according to documents obtained in 2003 from the austrian state archives by the "los angeles times", which was after the expiration of a 30-year seal of his records under austrian privacy law, gustav schwarzenegger voluntarily applied to join the national socialist party on 1 march 1938, two weeks before the country was annexed. austria became part of germany after being annexed on 12 march 1938. a separate record obtained by the wiesenthal center indicates he sought membership before the annexation but was only accepted in january 1941. he also applied to become a member of the sturmabteilung (sa), the nsdap's paramilitary wing, on 1 may 1939, the year after the annexation of austria, at a time when sa membership was declining. the sa had 900,000 members in 1940, down from 4.2 million in 1934. this decline in sa membership was the result of the night of the long knives, a political purge carried out by adolf hitler against the sa, as the sa was seen as too radical and too powerful by senior military and industrial leaders within the third reich.