Germany's Stormtroopers engaged in a vicious siege of violence that propelled the National Socialists to power in the 1930s. Known also as the SA or Brownshirts, these "ordinary" men waged a loosely structured campaign of intimidation and savagery across the nation from the 1920s to the "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934, when Chief of Staff Ernst Rohm and many other SA leaders were assassinated on Hitler's orders.
Introduction: A Night of Violence
Chapter 1: Turmoil in Post-War Germany and the Origins of the Nazi SA
Chapter 2: Stormtrooper Street Politics: Mobilization in Times of Crisis
Chapter 3: The Brown Cult of Youth and Violence in the Weimar Republic
Chapter 4: Terror, Excitement, and Frustration
Chapter 5: The ‘Röhm Purge’ and the Myth of the Homosexual Nazi
Chapter 6: The Transformation of the SA between 1934 and 1939
Chapter 7: Streetfighters into Farmers? The Brownshirts and the ‘Germanization’ of the European East
Chapter 8: Stormtroopers in the Second World War
Chapter 9: SA Diplomats and the Holocaust in Southeastern Europe
Chapter 10: ‘Not Guilty’: The Legacy of the SA in Germany after the Second World War
Conclusion: Stormtroopers and National Socialism