Sturm Cigarette Company

[3][5] During the 1920s, many cigarette firms in Germany closed, and the market was increasingly dominated by a few large and highly automated manufacturers.

[3][9] At the time, the SA charged no membership fees and was thus financially dependent on donations from the Nazi party leadership; an independent income source was welcomed.

[2] Approached through Saxon Nazi party leader Manfred von Killinger, SA-Stabschef Otto Wagener was interested and willing to put money towards an SA cigarette factory.

[4][11][9] While the SA was officially the sports and gymnastics division of the Nazi party, it was a successor to the banned Freikorps militias,[12] and promoted itself as a military training program.

[15] Aside from taxes, advertising revenues, and Sturm royalties and dividends, Nazi organizations accepted millions of reichsmarks in donations and bribes from the cigarette industry.

[2][16][15] The propaganda minister's view was decisive; Joseph Goebbels felt that cigarettes were essential to the war effort.

At the time, an average-intensity "Trommler" smoker[14] paid the average wage[20] would spend around a tenth of his gross income on cigarettes.

Hitler scolded Reemtsma for having Jewish partners, but they agreed to an initial deal of half a million marks of advertising.

[2] Shortly after the Nazis took power in 1933, Philipp Reemtsma asked Hermann Göring, then the highest official in Prussia, to do something about charges of corruption and SA attacks against the company.

By July 1934, the Night of the Long Knives had removed the threat of the SA: its leaders, who had profited from the firm's royalties, and often owned shares in it, were dead or imprisoned.