Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  120.Ernst Röhm, Geschichte eines Hochverräters (Munich: Eher, 1928, with several editions to follow). The first abbreviated English edition was published only in 2012: Ernst Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm (London: Frontline, 2012). Although Röhm’s book gives a reliable picture of his political philosophy, it is less trustworthy when it comes to his role in the early Nazi movement.

  121.Hanns H. Hofmann, Der Hitlerputsch: Krisenjahre deutscher Geschichte 1920 bis 1924 (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1961), p. 75; Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 37–45.

  122.Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, p. 87.

  123.See among others Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, pp. 176–94; Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, pp. 253–67; Hoffmann, Der Hitlerputsch, pp. 142–217; Otis, Hitler’s Stormtroopers, pp. 72–82.

  124.Conan Fischer convincingly argues that the failure of the German passive-resistance campaign had a very negative impact on the population’s acceptance of the Republic well beyond 1923. Even if the Weimar Republic had lasted for another decade, the ‘emotional engagement with the new republican order was as good as dead and buried’, he claimed. See Conan Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 290.

  125.Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, p. 194.

  126.On Hitler’s arrest, see Ludecke, I Knew Hitler, p. 135.

  127.It is not without irony that the majority of those killed on 9 November were members of the Bund Oberland and Röhm’s Reichskriegsflagge, but not genuine members of the SA. See Hofmann, Der Hitler-Putsch, p. 271.

  128.On the cult of the martyrs of 9 November 1923, see the excellent analysis by Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden, pp. 299–313; on Wessel’s life and the cult that was established at his death, see Siemens, Making of a Nazi Hero. On SA ‘martyrdom’, see also Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 548–60.

  129.Paradigmatic in this respect is Koch, Männer im Braunhemd, p. 41; for a recent analytical discussion of how (National Socialists’) sacrifice and violence were linked, see David Pan, Sacrifice in the Modern World: On the Particularity and Generality of Nazi Myth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012).

  130.Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, p. 209. Göring, who at the time was suffering from a badly healed leg wound he had received in November 1923, soon left for Italy, where he attempted to intensify the contacts between the Italian Fascists and the German National Socialists. See Michael Palumbo, ‘Goering’s Italian Exile 1924–1925’, Journal of Modern History 50:1 (1978), pp. D1035–D1051.

  131.Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, pp. 209–10.

  132.On the Frontbann, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 71–81; Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 175–293; Röhm, Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, pp. 210–35.

  133.For an overview, see Bruno Thoß, ‘Deutscher Notbann, 1924–1926’, Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/Deutscher Notbann. For an inside glimpse into the state’s calculations, see BayHStA IV, Bestand Bayern und Reich, no. 65: highly confidential letter from the State Minister of the Interior, Franz Schweyer, to Dr Essel in Ebersberg, 10 April 1924.

  134.Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 75–6.

  135.The ‘National Socialist Freedom Party’ existed only from 1924 to 1925. It was a merger of the more traditional Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei, or ‘German Völkisch Freedom Party’ (DVFP), with the ‘National Socialist Freedom Movement’, a successor organization to the banned NSDAP.

  136.Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 187–9.

  137.On this lack of accord between Hitler and Röhm, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 72–5, 79–81.

  138.Adolf Hitler, Proclamation to refound the NSDAP, Völkischer Beobachter, 26 February 1925, as quoted in Hein, Elite für Volk und Führer?, pp. 40–1. For a very early critical assessment of this ‘turn’, see Schweyer, Politische Geheimverbände, pp. 118–19.

  139.Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 299–304.

  140.Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 851st edn (Munich: Eher, 1943), pp. 604–5, 611, 620.

  141.Ibid., pp. 603–4.

  142.On the history of the Red Front Fighters League, see Kurt G. P. Schuster, Der Rote Frontkämpferbund: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Organisationsstruktur eines politischen Kampfbundes (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1975); Sara Ann Sewell, ‘Bolshevizing Communist Women: The Red Women and Girls’ League in Weimar Germany’, Central European History 45 (2012), pp. 268–305.

  143.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Decree ‘An die gesamte nationalsozialistische Presse’, 28 September 1926.

  144.Noël O’Sullivan, Fascism (London and Melbourne: J. M. Dent, 1983), p. 43.

  145.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 242: Letter from Franz Pfeffer von Salomon to the regional party leaders of the NSDAP, 1 October 1926.

  Chapter 2

  1.Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944, with an introduction by Peter Hayes (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2009), p. 436.

  2.See, for example, Rösch, Die Münchner NSDAP, pp. 122–3.

  3.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 52–3.

  4.On the origins of the unusual name, see Mark A. Fraschka, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon: Hitlers vergessener Oberster SA-Führer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016), pp. 229–32.

  5.For biographical details on von Pfeffer, see ibid. and Hermann Weiß, ‘Pfeffer von Salomon, Franz’, Neue Deutsche Biographie 20 (2001), pp. 310ff, http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd124769810.html.

  6.Heiden, A History of National Socialism, p. 123. On Kaufmann, see Frank Bajohr, ‘Gauleiter in Hamburg: Zur Person und Tätigkeit Karl Kaufmanns’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 43:2 (1995), pp. 267–95.

  7.See also Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 54.

  8.On the early HJ and its members, see Peter D. Stachura, Nazi Youth in the Weimar Republic (Santa Barbara, CA: Clio, 1975); Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 15–28.

  9.Hein, Elite für Volk und Führer?, pp. 47–50, 65; RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, p. 200: Adolf Hitler, Order from 7 November 1930.

  10.From 1931 onward, SA groups were termed Scharen, which is best translated as ‘hordes’ or ‘bands’.

  11.The SA’s new structure is here described according to a transcript of Vorwärts from 21 December 1926 and to Der Oberste SA-Führer, Erlaß Nr. 2 (Gliederung der SA), 20 February 1931, both in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805. For an overview of the organizational changes within the SA between 1923 and 1935, see Campbell, SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 161–2.

  12.Bessel, ‘Militarismus im innenpolitischen Leben der Weimarer Republik’, p. 210; Helge Matthiesen, Greifswald in Vorpommern: Konservatives Milieu in Kaiserreich, in Demokratie und Diktatur 1900–1990 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2000), p. 270.

  13.For an illustrated overview of these insignias and their corresponding ranks and units, see Ruhl and Starke (eds), Adolf Hitlers Braunhemden.

  14.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Transcript of the Lagebericht from the Berlin Police, no. 128, 20 February 1929; ‘SA-Versicherung der NSDAP’, Völkischer Beobachter, 12 December 1928.

  15.For details on these commercial activities, see chapter 3; for an extensive summary of Pfeffer von Salomon’s reforms, see also Fraschka, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, pp. 342–64.

  16.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Transcript of the Lagebericht from the Berlin Police, no. 128, 20 February 1929.

  17.Werner, SA und NSDAP, p. 412. A Nazi newspaper account in May 1931 provides the number of 2,055 reported cases for the five-month period between 1 January and 6 May 1931; see RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 44, p. 19: ‘Achtung, Parteigenossen!’, Völkischer Beobachter, 12 May 1931.

  18.Joachim C. Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag: Die Arbeiterbewegung in Leipzig und Lyon im Moment der Krise 1929–1933/38 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), p. 31.

  19.See, above all, Schmiechen-Ackermann, Nationalsozialismus und Arbeitermilieus, pp. 108–435. On the SA in Hambur
g, see in particular Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families; Anthony McElligott, Contested City: Municipal Politics and the Rise of Nazism in Altona, 1917–1937 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998); idem, ‘“. . . und so kam es zu einer schweren Schlägerei”: Straßenschlachten in Altona und Hamburg am Ende der Weimarer Republik’, in ‘Hier war doch alles nicht so schlimm’: Wie die Nazis in Hamburg den Alltag eroberten, ed. Maike Bruhns, Thomas Krause, and Anthony McElligott (Hamburg: VSA, 1984), pp. 58–87; Thomas Krause, Hamburg wird braun: Der Aufstieg der NSDAP 1921–1933 (Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1987); idem, ‘Von der Sekte zur Massenbewegung: Die Hamburger NSDAP von 1922 bis 1933’, in ‘Hier war doch alles nicht so schlimm’, pp. 18–51; Werner Jochmann, Nationalsozialismus und Revolution: Ursprung und Geschichte der NSDAP in Hamburg 1922–1933. Dokumente (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1963).

  20.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, p. 34; Daniel Siemens, ‘Prügelpropaganda: Die SA und der nationalsozialistische Mythos vom “Kampf um Berlin”’, in Berlin 1933–1945, ed. Michael Wildt and Christoph Kreutzmüller (Munich: Siedler, 2013), pp. 33–48, here p. 40.

  21.On the development of the Nazi movement in Berlin and, in particular, the violent ‘street politics’ that occurred there, see Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Pamela E. Swett, Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Anders G. Kjøstved, ‘The Dynamics of Mobilisation: The Nazi Movement in Weimar Berlin’, Politics, Religion & Ideology 14:3 (2013), pp. 338–54; Benjamin C. Hett, Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 38–59; Andreas Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg? Politischer Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1918–1933/39: Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), pp. 437–67; Wildt and Kreutzmüller (eds), Berlin 1933–1945; Rüdiger Hachtmann, Thomas Schaarschmidt, and Winfried Süß (eds), Berlin im Nationalsozialismus: Politik und Gesellschaft 1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011). For detailed local studies on particular neighbourhoods, see Oliver Reschke, Kampf um den Kiez: Der Aufstieg der NSDAP im Zentrum Berlins 1925–1933 (Berlin: Trafo, 2014); idem, Der Kampf um die Macht in einem Berliner Arbeiterbezirk: Nationalsozialisten am Prenzlauer Berg 1925–1933 (Berlin: Trafo, 2008); idem, Der Kampf der Nationalsozialisten um den roten Friedrichshain (1925–1933) (Berlin: Trafo, 2004).

  22.See Ziemann, ‘Germany after the First World War’; Dirk Schumann, ‘Einheitssehnsucht und Gewaltakzeptanz: Politische Grundpositionen des deutschen Bürgertums nach 1918 (mit vergleichenden Überlegungen zu den britischen middle classes)’, in Der Erste Weltkrieg und die europäische Nachkriegsordnung: Sozialer Wandel und Formveränderung der Politik, ed. Hans Mommsen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), pp. 83–105.

  23.Rudy Koshar, ‘From Stammtisch to Party: Nazi Joiners and the Contradictions of Grass-Roots Fascism in Weimar Germany’, in The Journal of Modern History 59:1 (1987), pp. 1–24, here p. 2. On the rise of National Socialism in the countryside, see in particular Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933: Die Verschränkung von Milieu und Parteien in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1996), pp. 324–432; Frank Bösch, Das konservative Milieu: Vereinskultur und lokale Sammlungspolitik in ost- und westdeutschen Regionen (1900–1960) (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002); Zdenek Zofka, Die Ausbreitung des Nationalsozialismus auf dem Lande: Eine regionale Fallstudie zur politischen Einstellung der Landbevölkerung in der Zeit des Aufstiegs und der Machtergreifung der NSDAP 1928–1936 (Munich: Wölfle, 1979), pp. 93–132. For work on Weimar elections, see Jürgen W. Falter, Hitlers Wähler (Munich: Beck, 1991); idem, Zur Soziographie des Nationalsozialismus: Studien zu den Wählern und Mitgliedern der NSDAP (Cologne: Gesis, 2013); on the electoral behaviour of women in particular, see Helen Boak, ‘Mobilising Women for Hitler: The Female Nazi Voter’, in Working Towards the Führer: Essays in Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw, ed. Anthony McElligott and Tim Kirk (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 68–92.

  24.Exemplary local and regional studies include Andrew Stewart Bergerson, Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times: The Nazi Revolution in Hildesheim (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004); Michael Schepua, Nationalsozialismus in der pfälzischen Provinz: Herrschaftspraxis und Alltagsleben in den Gemeinden des heutigen Landskreises Ludwigshafen 1933–1945 (Mannheim: Palatium, 2000), pp. 71–165; Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany; Johnpeter Horst Grill, The Nazi Movement in Baden 1920–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Volker Franke, Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Düsseldorf: Die nationalsozialistische Basis in einer katholischen Großstadt (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1987); Klaus Tenfelde, Proletarische Provinz: Radikalisierung und Widerstand in Penzberg/Oberbayern 1900–1945 (Munich and Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1982); Rainer Hambrecht, Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Mittel- und Oberfranken (1925–1933) (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv, 1976); Thomas Schnabel (ed.), Die Machtergreifung in Südwestdeutschland: Das Ende der Weimarer Republik in Baden und Württemberg, 1928–1933 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1982); Eberhart Schön, Die Entstehung des Nationalsozialismus in Hessen (Meisenhein am Glan: Anton Hain, 1972); Frank Bajohr (ed.), Norddeutschland im Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Ergebnisse-Verlag, 1993).

  25.In Berlin the SA in 1926 comprised about 400–450 men, see Bernd Kessinger, Die Nationalsozialisten in Berlin-Neukölln 1925–1933 (Berlin: Vergangenheitsverlag, 2013), p. 92; Bennecke, Hitler und die SA, p. 126; Martin Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’ in Berlin und Brandenburg 1926–1934, university diss., Technische Universität Berlin, 2005, pp. 39–41. In Hamburg the local SA, which after the party ban of November 1923 initially operated as the Blücher Gymnastic, Sports, and Hiking Club, attracted only 30–40 men in 1924, 60 men in early 1926, and some 350 in the summer of 1927: see Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 90, 96, 101, 105; Krause, Hamburg wird braun, pp. 96–7. SA membership figures for several other large German cities are provided in Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 271.

  26.Rösch, Die Münchner NSDAP, pp. 122–5.

  27.BArch Berlin, R 9361/II, no. 16746: Memorandum from Otto Herzog on the history of the SA in Frosen.

  28.For a similar estimate, see Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, p. 159. For the number of SA men present at the NSDAP party rally in Weimar in 1927, see Werner von Fichte, Typescript of a booklet on the SA: RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 372–437, here p. 380. Michael Kater gives a membership number for the SA of 15,000 for early 1929: see Kater, ‘Ansätze zu einer Soziologie der SA bis zur Röhm-Krise’, in Soziale Bewegung und politische Verfassung: Beiträge zur Geschichte der modernen Welt, ed. Ulrich Engelhardt et al. (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976), pp. 798–831, here p. 799.

  29.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 93; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 258. In slight contrast, SA General Curt von Ulrich in January 1929 overestimated the total number of stormtroopers as 50,000–60,000. See GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, Titel 4043, no. 309, pp. 313–17, here p. 316: SA-Führer Ober-West Curt von Ulrich, ‘Wehrhaftmachung’, 21 January 1929.

  30.GStA PK, VI. HA, NL Daluege, no. 9, pp. 20–4, here p. 23: Regierungsrat Bach (Darmstadt), ‘Die Entwicklung der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung in Hessen, besonders im Odenwald’.

  31.V. S. Khristoforov, Institut rossiı˘skoı˘ istorii (Rossiı˘skaya akademiya nauk), Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie goroda Moskvy, and Tsentralnyı˘ arkhiv FSB Rossii (eds), Oberfiurer SA Villi Redel’. Dokumenty iz arkhivov FSB Rossii (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Glavnogo arkhivnogo upravleniya goroda Moskvy, 2012), pp. 46–7; Schön, Die Entstehung des Nationalsozialismus in Hessen, p. 120. For similar figures and problems in Dortmund, see the case study by Daniel Schmidt, ‘Terror und Terrainkämpfe: Sozialprofil und soziale Praxis der SA in Dortmund 1925–1933’, Beiträge zur Geschichte Dortmunds und der
Grafschaft Mark 96/97 (2007), pp. 251–92; for Danzig, see Hans Sponholz, Danzig – deine SA! Einsatz und Bewährung im Polenfeldzug (Munich: Eher, 1940), pp. 26–7.

  32.Gerhard Paul, Die NSDAP des Saargebietes 1920–1935: Der verspätete Aufstieg der NSDAP in der katholisch-proletarischen Provinz (Saarbrücken: Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, 1987), p. 121.

  33.Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen, p. 283; Thomas Schnabel, ‘Die NSDAP in Württemberg 1928–1933: Die Schwäche einer regionalen Parteiorganisation’, in Die Machtergreifung in Südwestdeutschland, ed. Thomas Schnabel, pp. 49–81, here pp. 53–4.

  34.Christian Peters, Nationalsozialistische Machtdurchsetzung in Kleinstädten: Eine vergleichende Studie zu Quakenbrück und Heide/Holstein (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015), pp. 376, 447–9; Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, p. 176; Oded Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside: A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press, 1998), pp. 113–14.

  35.Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, pp. 186–204, here p. 187.

  36.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 65–72; Campbell, SA Generals, pp. 71–6, 142–8. For Berlin, see Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’, pp. 27–36.

  37.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 104–5; BArch Berlin, NS 23/1239: Letter from the Hamburg SA to the Gausturm Nordmark, 5 April 1929.

  38.Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’, pp. 31–6; GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a (Justizministerium), no. 55212.

  39.For details, see Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg?, pp. 442–7, 589–94.

  40.See, for example, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil 1, Band 1/II, p. 149 (entry from 15 November 1926).

  41.As quoted in Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, p. 186.

  42.Instructive in this respect is an SA-Standartenbefehl from the early 1930s which straightforwardly demands that ‘more than ever before, it is necessary to rope the police in for our purposes [. . .] Every SA man needs to know the telephone number of his police station by heart. We have to convince those officers on duty that we don’t fight for our idea out of rowdiness or by misguided activism, but that we only defend our naked lives’ (GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 219, no. 20, pp. 31–2: Typescript of an SA--Standartenbefehl, undated).