The SA, also known as the Storm Troopers and the Brownshirts, for the color of their uniform, was officially founded in 1921 and its objective was military protection for the Nazi Party, while also advancing Nazi ideology. The SA grew out of the Freikorps groups which were composed primarily of World War I veterans returning from the war and they fought against communists and other groups they believed were responsible for German defeat. From 5 January 1931, the SA was led by Ernst Röhm, a longtime friend of Hitler’s. Röhm gradually filled important positions in the SA Leadership with personal confidants, and in this way successively created a powerful position for himself in the Nazi movement. When Röhm took office as chief of staff of the SA, the total strength of the organization was 77,000 men. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles signed in the aftermath of World War I, had limited the German army to 100,000 men. In January 1933 Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and the same year the SA had expanded to a force of three million men, significantly outnumbering the German army. As a result, many political leaders, including President Paul von Hindenburg and Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, feared that the SA had become too powerful. In 1933, the SA continued to provide key support to the Nazi regime as it consolidated its power into a dictatorship. However, the SA leadership had demands to “finish” the Nazi revolution. Röhm’s plan was for the SA to absorb and replace the German military to form a true "people's army" under his command. As early as April 1934, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Reinhard Heydrich, the director of the Nazi secret police the Gestapo, began to conspire with Hermann Göring – the future head of German air force, to persuade Hitler to eliminate Röhm. In June 1934, in preparation for the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives, both Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid 12 million Reichs Marks, 60 million USD in today’s value, by the government of France to overthrow Hitler. 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. At Hitler's direction, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed.
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