Viktor Lutze (28 December 1890 – 2 May 1943) was a German Nazi Party functionary and the commander of the Sturmabteilung ("SA") who succeeded Ernst Röhm as Stabschef and Reichsleiter.

He also joined the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest, most active and most influential anti-Semitic organisation in the Weimar Republic.

[2] In October 1931, he organized a huge joint rally in Braunschweig (Brunswick) of SA and SS men to show strength in strife-weary Germany and loyalty to their leader, Adolf Hitler.

In preparation for the purge, both Heinrich Himmler and his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SS Security Service (SD), assembled dossiers of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had planned to overthrow Hitler.

[8] Meanwhile, Göring, Himmler, Heydrich and Lutze, at Hitler's direction, drew up lists of those who should be liquidated that started with seven top SA officials and including many more.

Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will, however, shows the SA mobbing Lutze as he departs at the end of his evening-rally speech.

Riefenstahl's footage shows only Hitler, Himmler and Lutze in the march to the World War I cenotaph, where they lay a wreath.

In September 1938, SA Stabschef Lutze travelled to Passau to welcome Nazis who had returned from the Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg.

Lutze stayed at "Veste Oberhaus" and seized the opportunity to meet Johann Nepomuk Kühberger, who had once helped to save Hitler from drowning in the Inn River.

In February 1939, Lutze reviewed a parade of 20,000 Blackshirts in Rome and then set off for a tour of Italy's Libyan border with Tunisia.

[13] Then, in September 1939, with the start of World War II in Europe, the SA lost most of its remaining members to military service in the Wehrmacht (armed forces).

On 1 May 1943, his son Viktor was driving a car with Lutze and his entire family on the Reichsautobahn en route to Berlin.

[15] According to another version, Lutze died as a result of Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) ambush and the "traffic accident" narrative was used by German media to cover up the real cause of his death.