When the Nazis had consolidated their power in the summer of 1933, the Brownshirts saw themselves robbed of their most important raison d’être: terrorising and neutralising the Nazis’ political opponents. Consequently, in early August, Göring rescinded the decree from the preceding February which made the SA an auxiliary police force. Politically there was no point any more to the Brownshirts’ violent activism, and the Nazi leadership viewed it as counter-productive. Many SA men were disappointed. They had hoped
