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 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.

Throughout 1933 and 1934, Röhm's rhetoric became increasingly radical as he called for a "second revolution" that would transform German society, alarming Hitler's powerful industrial allies.

Hitler came to see his long-time ally as a rival and liability, and made the decision to eliminate him with the assistance of SS leaders Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.

[6] 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.

[10] He was one of the senior members in Franz Ritter von Epp's Bayerisches Freikorps für den Grenzschutz Ost ("Bavarian Free Corps for Border Patrol East"), formed in Ohrdruf in April 1919, which finally overturned the Munich Soviet Republic by force of arms on 3 May 1919.

[16] 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.

[17] 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.

[20] 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.

[21] 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.

[23] 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.

[24] 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.

He felt great contempt for the "legalistic" path the party leaders wanted to follow and sought seclusion from public life.

In addition to army reform, ongoing tensions between Bolivia and Paraguay, which later erupted in the Chaco War, were probably also a reason why the Bolivian government was interested in recruiting German experts.

[30] Röhm arrived in La Paz in January 1929 and began work as a professor at the Bolivian military college so that he could first "learn Spanish.

"[31] From June to September 1929, Röhm served as a troop inspector, then until August 1930 he was chief of staff of the division command of the Bolivian Army headquartered in Oruro.

[34][35] The SA did continue its street battles against the communists, forces of rival political parties and violent actions against Jews and others deemed hostile to the Nazi agenda.

[46] Such plans were threatening to the business community in general, and to Hitler's corporate financial backers in particular—including many German industrial leaders he would rely upon for arms production.

[49] Furthermore, Röhm and his SA colleagues thought of their force as the core of the future German Army, and saw themselves as replacing the Reichswehr and its established professional officer corps.

In addition the army leadership was eager to co-operate with Hitler given his plan of re-armament and expansion of the established professional military forces.

A political struggle within the party grew, with those closest to Hitler, including Prussian premier Hermann Göring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, positioning themselves against Röhm.

[56] The threat of a declaration of martial law from Hindenburg, the only person in Germany with the authority to potentially depose the Nazi regime, put Hitler under pressure to act.

Röhm was also known for being a good organizer, a strong leader and having a brutal, unscrupulous manner; all of which served Hitler well politically, before the Nazis obtained national power in 1933.

[59] Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on 24 June that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government (Röhm-Putsch).

[62] Blomberg and General Walter von Reichenau, the army's liaison to the party, gave it to him by expelling Röhm from the German Officers' League.

[64] On 30 June 1934, Hitler and a large group of SS and regular police flew to Munich and arrived between 06:00 and 07:00 at Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Röhm and his followers were staying.

Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Göring at 10:00 with the codeword kolibri ("hummingbird") to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims.

[67] On 1 July 1934, SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Eicke (later commandant of the Dachau concentration camp) and SS-Obersturmbannführer Michael Lippert visited Röhm.

"[67] Having heard nothing in the allotted time, Eicke and Lippert returned to Röhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance.

[76] On 3 July 1934 the purge of the SA was legalised with a one-paragraph decree: the Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defence, a step that historian Robin Cross contended in 2009 was done by Hitler to cover his own tracks.