Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  75.Kay, Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder, p. 85.

  76.Kasche was by no means the only SA leader who was considered for or appointed to prominent positions in the German-occupied east. SA-Obergruppenführer (General) Karl-Siegmund Litzmann was made General Commissioner for Estonia in late 1941, and SA-Obergruppenführer Heinrich Schoene, the longtime SA leader in Schleswig-Holstein, was appointed General Commissioner for Volhynia-Podolia. Furthermore, no fewer than five SA generals were sent as German envoys to south-eastern Europe between 1940 and 1941 – next to Kasche these were Manfred von Killinger, Gottfried von Jagow, Hanns Elard Ludin, and Adolf-Heinz Beckerle. For details on these SA diplomats, see chapter 9.

  77.For a biographical sketch of Deuchler, see Hans-Peter de Lorent, ‘Gustaf Adolf Deuchler, Ordinarius in SA-Uniform’, HLZ: Zeitschrift der GEW Hamburg, 12 (2007), pp. 38–42 (part 1) and 3–4 (2008), pp. 46–50 (part 2).

  78.IfZ Archive, ED 149, vol. 2, pp. 10–13: Gustaf Deuchler, ‘Denkschrift-Entwurf: Über die Notwendigkeit und die Aufgabe eines Kolonialsturmes (K.-Sturmes)’. A few weeks later Deuchler even fantasized about a new Kolonialpädagogisches Institut, literally the ‘Institute for Colonial Pedagogy’, that was allegedly planned to be established at Hamburg University; IfZ Archive, ED 149, vol. 2, pp. 14–15: Letter from Gustaf Deuchler to Siegfried Kasche, 26 July 1941.

  79.‘Planungsgrundlagen der SS für den Aufbau der Ostgebiete (April–Mai 1940)’, in Madajczyk (ed.), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan, pp. 3–14, here p. 5.

  80.Ibid., pp. 3–5.

  81.Ibid., pp. 6–7.

  82.Note from Alexander Dolezalek from the planning department of the SS-Ansiedlungsstab Litzmannstadt on the Generalsiedlungsplan, 19 August 1941, in Madajczyk (ed.), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan, pp. 19–20, here p. 19; Prusin, ‘“Make This Land German Again!”’; Birthe Kundrus, ‘Regime der Differenz: Volkstumspolitische Inklusionen und Exklusionen im Warthegau und im Generalgouvernement 1939–1944’, in Bajohr and Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft, pp. 105–23. On the limited excitement for the ‘German east’, see Mai, ‘Rasse und Raum’, pp. 319–31.

  83.Mai, ‘Rasse und Raum’, p. 320.

  84.Geraldine von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel, ‘Die niederländische Ostkolonisation (1941–1944)’, in Friso Wielenga and Loek Geeraedts (eds), Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Niederlande Studien, vol. 22 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2011), pp. 81–101 (quotation p. 89).

  85.See Elizabeth Harvey, Women and the Nazi East: Agents and Witnesses of Germanisation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries; Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, Soldaten: Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2011).

  86.Patel, ‘The Paradox of Planning’, p. 245; Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg, p. 8.

  87.For details, see Pyta, ‘Menschenökonomie’, pp. 46–52. In contrast to Pyta, who emphasizes that this plan was ready for implementation by 1943, I would argue that by then there was no longer any chance of pushing such measures through because of the growing discontent on the ‘home front’. As early as November 1941 the party-chancellery of the NSDAP informed Nazi functionaries that the ‘resettlement’ of peasants from the Old Reich would only take place after the war. See GSt PK, XX. HA, Rep. 240 B 8 a–e, pp. 105–6: Gauleitung Ostpreußen, Supplement to the information on ‘Settlement of the new territories in the East’, November 1941.

  88.Sven Oliver Müller, ‘Nationalismus in der deutschen Kriegsgesellschaft’, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt and Jörg Echternkamp (eds), Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945: Zweiter Halbband: Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung (Munich: DVA, 2005), pp. 9–92, here pp. 67–9; Harvey, Women and the Nazi East; Helmut Heiber, ‘Dokumentation: Der Generalplan Ost’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 6:3 (1958), pp. 281–325, here pp. 288–9; Blackbourn, Die Eroberung der Natur, pp. 320–4.

  89.Herbert Backe, ‘Die Neubildung des deutschen Bauerntums im eroberten Europa’, NS-Landpost, 7 July 1942, as quoted in Corni and Gies, ‘Blut und Boden’, p. 207.

  90.Karl Rothmann, ‘Das Reich der Zukunft – ein Bauernreich: Was der SA-Mann über die Neubauernsiedlung wissen muß’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, 22/23 (March/April 1942), pp. 2–3.

  91.Michael Wildt, ‘The Individual and the Community: New Research on the History of National Socialism’ (Lecture at the German Historical Institute, London, 25 May 2014).

  92.Both terms are used in Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, p. 72.

  93.Ibid., p. 77.

  94.Reinhart Koselleck, ‘“Erfahrungsraum” und “Erwartungshorizont” – zwei historische Kategorien’, in Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), pp. 349–75.

  95.Kasche, ‘Bericht über die Arbeiten in der SA’, p. 72.

  96.See the detailed analysis in the previous chapter.

  97.Barbara Wolf, ‘Wohnungs- und Siedlungsbau’, in ‘Machtergreifung’ in Augsburg, ed. Cramer-Fürtig and Gotto, pp. 179–88, here p. 180.

  98.BArch Berlin, NS 23/501, pp. 114–20: Typescript ‘Die Wehrschützenbereitschaft im Gen[eral]-Gouvernement’, probably from October 1942, here p. 120.

  99.Ibid.: ‘Die SA als Vorbild im Generalgouvernement’, Krakauer Zeitung, 21 April 1942; ‘Die Aufstellung der SA-Einheit General-Gouvernement’ (Typescript).

  100.For details, see Bergien, Die bellizistische Republik, pp. 82–7, 107–20, as well as above, introduction.

  101.Christoph Rass, ‘“Volksgemeinschaft” und “Wehrgemeinschaft”’, in ‘Volksgemeinschaft als soziale Praxis’, ed. von Reeken and Thießen, pp. 309–22.

  Chapter 8

  1.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Wilhelm Schepmann, ‘Weltanschauliche Ausrichtung für den totalen Einsatz’ (topic 3: ‘Jeder SA-Mann ein fanatischer Träger des äußersten und totalen Widerstandswillens’), 6 December 1944.

  2.The number of studies that have hitherto dealt with such aspects of the SA’s history is very limited. See Campbell, ‘SA after the Röhm Purge’; Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 237–45; Jamin, ‘Zur Rolle der SA im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, pp. 353–8; Müller, ‘Wilhelm Schepmann’; Müller/Reiner Zilkenat, ‘. . . der Kampf wird über unserem Leben stehe [sic!], solange wir atmen!’ Einleitung, in idem (eds), Bürgerkriegsarmee, pp. 21–4.

  3.Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 198; Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika, pp. 634–5.

  4.Wilhelm Rehm, ‘Willensträger deutscher Wehrgemeinschaft!’, in SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 13 (May 1941). The same argument, phrased slightly differently, is also found in Wilhelm Rehm, ‘Zwei Jahre Kriegsbewährung der SA’, in SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 16/17 (September/October 1941). On Rehm’s importance to the DC, see Helmut Baier, Die Deutschen Christen Bayerns im Rahmen des bayerischen Kirchenkampfes (Nürnberg: Selbstverlag des Vereins für bayerische Kirchengeschichte, 1968). For a short biographical sketch of Rehm, see Nora Andrea Schulze (ed.), Verantwortung für die Kirche: Stenographische Aufzeichnungen und Mitschriften von Landesbischof Hans Meiser 1933–1955, vol. 3: 1937 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), p. 1,069.

  5.For biographical information about Schepmann, see IfZ Archive, ED 467, vol. 51, pp. 1–24: Testimony of Wilhelm Schepmann in the Landgerichtsgefängnis Lüneburg, 6 May 1949; Müller, ‘Wilhelm Schepmann’.

  6.BArch Berlin, VBS 264, no. 4001006602 (Sponholz, Hans): ‘Programm der 2: Arbeitstagung der Dienststelle Berlin der Obersten SA-Führung vom 4–6 März 1944 in Posen’.

  7.Ibid.: ‘Merkblatt für die Tagungsteilnehmer’, Posen, 3 March 1944.

  8.On the SA Sports Badge, which was issued by the SA’s Amt für Ausbildungswesen under SA-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, see Eisenberg, ‘English sports’ und deutsche Bürger, pp. 390–1; Bahro, Der SS-Sport, pp. 96–9.


  9.In a formal sense the men in the Wehrmannschaften did not automatically become members of the SA, even if the stormtroopers hoped to recruit among them. Consequently, the SA-Wehrmannschaften did not dress in the traditional Nazi brown shirt but trained in civil clothes. See Max Jüttner, ‘SA an allen Fronten’, Die SA 2:2 (1941) (10 January), pp. 9–10.

  10.BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Letter from OSAF, Georg Mappes, to the Oberkommando des Heeres on the budget for the Wehrmannschaften (classified), 18 July 1939.

  11.Ibid.: Note from SA-Oberführer Siegele on a meeting with the Oberkommando des Herres on 26 October 1939.

  12.‘Täglich wächst Deutschlands Wehrkraft’, in Die SA 1:25 (1940) (12 July).

  13.Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 88–9. Because of war-related censorship, the only statistics available are those compiled and published by the OSAF. A validation of these figures is therefore difficult.

  14.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: Max Luyken, ‘Bericht über den 6. Sonderlehrgang in Schliersee’.

  15.The best account of the creation and consequences of this organizational structure is still Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: R. v. Decker’s Verlag, 1969), pp. 226–32. See also Rudolf Absolon, Die Wehrmacht im Dritten Reich, Band IV: 5 Februar 1938 bis 31 August 1939 (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1979), p. 35.

  16.For an extract of this speech, see Volker Dahm et al. (eds), Die tödliche Utopie. Bilder, Texte, Dokumente, Daten zum Dritten Reich (Munich: IfZ, 2008), p. 272.

  17.The Nationalsozialistische Parteikorrespondenz (NSK) even reported that von Brauchitsch had advanced these developments on his own initiative; Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, p. 227.

  18.Otto Herzog, born 30 October 1900 in Zeiskam in the Palatinate, had received military training in Fürstenfeldbruck in 1917. After the war, he joined the Freikorps Epp and later became a member of the Reichswehr and the Reichskriegsflagge. Herzog participated and was severely wounded in the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919. Later, in 1923, he took part in the Hitler Purge. He joined the NSDAP and the SA in June 1926 and was promoted to the leader of the SA-Brigade Weser-Ems in November 1930, to the leader of the SA-Gruppe Nordsee in August 1933, and to the leader of the SA-Gruppe Schlesien in July 1934. On Herzog’s biography, see Werner Vahlenkamp, ‘Herzog, Otto’, in Hans Friedl (ed.), Biographisches Handbuch zur Geschichte des Landes Oldenburg (Oldenburg: Isensee, 1992), pp. 308–9; for his close relationship with Lutze, see in particular Herzog’s letter to Lutze from 15 July 1932, in BArch Berlin, SA 4000001586 (Herzog, Werner).

  19.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 125–6.

  20.Ibid., p. 126.

  21.Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, p. 229; FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 126–7. Georg von Neufville, born 27 October 1883, descended from one of the most distinguished families of Frankfurt am Main. A member of the General Staff in the First World War, he subsequently led a Freikorps unit and joined the Stahlhelm before becoming a member of the NSDAP on 1 May 1933. A protégé of Reichenau, Neufville was initially regarded by the SA with extreme suspicion, as a representative of the old elite who had switched sides for personal benefit just in time. For biographical details, see his SA file in BArch Berlin, SA 400002962 (Neufville, Georg von); as well as Tobias Picard, ‘Neufville, Familie de’, in Wolfgang Klötzer (ed.), Frankfurter Biographie: Personengeschichtliches Lexikon, vol. 2: M–Z (Veröffentlichungen der Frankfurter Historischen Kommission 19/2) (Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, 1996), pp. 94–6.

  22.Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat, p. 231.

  23.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Letter from SA-Gruppenführer Lehmann to OSAF Dienststelle Schrifttum, undated (probably spring 1941). In September 1943 the SA claimed that more than 75 per cent of its membership was serving in the Wehrmacht; see BArch Berlin, NS 23/518: NSDAP ‘Aufklärungs- und Redner-Informationsmaterial on “Feldherrnhalle”’, September 1943.

  24.SA-Standartenführer Speer, ‘Unsere größere Pflicht!’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, 35/36 (September/October 1943).

  25.BArch Berlin, SA 400002962 (Neufville, Georg von): ‘Oberst v. Neufville gefallen’, Fränkische Tageszeitung, 24 November 1941.

  26.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Letter from Max Jüttner to SA-Obergruppenführer Mappes, 29 April 1941.

  27.BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Brigadeführer Kömpf, judge at the Oberste SA-Gericht, on ‘Aufklärungsdienst der SA’ (classified), 3 October 1941.

  28.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: ‘Der Einsatz der SA im Kriege’.

  29.As we are dealing here with up to a million men with different backgrounds, experiences of socialization, and ambitions, it is impossible to generalize about such issues before detailed empirical investigations are available. Further, it is beyond the scope of this study to provide a clear and representative picture that would do justice to this very large group. On the basis of the few existing case studies and my own archival findings, it is, however, possible to come to conclusions that are more than just tentative. These conclusions can be considered ‘fragments floating out of a theoretical whole’, to borrow a formulation of Raul Hilberg, thus allowing the discernment of contours and insights into a wider phenomenon that is theoretically imaginable even while empirically not (yet) fully accessible. See Raul Hilberg, ‘Review of Entscheidungsjahr 1932: Zur Judenfrage in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik’, American Historical Review 72:4 (1967), pp. 1,425–6, here p. 1,426.

  30.Christoph Rass, ‘Menschenmaterial’: Deutsche Soldaten an der Ostfront: Innenansichten einer Infanteriedivision 1939–1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003), pp. 122–3.

  31.Ibid., pp. 124–5.

  32.Ibid., pp. 125–6, provides a similar conclusion.

  33.For details, see also ‘Verein zur militärhistorischen Forschung e.V.’, http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/Infanteriedivisionen/253ID.htm.

  34.For detailed insight into the confusion of many SA generals in reaction to the decree of 19 January 1939, see BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: Max Luyken, ‘Bericht über den 6. Sonderlehrgang in Schliersee’.

  35.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 35: SA-Oberführer Moock, Report, 15 September 1939. On the glorification of this ‘front-line experience’ since the late 1920s, see Matthias Schöning, Versprengte Gemeinschaft: Kriegsroman und intellektuelle Mobilmachung in Deutschland 1914–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009); Sprenger, Landsknechte auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich?

  36.A characteristic text for the ideological and historical worldview of the stormtroopers in the early 1940s can be found in BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: Obersturmführer Karl Bauer, ‘Menschen und Mächte deutscher Geschichte: Eine Rede zur Weihnachtsfeier des SA-Sturmes 21/16 L’, 20 December 1941.

  37.See, for example, BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: Letter from Viktor Hölscher to Hans Sponholz at OSAF, 15 June 1942. For a broader discussion, see Hensch, ‘Wir aber sind mitten im Kampf aufgewachsen’.

  38.GSt PK, XX. HA Rep. 240 B 8 b, no. 21, pp. 88–91: ‘Förderungsbestimmungen für Politische Leiter und Gliederungsführer’; RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 1212, Opis 2, no. 68: ‘Ausbildung ungedienter SA-Führer und SA-Unterführer durch das Heer’, 17 March 1939. I am grateful to Yves Müller for pointing me to the latter document.

  39.Ibid.

  40.Konrad H. Jarausch and Klaus Jochen Arnold (eds), ‘Das stille Sterben . . .’: Feldpostbriefe von Konrad Jarausch aus Polen und Rußland, 1939–1942 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008), p. 187 (diary entry from 7 March 1940).

  41.Officially, von Brauchitsch in January 1940 ordered that previous service in the SA be registered in the military service record. See GSt PK, XX. HA Rep. 240 B 8 b, no. 21, pp. 88–91: ‘Förderungsbestimmungen für Politische Leiter und Gliederungsführer’.

  42.For details, see SA-Obersturmbannführer Jaeger, ‘Der Einsatz der Danziger SA’, Danziger Vorposten, 5 September 1940; ‘So kämpften Danzig’s Soldaten�
��, Danziger Vorposten, 19 September 1943. I am grateful to Jan Daniluk for kindly providing me with copies of these articles.

  43.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: ‘Der Einsatz der SA im Kriege’.

  44.The figure is taken from Sponholz, Danzig – deine SA!, p. 5.

  45.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: ‘Der Einsatz der SA im Kriege’.

  46.‘Tagesbericht über den 7./8. September 1939 (nachts)’, in Stephan Lehnstaedt and Jochen Böhler (eds), Die Berichte der Einsatzgruppen aus Polen 1939: Vollständige Edition (Berlin: Metropol, 2013), pp. 62–4, here p. 64.

  47.As one of his first actions, Schröder appointed Ulrich Uhle, since 1935 the Gauleiter in Posen, as the Führer of the organization of the ethnic German formations; Lehnstaedt and Böhler, Die Berichte der Einsatzgruppen aus Polen, p. 127. This suggests that the work of registering the Germans of occupied Poland was carried out more by the SS than by the SA, not least because the SA was initially prohibited from establishing a proper infrastructure in the region.

  48.Jochen Böhler, Der Überfall: Deutschlands Krieg gegen Polen, 2nd edn (Frankfurt: Eichborn, 2009), pp. 137–40.

  49.See BArch Berlin, NS 23/238: ‘Stabschef der SA Lutze in Pressburg’, Grenzbote: Deutsches Tagblatt für die Karpathenländer, 69. Jg., no. 286; BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: ‘Der Einsatz der SA im Kriege’; Max Jüttner, ‘SA an allen Fronten’, in Die SA 1:2 (1940) (9 March). On Leo Bendak, see Luh, Der Deutsche Turnverband in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik, p. 432. On stormtroopers as concentration camp guards, see the IMT’s examination of Max Jüttner on 14 August 1946 (morning session), http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/08-14-46.asp.

  50.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: ‘Der Einsatz der SA im Kriege’.

  51.Georg Wagner, Sudeten SA in Polen: Ein Bildbericht vom Einsatz sudetendeutscher SA-Männer im polnischen Feldzug (Karlsbad and Leipzig: Adam Kraft Verlag, 1940).

  52.SA--Gruppenführer May, ‘Preface’, in Wagner, Sudeten SA in Polen, unpaginated.

  53.The literature on this region is sparse, particularly for the interwar years. On the German minority there, see Nikolaus G. Kozauer, Die Karpaten-Ukraine zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschen Bevölkerung (Esslingen: Langer, 1979).