Stennes revolt
Members of the SA led by Berlin chief Walter Stennes, unsatisified with the role and restrictions placed on them by Adolf Hitler, began to rebel against the Nazi Party leadership.
There is some evidence suggesting that Stennes may have been paid by the government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, with the intention of causing conflict within and destabilizing the Nazi movement.
[9] Brüning asked President Paul von Hindenburg to invoke Article 48 in order to promulgate the bill as an emergency decree.
[11][12][13] 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.
Stennes demanded the three ballot slots and threatened a "palace revolution" otherwise, claiming that he would resign and take 80% of Berlin SA (some 15,000 men) with him.
Goebbels turned to the Schutzstaffel (SS), who provided the necessary security for the speech and then assigned to protect the office of the Berlin Gau on Hedemannstrasse.
Goebbels was shocked at the extent of the damage done and notified Hitler, who left the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth and flew immediately to Berlin.
He summoned Ernst Röhm, who was in self-imposed exile in South America, and offered him effective command of the SA as its Chief of Staff.
[22] Even more troubling, the strategy of taking power by force was advocated by Stennes in February articles published in Der Angriff.
And Hitler had very publicly announced his "reliance on legality only" in the Leipzig trial of three young Reichswehr officers for "treasonous activities" in September 1930.
This was in perfect timing for the autumn elections and with an eye towards the attendant propaganda value, and he had sworn on the witness stand and under oath that the party had forsaken violent and illegal means as a path to power.
[33] Since all money for SA was dispensed through the Gau headquarters, it was a simple matter to cut this off and the lack of funding caused the rebellion to collapse.
The revolt illustrate Hitler's consistent approach to solving intraparty frictions: resorting to the Führerprinzip rather than address the underlying problems which motivated the tension.
A resolution to the dilemma had to wait until the Reichswehr forced the issue in the summer of 1934 when, with the SA growing restless and Hindenburg on his deathbed, Hitler responded with the murderous Night of the Long Knives.
[34] Stennes had a following among the leftist oriented SA in Berlin, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and Silesia, founding the National Socialist Fighting League of Germany (Nationalsozialistische Kampfbewegung Deutschlands).
He recruited about 2000 SA men from Berlin and elsewhere along with 2000 Ehrhardt followers, and the leaders protested that the "NSDAP has abandoned the revolutionary course of true national socialism" and will become "just another coalition party.
"[35] Stennes left Germany in 1933, working as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek until 1949, when he returned years after the fall of the Nazi regime.
Ironically the Stennes revolt may have assisted the Nazi rise to power, in that more moderate elements in the German right observed Hitler's adherence to his strategy of legality and gained confidence that he was accordingly "law-abiding.
Walther Stennes then left Prague for China where he worked in security and became commander of Chiang Kai-shek's personal bodyguard.
Stennes did not accept his dismissal and under his leadership, the SA occupied the party headquarters and the editorial office of the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff in Berlin.
The rebellion was quickly crushed as the Berlin police helped the party regain control of its headquarters and editorial office.
