50.For details on the biographies of the early SA leaders, see the excellent analysis by Bruce Campbell, The SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2004), esp. pp. 7, 29–48, 62–79.
51.See the comprehensive article by Malinowski and Reichardt, ‘Die Reihen fest geschlossen?’
52.The membership list cited earlier contains a total of 241 names, 144 of them with professional status. It is included in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 174–83. See also ‘Die bayrischen Nationalsozialisten’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 8 November 1922, in BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589; ‘Beim Überfall auf das Deutsche Theater’, Münchener Post, 18 October 1922, in ibid. As early as late 1920, a Studentensturm, or ‘SA Student Storm’, co-founded and initially led by Rudolf Hess, who later became Hitler’s proxy, is said to have existed. See Michael S. Steinberg, Sabers and Brown Shirts: The German Students’ Path to National Socialism, 1918–1935 (Chicago, IL, and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 73–4; Hans Peter Bleuel and Ernst Klinnert, Deutsche Studenten auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich: Ideologien – Programme – Aktionen, 1918–1935 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1967), p. 196. I have not been able to verify this claim.
53.See Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Germany after the First World War: A Violent Society? Results and Implications of Resent Research on Weimar Germany’, Journal of Modern European History 1 (2003), pp. 80–95; Klaus Schönhoven, ‘Die Entstehung der Weimarer Republik aus dem Krieg: Vorbelastungen und Neuanfang’, in Weimar im Widerstreit: Deutungen der ersten deutschen Republik im geteilten Deutschland, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), pp. 13–32; Andrew Donson, Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). The classical study is George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). For a short summary of the debate, see Gerwarth, ‘Rechte Gewaltgemeinschaften und die Stadt nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, pp. 106–7.
54.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, pp. 4, 6: Transcripts of SA announcements from 26 August and 19 October 1921.
55.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803: Police report about the SA meeting on 5 October 1921 in the Högerbräu.
56.Ibid.: Police report about the SA meeting in Corneliusstraße on 25 January 1922.
57.Ibid.: Police report about the SA meeting in the Hofbräuhaus on 6 April 1922.
58.Ibid.: Police report about the SA meeting in the restaurant Liebherr on 30 November 1921.
59.‘An alle Schaffenden! Die wahren Verräter und Würger der Deutschen!’, in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Sammlung von Flugblättern betreffend die Münchener Räterepublik 1919, http://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/flugblaetter-1919.
60.On the rise of antisemitism during the First World War and in the early years of the Weimar Republic, see Christoph Jahr, Antisemitismus vor Gericht: Debatten über die juristische Ahndung judenfeindlicher Agitation in Deutschland (1879–1960) (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011), pp. 245–76; Daniel Siemens, ‘Konzepte des nationaljüdischen Körpers in der frühen Weimarer Republik’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 56:1 (2008), pp. 30–54, here pp. 30–2; Cornelia Hecht, Deutsche Juden und Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 2003); Avraham Barkai, ‘Wehr Dich!’ Der Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (C.V.) 1893–1938 (Munich: Beck, 2002), pp. 55–66; Dirk Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 1999).
61.Hofmann, ‘Verräter verfallen der Feme!’, pp. 108, 112–13.
62.On the reception of juvenile criminality during the war years and in the Weimar Republic, see Sarah Bornhorst, ‘Bad Boys? Juvenile Delinquency during the First Word War in Wilhelmine Germany’, in Juvenile Delinquency and the Limits of Western Influence, 1850–2000, ed. Heather Ellis (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 121–44; Daniel Siemens, Metropole und Verbrechen: Die Gerichtsreportage in Berlin, Paris und Chicago (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007), pp. 129–35.
63.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Mussolini – Beherrscher Italiens’, Bayerische Staatszeitung, 28–29 October 1922.
64.Hitler’s speech in the Hofbräuhaus on the occasion of the first anniversary of the SA, as quoted in ‘Unsere Sturmabteilung’, Völkischer Beobachter, 5 August 1922, in BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589; ‘Aufruf! Deutsche Volksgenossen, Hand- und Kopfarbeiter!’, Völkischer Beobachter, 9 November 1921; HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 242: Letter from the SA-Gruppe Hansa, 9 July 1936.
65.Paradigmatic for the tone and style of this glorification is Karl W. H. Koch, Männer im Braunhemd: Vom Kampf und Sieg der SA (Berlin: Stubenrauch, 1936), pp. 11–17. Consequently, the Nazis used the events of 4 November 1921 in further propaganda. Three days later, on 7 November, they published a second call to join the SA in the Völkischer Beobachter, entitled ‘Hinein in die Sturmabteilungen!’ See StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 1–7, here p. 2: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated.
66.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Aus der politischen Kinderstube’, Münchener Post, 29 June 1922.
67.Ibid.: ‘Hakenkreuz und Ettstraße’, Münchener Post, 14 July 1922.
68.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 8: Note of the Bavarian Police from 24 September 1921; StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 13–15, here p. 14: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the SA of the NSDAP, undated (but after 3 February 1923); Westernhagen, Von der Herrschaft zur Gefolgschaft, p. 49.
69.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, pp. 175–92: Interrogation of Adolf Modes, 8 February 1923.
70.For details, see Torsten Homberger, Fashioning German Fascism: Constructing the Image of Hitler’s Storm Troopers, 1924–1933, PhD diss., Washington State University, 2014, pp. 56–73.
71.Richardi, Hitler und seine Hintermänner, p. 372.
72.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Aus der Bewegung’, Völkischer Beobachter, 2 August 1922.
73.For an overview of the SA’s organizational structure in 1933, see Julius M. Ruhl and Carl B. Starke (eds), Adolf Hitlers Braunhemden: Organisation, Einteilung, Bekleidung und Ausrüstung der Nationalsozialistischen Sturm-Abteilungen, Schutz-Staffeln, der Hitler-Jugend, des Deutschen Jungvolkes sowie der Politischen Organisation usw. (Leipzig: Moritz Ruhl, 1933). For the organization of the SA’s subdivisions in 1938, see Ernst Bayer, Die SA: Geschichte, Arbeit, Zweck und Organisation der Sturmabteilungen des Führers und der Obersten SA-Führung (Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1938).
74.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, pp. 15–16: ‘Flame letter’ from the O[ber]k[ommando] Transportleitung, a certain Herr Streck, to the leader of the SA (Göring), 14 July 1923.
75.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 230–1: Constable Pfeilschifler, Report to the Municipal Council of Bad Tölz, 16 August 1922.
76.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 232: Memo by the Munich police on the interrogation of Hans Ulrich Klintzsch, 20 September 1922. The Zionist weekly Das Jüdische Echo in May 1922 remarked that ‘Upper Bavaria is for its most part antisemitic’, thanks not least to the antisemitic agitation of the local newspaper Miesbacher Anzeiger. As a matter of self-respect, the author of the Das Jüdische Echo article urged his Jewish brothers in faith to no longer vacate in this area: Hans Guggenheimer, ‘Bayerische Sommerfrischen’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:21, 26 May 1922, pp. 268–9. See also Karl Glaser, ‘Antisemitismus und kleine Gemeinden’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:13, 31 March 1922, pp. 167–8.
77.Nunner-Winkler, ‘Überlegungen zum Gewaltbegriff’, p. 53.
78.‘Kritische Zeit’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:32, 11 August 1922, pp. 403–4, here p. 403.
79.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 1–7, here p. 2: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated.
80.Ernst Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, trans. Geoffrey Brooks (London: Frontline, 2012), p. 126.
81.The journalist Hermann Esser (1900–81) joined the DAP, the later NSDAP, in 1919. In the same ye
ar he became editor-in-chief of the Völkischer Beobachter. In the early 1920s, Esser made a name for himself in Bavaria as a fervently antisemitic demagogue. In 1923 he stated that all Jews in Germany should be interned in concentration camps, and that if the Allied occupation of the Ruhr region did not stop, 50,000 Jews would be ‘sent to a better afterworld’ (einem besseren Jenseits zugeführt) – that is, murdered. After becoming a member of the Bavarian Landtag in 1932, Esser was promoted to the head of the Bavarian State Chancellery in 1933. See ‘Die Sturmarmee’, Das Jüdische Echo 10:14, 6 April 1923, in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 319; Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler: The Lost Testimony by a Survivor from the Night of the Long Knives, ed. Bob Carruthers (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2013), p. 81; Thomas Fürst, Karl Stützel. Ein Lebensweg in Umbrüchen: Vom Königlichen Beamten zum Bayerischen Innenminister der Weimarer Zeit (1924–1933) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007), p. 454, n. 1,735.
82.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Zur Psychologie der Nationalsozialisten’, Münchener Post, 17 August 1922.
83.On the European dimension of this political event, which inspired Fascist movements throughout Europe, see Arnd Bauerkämper, ‘Transnational Fascism: Cross-Border Relations between Regimes and Movements in Europe, 1922–1939’, East Central Europe 37 (2010), pp. 214–46, here pp. 217–22. On the National Socialist admiration for Italian Fascism in the 1920s, see also Patrick Bernhard, ‘Konzertierte Gegnerbekämpfung im Achsenbündnis. Die Polizei im Dritten Reich und im faschistischen Italien 1933 bis 1943’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59:2 (2011), pp. 229–62, esp. pp. 230–7.
84.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: Clipping from Bayerischer Kurier, 19 June 1922.
85.Ibid.: ‘Eine Justizkomödie’, Münchener Post, 29 November 1922.
86.‘Antisemitisches aus Bayern: “Nieder mit den Juden!”’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:37, 15 September 1922, p. 466.
87.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Deutscher Tag in Koburg’, Bayerische Zeitung (Munich), 22 October 1922. On the National Socialist memory of this particular meeting, see BArch Berlin, NS 26/371: Auf nach Coburg! Einladung zur Nationalsozialistischen Kundgebung in Coburg am 8. und 9. Mai 1929.
88.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Die bayerischen Faschisten treten auf den Plan!’, Fränkische Tagespost, 17 October 1922.
89.‘Deutschvölkische Radauhelden’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:40, 6 October 1922, p. 501; BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Beim Überfall auf das Deutsche Theater’, Münchener Post, 18 October 1922.
90.‘Vom bayerischen Kriegsschauplatz: Nationalsozialistischer Hausfriedensbruch und anderes’, Das Jüdische Echo 10:1, 5 January 1923, p. 5.
91.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Nationalsozialistische Skandalmethoden’, Münchener Post, 2 October 1922.
92.Maser, Der Sturm auf die Republik, pp. 380–2. Klintzsch never returned to the SA. He married on 8 September 1923 and in the following two years struggled to earn a living for his quickly growing family. In 1925 he became an instructor at the Hanseatic Yacht School (Hanseatische Yacht-Schule) in Neustadt in Holstein. From 1929 onward Klinzsch worked as an instructor at the German School of Aviation in Warnemünde and on the island of Sylt. He entered the ranks of the Luftwaffe in 1936. In 1938 he was the commander of the Airforce School of Navigation (Navigationsschule der Luftwaffe) in the city of Anklam in Pomerania, and from 1942 onward he served as Chief of Staff in the airforce sea-rescue forces in the German Bight; Walsdorff, ‘Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch’, p. 1257; LKA Stuttgart, A 127, no. 1293: Personal information form Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch (1949/50).
93.StA München, Polizeidirektion München, Personalakten, no. 10020 (Wilhelm Brückner), p. 25: Testimony of Wilhelm Brückner to the Bavarian Police, 9 May 1923. In early 1923 several SA Hundertschaften formed a Bezirk, or ‘group’. Starting on 28 January 1923 each group disposed of its own ‘Standarte’. The first groups were said to have been Munich I, Munich II, Landshut, and Nuremberg.
94.Ibid., p. 40: Testimony of Wilhelm Brückner to the Bavarian Police, 19 May 1923. On the origins of the SS, see Bastian Hein, Elite für Volk und Führer? Die Allgemeine SS und ihre Mitglieder 1925–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), pp. 39–75; idem, Die SS. Geschichte und Verbrechen (Munich: Beck, 2015), pp. 7–14.
95.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 6: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated; StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 19–20: Report by Hans Lechner from the Austrian SA to SA headquarters in Munich, 1 September 1923; StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804: Report about a meeting of the Munich SA on 11 April 1923; Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, pp. 24–5; Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, p. 81; Daniel Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen: Polizisten im Ruhrgebiet in Demokratie und Diktatur 1919–1939 (Essen: Klartext, 2008), p. 283.
96.On Baur, a factotum of the early NSDAP who later served as a nurse in the Dachau concentration camp, see Daniela Andre, ‘Eleonore Baur – “Blutschwester Pia” oder “Engel von Dachau”’, in Rechte Karrieren in München: Von der Weimarer Zeit bis in die Nachkriegsjahre, ed. Marita Krauss (Munich: Volk, 2010), pp. 166–85. On the biography of Ernst von Westernhagen, see von Westernhagen, Von der Herrschaft zur Gefolgschaft, pp. 45–66.
97.All information on this incident, if not noted otherwise, is taken from Karl-Heinz Rueß, ‘Die “Schlacht am Walfischkeller”: Aus der politischen Niederlage entsteht die Göppinger SA’, in Göppingen unterm Hakenkreuz, ed. Konrad Plieninger and Karl-Heinz Rueß (Göppingen: Stadtarchiv Göppingen, 1994), pp. 12–21, here pp. 13–15.
98.Figures from the police show the participation of 1,300 SA men, 200 Reichsflagge men, 400 Bund Blücher men, 800 Bund Oberland men, and members of some other even smaller groups. See BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 3 May 1923.
99.Ibid.: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 28 May 1923; ‘Dokumente gegen “bedenkenlose Geschichtsfälschung”’, Münchener Post, 7 January 1932.
100.Ibid.: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 3 May 1923.
101.Idid.: Letter from Wehrkreiskommando VIII to Reichswehrministerium, 6 May 1923.
102.Ibid.: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 3 May 1923.
103.Ibid.: ‘Das Feldlager auf Oberwiesenfeld’, Münchener Post, 3 May 1923.
104.One reason for von Lossow’s benevolence toward the SA in 1923 was the threat of a possible German war with the French, who together with Belgian troops had occupied the demilitarized Ruhr area in January 1923. In such circumstances Röhm suggested to von Lossow that only a close cooperation between the paramilitary leagues and the Reichswehr would allow for suitable national defence. See Eleanor Hancock, Ernst Röhm: Hitler’s SA Chief of Staff (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 51–2.
105.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Letter from Wehrkreiskommando VIII to Reichswehrministerium, 6 May 1923.
106.Ibid.: ‘Kurze Anfrage Nr. 664 an das Bayerische Kultusministerium’, 2 May 1923. See also chapter 3.
107.Ventrone, ‘Fascism and the Legacy of the Great War’, p. 111.
108.Kurt Jackmush, in Boxwoche 1 (1923), as quoted in Erik N. Jensen, Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 63.
109.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Speech of Schweyer in the Bayerischer Landtag, 8 June 1923, in Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Bayerischen Landtags, no. 195, vol. 8, pp. 378–9. On Schweyer’s perception of the early Nazi movement, see also his book Politische Geheimverbände (Freiburg/Breisgau: Herder, 1925).
110.Collins, Violence, pp. 2–4 and passim.
111.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803: Police report about the meeting of the NSDAP in the Hotel Adelmann on 19 October 1921.
112.The situation was particularly chaotic in Nuremberg; see Reiche, Development of the SA in Nürnberg, pp. 36–40; Herbert Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD: Der politische Lebensweg des Dr. Hemuth Klotz (1894–1943) (Konstanz: UKV, 1998), pp. 48–81.
113.Konrad Heiden, A History of National Socialism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010 [1934]), p. 103.
114.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Confidential report, ‘Aus der Rechtsbewegung’, 2 June 1923; Westernhagen, Von der Herrschaft zur Gefolgschaft, p. 57; Andreas Hofer, Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke: Marineoffizier – Politiker – Widerstandskämpfer. Ein Leben zwischen den Fronten (Marburg: Tectum, 2003), p. 51. Mücke broke with the Nazis in 1929 and committed himself to preventing Hitler from coming to power. After the Second World War he campaigned against the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. On the complex biography of this forgotten but highly interesting man, see Hofer, Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke; StA München, Polizeidirektion München, Personalakten, no. 10119 (Hellmuth von Mücke).
115.Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 32–3. On the relationship between Röhm and von Epp, see Wächter, Die Macht der Ohnmacht, pp. 79–82.
116.Heiden, A History of National Socialism, pp. 8–9.
117.Nigel Jones, Mosley (London: Haus Publishing, 2004), p. 12.
118.For the characterization of Röhm as a ‘military desperado’, see Otis, Hitler’s Stormtroopers, pp. 25–6; for a more nuanced portrayal that stresses his roots as a royalist, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 7–35. On Röhm’s biography, see also the literary collage by Norbert Marohn, Röhm: Ein deutsches Leben. Romanbiografie (Leipzig: Lychatz, 2011); Marcus Mühle, Ernst Röhm: Eine biografische Skizze (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2016). For biographical studies on important leaders of the extreme right in interwar Europe, see Martyn Rady and Rebecca Haynes (eds), In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011).
119.Hancock, Ernst Röhm, p. 1. Her perspective is partly influenced by the writings of the German historian and former SA-Führer Heinrich Bennecke; see Bennecke, Hitler und die SA, p. 23. Othmar Plöckinger likewise stresses that Röhm was of ‘utmost importance’ for the early SA; see Plöckinger, Unter Soldaten und Agitatoren, p. 175. For more on this perspective, established very early, see Heiden, A History of National Socialism, p. 39.
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