Supreme
SA Command

The SA in Munich

Founded in Munich in 1921 as the paramilitary fighting organisation of the NSDAP, the Sturmabteilung (SA) recruited above all from former World War soldiers and Freikorps members. During the economic crisis from 1929 it grew from a gang of thugs into a radical party force: armed and in brown uniforms, the SA men acted ever more aggressively against political opponents, fought hall battles and terrorised Jewish citizens.

At first the SA leadership sat in the “Brown House”. From January 1934 the “Supreme SA Command” resided in the buildings acquired by the NSDAP at Barer Straße 7–11 — in the heart of the party quarter of the Maxvorstadt, a few steps from Königsplatz.

Röhm and the “Röhm purge”

The SA had been under Adolf Hitler since 1930; he appointed Ernst Röhm as its chief of staff. Röhm made it the most important instrument of terror of the “seizure of power” and a mass organisation: he took over the SA with 70,000 men; in 1933 it had one million members, a year later four million. Marches, intimidation and terror — the SA dominated the streets.

Röhm and his SA became a power within the state that Hitler found increasingly hard to control. In July 1934 Hitler, with the help of the SS, had the entire SA leadership liquidated in the so-called “Röhm purge”. The “Supreme SA Command” was then moved from Munich to Berlin; the SA lost its central role to the SS but remained an instrument of intimidation and terror.

Today

The building complex at Barer Straße 7–11 was completely destroyed in the war. Today the site holds commercial premises and a hotel; nothing on the spot recalls the former SA headquarters. The address belongs to the dense perpetrator topography of the party quarter, which today can be traced in the streetscape of the Maxvorstadt almost only through ground plaques and information signs.