Karl Ernst was born on 1 September 1904 in Berlin, then part of the German Empire. Adolf Hitler founded the SA in 1921, initially gathering the roughest elements of these Freikorps. Toughened by street brawls and possessed by fanatical nationalism, they saw themselves as the “shock troops” of the young Nazi movement. When Hitler´s Munich Putsch – an attempted coup – failed in November 1923, the Nazi Party was banned for a time, and the SA scattered. Yet by 1925, Hitler reestablished both the Party and its paramilitary wing. It was around this era that Karl Ernst reemerged in SA circles. If his past as a nightclub bouncer raised eyebrows among the homophobic Brownshirts, they still valued his street smarts and fierce loyalty. One of Karl Ernst’s earliest claims to infamy came on 12 September 1931—the day of the Jewish New Year. The bustling Berlin boulevard called Kurfürstendamm was packed with people, including Jewish families leaving a nearby synagogue. In an organized show of force, SA men poured onto the streets, chanting “Death to the Jews!” and “Beat the Jews dead!”. Eyewitnesses later recalled that Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff, a high-ranking SA leader, and Karl Ernst drove up and down the avenue in a car, giving orders to intensify the violence. Some of the Brownshirts stormed a local café, injuring visitors; others chased down passersby they deemed “Jewish-looking.” The rampage was vicious enough to shock even some of the conservative press, who normally overlooked Nazi brutality.
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