Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  145.Schaumann, Der Stahlhelm, p. 167.

  146.BayHStA IV, Stahlhelm, no. 365: ‘Bundesbefehl für die Neugliederung des Stahlhelms, B.d.F.’, 18 July 1933.

  147.In light of the post-Second World War debates it is important to note that the transfers from the Stahlhelm to the SA-R I and II were optional. See BayHStA IV, Stahlhelm, no. 109: Letter from the Landesamt to the Stahlhelm Ortsgruppe Vilsbiburg, 20 August 1934.

  148.BArch Berlin NS 23/510: Der Oberste SA-Führer, ‘Betr. Gliederung der gesamten SA’, 6 November 1933; Hermann-J. Rupieper and Alexander Sperk (eds), Die Lageberichte der Geheimen Staatspolizei zur Provinz Sachsen 1933–1936, vol. 2: Regierungsbezirk Merseburg (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2004), p. 121. In 1936 all men aged between eighteen and forty-five were part of the ‘active’ SA, divided into an ‘active SA I’ (18–35) and an ‘active SA II’ (36–45). See BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Oberste SA-Führung, On the organization of the SA, 15 December 1936. In 1935, by the latest, the SA-R II was referred to as the SA-Landsturm (SA-L); see BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Der Oberste SA-Führer, ‘Aufgaben und Gliederung der SA’, 22 January 1935.

  149.For the perspective of the Stahlhelm is BayHStA IV, Stahlhelm, no. 109: Letter from the Stahlhelm Landesverband [Bavaria] to the Bavarian Political Police, 3 October 1934.

  150.Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (London: John Murray, 2002), p. 31.

  151.Ibid., p. 33.

  152.Ibid., p. 34.

  153.On the activities of the SA at universities, see in particular Grüttner, Studenten im Dritten Reich; Giles, Students and National Socialism in Germany; Stefan Rückel and Karl-Heinz Noack, ‘Studentischer Alltag an der Berliner Universität 1933 bis 1945’, in Christoph Jahr (ed.), Die Berliner Universität in der NS-Zeit, vol. 1: Strukturen und Personen (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), pp. 115–42. On the burning of books in May 1933, see Hans-Wolfgang Strätz, ‘Die geistige SA rückt ein: Die studentische “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” im Frühjahr 1933’, in Ulrich Walberer (ed.), 10 Mai 1933: Bücherverbrennung in Deutschland und die Folgen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1983), pp. 84–114.

  154.On Bennecke’s time as leader of the SA-Hochschulamt, see Peschel (ed.), Die SA in Sachsen vor der ‘Machtübernahme’, pp. 17–18.

  155.BayHStA, StK, no. 7350: Letter from the Chef SA--Ausbildungswesen, Krüger, to the Minister President of Bavaria, 14 September 1933.

  156.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: Speech of Adolf Hitler from 28 July 1922, as quoted in the Supplement of the Völkischer Beobachter, no. 63/65, Freistaat oder Sklaventum?

  157.Deinert, Die Studierenden der Universität Rostock, pp. 329–30.

  158.Karl Gengenbach was a model Nazi activist. Born into a middle-class family in Pforzheim on 9 November 1911, he joined the NSDAP at the age of eighteen, shortly after receiving his Abitur with honorable mention. He then studied law and politics (Staatswissenschaften) in Munich. Gengenbach quickly developed into one of the city’s most influential student functionaries and as such was a leading organizer of the burning of books that occurred there in May 1933. Shortly after his time in the SA-Hochschulamt came to an end in the summer of 1934, he joined the SS and its Sicherheitsdienst, the SD. From 1939 onward, Gengenbach held a leading position in the Reich Security Main Office and was an SD representative in the German-occupied Netherlands. He died in a car accident on 25 January 1944. See Volker Bendig and Jürgen Kühnert, ‘Die Münchner Bücherverbrennung vom 10 Mai 1933 und der NS-Studentenführer Karl Gengenbach’, in Christine Haug and Lothar Poethe (eds), Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte 18 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), pp. 347–64, esp. pp. 349, 358–64; Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten, pp. 88, 380–91, 511, and passim.

  159.BayHStA, StK, no. 7350: Letter from the leader of the SA University Office in Munich to the Minister Hermann Esser, 24 January 1934, and further correspondence in file.

  160.For an introduction, see Monika Marose, Unter der Tarnkappe: Felix Hartlaub: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Transit, 2005).

  161.Felix Hartlaub in a letter to his father from 29 April 1934, as quoted in Felix Hartlaub, Aus Hitlers Berlin 1934–1938, ed. Nikola Herweg and Harald Tausch (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014), p. 104. See also his letter to his father from March 1934, in Erna Krauss and G. F. Hartlaub (eds), Felix Hartlaub in seinen Briefen (Tübingen: Rainer Wunderlich Verlag, 1958), p. 134.

  162.Grüttner, Studenten im Dritten Reich, pp. 252–60.

  163.The German version, as quoted in BayHStA, MK, no. 11247, reads: ‘Wetzt die langen Messer / Auf dem Bürgersteig! / Lasst die Messer flutschen / In den Judenleib / Blut muss fließen knüppelhageldick / Wir scheißen auf die Freiheit der Judenrepublik / Kommt einst die Stunde der Vergeltung / Sind wir zu jedem Massenmord bereit // Hoch die Hohenzollern / Am Laternenpfahl / Lasst die Hunde baumeln / Bis sie runterfalln! / Blut muss fließen . . . // In der Synagoge / Hängt ein schwarzes Schwein / In die Parlamente / Schmeisst ne Handgranate rein! / Blut muss fließen . . . // Reisst die Konkubine / Aus dem Fürstenbett / Schmiert die Guillotine / Mit dem Judenfett / Blut muss fließen . . . //.’

  164.For a detailed analysis of the different variants of this song, see the excellent analysis by Michael Kohlstruck and Simone Scheffler, ‘Das “Heckerlied” und seine antisemitische Variante: Zur Geschichte und Bedeutungswandel eines Liedes’, in Michael Kohlstruck and Andreas Klärner (eds), Ausschluss und Feindschaft: Studien zu Antisemitismus und Rechtsextremismus (Berlin: Metropol, 2011), pp. 135–58.

  165.BayHStA, MK 11247: Letter from the General Vicar of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising to the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Culture, 9 June 1934; Letter from the SA-Sturmführer Springer to the Directorate of the Bavarian Academy for Agriculture and the Brewing Trade in Weihenstephan, 4 June 1934. See also Johann Neuhäusler, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz: Der Kampf des Nationalsozialismus gegen die katholische Kirche und der kirchliche Widerstand: Erster Teil (Munich: Verlag der Katholischen Kirche Bayerns, 1946), pp. 316–17.

  166.BArch Berlin, NS 23/1239: Letter from SA-Gruppenführer W. C. Meyer to SA-Brigadeführer Paul Ellerhusen, 31 May 1929. The only knowledge of the song we have from Meyer’s letter is that it contained the words ‘Und wer kein Haar am Arschloch hat, der ist noch kein Soldat’ (‘One is simply not yet a soldier without hair around one’s asshole’).

  167.BayHStA, MK 11247: Letter from the SA University Office Munich to the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Culture, 19 June 1934.

  168.Ibid.: Letter from the SA-Hochschulamt Munich to the Reichs SA-Hochschulamt, 31 August 1934.

  169.See, for example, Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 2 (1935), p. 704, and vol. 3 (1936), p. 214.

  170.Instructive in this respect is the example of the gifted jurist Ernst Forsthoff, who in the early 1930s publicly turned to National Socialism and was rewarded with professorships at the German universities of Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg in 1933 and 1935, respectively. See Florian Meinel, Der Jurist in der industriellen Gesellschaft: Ernst Forsthoff und seine Zeit (Berlin: Akademie, 2011), pp. 48–54.

  171.Christoph Cornelißen, Gerhard Ritter: Geschichtswissenschaft und Politik im 20. Jahrhundert (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2001), p. 164.

  172.Emanuel Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934), p. 4.

  173.Deinert, Die Studierenden der Universität Rostock, pp. 336–8; Matthiesen, Greifswald in Vorpommern, p. 403.

  174.Nicola Willenberg, ‘“Der Betroffene war nur Theologe und völlig unpolitisch”: Die Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät von ihrer Begründung bis in die Nachkriegszeit’, in Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Daniel Droste, and Sabine Happ (eds), Die Universität Münster im Nationalsozialismus: Kontinuitäten und Brüche zwischen 1920 und 1960, vol. 1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012), pp. 251–308, here pp. 269–70. See also Ulrich Rottschäfer, 100 Jahre Predigerseminar in Westfalen 1892–1992 (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992), pp. 102–11.
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br />   175.Willenberg, ‘“Der Betroffene war nur Theologe und völlig unpolitisch”’, pp. 270–2.

  176.Grüttner, Studenten im Dritten Reich, p. 442.

  177.Deinert, Die Studierenden der Universität Rostock, pp. 338–9. In the following year Martin Bormann decreed that from July 1938 on it was no longer acceptable for clergymen to hold leadership positions in the NSDAP and its organizations, and that they should be replaced as soon as ‘suitable replacements’ were available. GSt PK, XX. HA, Rep. 240 A 1 a–e, p. 77: Secret Decree of Martin Bormann (no. 104/38), 27 July 1938.

  178.By the late 1930s the number of students affiliated with the SA comprised only 10 per cent of the total student population. See Deinert, Die Studierenden der Universität Rostock, pp. 330–1, with further references.

  179.UAK, Zugang 244: Wehner, Report on his activities as ‘SA-Verbindungsführer’ in the winter term 1937/38.

  180.There was nevertheless no shortage of obligations for the students: Reich Labour Service, mandatory participation in state-sponsored sporting events, general military service (introduced in 1935), and, beginning in 1937, the completion of auxiliary work service in either industry or agriculture. See Deinert, Die Studierenden der Universität Rostock, p. 74, n. 48.

  181.Morsch and Ohm, Terror in der Provinz Brandenburg, p. 40.

  182.Klein, ‘SA-Terror und Bevölkerung in Wuppertal’, p. 59.

  183.Fischer, Stormtroopers, p. 111. Fischer’s chapter on ‘The SA and its Sources of Financial and Welfare Assistance’ (pp. 110–42) provides a detailed analysis of the financial situation of the SA up to 1935.

  184.Ibid., pp. 113–35.

  185.BArch Berlin, R2/11913a, vol. 1: Rechnungshof of the German Reich, ‘Bericht über die Prüfung der Vereinnahmung der Obersten SA-Führung (OSAF) vom Reichministerium des Innern im Rechnungsjahr 1933 [. . .] überwiesenen Reichsgelder’, 8 June 1934.

  186.Ibid.: Rechnungshof of the German Reich, ‘Bericht über die Prüfung der Einnahmen und Ausgaben der SA-Gruppe Berlin-Brandenburg’, 30 June 1934.

  187.Ibid.: Letter from the Rechnungshof of the German Reich to the Reich Minister of Finance, 8 August 1934.

  188.Ibid.: Letter from the Reich Treasurer Schwarz to the President of the Reich Court of Auditors, 23 July 1934.

  189.Ibid.: Letter from the Reich Treasurer Schwarz to the Reich Ministry of Finance, 8 August 1934.

  190.BArch Berlin, SA 400003178 (Personal SA File of Erich Reimann): Letter from Lutze to the Reich Treasurer of the SA (Georg Mappes), 4 November 1938.

  191.Most revealing in this context is BArch Koblenz, ZSG 158/40: Erich Bandekow, ‘Über steuerliche Korruptionsfälle von Reichsministern, Reichsleitern etc’, 2 July 1945. For a more recent overview, see Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure.

  192.BArch Koblenz, ZSG 158/40, p. 8: Bandekow, ‘Über steuerliche Korruptionsfälle’.

  193.BArch Berlin, R 43 II/1206, pp. 50–4: Correspondence between Lutze’s testamentary executor Bodo Beneke and Hans Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery; BArch Koblenz, ZSG 158/40, p. 4: Bandekow, ‘Über steuerliche Korruptionsfälle’.

  194.Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn/Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (FES), Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 228. Bandekow very likely misdated the donation in question to the year 1939.

  195.Information provided by Karl Lutze to the author on 14 October 2015.

  196.Röhm’s speech is quoted in the online edition of the diaries of Michael Kardinal von Faulhaber (1911–52); see EAM, NL Faulhaber 09263, p. 40, http://p.faulhaber-edition.de/exist/apps/faulhaber/dokument.html?collid=1933&sortby=year&doctype=bb&docidno=BB_09263_0040s.

  197.Fest, ‘Röhm’, p. 204.

  Chapter 5

  1.Thomas Mann, journal entry from 4 July 1934, in his Tagebücher 1933–1934, ed. Peter de Mendelssohn (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1977), p. 458.

  2.Whereas the English-speaking world refers to the events in question as the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, German historians usually speak of them as the ‘Röhm purge’ or the ‘Röhm affair’. All three terms are questionable. In particular, the German label ‘Röhm purge’ echoes the perspective of the regime, obscuring the fact that this event was a purge of Röhm and his followers, not a purge by them. Even ‘Purge of the SA’ is not fully correct, as the SA constituted just one group of victims on this occasion. For a more elaborate discussion, see Eleanor Hancock, ‘The Purge of the SA Reconsidered: “An Old Putschist Trick”’?, Central European History 44:4 (2011), pp. 669–83, here pp. 682–3.

  3.For thorough discussions of this problem, see Brown, ‘SA in the Radical Imagination’, pp. 248–74; Udo Grashoff, ‘Erst rot, dann braun? Überläufer von der KPD zu NS-Organisationen im Jahr 1933’, in Günther Heydemann, Jan Erik Schulte, and Francesca Weil (eds), Sachsen und der Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 215–36.

  4.BArch Berlin, NS 23/431: Circular letter from OSAF on KPD infiltrations, 8 December 1932.

  5.Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante portas: Es spricht der erste Chef der Gestapo (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1950), p. 207.

  6.Grashoff points to the fact that the 50,000 Communists who allegedly joined the SA in 1933 constituted only 1.7 per cent of the SA’s overall membership but roughly 15 per cent of the strength of the Communist Party; Grashoff, ‘Erst rot, dann braun?’, pp. 230–4.

  7.Kirstin A. Schäfer, Werner von Blomberg: Hitlers erster Feldmarschall. Eine Biographie (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006), p. 135.

  8.Hancock, ‘Purge of the SA Reconsidered’, pp. 673–8; idem, Ernst Röhm, pp. 141–51.

  9.Schäfer, Werner von Blomberg, pp. 136–7.

  10.For summaries of these developments in the spring of 1934, see Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, pp. 629–44; Evans, Third Reich in Power, pp. 20–31; Karl Martin Graß, Edgar Jung: Papenkreis und Röhm-Krise 1933/34 (Edingen: Self-Publishing, 1967), pp. 156–98; and the popular yet carefully researched and in many respects reliable book by the journalist Heinz Höhne, Mordsache Röhm: Hitlers Durchbruch zur Alleinherrschaft 1933–1934 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1984). For a contemporary analysis, see Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 1 (1934), pp. 261–71.

  11.Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD, pp. 168–89. For Heimsoth’s interest in homosexuality, see in particular his medical dissertation Hetero- und Homophilie: Eine neuorientierende An- und Einordnung der Erscheinungsbilder, der ‘Homosexualität’ und der ‘Inversion’ in Berücksichtigung der sogenannten ‘normalen Freundschaft’ auf Grund der zwei verschiedenen erotischen Anziehungsgesetze und der bisexuellen Grundeinstellung des Mannes (Dortmund: Schmidt & Andernach, 1924). Although Röhm suffered from the fact that he was forced to hide his homosexuality from the public, he became a member of Friedrich Radszuweit’s Bund für Menschenrecht, a homosexual lobby group.

  12.Andreas Dornheim, Röhms Mann fürs Ausland: Politik und Ermordung des SA-Agenten Georg Bell (Münster: Lit, 1998), pp. 117–41; Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 115–16.

  13.John Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1946 (London: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 320–32. For a critical evaluation of the arguments in question, see Schäfer, Werner von Blomberg, pp. 137–9.

  14.Röhm and his followers quickly got wind of such plans. On 16 May 1934, Röhm in a confidential letter to SA leaders claimed that ‘enemies of the SA’ were at work, but that a direct intervention against them was not possible at the moment. However, for a later settling of scores, Röhm requested all SA-Standarten to collect evidence on cases of ‘animosity towards the SA’. For the stormtroopers who received the letter, it was clear that Röhm was referring to the activities of the Reichswehr; HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Typescript of Röhm’s letter from 16 May 1934.

  15.‘The Rule of the Inferior’ was also the title of Edgar J. Jung’s magnum opus, published first in 1927 and again, in a revised and extended form, in 1930.

  16.On this group and its activities, see in particular Orth’s dissertation ‘
Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’ See also the forthcoming book by Roshan Magub, A Life Cut Short – Edgar Julius Jung (1894–1934): A Political Biography (Lake Placid, NY: Camden House). For a dated yet still impressive summary, see Graß, Edgar Jung, in particular pp. 199–236.

  17.Extracts of von Papen’s speech at Marburg on 17 June 1934 are available in English translation in Roderick Stackelberg and Sally A. Winkle (eds), The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 170–2, here p. 171.

  18.Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’, ch. 6.1.4.

  19.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Minutes of the meeting in the Ministry of the Interior, 19 June 1934. Schmidt, whose wife was Jewish, was forced to resign in November 1938 after several thousand members of the HJ and the SA publicly requested his resignation. See Horst Romeyk, Düsseldorfer Regierungspräsidenten 1918 bis 1945, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 44 (1980), pp. 237–99, here pp. 285–6. Lüninck was executed in the wake of the 20 July 1944 plot.

  20.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Confidential report of U.S. ambassador William E. Dodd on the ‘internal political situation’ in Germany from 20 June 1934.

  21.For a recent summary of the positions in the relevant literature, see Hancock, ‘Purge of the SA Reconsidered’.

  22.Kurt Gossweiler, Die Röhm-Affäre: Hintergründe – Zusammenhänge – Auswirkungen (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1983 [1963]), here p. 417.

  23.Such accusations were made, for example, by Roschmann, Erinnerungen eines kämpferischen Schwaben, pp. 37–8.

  24.Not surprisingly, Röhm’s opponents later did their best to obscure the prefabricated nature of the accusations against him and instead stressed the latter’s alleged revolutionary determination. A typical example of such a strategy was that adopted by Werner von Blomberg, who when being interrogated by the U.S. Seventh Army Interrogation Center on 24 September 1945 characterized Röhm as an ‘anarchist who strove for power. Neither did he defend a particular ideal nor did he have any precise plans for a German government. His main purpose was to obtain control of the army. For this reason, he had planned to eliminate me and some other generals, maybe even Hitler’; HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Extract of the interrogation of Werner von Blomberg, 24 September 1945.