Ernst Julius Günther Röhm (German: [ɛʁnst ˈʁøːm]; 28 November 1887 – 1 July 1934) was a German military officer, politician, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. A close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler, Röhm was the co-founder and leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing, which played a significant role in Hitler's rise to power. He served as chief of the SA (Stabschef) from 1931 until his assassination by the SS in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives.
Born in Munich, Röhm joined the Royal Bavarian Army in 1906 and fought in the First World War. He was wounded in action three times and received the Iron Cross First Class. After the war, he continued his military career as a captain in the Reichswehr and provided assistance to Franz Ritter von Epp's Freikorps Epp. In 1919, Röhm joined the German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party, and became a close associate of Adolf Hitler. Using his military connections, he helped build up several paramilitary groups in service of Hitler, one of which became the SA. In 1923, he took part in Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch to seize governmental power in Munich and was given a suspended prison sentence. After a stint as a Reichstag deputy, Röhm broke with Hitler in 1925 over the future direction of the Nazi Party. He resigned from all positions and emigrated to Bolivia, where he served as an advisor to the Bolivian Army.
In 1930, at Hitler's request, Röhm returned to Germany and was officially appointed chief of staff of the SA in 1931. He reorganised the SA, which at the time numbered over a million members, and continued its campaign of political violence against communists, rival political parties, Jews and other groups deemed hostile to the Nazi agenda. At the same time, opposition to Röhm intensified as his homosexuality gradually became public knowledge. Nevertheless, he retained the trust of Hitler for a time. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Röhm was named a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party, and appointed to the Reich cabinet as a Reichsminister without portfolio.
As the Nazi government began to consolidate its rule, the tension between Röhm and Hitler escalated. Throughout 1933 and 1934, Röhm alarmed the German conservative elites and powerful industrialists by calling for a "second revolution" focused on socialist economic reforms and wealth redistribution. Additionally, Röhm sought to absorb the traditional German army (the 100,000-man Reichswehr) into his 3-million-strong SA to create a radical "Soldier’s State" (German: Soldatenstaat), with himself as its commander and defense minister—a direct threat to the Reichswehr's autonomy. Hitler thus came to see his long-time ally as a rival and a liability, and in order to secure the backing of the Reichswehr and the traditional establishment, made the decision to eliminate Röhm and his powerful SA allies with the assistance of SS leaders Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. On 30 June 1934, the entire SA leadership were purged by the SS during an event known as the Night of the Long Knives. Röhm, at the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee at the time, was arrested and taken to Stadelheim Prison in Munich, where, after declining an offer to honorably take his own life, he was summarily shot on 1 July 1934.
Ernst Röhm was born in 1887 in Munich as the youngest of three children – he had an elder sister and brother – of Emilie and Julius Röhm. Ernst Röhm described his father Julius, a railway official, as strict, but once Julius realized that his son responded better without exhortation, he allowed him significant freedom to pursue his interests.
In 1906, Röhm entered the Royal Bavarian 10th Infantry Regiment, "King Ludwig" at Ingolstadt as a cadet, even though his family had no military tradition. He was commissioned as a lieutenant on 12 March 1908.
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was adjutant of the 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment. The following month, he was seriously wounded in the face at Chanot Wood in Lorraine and carried the scars for the rest of his life. He was promoted to first lieutenant (Oberleutnant) in April 1915. During an attack on the fortification at Thiaumont, Verdun, on 23 June 1916, he sustained a serious chest wound and spent the remainder of the war in France and Romania as a staff officer. He was awarded the Iron Cross First Class before being wounded at Verdun, and was promoted to captain (Hauptmann) in April 1917. Among his comrades, Röhm was considered a "fanatical, simple-minded swashbuckler" who frequently displayed contempt for danger. In his memoirs, Röhm reported that during the autumn of 1918, he contracted the deadly Spanish influenza and was not expected to live, but recovered after a lengthy convalescence.
Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended the war, Röhm continued his military career as a captain in the Reichswehr. He was one of the senior members in Franz Ritter von Epp's Freikorps Epp (also called the Bayerisches Schützenkorps), formed in Ohrdruf in April 1919, which finally overturned the Munich Soviet Republic by force of arms on 3 May 1919. In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), which the following year became the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). His membership number was 623. Not long afterward, he met Adolf Hitler, and they became political allies and close friends. Throughout the early 1920s, Röhm remained an important intermediary between Germany's right-wing paramilitary organizations and the Reichswehr. Additionally, it was Röhm who persuaded his former army commander, Franz Ritter von Epp, to join the Nazis, an important development, since Epp helped raise the sixty-thousand marks needed to purchase the Nazi periodical, the Völkischer Beobachter. In early 1923, he took part in the establishment of a federation of paramilitary organizations that was titled Arbeitsgemeinschaft and aimed at strengthening the army and combating Marxist influences.
During early September 1923, when the Nazi Party held its "German Day" celebration at Nuremberg, it was Röhm who helped bring together some 100,000 participants drawn from right-wing militant groups, veterans' associations, and other paramilitary formations—which included the Bund Oberland, Reichskriegsflagge, the SA, and the Kampfbund—all of them subordinate to Hitler as "political leader" of the collective alliance. Röhm resigned or retired from the Reichswehr on 26 September 1923.
In November 1923, Röhm led the Reichskriegsflagge militia at the time of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. He rented the cavernous main hall of the Löwenbräukeller, supposedly for a reunion and festive comradeship. Meanwhile, Hitler and his entourage were at the Bürgerbräukeller. Röhm planned to start the revolution and use the units at his disposal to obtain weapons from secret caches with which to occupy crucial points in the centre of the city. When the call came, he announced to those assembled in the Löwenbräukeller that the Kahr government had been deposed and Hitler had declared a "national revolution" which elicited wild cheering. Röhm then led his force of nearly 2,000 men to the War Ministry, which they occupied for sixteen hours. Once in control of the Reichswehr headquarters, Röhm awaited news, barricaded inside. The subsequent march into the city center led by Hitler, Hermann Göring, and General Erich Ludendorff with banners flying high was ostensibly undertaken to "free" Röhm and his forces.
While crowds cheered, egged on by Gregor Strasser shouting "Heil", Hitler's armed assembly, wearing red swastika armbands, encountered Bavarian State Policemen, who were prepared to counter the Putsch. Around the time the marchers reached the Feldherrnhalle near the city center, shots were fired, scattering the participants. By the end of the gunfire, fourteen Nazis and four policemen had been killed; the putsch had failed and the Nazis' first bid for power had lasted less than twenty-four hours.