It Cannot be Stormed

by Ernst von Salomon

  They drove on. Whenever a house appeared on the roadside, whenever they encountered a vehicle, the leaflets fluttered down; not a soul passed without receiving his sheet of paper. A village emerged, spreading out peacefully between the wide fields, which, fringed by the dark outlines of the trees, caught the light of the sun in green and gold patches. Smoke rose in thin spirals above the gleaming white walls of the houses and the red roofs. The picture of this landscape and this village roused in Ive the same feeling of ashamed irritation with which the sight of certain kinds of trashy art affected him. Am I so urbanised already?, he thought, sniffing up the hot fumes of petrol, while the driver cursed the roughness of the village street. In the lorry they were singing the S.A. March; hens fluttered cackling across the road; curious faces peeped through the clear glass of the low, flower-fringed windows. The lorry drove slowly along the main street, and stopped in the square between the church and the War Memorial. The S.A. men lined up. From the church came the sound of the organ and the choir. Ive walked slowly round the War Memorial. It was a large, square sandstone pillar surmounted by an eagle with half-spread wings; on three sides of the pillar were the names of the fallen. Ive counted the names, then turned to look at the village. Not a house could have been spared. Yet in the frame on the door of the parish clerk’s house were posted four conscription notices. The church doors opened and the villagers poured out in a black swarm. They started at first at the sight of the brown-shirted men; then slowly passed on. Hinnerk waited a little longer; then the group formed up in threes and, at the word of command, marched back along the main street, singing, the flag at their head. In even ranks, their hands on their holsters, the men marched, Hinnerk at their side. If he held back a bit to inspect the line and the leader, he kept in step, marking time as prescribed in the Prussian Infantry Instructions for a sergeant. ‘Emil is right,’ said the van-driver to Ive, ‘he is certainly not a good Nazi, but he is a good leader.’

  Ive followed the procession. When they came to the last house in the village, the column, surrounded by a crowd of children, came to a halt; the men broke the line and retraced their steps, distributing leaflets from house to house and selling ‘bricks,’ little square tickets printed with the words: ‘A brick for the S.A.’ at 30 pfennigs each.’

  All the villagers were at their cottage doors; looking silently and distrustfully past the brown troop, but they took the leaflets, reading them carefully and then folding them up. Once more the lorry with its singing load rattled down the street, saluting every group of villagers with a resounding ‘Heil,’ and here and there they even received a salute in return, They drove about the countryside, between woods and fields, methodically visiting and working each village. Out of five cars they met on the way, the occupants of three responded to their ‘Heil.’ Whereupon up flew the arms of the S.A. men in salute, and for a few seconds the soldiers became party-men, and again Ive experienced, as before at the sight of the peaceful landscape, the faint feeling of uncomfortable shame. The men sang themselves hoarse; they repeated the same songs again and again, striking up as soon as they sighted the first houses of a village. They were the old melodies, but the words were new. They had been for Kaiser Wilhelm in the war; what matter now if they were for Karl Liebknecht or for Adolf Hitler—the words rolled out just as well. At midday the column stopped at a large agricultural village. The inn was filled with the brown uniforms. In one corner the farmers sat crowded together over their glasses, a silent fortress in the midst of the hubbub that suddenly filled the bar. The student took the opportunity of explaining the aims of the Movement to the farmers. They listened to him quietly, but it was impossible to guess their reactions from their faces. Ive was rather pleased. Farmers, he thought to himself, farmers.

  Ive sat down in the sun outside the inn. The square stretched before him, wide and empty. From the open windows he could hear the hum of voices. He lifted his nose to snuff up the warm smell of a dung-heap, he looked with concentration at a pig wallowing in a dark iridescent puddle. Fourteen stones live weight, he calculated, seventy marks, delivered free from the farm after seven months, fattening. In the shop, he thought, a pound of pork costs ninety pfennigs. The difference is swallowed up by the middlemen.

  The student was standing at the window with a hunk of black bread in his hand.

  ‘Subject, “Middlemen”!’ Ive called out to him. The student laughed and began straightaway:

  ‘The Jewish middlemen.’ Ive heard and smiled. He too had written about the Jewish middlemen in The Peasant. He had got the expression from the farmers and the farmers took it up from him. Until he discovered one day that in the Nordmark there were no Jewish middlemen. Ive would have liked to see the Jewish cattle merchant who could have got the better of old Reimann.

  ‘International financiers. . .’ the penetrating voice of the student, trained in turbulent meetings, reached his ear. He’s lost no time in collecting an audience, thought Ive, and continued his desultory meditations in the hot midday sun.

  Later on, when the lorry was rattling along a country road, the student said there would probably be a row in the evening. Their goal was now a labour colony, close to the outskirts of the town, and they expected to reach it at sunset after an extensive tour of the villages. Ive had heard them talking of the colony that morning, it had never had a National Socialist meeting before. The whole day seemed to be an unexpressed preparation for the evening. The lorry roused village after village with its propaganda; duty is duty; but, although no one mentioned it, the colony was the main objective of the day. It cast its shadow before it, and Ive observed that it was a powerful shadow. They clattered through the last village; Hinnerk looked at the time. The lorry continued its journey slowly. It left the wooded country, its wheels crunching the newly laid road, edged with thin, wretched little trees without foliage, driving between fields covered with garbage, through a grey, patchy landscape. In the distance the Colony could be seen, irregular rows of monotonous red huts against the bare horizon! Every voice in the lorry was silent. The student adjusted his belt and looked fixedly in front of him.

  ‘Halt!’ commanded Hinnerk.

  The lorry came to a grinding halt before the doors of an inn. Several men hurried out of the bar, raised their arms in response to a resounding salute, and turned eagerly to Hinnerk. They were the local Party members. They had rented the largest hall in the neighbourhood for a meeting, but the Communists had arranged to hold a meeting in the same hall exactly an hour beforehand. They were already beginning to assemble. They had stationed their young men in the most favourable positions for defence and had organised a look-out in relays to give immediate information of the arrival of the enemy. Hinnerk studied the map, running his finger along the intersecting lines, asking questions meditatively. One of the men drew a plan of the hall and the surrounding neighbourhood, and showed the position of their opponents’ committee-room.

  The National Socialists had already established their quarters outside the colony; today they were going inside it for the first time. The S.A. men proceeded in close ranks; the flag flew high, guarded by four men. In front was an advance guard of three men. On the pavement, on either side of the solid nucleus of the troop, marched the flank guards (with them Ive). The men, their caps strapped under their chins, their left hands on their holsters, knees bent high at every step, eyes fixed straight in front, their mouths opened wide as they sang, pushed on into the road which stretched ominously before them, with as yet only a few straggling huts on either side. Behind the wooden palings of wretched little gardens, behind the cement posts of narrow doorways, isolated figures appeared, looked the troop rapidly up and down and disappeared again. Cyclists shot out of side streets, turned at the sight of the marching contingent, and pedalled off in the opposite direction. Windows opened. A woman in a grey blouse, with a broad red face, her immense bosom spreading over the sill, leant out grinning into the street; she began to laugh, a shrill, fat laugh which turned into a screech, spitting out s
corn, malice and bitter hostility, like a poisonous reptile, at the men and their flag. The street filled up; children and youths, men in blue jerseys, accompanied the procession, mostly in silence, their eyes fixed on the marching men, pressing close upon the flank guards who strode on unflinchingly. People poured from every side street. Figures with pale expressionless faces and impenetrable eyes, with high shoulders, their arms hanging stiffly with clenched fists, came rushing up and thronged in front, behind, and at the side of the procession. The accompanying crowd grew thicker and thicker, a solid mass, an undulating sea of people on which the troops, heads in air, rode like a ship dividing the waves with its bows. Ive forced himself to take no heed of the crowd. He looked at the houses, the shops; he tried, for old times’ sake, to find, among the advertisement-placards of various oils on a petrol station, the black-and-red placard of Veedol, and was annoyed because it wasn’t there. Someone pushed him roughly so that he nearly fell into the road. He looked round. A young fellow, with his cap on the back of his head, was walking at his side and looking unconcernedly in front of him. There were dark smears of oil about his ears; his face was gradually turning red. The S.A. sang. One song followed another. The closer the crowd thronged round the troop, the more loudly the men roared out their songs. Between each verse Hinnerk boomed out over their heads, ‘Germany,’ and the S.A. replied, ‘Awake.’ It resounded like a thunderclap against the houses.

  They arrived at a square. In front of an inn with a white facade a silent crowd was waiting, clustering in dark masses. They were congregated most densely in front of the door of the adjoining building. The S.A. wheeled round, the advance guard stopped short, Hinnerk ran forward. The flag was lowered, the point with the swastika was thrust straight forward, threateningly, over the heads of the obstructing crowd. Ive suddenly felt himself shoved and pushed against the troop, which was thrusting its way through like a wedge towards the entrance. Their speed increased. Hinnerk raised his arm; there was a short sudden rush; the flag waved aloft; the S.A. had arrived; figures rushed to one side; a table was knocked over; the doors were flung wide; the dark passage, swept clear, swallowed up the brown troop. Ive stood in the hall. The hall was large and light with yellow walls, high up in which were narrow windows. Opposite the entrance was a platform with tables, chain and a desk. It was crowded. Row after row of chairs was filled with black figures; as though with one movement all the faces turned towards the door, pale discs in the dark confusion. The gigantic red flag which hung down straight over their heads, a flaming beacon, was blown out in billows.

  ‘Germany!’ cried Hinnerk into the hall.

  ‘Awake!’ resounded the answer.

  Hinnerk, followed by the S.A. men, leapt over the chairs on the right, and seemed to whiz like an arrow through the tumult towards the front of the hall, scaling the rows of seats with the agility of an acrobat—the head of a writhing serpent before whose rapid movement the heavy body of the crowd bent back in trepidation and swayed to make way. When he was near the platform, he turned, and, using the table as a jumping-off ground, landed with legs and arms widespread on the space cleared for him by the dumbfounded S.A. men to whom he had indicated the direction and goal of his leap. He waited for a moment for his soldiers to take up their positions. Then he bowed smilingly to the crowd, which had sprung to its feet, shrugged his shoulders apologetically, pointed politely to the platform to remind the men there of their duty and their purpose. Gradually the tumult subsided, leaving only a tremulous excitement, a dangerous tension, filling every corner of the hall with expectation. The lamps shed a lurid light over the crowd, colouring their faces yellow and green. Ive looked them up and down appraisingly and seemed satisfied. On the platform a man left one of the tables and, standing behind the desk, rang the bell. He began to speak slowly in a clear, calm voice. He opened the meeting, greeting all those present, emphasising the word ‘all,’ and said that he relied on their enlightened proletarian intelligence and their ability to distinguish between true and false, between the will of the proletariat and capitalist corruption. Comrade Melzer would now address them.

  Comrade Melzer was a robust young man with a low furrowed brow, behind which one could fancy one saw his thoughts taking form and point. He was in his shirt-sleeves. He took his position beside the desk, near the edge of the platform, directly over the heads of the S.A.

  ‘Comrades,’ he said, waited for silence, scrutinised the corners of the room from which a group of young workers were imperceptibly pushing forward, made a wide, all-embracing gesture towards the body of the hall, as though he were concentrating all the forces on himself, smiled, and bowed. He began to speak of the decisive struggle of the proletariat which had now reached its last stage, a truth which was demonstrated by the fact that the bourgeoisie of the whole world were manning their armies with any one they could find. The S.A. men looked attentively at the speaker. The latter only occasionally raised his voice slightly. What he said was simple and revolved round one clear point, from which he never deviated. At the present moment, continued Comrade Melzer, all the efforts of the capitalistic world were concentrated on producing confusion in the ranks of the proletariat, in dividing them in order to be able to continue their rule, with the short-period end in view, as soon as the achievements of organised labour had, through the treachery of its leaders, proved themselves to be achievements against the interests of labour, of establishing class rule once more and this time for ever—and, on the pretext of dealing with a crisis, to reduce wages to a brutally low level and artificially to increase the industrial reserve and, with its hand at their throats, to keep the Proletariat in such a state of misery that the revolutionary masses would become an army of half-starved slaves who, unable to make a stand against class-supremacy, would simply vegetate like a docile herd of cattle, perpetually creating the means for others to live. In this effort, went on Comrade Melzer, capitalism had been able to find hirelings in the ranks of the proletariat itself. The S.A. men stood behind Hinnerk in dumb expectation. The eyes of the whole room were drawn, as though by an invisible magnet, to the brown shirts, every breath that was drawn in the death-like silence between the sentences seemed to be fraught with cold, implacable hatred against the group. Comrade Melzer spoke of the Russian example, the example of a people, of a nation, which under the red flag of world-revolution had, by the emancipation of the proletariat, accomplished its own emancipation. Only through the Social Revolution, Comrade Melzer suddenly shouted into the hall, is national emancipation possible. ‘Bravo!’ burst out Hinnerk right in his face. With one accord the crowd rose to its feet. From all corners of the hall it pressed forward.

  ‘Only the international solidarity of the working-class, whose head and heart is Moscow,’ said Comrade Melzer, smiling, almost in a whisper, but accentuating every word, ‘can guarantee the Social Revolution.’

  Relieved, the crowd laughed, burst into shouts, which rose to resounding applause, stamping of feet, and shrill cat-calls. The S.A. men closed up, their hands dropped from their holsters. Ive looked intently at Hinnerk, who nodded laughingly to Comrade Melzer.

  ‘The revolution will be a Marxist revolution,’ said Comrade Melzer, ‘or there will be no revolution at all. Marx said—’ he shouted into the hall.

  ‘Have you ever read Marx?’ roared Hinnerk’s voice up at him.

  Comrade Melzer gave a start. ‘Certainly!’ he shouted in Hinnerk’s face.

  ‘Have you read all four volumes of Das Kapital, asked Hinnerk incredulously.

  ‘Certainly,’ hissed Comrade Melzer, bending down to him.

  ‘He only wrote three volumes,’ declared Hinnerk.

  The S.A. burst into a roar of laughter. With wide-open mouths, the men slapped their legs, laughed for all they were worth into the hall, they laughed up at the silent, dark walls, they laughed down into the menacing, dismayed faces. By this time the group of young workers had pushed their way forward to the front rows.

  ‘With the volume on the Criticism of Po
litical Economy there are four,’ said Comrade Melzer, shrugging his shoulders. The bell rang, Hinnerk motioned to his men—they were silent.

  Comrade Melzer continued his speech calmly; he spoke more rapidly; from time to time his eyes wandered to the front rows, between which the young workers were standing with non-committal faces. Hinnerk looked at the time.

  ‘Comrades,’ said Comrade Melzer, raising his voice, ‘capitalism is digging its own grave. By immutable and iron laws it is running full steam ahead to its own destruction. But the vultures and hyenas are getting ready to devour its corpse, to rob you, comrades, of the goal of your desire, of your desperate struggle, of your heroic sacrifice! Do not trust them, the wolves in—brown—sheep’s clothing.’

  A ripple passed through the rows, eyes met in consternation.

  ‘Do not trust those who cry to the four winds that they are the saviours: they are the traitors. . .’

  A groan reverberated through the icy cold, keen atmosphere.

  ‘. . .And let your watchword be now and forever: “Shoot the Fascists, wherever you meet them!”’

  ‘Up!’ roared Hinnerk. In one bound he rushed forward, his arms flew up, the leg of a chair whirled through the air, a table fell with a crash; cries shrieked from every throat, and they were at each other. Ive ran forward, his head lowered between his shoulders, one arm bent above his head; a blow crashed on his arm, his fist shot out and encountered a soft belly, a cracking thump landed on his chin from below, a chair rolled between his legs, he caught hold of it and held it high in the air, the student clutched the back of it, they tugged, the wood cracked and broke. Ive brandished the jagged cudgel, swung it round his head and brought it down with a crash on a cap. The platform seemed to be cleared. S.A. men sprang up from the boards. The men worked their way forward in two rows, forming a partition right across the hall, the first row with narrow spaces into which the men of the second line sprang. Outside, stones whirled against the window-panes, the glass fell in shivers to the floor, Hinnerk jumped back, he bent his trunk backwards, he hurled a chair, which turned right over in the air and hit the big lamp in the middle of the hall. It broke with a deafening crash; the light went out, chips of glass rained down on the fighting turmoil. New contingents came surging into the attack from the entrance—Ive hit about him blindly, cries were silenced, gasping figures clutched each other round the neck, wrestled, raged, staggered, rolled, tossed hither and thither by enraged kicks. A shot whistled through the air, and then another. For a moment the black figures loosened their hold of each other, a long-drawn groan echoed through the darkness, then they set about each other again, tumbling over broken furniture, over prostrate bodies, with one mad purpose, to drive back the barely visible opponent. Behind the S.A. ranks a black empty space yawned, gradually extending, hot dust falling heavily on the floor. Suddenly the struggling crowd fell asunder—the trample of hurrying footsteps was heard, the door banged to. Breathing heavily, the men stood and listened.