipzig trial of the young Reichswehr officers in September 1930, in perfect timing for the fall elections and with an eye towards the attendant propaganda value, and had sworn on the witness stand and under oath that the party had forsaken violent and illegal means as a path to power.
On 20 February 1931 Hitler issued a decree making the SA subordinate to the party organization at the Gau level. Stennes mildly protested to Röhm by letter, raising also the plight of unemployed SA men. On February 26, Röhm forbade the SA from taking part in street battles and also forbade its leaders from speaking in public.
On 28 March 1931 Brüning
Heinrich Brüning
Heinrich Brüning was Chancellor of Germany from 1930 to 1932, during the Weimar Republic. He was the longest serving Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, and remains a controversial figure in German politics....
, employing Hindenburg
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg , known universally as Paul von Hindenburg was a Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934....
's emergency powers under Article 48, issued an emergency degree requiring all political meetings to be registered and requiring all posters and political handouts to be subject to censorship. The decree also delegated wide powers to Brüning to curb "political excesses." Of course, the SA objected to the decree. Nevertheless, Hitler—whose party had recently achieved an astonishing electoral victory in the September 1930 Reichstag elections and whose "policy of legality" appeared to be paying dividends in the economic misery of the depression—ordered strict compliance. Stennes refused.
Expulsion of Stennes
Stennes rebelled again. The SA once again stormed the party offices in Berlin on the night of March 31-April 1 and took physical control of them. In addition, the SA took over the offices of Goebbels' Der AngriffDer Angriff
Der Angriff was a German language newspaper founded in 1927 by the Berlin Gau of the Nazi Party.The newspaper was set up by Joseph Goebbels, who in 1926 had become the Nazi Party leader in Berlin, and the party provided most of the money needed to ensure publication...
. Pro-Stennes versions of the newspaper appeared on April 1 and 2.
Hitler instructed Goebbels to take whatever means were necessary to put down the revolt. This time, the Berlin police were called to expel the SA intruders from the party's offices.
Goebbels and Goering purged the SA in Berlin and environs. Since all money for SA was dispensed through the Gau headquarters, it was a simple matter to cut this off and the lack of funding caused the rebellion to collapse. Stennes was expelled from the party.
In an article by Hitler in the Völkischer Beobachter
Völkischer Beobachter
The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...
he justified Stennes' expulsion, referring to him as a "salon socialist." Hitler's editorial demanded that all SA men choose between Stennes and Hitler, declaring that the mutinous Stennes was a conspirator against National Socialism.
Hitler demonstrated his confidence in the SS by his replacement of Stennes with an SS man. Himmler later commented that "we are his favorite and have never let him down."
Stennes had following among leftist oriented SA in Berlin, Pomerania, Mecklenburg and Silesia. When he left the SA and NSDAP he founded the National Socialist Combat Movement of Germany (Nationalsozialistische Kampfbewegung Deutschlands, NSKD) and made connection with Otto Strasser
Otto Strasser
Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser was a German politician and 'left-wing' member of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Strasser was part of the ‘left-wing’ faction of the party, along with his brother Gregor Strasser, and broke from the party due to disputes with the ‘Hitlerite’ faction...
and Captain Ehrhardt, ex-leader of the defunct Viking Bund. He recruited about 2000 SA men from Berlin and elsewhere along with 2000 Ehrhardt followers, and the leaders protested that the "NSDAP has abandoned the revolutionary course of true national socialism" and will become "just another coalition party."
Aftermath and consequences
Conservative businessmen gained more confidence in Hitler after seeing the repression of the more radical Stennes element and Hitler's attendant adherence to "legality." As Collier notes (p. 174):
Ironically the Stennes revolt may have assisted the Nazi rise to power, in that more moderate elements in the German right observed Hitler's adherence to his strategy of legality and gained confidence that he was accordingly "law-abiding."
The revolt illustrated Hitler's consistent approach to solving intraparty frictions: resort to the Führerprinzip
Führerprinzip
The Führerprinzip , German for "leader principle", prescribes the fundamental basis of political authority in the governmental structures of the Third Reich...
, rather than address the underlying problems which motivated the tension. Here, those underlying structural problems simply remained dormant for several years, and the inherent tensions between the party and the SA would only grow under the able SA leadership of Röhm, whose ambitions certainly were higher than those of Stennes. The real resolution of the Nazi dilemma would have to wait until the Reichswehr
Reichswehr
The Reichswehr formed the military organisation of Germany from 1919 until 1935, when it was renamed the Wehrmacht ....
forced the issue in the summer of 1934, when, with the SA growing restless and Hindenburg on his deathbed, Hitler responded with the murderous Night of the Long Knives
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...
. Stennes himself escaped retribution. Having left Germany in 1933, he worked as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
until 1949, when he returned to Germany. Later it was alleged that he also served as a Soviet agent.