Ernst Julius Günther Röhm (German: [ɛʁnst ˈʁøːm]; 28 November 1887 – 1 July 1934) was a German military officer and an early member of the Nazi Party. ...
As one of the members of its predecessor, the German Workers´ Party, he was a close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler and a co-founder of the Sturmabteilung (SA, "Storm Units"), the Nazi Party´s militia, and later was its commander. By 1934, the German Army feared the SA´s influence and Hitler had come to see Röhm as a potential rival, so he was executed during the Night of the Long Knives.
