The Stennes revolt () was a revolt within the Nazi Party by the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1930 and 1931.
Members of the SA led by Berlin chief Walter Stennes, dissatisfied with the role and restrictions placed on them by Adolf Hitler, began to rebel against the Nazi Party leadership.See generally Toland, pp. 248-52; Kershaw, pp. 347-51; Machtan, pp. 81-83; Read, pp. 199-211; Fest, pp. 281-82; Lemmons, pp. 81-82; and Grant, pp. 51-89 for general descriptions of the Stennes Revolt. Stennes issued a number of demands regarding the status of the SA and Nazi Party policy which were rejected by Hitler. Stennes ransacked the offices of the Berlin Gau twice as a show of force, which led to him and his supporters being expelled from the SA and the Nazi Party.
The Stennes revolt led to a temporary resumption of control of the SA by the Nazi Party leadership, and Hitler's appointment of Ernst Röhm as SA Chief. Many of the issues within the SA that provoked the revolt were not resolved and contributed to the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. The revolt was one of the first major actions of the Schutzstaffel which earned them the confidence of Hitler. There is some evidence suggesting that Stennes was paid by the government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, with the intention of causing conflict within and destabilizing the Nazi movement.Evans, Richard J. (2003) The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin Press. p.273.
Background Status of the SA The exact role and purpose of the Sturmabteilung (SA) within the Nazi movement was still unsettled in 1930.The SA was an "alien" body which had not been integrated into the party in 1930. Mommsen, p. 337. Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler viewed the SA as serving strictly political purposes: a subordinate body whose function was to foster Nazi 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 Nazi adversaries, distributing propaganda, recruiting, marching in the streets to propagandize by showing support for the Nazi cause, political campaigning, and brawling with Communist Party and its Rotfrontkämpferbund in the streets. Hitler did not advocate the SA's functioning as a military or paramilitary organization, which would contradict his announced "policy of legality" since the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 in which the Nazis would obtain power through purely legal means.See e.g. Toland, pp. 210-211 (April 1925 conflict between Hitler and Ernst Röhm over proper purpose of SA, leading to Röhm's resignation; p. 220 (Hitler's later selection of Pfeffer von Salomon as SA chief of staff to preside over a legitimate, non-military organization consistent with Hitler's announced "policy of legality" following the Beer Hall Putsch; and pp. 248-251 (tension between SA leaders seeking military function and Hitler's desire for strictly political function).
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.Fischer, p. 85. Of course this was Röhm's view, both before his 1925 resignation from the party and after his return from South America at Hitler's request to lead the SA in 1931 -- a view which eventually led to his murder in The Night of the Long Knives.
1928 and 1930 elections
The Reichstag elections in 1928 were a disaster for the Nazi Party, winning just 12 seats out of a total of 491 with less than 3% of the popular vote, becoming the ninth-largest party in parliament.In the Reichstag election of May 1928, the Nazis had won just 12 seats out of a total of 491. As a consequence, they were only the ninth largest party in the Reichstag, and had less than one-fourth the seats held by the Communists, who made substantial gains in 1928 and who came to control 54 seats through the 1928 election. The parties of the Left (Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Communist Party (KPD)) were the main winners in 1928 and jointly controlled 226 seats as a result of the 1928 elections; if they could jointly muster a coalition of only 246 seats, the coalition would be a parliamentary majority. See 1928 election results.
The NSDAP's pitiful showing (less than 3% of the 1928 popular vote) "appeared to confirm the correctness of those commentators who for years had been preaching the end of Hitler and his Movement," Kershaw, p. 302. In the cities, the results were awful for the Nazis; in Berlin, the NSDAP received 1.57% of the vote. Kershaw, p. 303. Some within the party even came to believe that Hitler would be forced to repudiate his plan to obtain power strictly through legal means, instead of by putsch, and he authorized the Nazi press in June of 1928 to reaffirm his commitment to constitutional procedures as the path to power. Kershaw, p. 304. Although the election saw losses for the political right and centre in general, the performance of the Nazi Party was so poor that some commentators believed that it was the beginning of the end for the Nazi movement. Some within the SA were energised as they believed Hitler might abandon his policy of obtaining power through strictly legal means. In March 1930, the Second Müller cabinet headed by Hermann Müller of the Social Democratic Party imploded over the issue of the amount of employer contributions to unemployment insurance, under pressure from the Great Depression.Müller, a Social Democrat, headed the so-called "Grand Coalition," which included members of the SPD (153 seats), German Democratic Party (25 seats), German People's Party (DVP, 45 seats), Catholic Center Party, (Zentrum, 61 seats) and Bavarian People's Party (17 seats). Any combination of 246 seats would create a majority. Kershaw, p. 304; Collier, p. 39.The coalition parties failed to cope with the issues raised by the Great Depression and by their mutual intransigence, and refusals to compromise, assisted the Weimar Republic in its suicide and facilitated the rise of the Nazis. Germany was strained by the obligation, enacted in 1927, to pay a fixed benefit to the unemployed. In 1927 with only 1.3 million unemployed in Germany, the procedure was quite workable; however, when unemployment rose with the depression, the Reich Institution responsible for benefit payment was forced to borrow from the general government, and the debt of some 350 million Reichsmarks by the end of 1929 strained the government's budget.The SPD wanted to increase the employer contribution from 3.5 to 4.0 percent; the DVP wanted instead to cut benefits; and the Center, trying to make peace, tried to negotiate a compromise wherein all parties would defer consideration of the issue until the autumn of 1930. The SPD refused the Center's proposed deal and the Müller government was consequently stymied.
Müller, faced with crisis, sought President Paul von Hindenburg's help, asking for power to rule by decree pursuant to Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution -- a power that had been granted in 1923 to Chancellor Gustav Stresemann by President Friedrich Ebert in economic crises and that would soon be granted by Hindenburg to each of Müller's successors as Chancellor. The haughty, aristocratic and thoroughly anti-democratic Hindenburg, having no use for any Social Democrat, refused, having decided earlier to use the opportunity to oust the SPD from its position of power in the government; he relished the chance to have formed an anti-parliamentary and anti-Marxist government. Kershaw pp. 323-324. The result was, in accordance with Hindenburg's plan, the appointment of Heinrich Brüning of the Center Party as Chancellor with no SPD members in his cabinet. Ibid; Collier p. 41. Its successor, the First Brüning cabinet headed by Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party was unable to obtain a parliamentary majority for its own financial reform bill, which was rejected by the Reichstag on 16 July 1930.The Brüning program generally sought to cut government spending in a time of severe deflation and depression.
Brüning asked President Paul von 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 Weimar Constitution. Brüning thereupon asked Hindenburg to dissolve parliament and call for new elections, which were scheduled for 14 September 1930.See Article 48 (Weimar Constitution) for references and detail. This presented an opportunity for the Nazis to improve their representation in the Reichstag two years earlier than expected.
SA demands of August 1930 Members of the SA in Berlin, led by Walter Stennes, had for some time been voicing objections to the policies and purposes of the SA as defined by Hitler.Machtan (pp. 182-183) notes that while Berlin was the major focus of discontent, similar incidents of dissatisfaction were percolating throughout the SA in GermanyStennes had been a regular army officer in the Reichswehr, a police captain and a Freikorps leader as well as an arms racketeer. He was OSAF Stellvertreter Ost (Deputy Supreme SA Leader East) in the SA and one of Pfeffer's seven regional deputies. See Green, Hoffman, p. 15. Stennes had replaced Daluege in Berlin. Read, pp. 199-221.Stennes had also been insubordinate: he had disobeyed directives and had formed ties with the German National People's Party (DNV) and the Stahlhelm. Grant also notes that the complaints from Stennes had been voiced since at least May 1930; the more explicit protest in August was thus no surprise, and it is characteristic of Hitler's penchant for procrastination and disorderliness that he did nothing for months. Grant. These SA members saw their organization as a revolutionary vanguard of a National Socialist order that would overthrow the hated Weimar Republic by force. Stennes complained that advancement within the SA was improperly based upon cronyism and favoritism rather than upon merit, and objected to the general law-abiding approach. He and his men chafed under Hitler's order to terminate street attacks upon Communists and Jews, sarcastically referring to him as "Adolf Legalité."Some in the SA sarcastically referred to the Führer as "Adolf Legalité."Toland, p. 248.