Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  3.See Armin Nolzen’s article, ‘Organizing the People’s Community during the Second World War: The NSDAP and the Ethnic Germans in Nazi-Occupied Territories’, submitted for publication in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research on ‘Lebensraum and Volksgemeinschaft’ (expected for 2017).

  4.Ute Peltz-Dreckmann, Nationalsozialistischer Siedlungsbau: Versuch einer Analyse der die Siedlungspolitik bestimmenden Faktoren am Beispiel des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Minerva, 1978). On the SA settlements as a sub-category of the Kleinsiedlung (small-scale settlements), see Jörn Düwel and Niels Gutschow, Städtebau in Deutschland im 20 Jahrhundert: Ideen – Projekte – Akteure (Stuttgart: Teubner, 2001), pp. 96–105.

  5.‘Gesetz über die Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums’, 14 June 1933, in Reichsgesetzblatt 1933, vol. 1, p. 517.

  6.Heinz Franz, Der Mensch in der Siedlungsbewegung, university diss., Ruprecht-Karls-Universität of Heidelberg, 1937, p. 40. On the NSDAP’s strategies in rural Germany, see in particular Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik; Hempe, Ländliche Gesellschaft in der Krise; Otto-Morris, Rebellion in the Province.

  7.BArch Berlin, NS 23/222: ‘Im Kampf gegen die Landflucht: SA schafft neues Bauerntum’, NSK, Series 164, 15 July 1939, p. 1; ‘Richtlinien für die Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums’, 1 June 1935, in Gustavo Corni and Horst Gies, ‘Blut und Boden’: Rassenideologie und Agrarpolitik im Staat Hitlers (Idstein: Schulz-Kirchner, 1994), p. 121.

  8.On the German settlement movement as part of the life-reform movement, see Anne Feuchter-Schawelka, ‘Siedlungs- und Landkommunebewegung’, in Diethard Kerbs and Jürgen Reulecke (eds), Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen, 1880–1933 (Wuppertal: Hammer, 1998), pp. 227–44. On the National Socialist settlement movement, see Uwe Mai, ‘Rasse und Raum’: Agrarpolitik, Sozial- und Raumplanung im NS-Staat (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002); Corni and Gies, ‘Blut und Boden’; Roland Baier, Der deutsche Osten als soziale Frage: Eine Studie zur preußischen und deutschen Siedlungs- und Polenpolitik in den Ostprovinzen während des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik (Cologne: Böhlau, 1980).

  9.At this time earlier dissonances between the Supreme SA Command and the Reichsnährstand had been overcome. See BArch Berlin, R 43 II, no. 207, p. 118ff: Letter from the SA’s Führungsamt to Darré, 24 May 1934, as quoted in Corni and Gies, ‘Blut und Boden’, p. 121. Since 1935 the guidelines of the Reich labour minister had specified that ‘combat veterans and fighters of the national revolution’ were to be given preference in the distribution of settlement patches; Peltz-Dreckmann, Nationalsozialistischer Siedlungsbau, pp. 139–40. Consequently, we can assume that SA men prior to 1937 benefited disproportionately from the state-sponsored construction of small housing estates (Kleinsiedlungsbau).

  10.BArch Berlin, NS 23/222: ‘Sturmabteilungsmänner packen an’, Bremer Zeitung, 27 November 1939; PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, no. 41, pp. 59–77, here p. 70: ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA hinsichtlich ihrer Beteiligung bei der Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums’. This document is also included in BArch Berlin, NS 23/688.

  11.SA-Oberführer Holtz, ‘SA-Dankopfersiedlung “Glaubensstatt”’, Die SA 2:17 (1941), pp. 14–16.

  12.On the close cooperation between the SA and the German shooting associations, see Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, as well as the previous chapter.

  13.Barbara Wolf, ‘Wohnungs- und Siedlungsbau’, in Michael Cramer-Fürtig and Bernhard Gotto (eds), ‘Machtergreifung’ in Augsburg: Anfänge der NS-Diktatur 1933–1937 (Augsburg: Wißner, 2008), pp. 179–88 (quotation on p. 180).

  14.BArch Berlin, NS 23/222: ‘Zinsfrei und kapitallos’, NSK, Series 77, 5 April 1937, p. 1.

  15.Ibid., p. 2.

  16.Holtz, ‘SA-Dankopfersiedlung “Glaubensstatt”’, p. 14.

  17.Jan (Johannes) G. Smit, Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums: Innere Kolonisation im Dritten Reich: Fallstudien in Schleswig-Holstein (Kassel: Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek, 1983), p. 184.

  18.Wolfram Pyta, ‘“Menschenökonomie”: Das Ineinandergreifen von ländlicher Sozialraumgestaltung und rassenbiologischer Bevölkerungspolitik im NS-Staat’, Historische Zeitschrift 273:1 (2001), pp. 31–94, here p. 39; Franz, Der Mensch in der Siedlungsbewegung, p. 30; Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg, pp. 11–12.

  19.Smit, Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums, p. 186.

  20.Klaus Kiran Patel, ‘The Paradox of Planning: German Agricultural Policy in a European Perspective, 1920s to 1970s’, Past and Present 212:1 (2011), pp. 239–69, here p. 245.

  21.On the actual mood of the German peasants at the end of the 1930s, see Timothy W. Mason, Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft: Dokumente und Materialien 1936–1939 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1975), pp. 865–7; J. E. Farquharson, ‘The Agrarian Policy of National Socialist Germany’, in Robert G. Moeller (ed.), Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), pp. 233–59.

  22.R. Walther Darré, ‘Bauern und Soldaten’, in Der SA-Führer 8 (1938), reprinted in R. Walther Darré, Um Blut und Boden: Reden und Aufsätze (Munich: Eher, 1942), pp. 158–61.

  23.On the importance of ‘male comradeship’ in the National Socialist movement as well in the Third Reich, see Thomas Kühne, Belonging and Genocide: Hitler’s Community, 1918–1945 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010).

  24.Smit, Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums, p. 185. Darré in October 1939 made a very similar argument; see Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie (Munich: Siedler, 2008), p. 450.

  25.Historical research so far has mentioned Kasche only with regard to his role as German envoy in Croatia (1941–5). See most recently Alexander Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs: Massengewalt der Ustaša gegen Serben, Juden und Roma in Kroatien 1941–1945 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013).

  26.On Kasche’s biography, see his detailed responses while interned to questions by the Yugoslav authorities on 7 March 1947 in Croatian State Archives, Zagreb (HDA), HR-HDR-1561, Sg 013.0.47 (Slavko Kvaternik), III DIO, pp. 280–1. See also BArch Berlin, R 9354/601: ‘Der deutsche Gesandte in Agram/Kroatien: SA-Obergruppenführer Kasche’, Illustrierter Beobachter, 14 August 1941.

  27.Prestien, ‘Die SA bei der Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums’, Die SA 2:17 (1941), pp. 10–13, here p. 11.

  28.BArch Berlin, NS 23/222: ‘Zinsfrei und kapitallos’, NSK, Series 77, 5 April 1937, p. 1.

  29.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: Siegfried Kasche, ‘Richtlinien für die Beteiligung der SA bei der Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums’, 8 September 1938. See also Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, pp. 59–60.

  30.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: ‘Merkblatt betreffend den Erwerb des Neubauernscheins’ (1938).

  31.Ibid.: Siegfried Kasche, ‘Besondere Anordnung Nr. 1’, 4 November 1940.

  32.Kasche, ‘Richtlinien für die Beteiligung der SA’.

  33.Alexander Prusin, ‘“Make This Land German Again!” The Nazi Population Policies in the Wartheland, 1939–1941’, in Aleksandr Dyukov and Olesya Orlenko (eds), Divided Eastern Europe: Border and Population Transfer, 1938–1947 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), pp. 74–91, here pp. 75–7; Smit, Neubildung deutschen Bauerntums, pp. 30–60.

  34.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, no. 34: SA-Oberführer Udo von Alvensleben, ‘Die Bedeutung der Grenzlandsiedlung: Vortrag vor den Neubauernsiedlungsreferenten und der Obersten SA Führung am 12 Mai 1939 in Schlochau’. Alvensleben, born on 4 May 1895, was an East Elbian aristocrat who was attracted to National Socialism already prior to 1933. After the First World War he initially joined the Stahlhelm, but in September 1930 he became a member of the NSDAP and soon was promoted to leader of the local SA-Standarte. In 1933 he was appointed head of the district authority in Schlochau/Pomerania and in the following years tried to reconcile local customs and religious traditions with the National Socialist ideology. On his biography and political views, see the documents in his SA personal file in BArch Berlin, SA 4000000027 (Alvensleben, Udo von).

  35.Christoph D
ieckmann, ‘Plan und Praxis: Deutsche Siedlungspolitik im besetzten Litauen 1941–1944’, in Wissenschaft – Planung – Vertreibung, ed. Heinemann and Wagner, pp. 93–118, here p. 94.

  36.Prusin, ‘“Make This Land German Again!”’ pp. 75–6. Among the important literature on the influence of colonial fantasies and experiences on Nazi rule, see Patrick Bernhard, ‘Hitler’s Africa in the East: Italian Colonialism as a Model for German Planning in Eastern Europe’, Journal of Contemporary History 51:1 (2016), pp. 61–90; Benjamin Madley, ‘From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe’, European History Quarterly 35:3 (2005), pp. 429–64; Jürgen Zimmerer, ‘Die Geburt des “Ostlandes” aus dem Geist des Kolonialismus: Die nationalsozialistische Eroberungs- und Beherrschungspolitik in (post-)kolonialer Perspektive’, Sozial.Geschichte 19:1 (2004), pp. 10–43.

  37.Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, pp. 62–4.

  38.Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, pp. 449–51; Robert L. Koehl, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945: A History of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 49–70.

  39.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: Kasche, ‘Schreiben betr. der Beteiligung der SA’.

  40.In contrast to the situation in Upper Silesia, no detailed planning with regard to rural settlements existed for the Warthegau and Danzig district in late 1939.

  41.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: SA-Obersturmbannführer Prestin, Summary of all important questions on the settlement of new peasants (Neubauernsiedlung) in the former Polish territories, 8 December 1939.

  42.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: Circular of the leader of SA-Gruppe Hessen, 4 December 1939.

  43.Kasche, Letter on the SA’s contribution to the new formation of German peasantry.

  44.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: Siegfried Kasche, ‘Besondere Anordnung’, 20 January 1941; Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, p. 73. Remarkably, there is no mention of Kasche in the relevant book by Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliarie. From the multitude of studies on the ethnic Germans and their experiences, see in particular Doris L. Bergen, ‘The “Volksdeutschen” of Eastern Europe, World War II and the Holocaust: Constructed Ethnicity, Real Genocide’, in Keith Bullivant et al. (eds), Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999), pp. 70–93; idem, ‘Die Volksdeutschen in German Propaganda’, German Studies Review 31:3 (2008), pp. 447–70.

  45.See Kasche’s personal papers, deposited in a Berlin safe-deposit locker in the final months of the war and today stored in the Political Archive of the German Foreign Ministry, as well as the extensive files on SA settlement policies in the German Federal Archives.

  46.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: OSAF (Jüttner), Urgent letter [Schnellbrief] on the set-up of the SA in the German territories of the former Polish state, 30 October 1939.

  47.Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, pp. 61 and 75.

  48.Ibid., p. 75.

  49.BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Remarks on the speech of the SA Reich Treasurer, 13 September 1940.

  50.Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, p. 75. Błonie Castle was the birthplace of the later commander of the Polish army in the Soviet Union, Władysław Anders. On Anders, see Joanna Pyłat et al. (eds), General Władysław Anders: Soldier and Leader of the Free Poles in Exile (London: Polish University Abroad, 2008).

  51.BArch Berlin, SA 4000001265 (Hacker, Heinrich): Letter from Hacker to Viktor Lutze, 25 September 1941; BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Note from Siegele (Oberführer) on a meeting with SA-Obergruppenführer Litzmann, Berlin, 9 October 1940. According to Hacker, the Wehrmacht and the SS had also expressed a vivid interest in Freihufen, ‘one of the most profitable country estates in the whole Warthegau’.

  52.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: Siegfried Kasche, ‘Besondere Anordnung Nr. 3’, 8 January 1941.

  53.Ibid.: Beauftragter des Stabschefs für die Beteiligung der SA bei der Neubauernsiedlung, Merkblatt 1, 2 January 1940.

  54.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: ‘Zahlenmäßige Aufstellung über die Neubauernbewerber in den Gruppen nach dem Stand vom 20. Juni 1940’.

  55.Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, p. 67.

  56.Ibid., p. 68.

  57.On Kasche’s tainted relations with Himmler, see Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, Ein General im Zwielicht: Die Erinnerungen Edmund Glaises von Horstenau. Bevollmächtigter General in Kroatien und Zeuge des Untergangs des Tausendjährigen Reiches, ed. Peter Broucek, vol. 3 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1988), pp. 188–9.

  58.Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, p. 68.

  59.Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, ‘Gewalt als Grundlage nationalsozialistischer Stadt- und Landschaftsplanung in den “eingegliederten Ostgebieten”’, in Der ‘Generalplan Ost’, ed. Rössler and Schleiermacher, pp. 328–38, here p. 330.

  60.See Heinemann, ‘Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut’; and the ongoing project on the SS by Jan Erik Schulte.

  61.Siegfried Kasche, ‘Besondere Anordnung Nr. 3’, 8 January 1941. For a thorough discussion of the general problem of reconciling the idea of a Volksgemeinschaft with the elitist self-understanding of the German nobility, see Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer, pp. 531–52. On those members of the German gentry who occupied leadership positions in the SA prior to 1934, see Malinowski and Reichardt, ‘Die Reihen fest geschlossen?’, pp. 146–9.

  62.Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt (Cotta: Stuttgart, 1981 [1932]), p. 246.

  63.Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, pp. 401–11, 427–32.

  64.On the German conduct of war, which often did not respect the standards of international law, see Wolf, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität, pp. 76–90.

  65.Christopher R. Browning, ‘Unterstaatssekretaer Martin Luther and the Ribbentrop Foreign Office’,  Journal of Contemporary History 12:2 (1977), pp. 313–44. For Rosenberg’s good relations with SA leaders, see Piper, Rosenberg, p. 471; Matthäus and Bajohr, Alfred Rosenberg, pp. 181–2, 237.

  66.Siegfried Kasche, ‘Besondere Anordnung Nr. 3’, 8 January 1941.

  67.This shows a remarkable parallel to the settlement praxis of former members of the Wehrmacht in the newly conquered European east, with actual settlements there likewise remaining the exception. The majority of the ‘Wehrbauern to be’ was supposed to be provided with land only after the final military victory. Nevertheless, many members of the military behaved as colonizers during the war. For details, see Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg, pp. 25–48.

  68.Max Otto Luyken was born on 16 October 1885 in Wesel in the Lower Rhine province. A professional soldier from 1905 until 1920, he became active with the Organization Escherich in Saxony and in the Black Reichswehr in the early 1920s before entering the agriculture business in 1926. In 1929, Luyken joined the NSDAP. He subsequently led the SA in the Gau Essen and then the SA-Gruppe Niederrhein before being transferred to the SA-Gruppe Kurpfalz in the autumn of 1934. Starting in early 1937 he was the director of the SA’s Reich Leadership School in Munich and Inspekteur der Obersten SA-Führung für das Erziehungs- und Ausbildungswesen. From September 1939 onward, Luyken served in the Wehrmacht with the military rank of a major. He was released from military service in late 1940 in order to help establish SA units in Alsace and Lorraine. On Luyken’s biography, see BArch Berlin, VBS 1/1070053842 (Luyken, Max); BArch Berlin, SA 4000002767 (Luyken, Max); Joachim Lilla, ‘Luyken, Max’, in Joachim Lilla, Staatsminister, leitende Verwaltungsbeamte und (NS-)Funktionsträger in Bayern 1918 bis 1945, http://verwaltungshandbuch.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/luyken-max.

  69.Karl Rothmann, ‘Das Reich der Zukunft – ein Bauernreich: Was der SA-Mann über die Neubauernsiedlung wissen muß’, in SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 22/23 (March/April 1942), pp. 2–3.

  70.BArch Berlin, NS 23/688: ‘Führungsbefehl der Obersten SA-Führung, Bestandsübersicht über Neubauernbewerber’, 20
February 1943.

  71.Ibid.: Circular of the leader of the SA-Gruppe Hessen on ‘Neubauerntum. Mitarbeit in der Propaganda’, 1 April 1942.

  72.Ibid.: ‘Führungsbefehl der Obersten SA-Führung’, 15 August 1942.

  73.Ibid.: Der Oberste SA-Führer, ‘Schnellbrief betr. Stillegung der Inspektion für Neubauerntum und Volkstumspflege’, 16 February 1943. At around the same time Lutze glumly noted in his diary: ‘Some persons and institutions of the NSDAP no longer endure the word SA’; FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 302.

  74.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 69: Personal Notes of the Ambassador Adolf-Heinz Beckerle I, 4 October 1941; ‘Memorandum of a meeting of Hitler, Rosenberg, Göring and Field Marshal Keitel in the Führer’s Headquarters on 16 July 1941’, in U.S. Government Printing Office (ed.), Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945: Series D (1937–1945), vol. 13: The War Years, June 23–December 11, 1941 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954), pp. 149–56, here p. 154; Alex J. Kay, Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940–1941 (New York und Oxford: Berghahn, 2006), p. 182; Götz Aly et al., Biedermann und Schreibtischtäter: Materialien zur deutschen Täter-Biographie (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1987), p. 137.