by Mark Felton
Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was shot to death whilst sitting in an open-topped car in Berlin in 1922. Rathenau, wartime chairman of the giant industrial concern AEG, had been given the task of getting the Allied Powers’ huge reparation demands modified or reduced. He failed and was killed for it. It didn’t help that Rathenau was also a Jew, invoking the hatred of many on the Far Right where anti-Semitism was already on the advance.4 Hitler and his ilk were already accusing the Jews, particularly those in international finance and business, of being in league with the generals and politicians who had ‘stabbed Germany in the back’ in 1918 when they surrendered to the Allies. In the search for answers as to why Germany had lost the war, the Jews were becoming convenient scapegoats.
In 1922 a Dresden merchant named Willi Schulze was arrested with two pistols on his person – under police interrogation he stated that he had intended to assassinate Chancellor Joseph Wirth at the Old Reich Chancellery in Berlin. In 1931 someone sent a homemade bomb to Chancellor Heinrich Bruning but his staff intercepted it before it exploded. The following year a woman armed with a large knife managed to infiltrate to the second floor of the Old Reich Chancellery, the main Berlin office and home of the German head of state, before being arrested, a significant and embarrassing security failure.
Altogether, in the particularly tumultuous period of 1919–22, there were 376 political assassinations in Germany. It was almost politics by the gun, grenade and knife, and it was into this milieu that Hitler strode. Between 1919 and Hitler’s rise to become Chancellor in 1933, a total of 228 Nazi Party members were killed. The Führer’s ascendency was truly a bloody and vicious rise.5
Hitler’s complex psychology meant that he could be both reckless and a hypochondriac, suffering from a variety of real and imaginary health issues that added greatly to his deeply held feeling that he did not have enough time to achieve his grandiose goals.6 He was obsessed by assassination and took an almost perverse interest in the finest details of his security apparatus, yet conversely stated that if someone wanted to kill him, there was nothing that could change his ultimate ‘fate’. Hitler believed that he would achieve great things before his life ended, and this overweening self-belief made him careless about his physical life. Of course, each time he managed to dodge an assassination attempt, his sense of destiny was further reinforced – he thought it was not his time, and that he was being preserved for a higher purpose.
Roger Moorhouse notes in Killing Hitler that the Führer ‘was fundamentally unconvinced that his bodyguards would actually serve any practical purpose. His belief in ‘fate’ and ‘destiny’ caused him to ascribe his continual survival not to the police, but to pure chance.’7 What to most people appeared to be chance or luck was to Hitler affirmation of his own greatness. And it is indeed remarkable that Hitler managed to survive for so long as he was the target of plot after plot both before and after he assumed the mantle of Führer. Few leaders in modern history have attracted so many people bent on killing them – and survived.
It is small wonder that, given the extremely violent times that he inhabited, Hitler realised early on that if he was not to fall victim to assassination, and therefore be prevented from achieving his goals, he needed protection. Hitler said that he required bodyguards who were ‘men who would even march against their own brothers.’ He was not to be disappointed.
Hitler’s first protection detail was a small collection of trusted heavies appointed in 1920. At this time the Nazi Party was simply the German Worker’s Party (DAP), and its name was changed in April 1920 by the addition of the words ‘National Socialist’. Political meetings in Munich were extremely rowdy and the heavies would violently eject hecklers from mass gatherings when Hitler spoke. Their basic function was to protect Hitler from getting beaten up during his early and often very dangerous public appearances. Their weapons were fists, boots and truncheons. They were known informally as the Saalschütz Abteilung (Hall Defence Detachment) under the command of Emil Maurice, a former watchmaker and Freikorps soldier. Maurice, aged 23, had been a personal friend of Hitler’s since the year before. The new unit’s proper name was Ordnertruppen (Order Troop). On 3 August 1921 Hitler refined the unit, now that he had been confirmed as supreme leader of the Nazi Party. In order not to antagonise the Bavarian government Hitler chose the rather innocent sounding title NSDAP Turn-und Sportabteilung (Party Gymnastics and Sports Division). It was well-organised, particularly after command was handed to an ex-naval officer, Hans Ulrich Klintzsche, and consisted mainly of ex-soldiers and street fighters.8 In September 1921 the unit became the Sturmabteilung (Storm Division – the SA), but was quickly dubbed the ‘Brownshirts’ after the colour of their uniforms. Maurice was appointed Oberster SA-Führer (Supreme SA Leader).
Throughout the 1920s Hitler’s inner circle of bodyguards consisted of only five trusted men: Ulrich Graf, a former wrestler built like a nightclub bouncer who was Hitler’s personal protection officer; Emil Maurice, his driver, a job that often necessitated violent evasive maneouvers; Christian Weber, a rather unsavoury part-time pimp and horse dealer who acted as the Führer’s private secretary; Julius Schaub who was Hitler’s valet; and SA-Obergruppenführer (an explanation of SS ranks is found in Appendix 1) Wilhelm Brückner who acted as his adjutant. Brückner was well liked, a former Bavarian army officer and Freikorps man who was affable and straightforward.
These men were kept busy. For example, in November 1921 Hitler spoke at a beer hall in Munich to an audience of around 300 heavy drinking supporters and enemies. The audience began arguing among themselves and then throwing beer steins, followed by chairs and eventually fists. During the resulting melee unknown assailants fired several shots at Hitler. His bodyguards, and possibly Hitler himself (who was routinely armed), returned fire with their pistols. No-one was killed but it was a lucky escape for Hitler.9
Meanwhile the SA grew in size and influence. Now under the decorated war hero and secret homosexual SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm, Hitler’s personal security detail was augmented and expanded. In 1923 the SA Stosstrupp (Assault Squad) was formed around Hitler’s five-man protection team and it would eventually number 100 trusted men.
Another assassination attempt took place in 1923 when Hitler spoke in Thuringia. Shots were fired at him from the crowd. And later when he was driving through Leipzig more shots were fired at his car.
Five Stosstruppen were killed during the abortive Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923 when Hitler disastrously attempted to seize power in Bavaria by force from the Weimar government. This was the moment when Hitler had come closest to being killed – ironically not by political opponents but by professional soldiers, a situation that was to be repeated several times during the Second World War. The Beer Hall Putsch was a defining moment in the history of the Nazi Party and also of Hitler’s personal security. Marching at the head of 2,000 SA and other Nazi supporters, Hitler was in the front row alongside First World War hero General der Infanterie Erich Ludendorff when 100 Reichswehr and police opened fire outside the Feldherrnhalle (Field Marshal’s Hall), a monumental loggia in the Odeonsplatz. The Feldherrnhalle was built in 1841–44 at the behest of King Ludwig I as a symbol of the honours of the Bavarian Army. The initial volley cut down several top Nazis, including Hermann Göring who was shot through the thigh. Hitler’s bodyguard Ulrich Graf actually dislocated the Führer’s shoulder as he tried to protect him from the gunfire, dragging him violently down to the pavement. In total, sixteen Nazis died, including five of Hitler’s protection team. Hitler fled the scene by car and was arrested two days later.
Hitler was jailed for his role in the Putsch, imprisoned alongside Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice, both men helping him to prepare his famous book Mein Kampf. When Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison in 1925 both the Nazi Party and the SA, dissolved in 1923, were rapidly recreated. Maurice was appointed commander of the newly formed Stabswache. From the rebirth of Nazism emerged an entirely new and sinister organisation that was
charged with protecting Hitler. The Stabswache was renamed the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squad), and this was the moment the infamous SS was born. Eventually the SS would entirely supplant the power of the SA.
Its first commander was 28-year-old Julius Schreck, a close friend of Hitler and a fellow First World War and Freikorps veteran. Schreck had also been imprisoned at Landsberg alongside Hitler and the other Nazi leaders in 1923–25. Emil Maurice, holding SS membership No. 2, was appointed Hitler’s full-time driver, but only until he was abruptly sacked by the Führer for having an affair with Hitler’s niece, Geli Raubal.
The SS would remain part of the SA for a long time. When formed in 1925, the SS consisted of a single, thirty-man company of bodyguards. In September 1925 all local Nazi Party offices were ordered to create ten-man bodyguard units from among their most promising SA storm troopers. The next year six SS-Gaus were established, supporting all such units. They answered directly to the SS-Oberleitung or headquarters unit commanded by Schreck. Schreck in turn took his orders from the office of the Supreme SA Leader Franz Pfeffer von Salomon.
In 1926 Schreck stood down as Reichsführer-SS, being replaced by former junior army officer Joseph Berchtold. Schreck later became an SS-Standartenführer and continued to serve Hitler as his personal driver following Maurice’s sacking for many years until his sudden death in 1936 from meningitis.
In 1927 Reichsführer-SS Erhard Heiden replaced Berchtold. Before 1929 the SS wore brown SA uniforms but with black ties and a black kepi adorned with the silver death’s head skull and bones symbol borrowed from earlier Imperial cavalry uniforms. It was a miniscule organisation in comparison with the now 3,000,000-strong SA from which it recruited its members, but it was an organisation that owed its allegiance not to the Nazi Party but to the body and person of Hitler, and Hitler alone. The SS was the new Praetorian Guard and its men were the brightest and best that the SA had to offer, men whose loyalty to Hitler was sacred. Unlike the SA, a mostly working class organisation, many SS men came from the middle classes. Their motto, engraved on their silver belt buckles, was ‘Meine Ehre heisst Treue’ (‘My Honour is Loyalty’), and this was taken quite literally.
In 1929 the leadership of the SS changed when a 29-year-old, bespectacled Bavarian chicken farmer and former Imperial Army officer cadet took over – Heinrich Himmler. His loyalty to Hitler was pathological – he once said: ‘If Hitler were to say I should shoot my mother I would do it and be proud of his confidence.’ With men such as Himmler at his disposal, Hitler’s protection underwent a revolution, evolving from a rough gang of street toughs and bruisers into a professional organisation that quickly gained both numbers and responsibilities.
Himmler changed the look of the SS to differentiate it from the SA. The SS uniform now incorporated black breeches, black boots and belts and black edges to the Nazi armband. In 1932 the organisation adopted a completely new all-black uniform. Although still a tiny organisation, the SS was nonetheless quickly gaining Hitler’s trust and Himmler was building up and expanding his power base.
Before 1933 the threats to Hitler’s life and person came from three general sources. Firstly there were the loners or mentally unbalanced people that all public figures have to contend with. Such persons were very difficult to identify until they actually made a move to carry out their plans, and Hitler was to survive several such attempts. This category of would-be assassin may have been mentally unbalanced, but some undoubtedly realised the truth, that the Führer was a great threat to Germany and the world at large. Members of this category could be called, to borrow a term from 1960s America, the ‘lone gunman’ or ‘lone nut’. Loners made numerous attempts. For example, at the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin in 1932 an unknown assailant poisoned Hitler’s food, though the attempt was foiled before the Führer took a bite. On 15 March of the same year someone fired several shots at the train Hitler was travelling on between Munich and Weimar, again without causing any injuries.10 Such plots became more commonplace after Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933.
The second group in opposition to Hitler could be broadly labelled ‘The Left’. Socialists and Communists hated Hitler and the Nazis, and knew what would happen to them if Hitler ever gained power. But the Left was remarkably disorganised. The Socialists clung on to a belief in the democratic process and viewed political assassination as anathema, a position also later adopted during the war by the Western Allies until quite late in the conflict. The Communists took their orders from Moscow, which directed their best efforts against their ideological cousins the Socialists rather than against the Nazis. In spite of the political situation, some on the Left did manage to make attempts on Hitler’s life.
The third, and potentially the most dangerous, group can be collectively termed ‘The Right’. In 1931 this took the form of the SA. Leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, frightened many Germans, particularly the Reichswehr general staff and prominent industrialists, when he constantly alluded to the SA replacing the regular army and creating a true socialist state. The SA numbered 3,000,000 while the Treaty of Versailles had limited the regular army to just 100,000 men. Generals and industrialists made representations to Hitler to curb Röhm’s power, but Hitler initially was reluctant to move against the very people who had done so much to put him into power. Other Nazi leaders wanted the SA leadership smashed, chief among them Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler.
By 1931 the SA was starting to become a threat to Hitler’s authority. A revolt against Hitler and the party organization by the SA under its deputy commander Walther Stennes was brought under control by Goebbels and Göring, and in 1933 an armed man dressed in SA uniform actually got inside Hitler’s private Bavarian house, the Berghof on the Obersalzberg, but was speedily arrested by SS guards.
Hitler eventually moved against Röhm when Göring and Himmler fed a fabricated plot to him. This suggested that the SA was planning to depose Hitler as Führer. Hitler ordered the SA leadership to meet at the Hanselbauer Hotel at Bad Wiessee on 10 June 1934. Hitler, accompanied by his SS bodyguards, stormed into the hotel and placed the leaders under arrest. Elsewhere in Germany SA leaders were simply shot. Hitler initially reprieved Röhm because of his vital role in the early days of the movement but under pressure from Göring and Himmler, Hitler changed his mind. Röhm was offered suicide, but refused so two SS officers shot him to death in his cell. Altogether, upwards of 200 senior SA leaders were murdered in the purge and the Brownshirts brought severely to heel.11 ‘The Night of the Long Knives’, when Hitler used his SS bodyguards to smash the power of the SA, was the event that would establish the SS as the new power in Germany.
After this, Himmler and his black knights were in the ascendant. The SA was severely reduced in numbers and although it survived until 1945, it was sidelined and most of its personnel drafted into the armed forces.
The focus of Nazi power in Germany in the early days was Munich not Berlin, which also became the spiritual home of the party until the end of the war. Munich was also the site of two important Nazi buildings. The first was the Braunhaus (Brown House), the headquarters of the NSDAP and named for the colour of SA uniforms. The building, a large, handsome three-storey house built in 1828 on Brienner Street was originally English-owned. Called Barlow Palace after the family of English wholesale merchants who built it, the Nazis acquired the property from the Barlows in 1930 after they had outgrown their original headquarters building. The palace was extensively remodelled, some of the work personally directed by Hitler, and paid for by the wealthy Fritz Thyssen. The Brown House was where the Bludfahne (Blood flag) was kept. During the Beer Hall Putsch the blood of Nazis shot by Reichswehr troops outside the Feldherrnhalle splashed onto this particular swastika flag and it had come to be revered as a holy relic. It was paraded each year on the anniversary of the Putsch. The Brown House contained Hitler’s party office, as well as the offices of Hess, Himmler, Göring, Minister of Justice for Bavaria and Hitler’s personal lawyer Dr. Hans Frank and Philipp Bouhler, Chief of th
e Chancellery of the Führer.
The second important Nazi building in Munich was Hitler’s private apartment. Although Hitler had lived at several different addresses in the city since the First World War he eventually moved into a luxury apartment on Prinzregentenplatz, a large building that now houses the regional police headquarters. It was here that Hitler would live with his half-niece Geli Raubal and where he entertained British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain during the 1938 Munich Crisis. For his protection, the SS had the building’s basement transformed into a reinforced air raid shelter equipped with metal bunker doors.12 Himmler soon determined that the SS should assume full responsibility for protecting the new chancellor, and that would include not only at his office and apartment in Munich, but everywhere the Führer went. On assuming the political leadership of Germany Hitler’s protection was no longer simply a Nazi Party matter, it was a national concern and the fledgling SS was still not powerful enough to circumvent or replace the established offices of state security.
Chapter 2
Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer!
‘I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich, loyalty and bravery. I vow to you and to my superiors designated by you obedience to the death. So help me God.’
(RSD Oath)
The Berghof, Hitler’s private house in the Bavarian Alps, overlooking his birthplace of Austria, was a rural idyll. One summer’s day a man passed through the entrance gate, which was carefully guarded by hard-looking SS men in field grey uniforms and armed with automatic pistols, and approached the large Alpine chalet-style building set on a wooded incline above the approach road. The visitor, a man named Kraus, had been granted the honour of personally delivering a petition into the Führer’s hands. He was dressed in the brown uniform and kepi of the SA. Escorted into Hitler’s presence, he stood to attention and stared into the 46-year-old Führer’s piercing grey eyes. Aides and bodyguards stood close by. Kraus handed the petition to Hitler, the Führer shaking his hand and muttering a few noncommittal words of encouragement. Suddenly, Kraus reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistol, pointed it in Hitler’s direction and pulled the trigger. The bullet cleaved the air close to Hitler but missed. Before the sound of Kraus’ shot had finished echoing off the wooden walls Hitler’s bodyguards had cut the assassin down with a hail of lead from their own weapons, killing the SA man instantly.1
