The Stennes Revolt was a revolt within the Nazi Party in 1930-1931 led by Walter Stennes (1895–1989), the Berlin commandant of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi's "brownshirt" storm troops. The revolt arose from internal tensions and conflicts within the Nazi Party of Germany, particularly between the party organization headquartered in Munich and Adolf Hitler on the one hand, and the SA and its leadership on the other hand.
The role and purpose of the SA within National Socialism was still unsettled in 1930. Hitler viewed the SA as serving strictly political purposes, a subordinate body whose function was to foster Nazi expansion and development. The SA's proper functions, in Hitler's view, were political ones such as protecting Nazi meetings from disruption by protesters, disrupting meetings of Nazi adversaries, distributing propaganda, recruiting, marching in the streets to propagandize by showing support for the Nazi cause, political campaigning, and brawling with Communists in the streets. He did not advocate the SA's functioning as a military or paramilitary organization.
Many in the SA itself—including the leadership—held a contrary, and more glorious, view of the SA's role. To them, the SA was a nascent military organization: the basis for a future citizen-army on the Napoleonic model, an army which would, ideally, absorb the Reichswehr and displace its outmoded Prussian concepts with "modern" Nazi ideals.
Reichstag elections had taken place in 1928 and the next elections were scheduled for 1932.
Unfortunately for the course of German democracy, the Mueller government imploded in late March 1930 over the issue of the amount of employer contributions to unemployment insurance.
Its successor, the Bruening government, was unable to obtain a parliamentary majority for its own financial reform bill, which was rejected by the Reichstag on 16 July 1930. Bruening asked Hindenburg to invoke Article 48 in order to promulgate the bill as an emergency decree. Hindenburg did so and the Reichstag promptly repudiated the bill on 18 July 1930, thereby invalidating the presidential decree under the Constitution. Bruening thereupon asked Hindenburg to dissolve parliament and call for new elections, which were scheduled for 14 September 1930.