Military wings of political organizations

While most democratic governments have a strong tradition of civilian control of the military, factions in unstable states often have either avowed or covert military wings. As with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, even a totalitarian state may have a politicized military force. Overt political Sinn Fein, in Ireland and Northern Ireland, long had the Irish Revolutionary Army as its military side.

In the 1920s and 1930s, there were a great many German military factions, some independent freikorps, but none more important to the rise of the Nazis than the Sturmabteilung (SA) "Stormtroopers" or "Brownshirts". As with many such movements, it eventually lost most power through factionalism. The Schutzstaffel (SS) or "Blackshirts", originally a SA-spawned unit for the immediate protection of Adolf Hitler, eventually purged the SA in 1934, in the Night of the Long Knives/