History Lesson: German Brownshirts of the 1920's & 30's

[rambone]

What is a "Brownshirt" ?


70 years ago there was a group known as the "Brownshirts" in Germany that did the bidding of the far left party of their day. Sometimes this word is tossed about but not everyone knows what it means, or where it comes from. I have been hearing this term thrown about a lot lately and decided to share.

They were a paramilitary detachment of the German political party:
National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party).
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The Brownshirts were a particularly violent arm of the Nazi Party that did not hesitate to employ violence against their political opponents, sometimes going as far as to beat the *speakers* of political rallies. They functioned as bodyguards of Hitler. They frequently taunted Jews and provoked violence on them. They were Socialist bullies blinded by their Cult-of-Personality Leader.

Names:
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Sturm Abteilung
(translated "Storm Section")
S.A.
Brownshirts
Stormtroops
Stormtroopers
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Definition:

German militia, also known as Brownshirts, of the Nazi Party, established in 1921 under the leadership of Ernst Röhm, in charge of physical training and political indoctrination.

Originally uniformed stewards to organize demonstrations, they became street brawlers who dealt with any political opposition to party rallies. When the Nazis gained power 1933 their strength was about 400,000 and they considered themselves the rival to the German Army. At the instigation of the Army and SS leaders, Hitler had all the SA's leaders murdered 30 June 1933, the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, and the organization disbanded.

Brown shirts - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about Brown shirts

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[/FONT]abbreviated SA (German for "Storm detachment" or "Assault detachment" or "Assault section", usually translated as "stormtroop(er)s"), functioned as a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s.

SA men were often called "brownshirts" for the colour of their uniforms; this distinguished them from the Schutzstaffel (SS), who wore black and brown uniforms (in comparison to Benito Mussolini's blackshirts). Brown-coloured shirts were chosen as the SA uniform because a large batch of them was cheaply available after World War I, having originally been ordered for German troops serving in Africa.[1]


The SA was also the first Nazi paramilitary group to develop pseudo-military titles for bestowal upon its members. The SA ranks would be adopted by several other Nazi Party groups, chief among them the SS. The SA was very important to Adolf Hitler's rise to power, but was largely irrelevant after he took control of Germany in 1933; it was effectively superseded by the SS after the Night of the Long Knives.[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This thread is designed to shed some light on a piece of history that is should
be studied so that it does not have to be repeated. God Bless America.
More History Lessons: INGO - History Lessons

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[5.56'aholic]

sounds a lot like ACORN to me.....

 

[rambone]

In the past couple of weeks I have been hearing this term used, particularly directed at the conservative side, the Americans who reject Socialism and do not want Obamacare. These people have been vocal at Town Hall Meetings and have been outnumbering the supporters of Obama's National Health Care.

So of course the Left has been demonizing the American people saying that they aren't interested in a civil discussion, they are bullies, they are an angry mob, they are "brownshirts." This has been p!ssing me off.

I did a Google search for "brownshirts." I was hard pressed to find many articles that were not by liberals, bashing conservatives. Seriously, I question the validity of Google's search results sometimes, it seems that it purposely pushes leftist entries forward so that is the most likely thing to be read.

I just wanted to put this out here, so people can know the history behind the term and decide for themselves who is acting like Brownshirts.

 

[mrjarrell]

The denizens of the Left conveniently forget that the original brownshirts and their philosophy arose from the Left and not the Right. Not to say that the Right doesn't have enough problems of their own, but the originals came from the Left.

 

[whiskeytangofoxtrot]

I urge people to read about late 1920's to early 1940's Germany to see where they went with the things they did. You can almost directly correlate their beginnings with what is going on here right now. Now all we need is the Reichstag to burn so some sort of martial law can be instituted...

Read about it and see how far it can and could possibly go...

 

[stilllearning09]

"Those that do not study history are doomed to repeat it." G. Santayana

 

[rambone]

The denizens of the Left conveniently forget that the original brownshirts and their philosophy arose from the Left and not the Right. Not to say that the Right doesn't have enough problems of their own, but the originals came from the Left.

Either they have forgotten, or they lie about it, or they don't understand what "left" and "right" means in politics. Either way they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

In doing my reading of articles about WWII, I was detecting some political spin. A history revisionist spin.

I found several articles that refer to Hitler as "right-wing." I found references that he "united conservatives" by doing such-and-such. They point out that the SA (brownshirts) spawned from some "right-wing" militia from World War I.

Hitler demonized several groups infamously, which of course included Jews, but also communists. Hitler sometimes had people arrested and or punished and often said the reason was their "communist" beliefs. I think "communist" was sometimes just a name he called anyone who opposed him.

Because Hitler targeted Communists - an obviously a leftist ideology - the revisionist historians use that point to further point out that Hitler was "right-wing." They also use Hitler's hatred for homosexuals as some sort of tie to the "right wing."

Neither Nazism or Communism represent anything remotely "right-wing." I think the political climate in 1930's Germany was a case of "Left and Lefter." The Nazis, Socialists, & Communists were all competing with each other and therefore were the target of attack from each other. But just because one attacked another did not make one the "left" and one the "right."

None of these groups represents conservatism or resembles the "right-wing" of political ideology.