Sturmabteilung

The Sturmabteilung or SA has its origins in 1920, where Adolf Hitler was giving a speech at a brewery, and several protesters who didn't want the rally to take place, where sent "flying down the stairs with gashes on their heads" by Hitler's army friends, who were armed with mainly truncheons. That was the birth of the SA Organization. Originally made up of Ex-soldiers and beer hall brawlers, their main job was to stop Social Democrats and Communists from interrupting party meetings. Two units were originally born from the SA: the Hitler Youth, originally called the Jugendbund; and the Schutzstaffel (SS), were originally branches of the SA. They earned the name 'Brownshirts' from their brown uniforms, which were leftover from WWI German African Troops.

Hitler feared the growing power of the SA, which was aiming to replace the normal German Army. On 30 June, 1934, Ernst Rohm (head of the SA) and 200 other senior SA officers were arrested, and between 100-150 of them were killed, including Ernst Rohm. Even though mainly existing on paper after the murder of many of their leaders, attacks on Jews in the '30s escalated, many of those terrorism acts perpetrated by the SA. They beat many Jews to death and arrested 30,000 more over the course of all actions.

When WWII began, most of the remaining SA members joined the Wehrmacht. Just like there were SS Combat Units, a plan went through to create a SA combat unit, which was formed as the Panzer Corps Feldherrnhalle in 1944. They saw action on the Eastern Front.