The Sturm Cigarette Company was a cigarette company created by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA). The sale of its cigarettes provided the SA with operating funds and a channel for political messaging. Coercion and violence were used to increase sales.
An advertisement from January 1932, when the Nazis were trying to win power, showing a uniformed SA member, the Nazi swastika, the SA logo, and an anti-monopoly political slogan
A blackletter advertisement from October 1932 showing an aircraft with SA-logo roundels and the word Sturm ("Storm" or "Military Assault"). The strapline reads "Valuable coupons · Sumptuous pictures of uniforms".
Unemployed SA men, at least three of them smoking, in 1932, three years after the SA began manufacturing cigarettes
An advertisement from December 1933, after the Nazis took power, with the slogan Wer sie einmal wählt, ist ihr immer verbunden (Choose [vote for] them once, be bound to them forever)
The Sturmabteilung was the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. Its primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Roter Frontkämpferbund of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and intimidating Romani, trade unionists, and especially Jews.
Hitler and Hermann Göring with SA stormtroopers in front of Frauenkirche, Nuremberg in 1928
The SA unit in Nuremberg, 1929
Marketing for the SA's Sturm Cigarette Company also promoted military service.
The SA unit in Berlin in 1932