NOTES

1.Letter from Boris Pasternak to Warlam Schalamow, 9 July 1952, in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii s prilozheniiami, vol. 9, ed. E. B. Pasternak and E. V. Pasternak (Moscow: Slovo, 2005), pp. 684–90, here p. 686.

2.Wolfgang Sofsky, Traktat über die Gewalt (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2005 [1996]), p. 10.

Introduction

1.August Scholtis, Ostwind: Ein schlesischer Schelmenroman (Munich: dtv, 1986 [1931]), p. 275.

2.The spellings ‘Pietczuch’ or ‘Pietzuch’ can also be found in the documents related to this case.

3.Unless noted otherwise, the facts of the following account are drawn from APK (Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach), akt nr 15/28 Starostwo Powiatowe w Gliwicach (Politische Angelegenheiten, 1928–1933), vol. 5, pp. 334–45: Bill of Indictment of the Senior Prosecutor in Beuthen, 14 August 1932; Richard Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, in Central European History 10:3 (1977), pp. 241–54; Paul Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa (Dokumentation)’, in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 5 (1957), pp. 279–97; Günther Schmerbach, Der Kampf der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands gegen Faschismus und Kriegsgefahr im Bezirk Oberschlesien 1932/33, diss., Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 1957, pp. 104–27; and newspaper coverage by the liberal Vossische Zeitung (Berlin).

4.For more details on the night of the murder, see also ‘Raus aus dem Bett, Ihr verfluchten Kommunisten!’, Sozialistische Arbeiter-Zeitung (hereafter SAZ) (Breslau), 12 August 1932; ‘Nine Nazis on Trial’, The Times (London), 22 August 1932, p. 9.

5.Quoted in ‘So wurde Pietrzuch ermordet’, SAZ (Breslau), 26 August 1932, http://library.fes.de/breslau/sozialistische-arbeiterzeitung/pdf/1932/1932-192.pdf. See also Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa’, p. 291.

6.APK, akt nr 15/28, vol. 5, pp. 333–4: ‘Letter from the Landjägerhauptmann Seeliger to the Landrat in Gleiwitz’, 15 August 1932; Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, p. 248; Schmerbach, Der Kampf der Kommunistischen Partei, p. 109.

7.Naturally, all of the parties involved portrayed themselves as victims who only reacted to the violence of the other side. Instructive in this respect is a comparative reading of Nazi and Communist propaganda in the Potempa affair: Gerhard Pantel, Potempa-Beuthen: Ein Signal für alle deutschen Deutschen (Munich: Eher, 1932); Robert Venzlaff, Der Schuldige . . . Die Mordnacht von Potempa, ed. Rote Hilfe (Berlin: Tribunal Verlag, 1932).

8.‘Rückblick auf eine Woche “Burgfrieden”’, CV-Zeitung, 15 August 1932, pp. 1–2.

9.Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, p. 243; Marjorie Lamberti, The Politics of Education: Teachers and School Reform in Weimar Germany (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2002), p. 228.

10.See Reichsgesetzblatt 1932, vol. 1, no. 54 (9 August 1932), pp. 403–4.

11.For the final stage of the Weimar Republic, see in particular Dirk Blasius, Weimars Ende: Bürgerkrieg und Politik 1930–1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005); Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London: Penguin Books, 2004), pp. 231–308; Detlev J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik: Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), pp. 243–65. With regard to the SA’s violence in Upper Silesia, see Richard Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany 1925–1934 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 75–96.

12.Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, vol. 2/2 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004), p. 336.

13.APK, akt nr 15/28, vol. 5, pp. 334–45, here pp. 334–5: Bill of Indictment of the Senior Prosecutor in Beuthen, 14 August 1932.

14.Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, p. 248.

15.Ibid., p. 249.

16.Henning Grunwald, Courtroom to Revolutionary Stage: Performance and Ideology in Weimar Political Trials (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 168.

17.Ibid., p. 169.

18.Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, p. 246.

19.Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa’, p. 288.

20.Nazi propaganda and the arguments of SA lawyer Luetgebrune in court emphasized that Pietrzuch had repeatedly ‘betrayed’ the Germans of Upper Silesia in the years following the First World War through such actions as disclosing illegal arms depots to the French authorities and threatening those determined to vote for Germany in the plebiscite of March 1921. The radical left, in defence of the ‘worker and communist’ Pietrzuch, however, claimed that he had courageously supported the German minority in his home village of Potempa against Polish insurgents in that same crucial year. See Pantel, Potempa-Beuthen, pp. 9–13; Venzlaff, Der Schuldige, p. 4.

21.In 1936 Lachmann was sentenced to a seven-year prison term for fraud and perjury, and in 1940 an NSDAP Gau court sentenced him on two charges of poaching; Sopade (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland in exile), Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 3 (1936), p. 239; Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, pp. 245–6.

22.Venzlaff, Der Schuldige, p. 4.

23.Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa’, p. 287.

24.‘Fünf Todesurteile in Beuthen’, Vossische Zeitung, 23 August 1932, p. 1.

25.‘Nine Nazis on Trial’, p. 9. See also Goebbels’s diary entry from 23 August 1932: ‘In Beuthen 5 Todesurteile gegen unsere Leute. Das Ungeheuerlichste, das auszudenken ist. Die Regierung wird nicht wagen, sie zu vollstrecken’; Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, vol. 2/2, p. 346.

26.‘Nazi Death Sentences’, The Times (London), 23 August 1932, p. 10; ‘Five Nazis to Die: Sentences at Trial’, The Manchester Guardian, 23 August 1932, p. 9; ‘Krawalle nach dem Urteilsspruch’, Vossische Zeitung, 23 August 1932, p. 3.

27.As quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945. The Chronicle of a Dictatorship, vol. 1: The Years 1932–1934 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1990), p. 160.

28.‘Five Nazis to Die’, p. 9.

29.BArch Berlin (Bundesarchiv Berlin), NS 26/2515: Letter from Landeskriminalpolizeiamt Berlin to the Police President Bielefeld, May 1931; BArch Berlin, NS 26/1348: ‘Fememörder Heines als MdR’, Vorwärts, 5 October 1930.

30.Adolf Hitler, telegram to August Gräupner, Reinhold Kottisch, Paul Lachmann, Helmuth-Josef Müller, and Rufin Wolnitza, in Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen: Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, vol. 5: Von der Reichspräsidentenwahl bis zur Machtergreifung. April 1932–Januar 1933. Part 1: April 1932–September 1932, ed. Klaus A. Lankheit (Munich: Saur, 1996), p. 317.

31.Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa’, p. 284; Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, p. 251.

32.Adolf Hitler, ‘Nationalisten! Deutsche!’, Völkischer Beobachter, 24 August 1932, as quoted in Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945, vol. 1, pp. 159–60. Hitler had publicly justified immoral political deeds for the sake of the nation in similar terms as early as 1922; see BayHStA (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München), MInn (Ministerium des Innern), no. 81594: ‘Die Maischlacht Hitlers’, Bayerischer Kurier, 3 May 1923.

33.With remarkable consistency, Goebbels used this wording again and again in the following years; for example, see his notorious article ‘Mimicry’, published in the highbrow Nazi newspaper Das Reich on 20 July 1941. See Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 2: The Years of Extermination (London: Phoenix, 2008), p. 204.

34.Joseph Goebbels, ‘Die Juden sind schuld!’, Der Angriff, 24 August 1932, pp. 1–2.

35.Interestingly, there were cases in which Social Democrats likewise accused their Nazi opponents of being former Polish insurgents; see ‘Der “Märytrer”’, Vossische Zeitung, 4 November 1932, p. 6.

36.According to official statistics, political violence in 1932 caused 155 deaths in all of the provinces of Prussia. Of these casualties, 55 had been members of the NSDAP, 54 had belonged to the Communist Party, and twelve had been members of the Reichsbanner and/or the Social Democratic Party; see Dirk Schumann, ‘Political Violence, Contested Public Space, and Reasserted Masculinity’, in Weimar Publics / Weimar Subjects, ed. Kathleen Canning and Kerstin Barndt (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), pp. 236–53, here p. 244.

37.For the most impudent distortions of this kind, see Pantel, Potempa-Beuthen.

38.IfZ Archive (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Archiv, Munich), ED 414 (Herbert Frank), vol. 181: Joachim Leo, ‘Beuthen!’, Schlesischer NS-Beobachter (Breslau), 3 September 1932. I am grateful to Marcel Krueger, Berlin, for his help in translating this and other poems and songs in this book.

39.‘Five Nazis to Die’, p. 9.

40.Such was the logic of the Nazi Hamburger Abendblatt, as quoted in ‘Why Nazi Newspaper was Suppressed’, The Manchester Guardian, 26 August 1932, p. 9.

41.Alfred Rosenberg in Der Völkische Beobachter, as quoted in ‘Killing Not Murder’, The Manchester Guardian, 27 August 1932, p. 15.

42.Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, vol. 2/2 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004), pp. 346–7.

43.‘Defence of the Nazi Murderers’, The Manchester Guardian, 24 August 1932.

44.Bessel, ‘The Potempa Murder’, p. 252.

45.For an overview, see Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, ‘Vectors of Violence: Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923’, Journal of Modern History 83:3 (2011), pp. 489–512.

46.Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa’, p. 292.

47.Ibid., p. 287; GSt PK (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz), I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, vol. 311, p. 325: Racliffe (Polizeimajor), ‘Denkschrift über Kampfvorbereitung und Kampfgrundsätze radikaler Organisationen’ [1931].

48.On the political context, see Enno Eimers, ‘Oberschlesien während der Unruhen in den ersten Jahren der Weimarer Republik’, in Geschichte, Öffentlichkeit, Kommunikation: Festschrift für Bernd Sösemann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Patrick Merziger (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), pp. 383–404; Dawid Smolorz, ‘Die deutsch-polnische Grenze in Oberschlesien 1922–1939’, in Granica: Die deutsch-polnische Grenze vom 19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert, ed. Karoline Gil and Christian Pletzing (Munich: Meidenbauer, 2010), pp. 75–86; Bernard Sauer, ‘“Auf nach Oberschlesien”. Die Kämpfe der deutschen Freikorps 1921 in Oberschlesien und den anderen ehemaligen deutschen Ostprovinzen’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 58 (2010), pp. 297–320; Kai Struve (ed.), Oberschlesien nach den Ersten Weltkrieg: Studien zu einem nationalen Konflikt und seiner Erinnerung(Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2003); Karsten Eichner, Briten, Franzosen und Italienier in Oberschlesien, 1920–1922: Die Interalliierte Regierungs- und Plebiszitkommission im Spiegel der britischen Akten (St Katharinen: Winkel Stiftung, 2002); Ralph Schattkowsky, Deutschland und Polen von 1918/19 bis 1925 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1994); Günther Doose, Die separatistische Bewegung in Oberschlesien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg: 1918–1922 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987).

49.C. A. Macartney and A. W. Palmer, Independent Eastern Europe: A History (London: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 105–6.

50.The first uprising took place 16–24 August 1919; the second 19–28 August 1920; and the third 3 May 1921 and the early days of July 1921. For the Polish efforts to ‘re-Polonize’, see Richard Blake, ‘Interwar Poland and the Problem of Polish-Speaking Germans’, in The Germans and the East, ed. Charles W. Ingrao and Franz A. J. Szabo (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008), pp. 262–3.

51.Sauer, ‘“Auf nach Oberschlesien”’, pp. 302–3; Daniel Schmidt, ‘Der SA-Führer Hans Ramshorn. Ein Leben zwischen Gewalt und Gemeinschaft (1892–1934)’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 60:2 (2012), pp. 201–35, here p. 228. Many Freikorps leaders, in particular those from the gentry in these borderlands, later joined the SA; see Stephan Malinowski and Sven Reichardt, ‘Die Reihen fest geschlossen? Adelige im Führungskorps der SA bis 1934’, in Adel und Moderne: Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Eckart Conze and Monika Wienfort (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), pp. 119–50, here pp. 126–8, 138–42. For an instructive case study, see Kai Langer, ‘Der “Fall Flotow” – vom Aufstieg und Fall eines mecklenburgischen SA-Führers’, Zeitgeschichte regional: Mitteilungen aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 7:2 (2003), pp. 5–13.

52.See Irmela Nagel, Fememord und Fememordprozesse in der Weimarer Republik (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991), with further references.

53.Sauer, ‘“Auf nach Oberschlesien”’, pp. 308–9, 316.

54.Idem, ‘“Verräter waren bei uns in Mengen erschossen worden”: Die Fememorde in Oberschlesien 1921’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 54:7/8 (2006), pp. 644–62, here p. 645.

55.Archive of Der Spiegel, Hamburg (hereafter HA-Spiegel), Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 124: Bill of indictment of the Reich Prosecutor against Alfred Hoffmann, Manfred von Killinger, and others, 16 May 1922.

56.For details, see Hagen Schulze, Freikorps und Republik 1918–1920 (Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1969), pp. 214–35. Recent research has emphasized that this widespread presumption did not match the ‘realities’; see Rüdiger Bergien, Die bellizistische Republik: Wehrkonsens und ‘Wehrhaftmachung’ in Deutschland 1918–1933 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), esp. pp. 355–406.

57.On this point, see the excellent study by Matthias Sprenger, Landsknechte auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich? Zur Genese und Wandel des Freikorpsmythos (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008).

58.According to Killinger, in its desire to ‘consolidate and strengthen’ the German national character, the fight against the Poles in Upper Silesia directly foreshadowed the ‘mission of Adolf Hitler’ that by 1934 had become an indispensable element of ‘our pan-German destiny’. See Manfred von Killinger, Kampf um Oberschlesien 1921: Bisher unveröffentlichte Aufzeichnungen des Führers der ‘Abteilung v. Killinger’ genannt ‘Sturmkompanie Koppe’ (Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1934), p. 124. See also Klaus Gundelach, ‘Der Opferweg zum Sieg’, in Vom Kampf und Sieg der schlesischen SA: Ein Ehrenbuch, ed. SA-Gruppe Schlesien (Breslau: Korn, 1933), pp. 11–15.

59.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 242: Report of the Oberster SA-Führer to the SA-Gruppenführer, Munich, 28 August 1931.

60.Lisa Pine, Education in Nazi Germany (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2010), p. 15.

61.Lamberti, Politics of Education, pp. 221–6.

62.Notable exceptions are Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism; Stefan Dölling, ‘Grenzüberschreitende Gewalttätigkeit – die SA und die “Sudetenkrise”’, in Bürgerkriegsarmee: Forschungen zur nationalsozialistischen Sturmabteilung (SA), ed. Yves Müller and Reiner Zilkenat (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2013), pp. 241–63; Bergien, Die bellizistische Republik; Schmidt, ‘Der SA-Führer Hans Ramshorn’, pp. 227–9.

63.For details, see chapter 6 of this book. On the importance of the German borderlands as ‘hotbeds’ of Nazi perpetrators, see also Michael Mann, Die dunkle Seite der Demokratie: Eine Theorie der ethnischen Säuberung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2007), pp. 329–36, 351.

64.Their release took place in the context of a general amnesty for the ‘pioneers of the national revolution’. See Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa’, p. 286; Blasius, Weimars Ende, p. 95.

65.‘Making Murderers into Heroes’, The Manchester Guardian, 13 October 1933, p. 9.

66.August Scholtis, Ein Herr aus Bolatitz: Lebenserinnerungen (Munich: List, 1959), p. 10.

67.Timothy D. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010).

68.Ian Kershaw, The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45 (London: Penguin, 2011), p. 208.

69.Peter Fritzsche, ‘Review: Did Weimar Fail?’, Journal of Modern History 68:3 (1996), pp. 629–56; Moritz Föllmer and Rüdiger Graf (eds), Die ‘Krise’ der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005).

70.For a detailed discussion of political violence in the late Weimar Republic, see chapter 3.

71.Reinhard Sturm, ‘Zerstörung der Demokratie 1930–1932’, Informationen zur politischen Bildung, no. 261, http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/dossier-nationalsozialismus/39537/zerstoerung-der-demokratie?p=all.

72.RGVA (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voennyi arkhiv), Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 140–2, here p. 141: Badisches Landespolizeiamt, ‘Die SA und die SS der NSDAP’, Karlsruhe, 15 May 1931.

73.These and other aspects of the SA are discussed in detail in the following chapters, where the relevant specialist literature is also noted. The annotations to this introduction are therefore limited to works that deal overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, with the history of the SA or with methodological issues.

74.See, for example, Peter Longerich, Geschichte der SA (Munich: Beck, 2003), pp. 284–5; Conan Fischer, Stormtroopers: A Social, Economic and Ideological Analysis 1929–35 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983), p. 225; Rudy Koshar, German Travel Cultures (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), p. 137; Dorothee Hochstetter, Motorisierung und ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: Das nationalsozialistische Kraftfahrkorps (NSKK), 1931–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), p. 73.

75.Lewis A. Coser, Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment (New York: The Free Press, 1974), pp. 4–6.

76.See Alfons Bora, ‘“Partizipation” als politische Inklusionsformel’, in Inklusion und Partizipation: Politische Kommunikation im historischen Wandel, ed. Christoph Gusy and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005), pp. 15–34, esp. pp. 24–7, 33.

77.Hans Mommsen, ‘Cumulative Radicalisation and Progressive Self-Destruction as Structural Determinants of the Nazi Dictatorship’, in Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, ed. Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 75–87.

78.Sven Keller, Volksgemeinschaft am Ende: Gesellschaft und Gewalt 1944/45 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013); Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945 (London: Atlantic Books, 2013); Cord Arendes, Edgar Wolfrum, and Jörg Zedler (eds), Terror nach Innen: Verbrechen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006); Patrick Wagner, ‘Die letzte Schlacht der “alten Kämpfer”. Isolation, Vergemeinschaftung und Gewalt nationalsozialistischer Aktivisten in den letzten Kriegsmonaten 1945’, Mittelweg 36:4 (2015), pp. 25–50.

79.The second edition of Michael Ruck’s bibliography on the historiography of National Socialism, published in 2000, contained approximately 37,000 titles; Michael Ruck, Bibliographie zum Nationalsozialismus, 2 vols (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000). In consequence, newer bibliographies usually cover only certain aspects of the subject in order to achieve at least a partial completeness. See Janosch Steuwer, ‘Was meint und nützt das Sprechen von der “Volksgemeinschaft”? Neuere Literatur zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 53 (2013), pp. 487–534; Christoph Nonn, ‘Nationalsozialismus als Geschichte: Neuere Literatur zum Umgang mit der NS-Vergangenheit in Deutschland’, Neue politische Literatur 49:3 (2003), pp. 407–26; Birthe Kundrus, ‘Widerstreitende Geschichte: Ein Literaturbericht zur Geschlechtergeschichte des Nationalsozialismus’, Neue politische Literatur 45:1 (2000), pp. 67–92.

80.See Conan Fischer and Detlef Mühlberger, ‘The Pattern of the SA’s Social Appeal’, in The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany, ed. Conan Fischer (New York: Berghahn, 1996), pp. 99–113; Detlef Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers: Studies in the Sociology of the Nazi Movement (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 159–80, 202–9; Peter Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone: Geschichte der SA (Munich: Beck, 1989), pp. 81–8; Michael H. Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders 1919–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

81.Paradigmatic in this respect are Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany: The Brownshirts in ‘Red’ Saxony (New York: Berghahn, 1999); Otis C. Mitchell, Hitler’s Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic, 1919–1933 (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 2008); Thomas D. Grant, Stormtroopers and Crisis in the Nazi Movement: Activism, Ideology and Dissolution (London and New York: Routledge, 2004); Fischer, Stormtroopers. The history of the SA provided by Wilfred von Oven, a former National Socialist, likewise ends in 1934, yet – unlike the books mentioned above – it is a disappointing read. Its value for academic scholarship consists above all in the fact that it expresses the perspective of an incorrigible lifelong Nazi; Eleanor Hancock (ed.), Hitler’s Storm Troopers: A History of the SA. The Memoirs of Wilfred von Oven (London: Frontline, 2010).

82.Ernst Niekisch, Das Reich der niederen Dämonen (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1953), p. 115.

83.Joachim C. Fest, ‘Ernst Röhm und die verlorene Generation’, in his Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches: Profile einer totalitären Herrschaft (Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1993 [1963]), pp. 190–206, here p. 195.

84.Hans Buchheim, ‘Befehl und Gehorsam’, in Anatomie des SS-Staates, ed. Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, and Helmut Krausnick (Munich: dtv, 1999 [1967]), pp. 213–320, here p. 220.

85.William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, with a New Introduction by Ron Rosenbaum (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 120.

86.GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, vol. 311, p. 319: Racliffe (Polizeimajor), ‘Denkschrift über Kampfvorbereitung und Kampfgrundsätze radikaler Organisationen’ [1931].

87.Karl Otto Paetel, ‘Die nationalsozialistischen “Sturmabteilungen”’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 6:1 (1965), pp. 103–5, here p. 104; Karl Otto Paetel (ed.), Beat: Eine Anthologie (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1962).

88.See the careful synopsis by Edgar Wolfrum, Die geglückte Demokratie: Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Pantheon, 2007), pp. 169–86; Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried (eds), Deutsche Kulturgeschichte: Die Bundesrepublik – 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Hanser, 2009), pp. 46–57, 130–52.

89.Peter Merkl, The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); idem, Political Violence under the Swastica: 581 Early Nazis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); Mathilde Jamin, Zwischen den Klassen: Zur Sozialstruktur der SA-Führerschaft(Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1984); idem, ‘Zur Rolle der SA im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, in Der Führerstaat: Mythos und Realität. Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches, ed. Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), pp. 329–60; Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism; Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone.

90.On urban ‘communities of violence’, see Sharon Bäcker-Wilke, Florian Grafl, and Friedrich Lenger, ‘Gewaltgemeinschaften im städtischen Raum. Barcelona, Berlin und Wien in der Zwischenkriegszeit’, in Gewaltgemeinschaften: Von der Spätantike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Winfried Speitkamp (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2013), pp. 317–41.

91.Sven Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde: Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009). See also Sven Reichardt, ‘Praxeologie und Faschismus. Gewalt und Gemeinschaft als Elemente eines praxeologischen Faschismusbegriffs’, in Doing Culture: Neue Positionen zum Verhältnis von Kultur und Praxis, ed. Karl H. Hörning and Julia Reuter (Bielefeld: transcript, 2004), pp. 129–53; idem, ‘Zeithistorisches zur praxeologischen Geschichtswissenschaft’ in Arndt Brendecke (ed.), Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit: Akteure – Handlungen – Artefakte (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015), pp. 46–61; and the contributions in Stefan Hördler (ed.), SA-Terror als Herrschaftssicherung: ‘Köpenicker Blutwoche’ und öffentliche Gewalt im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Metropol, 2013). On praxeology as a historiographical method more generally, see the pioneering article by Thomas Welskopp, ‘Der Mensch und die Verhältnisse: “Handeln” und “Struktur” bei Max Weber und Anthony Giddens’, in Geschichte zwischen Kultur und Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Theoriedebatte, ed. Thomas Welskopp and Thomas Mergel (Munich: Beck, 1997), pp. 39–70, and, more recently, Hilmar Schäfer, ‘Einleitung: Grundlagen, Rezeption und Forschungsperspektiven der Praxistheorie’, in his Praxistheorie: Ein soziologisches Forschungsprogramm (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2016), pp. 9–25; Dagmar Freist, ‘Historische Praxeologie als Mikro-Historie’, in Brendecke (ed.), Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit, pp. 62–77.

92.Irene Mayer-von Götz, Terror im Zentrum der Macht: Die frühen Konzentrationslager in Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 2008); Kim Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Benjamin C. Hett, Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put Hitler in the Witness Stand (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Daniel Siemens, The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013). Regional studies that deal with or at least contain relevant information on the SA in 1933–4 are discussed in detail in chapter 4.

93.See Astrid Gehrig, Im Dienste der nationalsozialistischen Volkstumspolitik in Lothringen: Auf den Spuren meines Großvaters (Essen: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2014); Dörte von Westernhagen, Von der Herrschaft zur Gefolgschaft: Die von Westernhagens im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Göttingen: V&R, 2012); Malte Ludin, ‘Hanns Elard Ludin’, in Stuttgarter NS-Täter: Vom Mitläufer bis zum Massenmörder, ed. Hermann G. Abmayr (Stuttgart: Abmayr, 2009), pp. 30–9.

94.Next to Klaus Theweleit’s pioneering two-volume work Male Fantasies (Cambridge: Polity, 1987/8 [first published in German in 1977/8]), see also the studies by Paula Diehl, Macht – Mythos – Utopie: Die Körperbilder der SS-Männer (Berlin: Akademie, 2005); Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische Mythen, Riten und Symbole (Vierow bei Greifswald: SH-Verlag, 1996); and the recent contributions to a special issue of Central European History 46 (2013): Timothy S. Brown, ‘The SA in the Radical Imagination of the Long Weimar Republic’, pp. 238–74; Bruce Campbell, ‘New Perspectives on the Nazi Storm Troopers. Autobiographies of Violence: The SA in its Own Words’, pp. 217–37; and Andrew Wackerfuss, ‘The Myth of the Unknown Storm Trooper: Selling SA Stories in the Third Reich’, pp. 298–324.

95.See the contributions in Müller and Zilkenat (eds), Bürgerkriegsarmee, as well as my review of this book in German History 32:1 (2014), pp. 153–4; and Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany. On the SA and the churches see Ernst Klee, ‘Die SA Jesu Christi’: Die Kirche im Banne Hitlers(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1989); Manfred Gailus, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Durchdringung des protestantischen Sozialmilieus in Berlin (Cologne: Böhlau, 2001); Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Derek Hastings, Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism: Religious Identity and National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Manfred Gailus and Daniel Siemens (eds), ‘Hass und Begeisterung bilden Spalier’: Horst Wessels politische Autobiographie (Berlin: be.bra, 2011). On the SA and homosexuality, see Andrew Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2015); Alexander Zinn, ‘SA, Homosexualität und Faschismus. Zur Genese des Stereotyps vom schwulen Nazi’, in Bürgerkriegsarmee, ed. Müller and Zilkenat, pp. 393–413; Hans Rudolf Wahl, ‘“National-Päderasten?” Zur Geschichte der (Berliner) SA-Führung 1925–1934’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 56:5 (2008), pp. 442–59; Hans Rudolf Wahl, ‘Männerbünde, Homosexualitäten und politische Kultur im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts. Überlegungen zur Historiographie der SA’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 52:3 (2004), pp. 218–37; Sven Reichardt, ‘Homosexualität und SA-Führer: Plädoyer für eine Diskursanalyse’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 52:8 (2004), pp. 737–40.

96.The archives consulted were predominantly located in Germany, but some of the archival material is drawn from institutions as far away as Moscow, Zagreb, and Stanford in California. This was partly due to the course of history (for example, the Polish sociologist Theodore Abel, who collected an impressive list of Nazi autobiographies in 1933–4, emigrated to the United States, and large parts of the archival material of the Saxon SA were seized by the Russians in 1945 and are nowadays stored in Moscow); but it was also the consequence of the fact that the history of the SA after 1934 increasingly became an international affair, not only because of German expansionism in the second half of the 1930s, but also because the Nazis ruled over large parts of Central and Eastern Europe during the Second World War.

97.Bruce Campbell, ‘The SA after the Röhm Purge’, Journal of Contemporary History 28:4 (1993), pp. 659–74. Among the exceptions: Ives Müller, ‘Wilhelm Schepmann – der letzte SA-Stabschef und die Rolle der SA im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 63:6 (2015), pp. 513–32; Daniel Siemens, ‘Dem SA-Mann auf der Spur: Nationalsozialistische Erinnerungspolitik im Berlin der 1930er Jahre’, in SA-Terror als Herrschaftssicherung, ed. Hördler, pp. 147–63.

98.Armin Nolzen, ‘Die NSDAP, der Krieg und die deutsche Gesellschaft’, in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 9/1, ed. Jörg Echternkamp (Munich: DVA, 2004), pp. 99–193, here p. 103. The exact number given by Nolzen is 1,329,448. However, because of the constant changes in the SA’s organization and the territory in which it operated, all estimates on the membership of the late SA can only be plausible approximations.

99.On the extensive historiographical debate about the analytical value of the concept of a German Volksgemeinschaft, see Martina Steber and Bernhard Gotto (eds), Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Steuwer, ‘Was meint und nützt das Sprechen von der “Volksgemeinschaft”?’; Dietmar von Reeken and Malte Thießen (eds), ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ als soziale Praxis: Neue Forschungen zur NS-Gesellschaft vor Ort (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013); Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann (ed.), ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: Mythos, wirkungsmächtige soziale Verheißung oder soziale Realität im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012); Frank Bajohr and Michael Wildt (eds), Volksgemeinschaft: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2009).

100.Such a broader perspective is all the more necessary as historians of Nazi Germany are increasingly challenged by the prevailing ‘obsessive post-national historiography’ that has raised new questions about the importance of their subject. Historicization of the Third Reich more than ever means the attempt to determine its place not only in the course of a rather narrowly defined German national history, but also in the wider development of capitalist modernity; Ulrich Herbert, ‘Nach dem Postnationalismus’, paper presented at the conference on ‘Transformationen der Geschichtswissenschaft: Hans-Ulrich Wehler und der Wandel der akademischen Felder seit den 1960er Jahren’, Bielefeld, 10–12 September 2015.

101.See in particular the pioneering books by Hans Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss: Die Österreichische Legion 1933–1938 (Vienna: Czerzin, 2011); and his Sommerfest mit Preisschießen: Die unbekannte Geschichte des NS-Putsches im Juli 1934 (Vienna: Czernin, 2006).

102.Dietrich Beyrau, ‘Eastern Europe as a “Sub-Germanic Space”: Scholarship on Eastern Europe under National Socialism’, in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13:3 (2012), pp. 685–723; Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik: Die Zusammenarbeit von Wehrmacht, Wirtschaft und SS (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1991); Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe 1933–45 (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002); Michael A. Hartenstein, Neue Dorflandschaften: Nationalsozialistische Siedlungsplanung in den ‘eingegliederten Ostgebieten’ 1939 bis 1944 (Berlin: Dr. Köster, 1998); Isabel Heinemann, ‘Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut’: Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003); Isabel Heinemann and Patrick Wagner (eds), Wissenschaft – Planung – Vertreibung: Neuordnungskonzepte und Umsiedlungspolitik im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006); Markus Leniger, Nationalsozialistische “Volkstumsarbeit” und Umsiedlungspolitik 1933–1945: Von der Minderheitenbetreuung zur Siedlerauslese (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2006); Gerhard Wolf, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität: Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen(Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012).

103.Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jörg Baberowski, Verbrannte Erde: Stalins Herrschaft der Gewalt (Munich: Beck, 2012); Donald Bloxham and Dirk A. Moses (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006).

104.See Georg Elwert, ‘Gewaltmärkte: Beobachtungen zur Zweckrationalität der Gewalt’, in Soziologie der Gewalt, ed. Trutz von Trotha (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), pp. 86–101, esp. pp. 87–91.

105.Jan Philipp Reemtsma, ‘Gewalt als attraktive Lebensform betrachtet’, Mittelweg 36 24:4 (2015), pp. 4–16, here pp. 12–14.

106.On violence as pleasure, see in particular the influential sociological study of Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 242–81.

107.Karl Marx, Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, vol. 1 (Berlin: Dietz, 1983), p. 779; Friedrich Engels, ‘Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft’, in Marx-Engels-Werke, vol. 20 (Berlin: Dietz, 1962), pp. 1–303, here p. 171; both as quoted in Felix Schnell, ‘Gewalt und Gewaltforschung’, version 1.0, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 8 November 2014, http://docupedia.de/zg/Gewalt_und_Gewaltforschung, p. 7.

108.Reemtsma, ‘Gewalt als attraktive Lebensform betrachtet’, pp. 12–14. See also the seminal studies by Collins, Violence; Peter Imbusch, Moderne und Gewalt: Zivilisationstheoretische Perspektiven auf das 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2005); Hans Joas, War and Modernity(Cambridge: Polity, 2003); Sofsky, Traktat über die Gewalt; Heinrich Popitz, Phänomene der Macht, 2nd edn (Tübingen: Siebeck, 1992), esp. pp. 43–78.

109.On ‘mobilization’ as a key concept for the analysis of social dynamics in the Third Reich, see Oliver Werner, ‘Mobilisierung im Nationalsozialismus – eine Einführung’, in Mobilisierung im Nationalsozialismus: Institutionen und Regionen in der Kriegswirtschaft und der Verwaltung des ‘Dritten Reiches’ 1936 bis 1945, ed. Oliver Werner (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013), pp. 9–26; Jürgen John, ‘Mobilisierung als Charakteristikum des NS-Systems?’, in Werner, Mobilisierung im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 29–57. On the importance of ‘discipline’ in interwar Germany, see also Ulrich Bröckling, Disziplin: Soziologie und Geschichte militärischer Gehorsamsproduktion (Munich: Fink, 1997), pp. 241–71.

110.For recent survey articles on the booming field of the history of violence, see Schnell, ‘Gewalt und Gewaltforschung’; Jan C. Behrends, ‘Gewalt und Staatlichkeit im 20. Jahrhundert: Einige Tendenzen zeithistorischer Forschung’, Neue Politische Literatur 58 (2013), pp. 39–58; Elissa Mailänder, ‘Geschichtswissenschaft’, in Gewalt: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, ed. Christian Gudehus and Michaela Christ (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2013), pp. 323–31; Maike Christadler, ‘Gewalt in der Frühen Neuzeit – Positionen der Forschung’, Gesnerus 64 (2007), pp. 231–45.

111.Ernst Nolte, Der Europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945: Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus (Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen, 1987); Enzo Traverso, Im Bann der Gewalt: Der Europäische Bürgerkrieg (Munich: Siedler, 2007).

112.Michael Mann, Fascism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), quotation on p. 353. From the recent literature, see António Costa Pinto and Aristotle Kallis (eds), Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship in Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); António Costa Pinto (ed.), Rethinking the Nature of Fascism: Comparative Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). See also the pioneering study of Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966).

113.Chris Millington and Kevin Passmore (eds), Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth (eds), Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2011); Enzo Traverso, L’histoire comme champ de bataille: Interpréter les violences du XXe siècle (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 2012); Alf Lüdtke and Bernd Weisbrod (eds), No Man’s Land of Violence: Extreme Wars in the 20th Century (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); Bernd Weisbrod, ‘Gewalt in der Politik. Zur politischen Kultur in Deutschland zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 43 (1992), pp. 391–404.

114.For critical and contrasting summaries of this debate, see Geoff Eley, Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930–1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 198–225; Jürgen Kocka, ‘Nach dem Ende des Sonderweges. Zur Tragfähigkeit eines Konzepts’, in Die Bielefelder Sozialgeschichte: Klassische Texte zu einem geschichtswissenschaftlichen Programm und seinen Kontroversen, ed. Bettina Hitzer and Thomas Welskopp (Bielefeld: transcript, 2010), pp. 263–75.

115.See pars pro toto, the masterful synthesis of Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 2 vols (New York: HarperCollins, 1997/2007).

116.A similar classification was first suggested by Andreas Werner, SA und NSDAP: ‘Wehrverband’, ‘Parteitruppe’ oder ‘Revolutionsarmee’? Studien zur Geschichte der SA und der NSDAP 1920–1933, diss., Friedrich Alexander Universität zu Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1964. This book is still a major reference for the early organizational history of the SA.

117.See in particular Reichardt’s methodological clarifications in his ‘Praxeologie und Faschismus’, pp. 129–35.

118.As made in ibid., pp. 136, 141; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 22–6. In challenging Reichardt’s view, I rely on recent praxis-based theoretical approaches as formulated by Schatzki and others: Theodore R. Schatzki, Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); idem, ‘Practice Mind-ed Orders’, in The Practice Turn in Contemporary History, ed. Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 42–55.

119.Gertrud Nunner-Winkler, ‘Überlegungen zum Gewaltbegriff’, in Gewalt: Entwicklungen, Strukturen, Analyseprobleme, ed. Wilhelm Heitmeyer and Hans-Georg Soeffner (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), pp. 21–61, here pp. 21–4; Schnell, ‘Gewalt und Gewaltforschung’, pp. 1–3, with further references. For an elaborate discussion of the forms of violence involved in the street violence of the 1920s, see Dirk Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1933: Kampf um die Straße und Furcht vor dem Bürgerkrieg (Essen: Klartext, 2001), pp. 15–22.

120.For different conceptualizations of these forms of violence and their problems, see Trutz von Trotha, ‘Zur Soziologie der Gewalt’, in idem (ed.), Soziologie der Gewalt (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997), pp. 9–56; Schnell, ‘Gewalt und Gewaltforschung’, pp. 1–4; Raphael van Riel, ‘Gedanken zum Gewaltbegriff: Drei Perspektiven’, IPW-Working Paper no. 5, Hamburg University, 2005, https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/sowi/akuf/Text_2010/Gewalt-Riel-2005.pdf; Imbusch, Moderne und Gewalt, pp. 20–35; Pierre Bourdieu, Grundlagen einer Theorie der symbolischen Gewalt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973).

121.The concept of the ‘bystander’ has recently come under criticism. Here, the term simply designates those individuals who are physically present in a particular situation but do not regard themselves as actively involved in it, either as perpetrators or as victims. This definition does not imply any statement about the effects of ‘bystanderism’. For a critical perspective on the concept of the ‘bystander’, see the contributions to the conference on ‘Probing the Limits of Categorization: The “Bystander” in Holocaust History’, Amsterdam, 24–26 September 2015.

122.As Hans-Gerd Jaschke and Martin Loiperdinger have demonstrated, the Nazis’ ‘aesthetic occupation’ and ‘physical terror’ were intrinsically linked. See Hans-Gerd Jaschke and Martin Loiperdinger, ‘Gewalt und NSDAP vor 1933: Ästhetische Okkupation und physischer Terror’, in Faszination der Gewalt: Politische Strategie und Alltagserfahrung, ed. Reiner Steinweg (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), pp. 123–55, here pp. 132–3, 146–7. See also Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann, Nationalsozialismus und Arbeitermilieus: Der nationalsozialistische Angriff auf die proletarischen Wohnquartiere und die Reaktionen in den sozialistischen Vereinen (Bonn: Dietz, 1997), pp. 312–35; Gerhard Paul, Aufstand der Bilder: Die NS-Propaganda vor 1933 (Bonn: Dietz, 1990), pp. 133–42; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 101–19. I hereby disagree with Dirk Schumann whose otherwise excellent study pays little attention to such ‘structural’ aspects of violence, a consequence of his basic methodological choices. See Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 15–16.

123.For this concept, which encompasses physical and psychological forms of violence, see Popitz, Phänomene der Macht, pp. 43–7.

124.Thomas Kühne, Belonging and Genocide: Hitler’s Community, 1918–1945 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2010). Kühne’s argument has provoked disagreement. In particular, his pointed emphasis on the genocidal aspects of Nazi community formation have been criticized as exaggerated; see Jürgen Matthäus’s review in the American Historical Review 117:2 (2012), pp. 626–7. Yet Kühne is not alone in seeing such a connection. For example, the military sociologist Anthony King has likewise stressed that bonds based on feelings of belonging and comradeship are a central precondition for good performance in combat; see Anthony King, The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 7–23.

125.Jörg Baberowski, ‘Einleitung: Ermöglichungsräume exzessiver Gewalt’, in Gewalträume: Soziale Ordnungen im Ausnahmezustand, ed. Jörg Baberowski and Gabriele Metzler (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2012), pp. 7–27, esp. pp. 25–7.

126.Jan Philipp Reemtsma, ‘Tötungslegitimationen: Die mörderische Allianz von Zivilisation und Barbarei’, in Bruchlinien: Tendenzen der Holocaustforschung, ed. Gertrud Koch (Cologne: Böhlau, 1999), pp. 85–103, here p. 99.

127.However, in recent months two important studies have been published that summarize the violence in the early SA concentration camps: Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (London: Little, Brown, 2015), here pp. 23–78; Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz.

128.Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004). Pioneering and still thought-provoking in this respect is David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (New York and London: Norton, 1980 [1966]).

129.See in particular the recent analysis by Thomas Rohkrämer, Die fatale Attraktion des Nationalsozialismus: Zur Popularität eines Unrechtsregimes (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013), pp. 27–56, 178–217; Thomas Mergel, ‘Führer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine: Politische Erwartungsstrukturen in der Weimarer Republik und dem Nationalsozialismus 1918–1936’, in Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939, ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), pp. 91–127; Michael Wildt, ‘Volksgemeinschaft und Führererwartung in der Weimarer Republik’, in Politische Kultur und Medienwirklichkeiten in den 1920er Jahren, ed. Ute Daniel, Inge Marszolek, Wolfram Pyta, and Thomas Welskopp (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010), pp. 181–204; Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Volksgemeinschaft im Übergang: Von der Demokratie zum rassistischen Führerstaat’, in Gemeinschaftsdenken in Europa: Das Gesellschaftskonzept ‘Volksheim’ im Vergleich 1900–1938, ed. Detlef Lehnert (Cologne: Böhlau, 2013), pp. 227–53.

130.In doing so, the NSDAP, as well as other Fascist and extreme nationalist parties, was not alone. In an instructive article, the historian Moritz Föllmer has recently argued that the idea of strong leadership in interwar Europe should not necessarily be regarded as a symptom of a ‘crisis of democracy’, as many moderate and left-wing politicians also favoured a highly personalized leadership. See Moritz Föllmer, ‘Führung und Demokratie in Europa’, in Normalität und Fragilität: Demokratie nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Tim B. Müller and Adam Tooze (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2015), pp. 177–97.

131.On the ‘democratic’ aspect of the leadership ideal in Germany after 1918, see also Wildt, ‘Volksgemeinschaft und Führererwartung in der Weimarer Republik’, pp. 196–8. As Christina Benninghaus and others have rightly emphasized, these concepts, which were popular among the intellectual leaders of the self-declared ‘young generation’, nearly exclusively addressed men. This is why, in the sentence above, I have used the male form only. See Christina Benninghaus, ‘Das Geschlecht der Generation: Zum Zusammenhang von Generationalität und Männlichkeit um 1930’, in Generationen: Zur Relevanz eines wissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs, ed. Ulrike Jureit and Michael Wildt (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2005), pp. 127–58. In reality, members of the middle and upper classes occupied by far the majority of the leadership ranks in the SA, to the detriment of those stormtroopers who originated from the lower classes; see Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, p. 165; and, with regard to Hamburg, Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 48–9.

132.This example is taken from Felix Römer, Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht von innen (Munich: Piper, 2012), pp. 85–6. The findings of Alexander W. Hoerken’s recent study on the political attitudes of German prisoners of war during the Second World War confirm the appeal of the idea of a people’s community – in contrast to the frequent and often bold criticism of the party and its personnel, including the SA. See Alexander W. Hoerkens, Unter Nazis? Die NS-Ideologie in den abgehörten Gesprächen deutscher Kriegsgefangener von 1939 bis 1945 (Berlin: Be.bra, 2014), pp. 308–12, 336.

133.In this respect see also Malte Thießen, ‘Schöne Zeiten? Erinnerungen an die “Volksgemeinschaft” nach 1945’, in Volksgemeinschaft: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschaft des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Bajohr and Wildt, pp. 165–87.

Chapter 1

1.As quoted in Othmar Plöckinger, Unter Soldaten und Agitatoren: Hitlers prägende Jahre im deutschen Militär 1918–1920 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013), p. 5.

2.See recently Robert Gerwarth, ‘The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War’, Past and Present 200 (2008), pp. 175–209, here p. 177; idem, ‘Rechte Gewaltgemeinschaften und die Stadt nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg: Berlin, Wien und Budapest im Schatten von Kriegsniederlage und Revolution’, in Kollektive Gewalt in der Stadt: Europa 1890–1939, ed. Friedrich Lenger (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), pp. 103–21; Béla Bodó, ‘Heroes or Thieves? Nepotism, Clientage and Paramilitary Violence in Hungary, 1919–1921’, Centre. Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries 1 (2015), pp. 66–114.

3.For Germany, see among others the contributions in Gerhard Krumeich (ed.), Nationalsozialismus und Erster Weltkrieg (Essen: Klartext, 2010). For a European perspective, see Angelo Ventrone, ‘Fascism and the Legacy of the Great War’, in The Legacies of Two World Wars: European Societies in the Twentieth Century, ed. Lothar Kettenacker and Torsten Riotte (New York: Berghahn, 2011), pp. 90–119; Michael Mann, Fascists (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 31–91.

4.From the extensive literature on the topic, see Kathleen Canning, ‘Claiming Citizenship: Suffrage and Subjectivity in Germany after the First World War’, in Weimar Publics / Weimar Subjects: Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s, ed. Kathleen Canning, Kerstin Barndt, and Kristin McGuire (New York and London: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 116–37; Julia Sneeringer, Winning Women’s Votes: Propaganda and Politics in Weimar Germany (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Matthew Stibbe, ‘Anti-Feminism, Nationalism and the German Right, 1914–1920: A Reappraisal’, German History 20:2 (2002), pp. 185–210.

5.Jörn Leonhard, ‘Means of Propaganda, Tools of Loyalty? Experience and Language in the First World War’, paper presented at the 17th International Conference, ‘History of Concepts: Communicating Concepts – Conceptualizing Communication’, Bielefeld University, 28–30 August 2014.

6.On the languages and forms of politics in interwar Germany, see in particular Thomas Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik: Politische Kommunikation, symbolische Politik und Öffentlichkeit im Reichstag (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002); Kirsten Heinsohn, Konservative Parteien in Deutschland 1912–1933: Demokratisierung und Partizipation in geschlechterhistorischer Perspektive (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2010).

7.On the early Reichswehr and its clandestine paramilitary forces, the so-called ‘Black Reichswehr’, see Bergien, Die bellizistische Republik, pp. 107–30; Francis L. Carsten, Reichswehr und Politik (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1964), pp. 168–173; Franz von Gaertner, Die Reichswehr in der Weimarer Republik: Erlebte Geschichte (Darmstadt: Fundus, 1969), pp. 129–35. For partisan views on the extremely controversial topic of the ‘Black Reichswehr’ in the 1920s and 1930s, see the ‘defence statements’ by Bruno Ernst Buchrucker, Im Schatten Seeckt’s: Die Geschichte der ‘Schwarzen Reichswehr’ (Berlin: Kampf-Verlag, 1928); Friedrich Wilhelm von Oerzen, Die Deutschen Freikorps 1918–1923 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1938), pp. 462–73; for a critical voice of the 1920s, see Emil Julis Gumbel, Verschwörer (Vienna: Malick, 1924), pp. 100–17.

8.The historian Peter Keller has recently argued that the use of Freikorps as a catch-all term for those military units that operated with the consent of the German government, but were not officially part of the Reichswehr, largely stems from a tradition invented in the 1930s. Instead of Freikorps, Keller prefers the term Regierungstruppen – government forces. See Peter Keller, ‘Die Wehrmacht der Deutschen Republik ist die Reichswehr’: Die deutsche Armee 1918–1921 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2014), pp. 81–101. See also Sprenger, Landsknechte; Perry Biddiscombe, ‘The End of the Freebooter Tradition: The Forgotten Freikorps Movement of 1944/45’, Central European History 32:1 (1999), pp. 53–90, here p. 58; Kai Uwe Tapken, Die Reichswehr in Bayern von 1919 bis 1924 (Hamburg: Kovač, 2002), p. 115; Schulze, Freikorps und Republik, pp. 35–47.

9.Richard Bessel, ‘Militarismus im innenpolitischen Leben der Weimarer Republik: Von den Freikorps zur SA’, in Militär und Militarismus in der Weimarer Republik: Beiträge eines internationalen Symposiums an der Hochschule der Bundeswehr Hamburg am 5. und 6. Mai 1977, ed. Klaus-Jürgen Müller and Eckardt Opitz (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1978), pp. 193–222, here pp. 200–3.

10.Jan-Philipp Pomplun, ‘Freikorps als personelle und organisatorische Keimzellen des Nationalsozialismus? Eine sozial- und politikgeschichtliche Untersuchung am Beispiel süddeutscher Einheiten’, speech delivered at the conference ‘Wegbereiter des Nationalsozialismus: Personen, Organisationen, Netzwerke des völkisch-antisemitischen Aktivismus 1919–1933’, Gelsenkirchen, 30 September–2 October 2013. According to Pomplun, 1 per cent of former Freikorps members later joined the SS, and 17 per cent became members of the NSDAP. The previously dominant perspective emphasized the continuity in membership between Freikorps units and the Nazi Party; see Robert G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970); Bernhard Sauer, ‘Freikorps and Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 56:1 (2008), pp. 5–29, here p. 29; Bessel, ‘Militarismus im innenpolitischen Leben der Weimarer Republik’, p. 202.

11.After the failed Kapp Putsch in March 1920, Hermann Ehrhardt moved his brigade from Berlin to Munich, where Bavarian authorities welcomed him and his men. He then set up a secret terror organization, the Organization Consul (OC), under the guise of the Bayerische Holzverwertungsgesellschaft, literally the ‘Bavarian Forest and Wood Company’. For details, see Gabriele Krüger, Die Brigade Ehrhardt (Hamburg: Leibnitz, 1971), pp. 68–99.

12.The Freikorps Epp, named after its leader Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp (1868–1947), was founded in Thuringia as the Bavarian Free Corps for the Protection of the Eastern Frontier in the spring of 1919. It participated in the toppling of the Munich Soviet Republic in May 1919 and later that month was integrated into the provisional Reichswehr as the 1. Bayerisches Schützenregiment, literally the ‘First Bavarian Shooters Regiment’. Later leading National Socialist politicians Rudolf Hess, Ernst Röhm, and Gregor and Otto Strasser were all members of the Freikorps Epp. See Bruno Thoß, ‘Freikorps Epp’, in Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44494; Katja-Maria Wächter, Die Macht der Ohnmacht: Leben und Politik des Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp (1868–1946) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1999), pp. 53–113.

13.On the Freikorps Oberland that in 1921 was renamed Bund Oberland, see Hans Fenske, Konservatismus und Rechtsradikalismus in Bayern nach 1918 (Berlin and Zurich: Gehlen, 1969), pp. 53–6, 159–64; Reinhold Friedrich, Spuren des Nationalsozialismus im bayerischen Oberland: Schliersee und Hausham zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2011), pp. 76–90; Rüdiger Ahrens, Bündische Jugend: Eine neue Geschichte 1918–1933 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015), p. 56.

14.The best book that provides a comprehensive picture of Munich society during the war and post-war years is Martin Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation und Moderne. München 1914–1924 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), here esp. pp. 94–129.

15.David Clay Large, The Politics of Law and Order: A History of the Bavarian Einwohnerwehr, 1918–1921 (Philadelphia, PA: The American Philosophical Society, 1980), pp. 3–4, 20–6; ‘Ein “Bund der erwachenden Bayern”’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:11, 17 March 1922, p. 146. On the Bavarian Einwohnerwehren, see also the older but still relevant accounts by Fenske, Konservatismus und Rechtsradikalismus, pp. 76–112; Werner Gabriel Zimmermann, Bayern und das Reich 1918–1923 (Munich: R. Pflaum Verlag, 1953), pp. 98–104.

16.Large, The Politics of Law and Order, pp. 25–31, 39, 43. In contrast to Large, Dirk Schumann has argued that the Einwohnerwehr movement had only a limited influence on the radicalization of the middle classes, at least in Saxony: Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik, p. 361. For Bavaria, however, this nexus is irrefutable.

17.On the Orgesch, see Christoph Hübner, ‘Organisation Escherich (Orgesch), 1920/21’, in Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44558.

18.Dietrich Orlow, Weimar Prussia 1918–1925: The Unlikely Rock of Democracy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986). See also his second volume: Weimar Prussia 1925–1933: The Illusion of Strength (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); as well as Hans-Peter Ehni, Preußen-Regierung, Reich-Länder-Problem und Sozialdemokratie 1928–1932(Bonn: Neue Gesellschaft, 1975). For a first-hand account, see the memoirs of the former Prussian Minister of the Interior, Albert C. Grzesinski, Inside Germany (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1939).

19.Revealing in this context is that the Bavarian government did not accept the Reich laws designed to protect the democratic order after the murder of the Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau, on 24 June 1922, which was the most prominent of a series of political murders between 1919 and 1922 that were meant to punish those whom the nationalist right branded as appeasement politicians, traitors to the German cause, and Jews. See Martin Sabrow, Die verdrängte Verschwörung: Der Rathenau-Mord und die deutsche Gegenrevolution (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999); Ulrike Claudia Hofmann, ‘Verräter verfallen der Feme!’ Fememorde in Bayern in den zwanziger Jahren (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000); Gumbel, Verschwörer.

20.Maurice, born in 1897 in Westermoor near Itzehoe in Schleswig-Holstein, had come to Munich in October 1917. There, he briefly worked as a watchmaker, his learned profession, before he was drafted into the military, where he was wounded but apparently never deployed in combat. He was released from the army on 25 January 1919 and returned to his former employer. Apparently aided by the introduction of the eight-hour workday, which gave him more spare time, Maurice became involved in politics and the world of paramilitarism over the course of 1919. He joined the new Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP) in late 1919, played leading roles in the SA and later the SS, and in 1923 participated in the Beer Hall Putsch. Protected by Hitler, with whom he was on an intimate footing beginning in the early 1920s, Maurice became a Munich city councilman in 1933 and president of the Munich Chamber of Crafts in 1936. On his early life, see the Bavarian police’s note about him from 3 November 1921 in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, pp. 1–2; on his later life, see Anna Maria Sigmund, Des Führers bester Freund: Adolf Hitler, seine Nichte Geli Raubal und der ‘Ehrenarier’ Emil Maurice – eine Dreiecksbeziehung (Munich: Heyne, 2003).

21.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 1–7, here p. 2: Memorandum of the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated.

22.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 23; Fenske, Konservatismus und Rechtsradikalismus, pp. 77–8; Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 19–27; Jeremy Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, 1921–1933 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 24–5.

23.Paul Hoser, ‘Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Arbeiterverein e.V. (NSDAV), 1920–1923/1925–1935’, Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44775.

24.Auer acted as Minister of the Interior in the revolutionary government in 1918–19 and was from 1919 until 1933 the leader of the Bavarian SPD. See Markus Schmalzl, Erhard Auer – Wegbereiter der parlamentarischen Demokratie in Bayern (Laßleben: Kallmünz, 2013), pp. 468–79. While the SPD in exile in 1934 still knew that the Nazis had ‘stolen’ the term ‘SA’ from the Bavarian Social Democrats, this knowledge came to be forgotten later. See Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 1 (1934), p. 262.

25.On Valley, see Friedrich Hitzer, Anton Graf Arco: Das Attentat auf Kurt Eisner und die Schüsse im Landtag (Munich: Knesebeck and Schuler, 1988).

26.Wilhelm Buisson (1892–1940) had studied pharmacy science in Munich between 1913 and 1920, with an interruption for his military service. With the help of Auer, he was able to open his own pharmacy in 1924. Two years later he started to volunteer as ‘leisure warden’ (Vergnügungswart) for the Bayern Munich sports club. He was sentenced to death because of his anti-Fascist activities in the 1930s, and the Nazis executed him on 6 September 1940 in Berlin-Plötzensee. His role as a Social Democratic activist in the early 1920s is virtually unknown. For biographical details, see Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Der FC Bayern und seine Juden: Aufstieg und Zerschlagung einer liberalen Fußballkultur (Göttingen: Die Werkstatt, 2011), pp. 190–1, 239; ‘Erinnerungstag 2015 – Wilhelm Buisson – FC Bayern-Funktionär und Widerstandskämpfer’, Südkurvenbladdl Onlinemagazin, http://suedkurvenbladdl.org/erinnerungstag-2015-wilhelm-buisson-fc-bayern-funktionaer-und-widerstandskaempfer.

27.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 13–15: Memorandum of the Bavarian Police on the SA of the NSDAP, undated (but after 3 February 1923); Robert Hofmann, ‘Auergarde, 1919–1924’, Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44656; Günther Gerstenberg, Freiheit! Sozialdemokratischer Selbstschutz im München der zwanziger und frühen dreißiger Jahre (Munich: Eulenspiegeldruck, 1997), vol. 1, p. 75.

28.On the origins and first years of the Reichsbanner, see Benjamin Ziemann, Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 60–94; idem, Die Zukunft der Republik? Das Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold 1924–1933 (Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2011), pp. 13–20; Carsten Voigt, Kampfbünde der Arbeiterbewegung: Das Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold und der Rote Frontkämpferbund in Sachsen 1924–1933 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009).

29.See StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, p. 52: Memorandum from Bauerreiter of the Munich police, 3 November 1921.

30.Given the overwhelming evidence on this point, it is striking that the Bavarian police under Pöhner in a memo from 1923 still claimed that the National Socialist stormtroopers had never taken the offensive. See StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 13–15, here p. 13: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the SA of the NSDAP, undated (but after 3 February 1923).

31.Johannes Schwarze, Die bayrische Polizei und ihre historische Funktion bei der Aufrechterhaltung der öffentlichen Sicherheit in Bayern von 1919–1933 (Munich: Wölfle, 1977), p. 151.

32.BayHStA, MInn, no. 71712, pp. 32–4, here p. 33: Letter from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior to the Police Headquarters in Munich, 11 February 1921.

33.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 8: Note by the Bavarian police, 24 September 1921.

34.BayHStA, MInn, no. 71712, pp. 32–4: Letter from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior to the Police Headquarters in Munich, 11 February 1921.

35.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 13–15: Memorandum of the Bavarian Police on the SA of the NSDAP, undated (but after 3 February 1923).

36.On the early SA in Bavaria, see above all Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 9–44; Eric G. Reiche, The Development of the SA in Nürnberg, 1922–1934 (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 1–49; Werner Maser, Der Sturm auf die Republik: Frühgeschichte der NSDAP (Munich: DVA, 1973), pp. 284–464; Werner, SA und NSDAP; Heinrich Bennecke, Hitler und die SA (Munich and Vienna: Günter Olzog Verlag, 1962), pp. 25–103.

37.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 1–7, here p. 2: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated; ‘An unsere deutsche Jugend!’, Völkischer Beobachter, 11 August 1921 (trans. Heiden, History of National Socialism, pp. 82–3); Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 38–40.

38.Krüger, Brigade Ehrhardt, pp. 105–7; Hans-Günter Richardi, Hitler und seine Hintermänner: Neue Fakten zur Frühgeschichte der NSDAP (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1991), p. 368; Werner, NSDAP und SA, 23; HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 242: Letter from the SA-Gruppe Hansa, 9 July 1936. For Johannes Paul Klintzsch (1861–1920), see the entry in Evangelisches Pfarrerbuch für die Mark Brandenburg seit der Reformation, ed. Brandenburgischer Provinzialsynodalverband, vol. 2 (Berlin: Mittler, 1941), p. 417.

39.Krüger, Brigade Ehrhardt, pp. 105–6. For a biographical sketch of Klinzsch’s life, see Friedrich Walsdorff, ‘Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch’, in Alma Mater Joachimica: Zeitschrift der Vereinigung Alter Joachimsthaler e.V. 53 (1981), pp. 1,253–7.

40.It is telling that in Friedrich Freksa (ed.), Kapitän Ehrhardt: Abenteuer und Schicksale (Berlin: Scherl, 1924), a popular but authorized account of Ehrhardt’s life, all references to the illegality of the SA and NSDAP are omitted.

41.‘Kritische Zeit’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:32, 11 August 1922, pp. 403–4. On Ludendorff and his ‘movement’ in the 1920s, see Bettina Amm, Die Ludendorff-Bewegung: Vom nationalistischen Kampfbund zur völkischen Weltanschauungssekte (Hamburg: Ad Fontes, 2006); Bruno Thoß, Der Ludendorff-Kreis 1919–1923: München als Zentrum der mitteleuropäischen Gegenrevolution zwischen Revolution und Hitler-Putsch (Munich: Woelfle, 1978).

42.See the instructive article ‘Kapitän Ehrhardt’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:49, 8 December 1922, p. 607.

43.Bessel, ‘Militarismus im innenpolitischen Leben der Weimarer Republik’, p. 208.

44.On Hitler’s life and political development between 1918 and 1921, see the exemplary Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936 (Stuttgart: DVA, 1998), pp. 149–276; Evans, Coming of the Third Reich, pp. 161–75; Plöckinger, Unter Soldaten und Agitatoren; Thomas Weber, Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 227–87.

45.Richardi, Hitler und seine Hintermänner, p. 369. After the Second World War, Klintzsch likewise claimed that he had only been responsible to Ehrhardt, but not Hitler. He even denied that there ever was a formal affiliation between the Ehrhardt men and the organizations under Hitler’s command; Landeskirchliches Archiv Stuttgart (LKA Stuttgart), A 127, no. 1293: Letter from Klintzsch to a Protestant Oberkirchenrat in Württemberg, 25 March 1948.

46.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 174–83: an early list of SA members (from Maurice), presumably intercepted by the police in September 1921. A newspaper report from October 1922 likewise gave the age of the stormtroopers involved in public appearances as ‘between 18 and 25 years’; see ‘Bayerischer Skandal’, Oberfränkische Volkszeitung, no. 295, 20 October 1922, in BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589. As the SA was, at least between 1921 and the first half of 1922, divided into two categories – Category A comprising those between seventeen and twenty-three and Category B comprising the more ‘senior gentlemen’ – it is possible that the total number of stormtroopers was actually slightly higher than estimated, so that Longerich’s number of 300 seems plausible; Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 26. In light of these sources, Rösch’s claim that the SA in November 1921 comprised 1,500 men seems exaggerated; Mathias Rösch, Die Münchner NSDAP 1925–1933: Eine Untersuchung zur inneren Struktur der NSDAP in der Weimarer Republik (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), p. 80. See also StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 20–1: Letter from the Munich police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 25 June 1923.

47.It remained a characteristic of the SA until the early 1930s that its rank and file as well as Führer were often of very young age. See Bessel, ‘Militarismus im innenpolitischen Leben der Weimarer Republik’, pp. 216–17.

48.See the documents in Klintzsch’s investigation file, in LArch Freiburg, F 179/4 no. 110.

49.Hermann Göring (1893–1946), a well-known fighter pilot during the First World War, had spent most of the years 1919–21 in Denmark and Sweden, before he moved to Bavaria in 1922 and enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at Ludwig Maximilians University (at least for the winter term of 1922–3). He suffered from morphine addiction for most of his life and – perhaps because of it – at times behaved so violently that he eventually spent several weeks in a psychiatric hospital in Stockholm in 1925. Within the Third Reich, Göring, as Hitler’s deputy, served in several influential positions, most notably as Prussian Minister of the Interior in 1933 and later as Reich Minister for the Four-Year Plan. Sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Göring committed suicide by ingesting a potassium cyanide capsule prior to his execution. On Göring’s drug-related physical violence, see Hermann Weber et al. (eds), Deutschland, Russland, Komintern. II. Dokumente (1918–1943). Nach der Archivrevolution: Neuerschlossene Quellen zu der Geschichte der KPD und den deutsch-russischen Beziehungen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), pp. 958–9.

50.For details on the biographies of the early SA leaders, see the excellent analysis by Bruce Campbell, The SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2004), esp. pp. 7, 29–48, 62–79.

51.See the comprehensive article by Malinowski and Reichardt, ‘Die Reihen fest geschlossen?’

52.The membership list cited earlier contains a total of 241 names, 144 of them with professional status. It is included in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 174–83. See also ‘Die bayrischen Nationalsozialisten’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 8 November 1922, in BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589; ‘Beim Überfall auf das Deutsche Theater’, Münchener Post, 18 October 1922, in ibid. As early as late 1920, a Studentensturm, or ‘SA Student Storm’, co-founded and initially led by Rudolf Hess, who later became Hitler’s proxy, is said to have existed. See Michael S. Steinberg, Sabers and Brown Shirts: The German Students’ Path to National Socialism, 1918–1935 (Chicago, IL, and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 73–4; Hans Peter Bleuel and Ernst Klinnert, Deutsche Studenten auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich: Ideologien – Programme – Aktionen, 1918–1935(Gütersloh: Mohn, 1967), p. 196. I have not been able to verify this claim.

53.See Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Germany after the First World War: A Violent Society? Results and Implications of Resent Research on Weimar Germany’, Journal of Modern European History 1 (2003), pp. 80–95; Klaus Schönhoven, ‘Die Entstehung der Weimarer Republik aus dem Krieg: Vorbelastungen und Neuanfang’, in Weimar im Widerstreit: Deutungen der ersten deutschen Republik im geteilten Deutschland, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), pp. 13–32; Andrew Donson, Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). The classical study is George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). For a short summary of the debate, see Gerwarth, ‘Rechte Gewaltgemeinschaften und die Stadt nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, pp. 106–7.

54.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, pp. 4, 6: Transcripts of SA announcements from 26 August and 19 October 1921.

55.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803: Police report about the SA meeting on 5 October 1921 in the Högerbräu.

56.Ibid.: Police report about the SA meeting in Corneliusstraße on 25 January 1922.

57.Ibid.: Police report about the SA meeting in the Hofbräuhaus on 6 April 1922.

58.Ibid.: Police report about the SA meeting in the restaurant Liebherr on 30 November 1921.

59.‘An alle Schaffenden! Die wahren Verräter und Würger der Deutschen!’, in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Sammlung von Flugblättern betreffend die Münchener Räterepublik 1919, http://www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/flugblaetter-1919.

60.On the rise of antisemitism during the First World War and in the early years of the Weimar Republic, see Christoph Jahr, Antisemitismus vor Gericht: Debatten über die juristische Ahndung judenfeindlicher Agitation in Deutschland (1879–1960) (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011), pp. 245–76; Daniel Siemens, ‘Konzepte des nationaljüdischen Körpers in der frühen Weimarer Republik’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 56:1 (2008), pp. 30–54, here pp. 30–2; Cornelia Hecht, Deutsche Juden und Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 2003); Avraham Barkai, ‘Wehr Dich!’ Der Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (C.V.) 1893–1938 (Munich: Beck, 2002), pp. 55–66; Dirk Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 1999).

61.Hofmann, ‘Verräter verfallen der Feme!’, pp. 108, 112–13.

62.On the reception of juvenile criminality during the war years and in the Weimar Republic, see Sarah Bornhorst, ‘Bad Boys? Juvenile Delinquency during the First Word War in Wilhelmine Germany’, in Juvenile Delinquency and the Limits of Western Influence, 1850–2000, ed. Heather Ellis (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 121–44; Daniel Siemens, Metropole und Verbrechen: Die Gerichtsreportage in Berlin, Paris und Chicago (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007), pp. 129–35.

63.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Mussolini – Beherrscher Italiens’, Bayerische Staatszeitung, 28–29 October 1922.

64.Hitler’s speech in the Hofbräuhaus on the occasion of the first anniversary of the SA, as quoted in ‘Unsere Sturmabteilung’, Völkischer Beobachter, 5 August 1922, in BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589; ‘Aufruf! Deutsche Volksgenossen, Hand- und Kopfarbeiter!’, Völkischer Beobachter, 9 November 1921; HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 242: Letter from the SA-Gruppe Hansa, 9 July 1936.

65.Paradigmatic for the tone and style of this glorification is Karl W. H. Koch, Männer im Braunhemd: Vom Kampf und Sieg der SA (Berlin: Stubenrauch, 1936), pp. 11–17. Consequently, the Nazis used the events of 4 November 1921 in further propaganda. Three days later, on 7 November, they published a second call to join the SA in the Völkischer Beobachter, entitled ‘Hinein in die Sturmabteilungen!’ See StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 1–7, here p. 2: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated.

66.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Aus der politischen Kinderstube’, Münchener Post, 29 June 1922.

67.Ibid.: ‘Hakenkreuz und Ettstraße’, Münchener Post, 14 July 1922.

68.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 8: Note of the Bavarian Police from 24 September 1921; StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 13–15, here p. 14: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the SA of the NSDAP, undated (but after 3 February 1923); Westernhagen, Von der Herrschaft zur Gefolgschaft, p. 49.

69.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, pp. 175–92: Interrogation of Adolf Modes, 8 February 1923.

70.For details, see Torsten Homberger, Fashioning German Fascism: Constructing the Image of Hitler’s Storm Troopers, 1924–1933, PhD diss., Washington State University, 2014, pp. 56–73.

71.Richardi, Hitler und seine Hintermänner, p. 372.

72.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Aus der Bewegung’, Völkischer Beobachter, 2 August 1922.

73.For an overview of the SA’s organizational structure in 1933, see Julius M. Ruhl and Carl B. Starke (eds), Adolf Hitlers Braunhemden: Organisation, Einteilung, Bekleidung und Ausrüstung der Nationalsozialistischen Sturm-Abteilungen, Schutz-Staffeln, der Hitler-Jugend, des Deutschen Jungvolkes sowie der Politischen Organisation usw. (Leipzig: Moritz Ruhl, 1933). For the organization of the SA’s subdivisions in 1938, see Ernst Bayer, Die SA: Geschichte, Arbeit, Zweck und Organisation der Sturmabteilungen des Führers und der Obersten SA-Führung (Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1938).

74.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804, pp. 15–16: ‘Flame letter’ from the O[ber]k[ommando] Transportleitung, a certain Herr Streck, to the leader of the SA (Göring), 14 July 1923.

75.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 230–1: Constable Pfeilschifler, Report to the Municipal Council of Bad Tölz, 16 August 1922.

76.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 232: Memo by the Munich police on the interrogation of Hans Ulrich Klintzsch, 20 September 1922. The Zionist weekly Das Jüdische Echo in May 1922 remarked that ‘Upper Bavaria is for its most part antisemitic’, thanks not least to the antisemitic agitation of the local newspaper Miesbacher Anzeiger. As a matter of self-respect, the author of the Das Jüdische Echo article urged his Jewish brothers in faith to no longer vacate in this area: Hans Guggenheimer, ‘Bayerische Sommerfrischen’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:21, 26 May 1922, pp. 268–9. See also Karl Glaser, ‘Antisemitismus und kleine Gemeinden’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:13, 31 March 1922, pp. 167–8.

77.Nunner-Winkler, ‘Überlegungen zum Gewaltbegriff’, p. 53.

78.‘Kritische Zeit’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:32, 11 August 1922, pp. 403–4, here p. 403.

79.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 1–7, here p. 2: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated.

80.Ernst Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, trans. Geoffrey Brooks (London: Frontline, 2012), p. 126.

81.The journalist Hermann Esser (1900–81) joined the DAP, the later NSDAP, in 1919. In the same year he became editor-in-chief of the Völkischer Beobachter. In the early 1920s, Esser made a name for himself in Bavaria as a fervently antisemitic demagogue. In 1923 he stated that all Jews in Germany should be interned in concentration camps, and that if the Allied occupation of the Ruhr region did not stop, 50,000 Jews would be ‘sent to a better afterworld’ (einem besseren Jenseits zugeführt) – that is, murdered. After becoming a member of the Bavarian Landtag in 1932, Esser was promoted to the head of the Bavarian State Chancellery in 1933. See ‘Die Sturmarmee’, Das Jüdische Echo 10:14, 6 April 1923, in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 319; Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler: The Lost Testimony by a Survivor from the Night of the Long Knives, ed. Bob Carruthers (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2013), p. 81; Thomas Fürst, Karl Stützel. Ein Lebensweg in Umbrüchen: Vom Königlichen Beamten zum Bayerischen Innenminister der Weimarer Zeit (1924–1933) (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007), p. 454, n. 1,735.

82.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Zur Psychologie der Nationalsozialisten’, Münchener Post, 17 August 1922.

83.On the European dimension of this political event, which inspired Fascist movements throughout Europe, see Arnd Bauerkämper, ‘Transnational Fascism: Cross-Border Relations between Regimes and Movements in Europe, 1922–1939’, East Central Europe 37 (2010), pp. 214–46, here pp. 217–22. On the National Socialist admiration for Italian Fascism in the 1920s, see also Patrick Bernhard, ‘Konzertierte Gegnerbekämpfung im Achsenbündnis. Die Polizei im Dritten Reich und im faschistischen Italien 1933 bis 1943’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 59:2 (2011), pp. 229–62, esp. pp. 230–7.

84.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: Clipping from Bayerischer Kurier, 19 June 1922.

85.Ibid.: ‘Eine Justizkomödie’, Münchener Post, 29 November 1922.

86.‘Antisemitisches aus Bayern: “Nieder mit den Juden!”’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:37, 15 September 1922, p. 466.

87.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Deutscher Tag in Koburg’, Bayerische Zeitung (Munich), 22 October 1922. On the National Socialist memory of this particular meeting, see BArch Berlin, NS 26/371: Auf nach Coburg! Einladung zur Nationalsozialistischen Kundgebung in Coburg am 8. und 9. Mai 1929.

88.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Die bayerischen Faschisten treten auf den Plan!’, Fränkische Tagespost, 17 October 1922.

89.‘Deutschvölkische Radauhelden’, Das Jüdische Echo 9:40, 6 October 1922, p. 501; BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Beim Überfall auf das Deutsche Theater’, Münchener Post, 18 October 1922.

90.‘Vom bayerischen Kriegsschauplatz: Nationalsozialistischer Hausfriedensbruch und anderes’, Das Jüdische Echo 10:1, 5 January 1923, p. 5.

91.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81589: ‘Nationalsozialistische Skandalmethoden’, Münchener Post, 2 October 1922.

92.Maser, Der Sturm auf die Republik, pp. 380–2. Klintzsch never returned to the SA. He married on 8 September 1923 and in the following two years struggled to earn a living for his quickly growing family. In 1925 he became an instructor at the Hanseatic Yacht School (Hanseatische Yacht-Schule) in Neustadt in Holstein. From 1929 onward Klinzsch worked as an instructor at the German School of Aviation in Warnemünde and on the island of Sylt. He entered the ranks of the Luftwaffe in 1936. In 1938 he was the commander of the Airforce School of Navigation (Navigationsschule der Luftwaffe) in the city of Anklam in Pomerania, and from 1942 onward he served as Chief of Staff in the airforce sea-rescue forces in the German Bight; Walsdorff, ‘Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch’, p. 1257; LKA Stuttgart, A 127, no. 1293: Personal information form Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch (1949/50).

93.StA München, Polizeidirektion München, Personalakten, no. 10020 (Wilhelm Brückner), p. 25: Testimony of Wilhelm Brückner to the Bavarian Police, 9 May 1923. In early 1923 several SA Hundertschaften formed a Bezirk, or ‘group’. Starting on 28 January 1923 each group disposed of its own ‘Standarte’. The first groups were said to have been Munich I, Munich II, Landshut, and Nuremberg.

94.Ibid., p. 40: Testimony of Wilhelm Brückner to the Bavarian Police, 19 May 1923. On the origins of the SS, see Bastian Hein, Elite für Volk und Führer? Die Allgemeine SS und ihre Mitglieder 1925–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), pp. 39–75; idem, Die SS. Geschichte und Verbrechen(Munich: Beck, 2015), pp. 7–14.

95.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, p. 6: Memorandum from the Bavarian Police on the Self-Defence Leagues, undated; StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 19–20: Report by Hans Lechner from the Austrian SA to SA headquarters in Munich, 1 September 1923; StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804: Report about a meeting of the Munich SA on 11 April 1923; Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, pp. 24–5; Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, p. 81; Daniel Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen: Polizisten im Ruhrgebiet in Demokratie und Diktatur 1919–1939 (Essen: Klartext, 2008), p. 283.

96.On Baur, a factotum of the early NSDAP who later served as a nurse in the Dachau concentration camp, see Daniela Andre, ‘Eleonore Baur – “Blutschwester Pia” oder “Engel von Dachau”’, in Rechte Karrieren in München: Von der Weimarer Zeit bis in die Nachkriegsjahre, ed. Marita Krauss (Munich: Volk, 2010), pp. 166–85. On the biography of Ernst von Westernhagen, see von Westernhagen, Von der Herrschaft zur Gefolgschaft, pp. 45–66.

97.All information on this incident, if not noted otherwise, is taken from Karl-Heinz Rueß, ‘Die “Schlacht am Walfischkeller”: Aus der politischen Niederlage entsteht die Göppinger SA’, in Göppingen unterm Hakenkreuz, ed. Konrad Plieninger and Karl-Heinz Rueß (Göppingen: Stadtarchiv Göppingen, 1994), pp. 12–21, here pp. 13–15.

98.Figures from the police show the participation of 1,300 SA men, 200 Reichsflagge men, 400 Bund Blücher men, 800 Bund Oberland men, and members of some other even smaller groups. See BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 3 May 1923.

99.Ibid.: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 28 May 1923; ‘Dokumente gegen “bedenkenlose Geschichtsfälschung”’, Münchener Post, 7 January 1932.

100.Ibid.: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 3 May 1923.

101.Idid.: Letter from Wehrkreiskommando VIII to Reichswehrministerium, 6 May 1923.

102.Ibid.: Letter from the Munich Police to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 3 May 1923.

103.Ibid.: ‘Das Feldlager auf Oberwiesenfeld’, Münchener Post, 3 May 1923.

104.One reason for von Lossow’s benevolence toward the SA in 1923 was the threat of a possible German war with the French, who together with Belgian troops had occupied the demilitarized Ruhr area in January 1923. In such circumstances Röhm suggested to von Lossow that only a close cooperation between the paramilitary leagues and the Reichswehr would allow for suitable national defence. See Eleanor Hancock, Ernst Röhm: Hitler’s SA Chief of Staff (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 51–2.

105.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Letter from Wehrkreiskommando VIII to Reichswehrministerium, 6 May 1923.

106.Ibid.: ‘Kurze Anfrage Nr. 664 an das Bayerische Kultusministerium’, 2 May 1923. See also chapter 3.

107.Ventrone, ‘Fascism and the Legacy of the Great War’, p. 111.

108.Kurt Jackmush, in Boxwoche 1 (1923), as quoted in Erik N. Jensen, Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 63.

109.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Speech of Schweyer in the Bayerischer Landtag, 8 June 1923, in Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Bayerischen Landtags, no. 195, vol. 8, pp. 378–9. On Schweyer’s perception of the early Nazi movement, see also his book Politische Geheimverbände (Freiburg/Breisgau: Herder, 1925).

110.Collins, Violence, pp. 2–4 and passim.

111.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803: Police report about the meeting of the NSDAP in the Hotel Adelmann on 19 October 1921.

112.The situation was particularly chaotic in Nuremberg; see Reiche, Development of the SA in Nürnberg, pp. 36–40; Herbert Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD: Der politische Lebensweg des Dr. Hemuth Klotz (1894–1943) (Konstanz: UKV, 1998), pp. 48–81.

113.Konrad Heiden, A History of National Socialism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010 [1934]), p. 103.

114.BayHStA, MInn, no. 81594: Confidential report, ‘Aus der Rechtsbewegung’, 2 June 1923; Westernhagen, Von der Herrschaft zur Gefolgschaft, p. 57; Andreas Hofer, Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke: Marineoffizier – Politiker – Widerstandskämpfer. Ein Leben zwischen den Fronten(Marburg: Tectum, 2003), p. 51. Mücke broke with the Nazis in 1929 and committed himself to preventing Hitler from coming to power. After the Second World War he campaigned against the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany. On the complex biography of this forgotten but highly interesting man, see Hofer, Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke; StA München, Polizeidirektion München, Personalakten, no. 10119 (Hellmuth von Mücke).

115.Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 32–3. On the relationship between Röhm and von Epp, see Wächter, Die Macht der Ohnmacht, pp. 79–82.

116.Heiden, A History of National Socialism, pp. 8–9.

117.Nigel Jones, Mosley (London: Haus Publishing, 2004), p. 12.

118.For the characterization of Röhm as a ‘military desperado’, see Otis, Hitler’s Stormtroopers, pp. 25–6; for a more nuanced portrayal that stresses his roots as a royalist, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 7–35. On Röhm’s biography, see also the literary collage by Norbert Marohn, Röhm: Ein deutsches Leben. Romanbiografie (Leipzig: Lychatz, 2011); Marcus Mühle, Ernst Röhm: Eine biografische Skizze (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2016). For biographical studies on important leaders of the extreme right in interwar Europe, see Martyn Rady and Rebecca Haynes (eds), In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011).

119.Hancock, Ernst Röhm, p. 1. Her perspective is partly influenced by the writings of the German historian and former SA-Führer Heinrich Bennecke; see Bennecke, Hitler und die SA, p. 23. Othmar Plöckinger likewise stresses that Röhm was of ‘utmost importance’ for the early SA; see Plöckinger, Unter Soldaten und Agitatoren, p. 175. For more on this perspective, established very early, see Heiden, A History of National Socialism, p. 39.

120.Ernst Röhm, Geschichte eines Hochverräters (Munich: Eher, 1928, with several editions to follow). The first abbreviated English edition was published only in 2012: Ernst Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm (London: Frontline, 2012). Although Röhm’s book gives a reliable picture of his political philosophy, it is less trustworthy when it comes to his role in the early Nazi movement.

121.Hanns H. Hofmann, Der Hitlerputsch: Krisenjahre deutscher Geschichte 1920 bis 1924 (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1961), p. 75; Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 37–45.

122.Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, p. 87.

123.See among others Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, pp. 176–94; Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, pp. 253–67; Hoffmann, Der Hitlerputsch, pp. 142–217; Otis, Hitler’s Stormtroopers, pp. 72–82.

124.Conan Fischer convincingly argues that the failure of the German passive-resistance campaign had a very negative impact on the population’s acceptance of the Republic well beyond 1923. Even if the Weimar Republic had lasted for another decade, the ‘emotional engagement with the new republican order was as good as dead and buried’, he claimed. See Conan Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 290.

125.Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, p. 194.

126.On Hitler’s arrest, see Ludecke, I Knew Hitler, p. 135.

127.It is not without irony that the majority of those killed on 9 November were members of the Bund Oberland and Röhm’s Reichskriegsflagge, but not genuine members of the SA. See Hofmann, Der Hitler-Putsch, p. 271.

128.On the cult of the martyrs of 9 November 1923, see the excellent analysis by Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden, pp. 299–313; on Wessel’s life and the cult that was established at his death, see Siemens, Making of a Nazi Hero. On SA ‘martyrdom’, see also Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 548–60.

129.Paradigmatic in this respect is Koch, Männer im Braunhemd, p. 41; for a recent analytical discussion of how (National Socialists’) sacrifice and violence were linked, see David Pan, Sacrifice in the Modern World: On the Particularity and Generality of Nazi Myth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012).

130.Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, p. 209. Göring, who at the time was suffering from a badly healed leg wound he had received in November 1923, soon left for Italy, where he attempted to intensify the contacts between the Italian Fascists and the German National Socialists. See Michael Palumbo, ‘Goering’s Italian Exile 1924–1925’, Journal of Modern History 50:1 (1978), pp. D1035–D1051.

131.Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, pp. 209–10.

132.On the Frontbann, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 71–81; Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 175–293; Röhm, Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, pp. 210–35.

133.For an overview, see Bruno Thoß, ‘Deutscher Notbann, 1924–1926’, Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/Deutscher Notbann. For an inside glimpse into the state’s calculations, see BayHStA IV, Bestand Bayern und Reich, no. 65: highly confidential letter from the State Minister of the Interior, Franz Schweyer, to Dr Essel in Ebersberg, 10 April 1924.

134.Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 75–6.

135.The ‘National Socialist Freedom Party’ existed only from 1924 to 1925. It was a merger of the more traditional Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei, or ‘German Völkisch Freedom Party’ (DVFP), with the ‘National Socialist Freedom Movement’, a successor organization to the banned NSDAP.

136.Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 187–9.

137.On this lack of accord between Hitler and Röhm, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 72–5, 79–81.

138.Adolf Hitler, Proclamation to refound the NSDAP, Völkischer Beobachter, 26 February 1925, as quoted in Hein, Elite für Volk und Führer?, pp. 40–1. For a very early critical assessment of this ‘turn’, see Schweyer, Politische Geheimverbände, pp. 118–19.

139.Werner, SA und NSDAP, pp. 299–304.

140.Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 851st edn (Munich: Eher, 1943), pp. 604–5, 611, 620.

141.Ibid., pp. 603–4.

142.On the history of the Red Front Fighters League, see Kurt G. P. Schuster, Der Rote Frontkämpferbund: Beiträge zur Geschichte und Organisationsstruktur eines politischen Kampfbundes (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1975); Sara Ann Sewell, ‘Bolshevizing Communist Women: The Red Women and Girls’ League in Weimar Germany’, Central European History 45 (2012), pp. 268–305.

143.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Decree ‘An die gesamte nationalsozialistische Presse’, 28 September 1926.

144.Noël O’Sullivan, Fascism (London and Melbourne: J. M. Dent, 1983), p. 43.

145.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 242: Letter from Franz Pfeffer von Salomon to the regional party leaders of the NSDAP, 1 October 1926.

Chapter 2

1.Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944, with an introduction by Peter Hayes (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2009), p. 436.

2.See, for example, Rösch, Die Münchner NSDAP, pp. 122–3.

3.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 52–3.

4.On the origins of the unusual name, see Mark A. Fraschka, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon: Hitlers vergessener Oberster SA-Führer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016), pp. 229–32.

5.For biographical details on von Pfeffer, see ibid. and Hermann Weiß, ‘Pfeffer von Salomon, Franz’, Neue Deutsche Biographie 20 (2001), pp. 310ff, http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd124769810.html.

6.Heiden, A History of National Socialism, p. 123. On Kaufmann, see Frank Bajohr, ‘Gauleiter in Hamburg: Zur Person und Tätigkeit Karl Kaufmanns’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 43:2 (1995), pp. 267–95.

7.See also Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 54.

8.On the early HJ and its members, see Peter D. Stachura, Nazi Youth in the Weimar Republic (Santa Barbara, CA: Clio, 1975); Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 15–28.

9.Hein, Elite für Volk und Führer?, pp. 47–50, 65; RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, p. 200: Adolf Hitler, Order from 7 November 1930.

10.From 1931 onward, SA groups were termed Scharen, which is best translated as ‘hordes’ or ‘bands’.

11.The SA’s new structure is here described according to a transcript of Vorwärts from 21 December 1926 and to Der Oberste SA-Führer, Erlaß Nr. 2 (Gliederung der SA), 20 February 1931, both in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805. For an overview of the organizational changes within the SA between 1923 and 1935, see Campbell, SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 161–2.

12.Bessel, ‘Militarismus im innenpolitischen Leben der Weimarer Republik’, p. 210; Helge Matthiesen, Greifswald in Vorpommern: Konservatives Milieu in Kaiserreich, in Demokratie und Diktatur 1900–1990 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2000), p. 270.

13.For an illustrated overview of these insignias and their corresponding ranks and units, see Ruhl and Starke (eds), Adolf Hitlers Braunhemden.

14.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Transcript of the Lagebericht from the Berlin Police, no. 128, 20 February 1929; ‘SA-Versicherung der NSDAP’, Völkischer Beobachter, 12 December 1928.

15.For details on these commercial activities, see chapter 3; for an extensive summary of Pfeffer von Salomon’s reforms, see also Fraschka, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, pp. 342–64.

16.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Transcript of the Lagebericht from the Berlin Police, no. 128, 20 February 1929.

17.Werner, SA und NSDAP, p. 412. A Nazi newspaper account in May 1931 provides the number of 2,055 reported cases for the five-month period between 1 January and 6 May 1931; see RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 44, p. 19: ‘Achtung, Parteigenossen!’, Völkischer Beobachter, 12 May 1931.

18.Joachim C. Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag: Die Arbeiterbewegung in Leipzig und Lyon im Moment der Krise 1929–1933/38 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), p. 31.

19.See, above all, Schmiechen-Ackermann, Nationalsozialismus und Arbeitermilieus, pp. 108–435. On the SA in Hamburg, see in particular Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families; Anthony McElligott, Contested City: Municipal Politics and the Rise of Nazism in Altona, 1917–1937 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998); idem, ‘“. . . und so kam es zu einer schweren Schlägerei”: Straßenschlachten in Altona und Hamburg am Ende der Weimarer Republik’, in ‘Hier war doch alles nicht so schlimm’: Wie die Nazis in Hamburg den Alltag eroberten, ed. Maike Bruhns, Thomas Krause, and Anthony McElligott (Hamburg: VSA, 1984), pp. 58–87; Thomas Krause, Hamburg wird braun: Der Aufstieg der NSDAP 1921–1933 (Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1987); idem, ‘Von der Sekte zur Massenbewegung: Die Hamburger NSDAP von 1922 bis 1933’, in ‘Hier war doch alles nicht so schlimm’, pp. 18–51; Werner Jochmann, Nationalsozialismus und Revolution: Ursprung und Geschichte der NSDAP in Hamburg 1922–1933. Dokumente (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1963).

20.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, p. 34; Daniel Siemens, ‘Prügelpropaganda: Die SA und der nationalsozialistische Mythos vom “Kampf um Berlin”’, in Berlin 1933–1945, ed. Michael Wildt and Christoph Kreutzmüller (Munich: Siedler, 2013), pp. 33–48, here p. 40.

21.On the development of the Nazi movement in Berlin and, in particular, the violent ‘street politics’ that occurred there, see Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Pamela E. Swett, Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Anders G. Kjøstved, ‘The Dynamics of Mobilisation: The Nazi Movement in Weimar Berlin’, Politics, Religion & Ideology 14:3 (2013), pp. 338–54; Benjamin C. Hett, Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 38–59; Andreas Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg? Politischer Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1918–1933/39: Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), pp. 437–67; Wildt and Kreutzmüller (eds), Berlin 1933–1945; Rüdiger Hachtmann, Thomas Schaarschmidt, and Winfried Süß (eds), Berlin im Nationalsozialismus: Politik und Gesellschaft 1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011). For detailed local studies on particular neighbourhoods, see Oliver Reschke, Kampf um den Kiez: Der Aufstieg der NSDAP im Zentrum Berlins 1925–1933 (Berlin: Trafo, 2014); idem, Der Kampf um die Macht in einem Berliner Arbeiterbezirk: Nationalsozialisten am Prenzlauer Berg 1925–1933 (Berlin: Trafo, 2008); idem, Der Kampf der Nationalsozialisten um den roten Friedrichshain (1925–1933) (Berlin: Trafo, 2004).

22.See Ziemann, ‘Germany after the First World War’; Dirk Schumann, ‘Einheitssehnsucht und Gewaltakzeptanz: Politische Grundpositionen des deutschen Bürgertums nach 1918 (mit vergleichenden Überlegungen zu den britischen middle classes)’, in Der Erste Weltkrieg und die europäische Nachkriegsordnung: Sozialer Wandel und Formveränderung der Politik, ed. Hans Mommsen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2000), pp. 83–105.

23.Rudy Koshar, ‘From Stammtisch to Party: Nazi Joiners and the Contradictions of Grass-Roots Fascism in Weimar Germany’, in The Journal of Modern History 59:1 (1987), pp. 1–24, here p. 2. On the rise of National Socialism in the countryside, see in particular Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933: Die Verschränkung von Milieu und Parteien in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1996), pp. 324–432; Frank Bösch, Das konservative Milieu: Vereinskultur und lokale Sammlungspolitik in ost- und westdeutschen Regionen (1900–1960) (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002); Zdenek Zofka, Die Ausbreitung des Nationalsozialismus auf dem Lande: Eine regionale Fallstudie zur politischen Einstellung der Landbevölkerung in der Zeit des Aufstiegs und der Machtergreifung der NSDAP 1928–1936 (Munich: Wölfle, 1979), pp. 93–132. For work on Weimar elections, see Jürgen W. Falter, Hitlers Wähler (Munich: Beck, 1991); idem, Zur Soziographie des Nationalsozialismus: Studien zu den Wählern und Mitgliedern der NSDAP (Cologne: Gesis, 2013); on the electoral behaviour of women in particular, see Helen Boak, ‘Mobilising Women for Hitler: The Female Nazi Voter’, in Working Towards the Führer: Essays in Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw, ed. Anthony McElligott and Tim Kirk (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 68–92.

24.Exemplary local and regional studies include Andrew Stewart Bergerson, Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times: The Nazi Revolution in Hildesheim (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004); Michael Schepua, Nationalsozialismus in der pfälzischen Provinz: Herrschaftspraxis und Alltagsleben in den Gemeinden des heutigen Landskreises Ludwigshafen 1933–1945 (Mannheim: Palatium, 2000), pp. 71–165; Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany; Johnpeter Horst Grill, The Nazi Movement in Baden 1920–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Volker Franke, Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Düsseldorf: Die nationalsozialistische Basis in einer katholischen Großstadt (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1987); Klaus Tenfelde, Proletarische Provinz: Radikalisierung und Widerstand in Penzberg/Oberbayern 1900–1945(Munich and Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1982); Rainer Hambrecht, Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Mittel- und Oberfranken (1925–1933) (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv, 1976); Thomas Schnabel (ed.), Die Machtergreifung in Südwestdeutschland: Das Ende der Weimarer Republik in Baden und Württemberg, 1928–1933 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1982); Eberhart Schön, Die Entstehung des Nationalsozialismus in Hessen (Meisenhein am Glan: Anton Hain, 1972); Frank Bajohr (ed.), Norddeutschland im Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Ergebnisse-Verlag, 1993).

25.In Berlin the SA in 1926 comprised about 400–450 men, see Bernd Kessinger, Die Nationalsozialisten in Berlin-Neukölln 1925–1933 (Berlin: Vergangenheitsverlag, 2013), p. 92; Bennecke, Hitler und die SA, p. 126; Martin Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’ in Berlin und Brandenburg 1926–1934, university diss., Technische Universität Berlin, 2005, pp. 39–41. In Hamburg the local SA, which after the party ban of November 1923 initially operated as the Blücher Gymnastic, Sports, and Hiking Club, attracted only 30–40 men in 1924, 60 men in early 1926, and some 350 in the summer of 1927: see Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 90, 96, 101, 105; Krause, Hamburg wird braun, pp. 96–7. SA membership figures for several other large German cities are provided in Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 271.

26.Rösch, Die Münchner NSDAP, pp. 122–5.

27.BArch Berlin, R 9361/II, no. 16746: Memorandum from Otto Herzog on the history of the SA in Frosen.

28.For a similar estimate, see Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, p. 159. For the number of SA men present at the NSDAP party rally in Weimar in 1927, see Werner von Fichte, Typescript of a booklet on the SA: RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 372–437, here p. 380. Michael Kater gives a membership number for the SA of 15,000 for early 1929: see Kater, ‘Ansätze zu einer Soziologie der SA bis zur Röhm-Krise’, in Soziale Bewegung und politische Verfassung: Beiträge zur Geschichte der modernen Welt, ed. Ulrich Engelhardt et al. (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976), pp. 798–831, here p. 799.

29.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 93; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 258. In slight contrast, SA General Curt von Ulrich in January 1929 overestimated the total number of stormtroopers as 50,000–60,000. See GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, Titel 4043, no. 309, pp. 313–17, here p. 316: SA-Führer Ober-West Curt von Ulrich, ‘Wehrhaftmachung’, 21 January 1929.

30.GStA PK, VI. HA, NL Daluege, no. 9, pp. 20–4, here p. 23: Regierungsrat Bach (Darmstadt), ‘Die Entwicklung der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung in Hessen, besonders im Odenwald’.

31.V. S. Khristoforov, Institut rossiı˘skoı˘ istorii (Rossiı˘skaya akademiya nauk), Glavnoe arkhivnoe upravlenie goroda Moskvy, and Tsentralnyı˘ arkhiv FSB Rossii (eds), Oberfiurer SA Villi Redel’. Dokumenty iz arkhivov FSB Rossii (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Glavnogo arkhivnogo upravleniya goroda Moskvy, 2012), pp. 46–7; Schön, Die Entstehung des Nationalsozialismus in Hessen, p. 120. For similar figures and problems in Dortmund, see the case study by Daniel Schmidt, ‘Terror und Terrainkämpfe: Sozialprofil und soziale Praxis der SA in Dortmund 1925–1933’, Beiträge zur Geschichte Dortmunds und der Grafschaft Mark 96/97 (2007), pp. 251–92; for Danzig, see Hans Sponholz, Danzig – deine SA! Einsatz und Bewährung im Polenfeldzug (Munich: Eher, 1940), pp. 26–7.

32.Gerhard Paul, Die NSDAP des Saargebietes 1920–1935: Der verspätete Aufstieg der NSDAP in der katholisch-proletarischen Provinz (Saarbrücken: Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, 1987), p. 121.

33.Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen, p. 283; Thomas Schnabel, ‘Die NSDAP in Württemberg 1928–1933: Die Schwäche einer regionalen Parteiorganisation’, in Die Machtergreifung in Südwestdeutschland, ed. Thomas Schnabel, pp. 49–81, here pp. 53–4.

34.Christian Peters, Nationalsozialistische Machtdurchsetzung in Kleinstädten: Eine vergleichende Studie zu Quakenbrück und Heide/Holstein (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015), pp. 376, 447–9; Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, p. 176; Oded Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside: A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press, 1998), pp. 113–14.

35.Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, pp. 186–204, here p. 187.

36.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 65–72; Campbell, SA Generals, pp. 71–6, 142–8. For Berlin, see Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’, pp. 27–36.

37.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 104–5; BArch Berlin, NS 23/1239: Letter from the Hamburg SA to the Gausturm Nordmark, 5 April 1929.

38.Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’, pp. 31–6; GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a (Justizministerium), no. 55212.

39.For details, see Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg?, pp. 442–7, 589–94.

40.See, for example, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil 1, Band 1/II, p. 149 (entry from 15 November 1926).

41.As quoted in Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, p. 186.

42.Instructive in this respect is an SA-Standartenbefehl from the early 1930s which straightforwardly demands that ‘more than ever before, it is necessary to rope the police in for our purposes [. . .] Every SA man needs to know the telephone number of his police station by heart. We have to convince those officers on duty that we don’t fight for our idea out of rowdiness or by misguided activism, but that we only defend our naked lives’ (GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 219, no. 20, pp. 31–2: Typescript of an SA--Standartenbefehl, undated).

43.Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil 1, Band 1/II, p. 153 (entry from 28 November 1926).

44.Gailus and Siemens, ‘Hass und Begeisterung bilden Spalier’, p. 110; Siemens, The Making of a Nazi Hero, p. 60.

45.As quoted in Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 78–9.

46.On this point, see in particular Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 416–18, 435–68; Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 173–199; Swett, Neighbors and Enemies, pp. 237–60. For a detailed case study, see Reschke, Der Kampf der Nationalsozialisten um den roten Friedrichshain.

47.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 143–53, here p. 145: Memorandum of the Baden police, Die SA und SS der NSDAP, Karlsruhe, 15 May 1931.

48.Kjøstved, ‘Dynamics of Mobilisation’, pp. 350–2; Krause, Hamburg wird braun, pp. 146–8; Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 136–44.

49.Thomas Welskopp, Das Banner der Brüderlichkeit: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie vom Vormärz bis zum Sozialistengesetz (Bonn: Dietz, 2000); Klaus Tenfelde (ed.), Streik: Zur Geschichte des Arbeitskampfes in Deutschland während der Industrialisierung (Munich: Beck, 1981).

50.Kjøstved, ‘Dynamics of Mobilisation’, pp. 343–6; Rudy Koshar, ‘Political Gangsters and Nazism: Some Comments on Richard Hamilton’s Theory of Fascism. A Review Article’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 28:4 (1986), pp. 785–93; Felix Schnell, ‘Gewalt und Gewaltforschung’, p. 19.

51.Clayton A. Hartjen, ‘Review of Hazen, Jennifer M; Rodgers, Dennis (eds): Global Gangs: Street Violence across the World   ’, H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews, August 2014, https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42245. For the gang-like character of Hungarian paramilitary violence after the First World War, see Bodó, ‘Heroes or Thieves?’, pp. 72, 83–9.

52.Ernst Haffner, Jugend auf der Landstraße Berlin (Berlin: Cassirer, 1932). For a contemporary critique, see Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Großstadtjugend ohne Arbeit: Zu den Büchern von Lamm und Haffner’, in Essays, Feuilletons, Rezensionen, vol. 5:4 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), pp. 240–3. A new edition of Haffner’s novel was published in 2013: Ernst Haffner, Blutsbrüder: Ein Berliner Cliquenroman (Berlin: Walde + Graf, 2013).

53.Eberhard Knödler-Bunte, ‘Exkurs: Die Binnenstruktur der NSDAP und SA’, Ästhetik & Kommunikation 26 (1976), pp. 35–7, here p. 35.

54.On the ‘Captain of Köpenick’ episode and its effects, see Philipp Müller, Auf der Suche nach dem Täter: Die öffentliche Dramatisierung von Verbrechen im Berlin des Kaiserreichs (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005), pp. 173–354; on the relevance of Heinrich Mann’s novel, see Georg Bollenbeck, ‘Ein beweglicher Er-Erzähler, komplexe Erzählhaltungen und epochale Repräsentanz: Heinrich Mann, Der Untertan’, in Psyche und Epochennorm: Festschrift für Heinz Thomas zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Henning Krauss et al. (Heidelberg: Winter, 2005), pp. 499–519.

55.On the SA uniform and its effects, see Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 579–89; Noakes, Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, pp. 185–6; Homberger, Fashioning German Fascism; Balister, Gewalt und Ordnung: Kalkül und Faszination der SA (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1989), pp. 96–102; Rohkrämer, Die fatale Attraktion des Nationalsozialismus, p. 152.

56.Hitler’s orders to Pfeffer von Salomon are quoted according to the transcript of an article in Vorwärts, no. 54, 4 February 1927, in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805.

57.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 143–53, here p. 146: Memorandum of the Baden police, Die SA und SS der NSDAP, Karlsruhe, 15 May 1931.

58.On membership numbers of the Stahlhelm, see Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm: Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1966), pp. 85, 286–7.

59.On the Red Front Fighters League, see Sewell, ‘Bolshevizing Communist Women’; Voigt, Kampfbünde der Arbeiterbewegung; Kurt Finker, Geschichte des roten Frontkämpferbundes (Berlin: Dietz, 1981); Schuster, Der Rote Frontkämpferbund.

60.It is noteworthy, however, that an insider like the former Berlin police president Albert C. Grzesinski in retrospect spoke of an ‘incipient civil war’ when describing the situation in the German capital in 1930. See Grzesinski, Inside Germany, p. 130. At around this time the branch of the NSDAP located in the capital considered itself to be already ‘in the thick of a civil war’. See GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, no. 302, pp. 221–6, here p. 224: Transcript of a speech by Martin Löpelmann, 12 August 1931.

61.LArch Berlin, A-Rep. 358-01, no. 2165, p. 37: ‘Schlagt die Faschisten, wo ihr sie trefft!’, Die Rote Fahne, 23 January 1930; LArch Berlin, A-Rep. 358-01, no. 2165, pp. 4–6: ‘Nieder mit den faschistischen Mördern!’, Die Rote Fahne, 29 August 1929.

62.Unlike the Communists and the Nazis, which both categorically opposed the ‘system of Weimar’, the Reichsbanner leadership defended the state monopoly on violence. Whereas the rank-and-file Reichsbanner men repeatedly engaged in violent attacks on their opponents, their regional leaders – among them the Hamburg police president Adoph Schönfelder and the young circuit judge Fritz Bauer in Stuttgart – urged their men to stage powerful demonstrations but to abstain from physical violence. See McElligott, ‘. . . und so kam es zu einer schweren Schlägerei’, pp. 66–7; Ronen Steinke, Fritz Bauer oder Auschwitz vor Gericht (Munich and Zurich: Piper, 2013), pp. 89–91; Michael Trauthig, Im Kampf um Glauben und Kirche: Eine Studie über Gewaltakzeptanz und Krisenmentalität der württembergischen Protestanten zwischen 1918 und 1933 (Leinfelden-Echterdingen: DRW-Verlag, 1999), pp. 53–4.

63.Hubert R. Knickerbocker, The German Crisis (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1932), p. 130; Jacques Decour, Philisterburg (Berlin: Die Andere Bibliothek, 2014), p. 70.

64.‘Kütemeyer – “geräuschlose Gegenarbeit des CV”’, in Anti-Anti: Tatsachen zur Judenfrage, ed. CV-Verein (Berlin: Philo, 1932), p. 35 a–b.

65.Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’, pp. 113–14.

66.‘Der Begräbnis-Umzug der Hakenkreuzler verboten’, Tempo, 23 November 1928, p. 1.

67.See the official directive in GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, Titel 4043, no. 309, p. 145.

68.In 1930 the authorities of Hesse, Bavaria, Prussia, Baden, and Hamburg prohibited the public wearing of the SA uniform for some time but likewise met with limited success; see Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 231–2.

69.Paul Hoser, ‘Sturmabteilung (SA), 1921–1923/1925–1945’, Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, http://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/artikel/artikel_44621.

70.Maik Hattenhorst, Magdeburg 1933: Eine rote Stadt wird braun (Halle an der Saale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2009), p. 100.

71.GStA PK, XX. HA, Rep. 240 B 31 c, pp. 179–90, here p. 183: ‘Erste Anfänge der SA in Ostpreußen’.

72.GStA PK, I. HA, NL Daluege, no. 9, pp. 32–42: Verdict of the Kammergericht, 13 March 1931.

73.There is a long debate on the political leanings of the German judiciary in the 1920s and its contribution to the misery of the Republic that cannot be dealt with here. See Ralph Angermund, Deutsche Richterschaft 1919–1945: Krisenerfahrung, Illusion, politische Rechtsprechung (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1990); Daniel Siemens, ‘Die “Vertrauenskrise der Justiz” in der Weimarer Republik’, in Die ‘Krise’ der Weimarer Republik: Zur Kritik eines Deutungsmusters, ed. Moritz Föllmer and Rüdiger Graf (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005), pp. 139–63, with further references.

74.Siemens, ‘SA-Gewalt, nationalsozialistische “Revolution” und Staatsräson: Der Fall des Chemnitzer Kriminalamtschefs Albrecht Böhme 1933/34’, in Die Linke im Visier: Zur Errichtung der Konzentrationslager, ed. Nikolaus Wachsmann and Sybille Steinbacher (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014), pp. 191–213, here p. 191. For Saxony, see also Andreas Peschel (ed.), Die SA in Sachsen vor der ‘Machtübernahme’: Nachgelassenes von Heinrich Bennecke (1902–1972) (Markkleeberg: Sax, 2012), pp. 41–4, 66, 75. For a general analysis, see Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen, pp. 250–310. For the relation between the German police and National Socialism, see Joachim Schröder, Die Münchner Polizei und der Nationalsozialismus (Essen: Klartext, 2013); KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme (ed.), Polizei, Verfolgung und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2013); Thomas Roth, ‘Verbrechensbekämpfung’ und soziale Ausgrenzung im nationalsozialistischen Köln: Kriminalpolizei, Strafjustiz und abweichendes Verhalten zwischen Machtübernahme und Kriegsende (Cologne: Emons, 2010); Patrick Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher: Konzeptionen und Praxis der Kriminalpolizei in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg: Christians, 1996).

75.Andreas Wagner, ‘Machtergreifung’ in Sachsen: NSDAP und staatliche Verwaltung, 1930–1935 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), pp. 31–69.

76.Arno Schreiber, Speech in the Saxon Landtag, 26 April 1932, Verhandlungen des Sächsischen Landtags, 5. Wahlperiode, vol. 3, Dresden 1932, p. 2,991. In the Ruhr the NSDAP in early 1932 claimed that about 35 per cent of all police officers were sympathetic to the Nazi movement; GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, no. 311, pp. 25–6: Report from the Berlin Police President to the Regierungspräsident in Düsseldorf, 4 February 1932.

77.Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher, pp. 180–7. See also ‘Wegen Hochverrats verhaftet. Nationalsozialistische Spionage in der Polizei’, Vossische Zeitung, 10 March 1932, p. 1; ‘Grzesinski erklärt’, Vossische Zeitung, 12 March 1932, p. 3.

78.Karl Gerlach, speech in the Saxon Landtag, 26 April 1932, Verhandlungen des Sächsischen Landtags, 5. Wahlperiode, vol. 3, Dresden 1932, pp. 2,946–7.

79.GStA PK, VI. HA, NL Daluege, no. 9, pp. 20–4, here p. 23: Regierungsrat Bach (Darmstadt), ‘Die Entwicklung der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung in Hessen, besonders im Odenwald.’

80.‘Hat man Ihnen schon zugeflüstert, dass . . .’, Ulk, 18 December 1930.

81.Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Zertrümmerte Fensterscheiben’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 16 October 1930, as quoted in idem, Essays, Feuilletons, Rezensionen, 5:3 (1928–31), ed. Inka Mülder-Bach (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), pp. 348–50, here p. 348.

82.Erich Kästner, Fabian: The Story of a Moralist, trans. Cyrus Brooks (London: Libris 1990), p. 48.

83.Jürgen W. Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik: Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich: Beck, 1986), p. 41; GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 219, no. 20, pp. 196–9: Circular from the leadership of the KPD at the Ruhr, 12 December 1931.

84.For careful discussions, see Paul, Aufstand der Bilder, pp. 133–42; Balister, Gewalt und Ordnung, in particular pp. 55–62, 198–204; Thomas Childers and Eugene Weiss, ‘Voters and Violence: Political Violence and the Limits of National Socialist Mass Mobilisation’, German Studies Review13:3 (1990), pp. 481–98.

85.Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer: Sozialer Niedergang und politische Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Staat, 3rd edn (Berlin: Akademie, 2003), p. 476.

86.This is one of the central findings of Timothy S. Brown, Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2009).

87.Statement of the former SA Brigade Leader Franz Bock at the Nuremberg trials, Monday, 12 August 1946, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-21/tgmwc-21-201-08.shtml.

88.Roger Griffin, ‘Political Modernism and the Cultural Production of “Personalities of the Right” in Inter-War Europe’, in In the Shadow of Hitler, ed. Rady and Haynes, pp. 20–37, here p. 23; idem, ‘Fixing Solutions: Fascist Temporalities as Remedies for Liquid Modernity’, Journal of Modern European History 13:1 (2015) pp. 5–22.

89.Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil 1, Band 1/II, p. 147 (entry from 11 November 1926).

90.The official crime statistics, as published by the Reich justice minister, are only of limited use, as they contain only those crimes that were punished and furthermore do not identify the political affiliation of those condemned as criminals. Overall, criminality did not increase considerably in 1931 and 1932, and it even remained lower in those years than in those immediately following the First World War. However, convictions for high treason and for violations of the Reich president’s decrees on political terrorism sharply increased. See Reichsjustizministerium und Statistisches Reichsamt (ed.), Kriminalstatistik für das Jahr 1932: Statistik des Deutschen Reichs 448 (Berlin: Verlag für Sozialpolitik, 1935), p. 20.

91.McElligott, ‘“. . . und so kam es zu einer schweren Schlägerei” ’, pp. 60–4, 69. For similar forms of violence in Leipzig, see Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag, pp. 53–61; for Dortmund, see Schmidt, ‘Terror und Terrainkämpfe’, pp. 275–80.

92.BArch Berlin, R1501, no. 20234, p. 16: Reichsministerium des Innern, Mis I A 2000/13.5, 13 May 1932, as quoted in Camiel Oomen, ‘Wir sind die Soldaten der Republik!’ Das Berliner Reichsbanner und die Politische Gewalt 1930–1933, doctoral diss., Universiteit Utrecht, 2007, p. 21.

93.Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, p. 186.

94.IfZ Archive, ED 414, vol. 181: ‘Statistik der Gewalt’, Vossische Zeitung, 19 December 1931.

95.Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag, p. 44.

96.As quoted in Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 306–7.

97.Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists?, p. 6.

98.See, among others, GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4041, no. 302, pp. 69–70: Letter from the Berlin Police President to the Prussian Minister of the Interior on the search of weapons at an NSDAP meeting, 9 May 1930.

99.Grzesinski, Inside Germany, p. 132.

100.For details, see Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft, 1903–1989 (Bonn: Dietz, 1996), pp. 112–19.

101.Schepua, Nationalsozialismus in der pfälzischen Provinz, pp. 87–91; ‘Bomben für Boxheim’, Vossische Zeitung, 10 March 1932, p. 1. On Eicke, see the detailed biographical study by Niels Weise, Eicke: Eine SS-Karriere zwischen Nervenklinik, KZ-System und Waffen-SS (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013), particularly pp. 95–176 on the Palatinate bombings.

102.Herbert, Best, pp. 116, 118.

103.For examples, see Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag, pp. 69–72.

104.Christian Goeschel, ‘The Criminal Underworld in Weimar and Nazi Germany’, History Workshop Journal 75:1 (2013), pp. 58–80; Siemens, Horst Wessel, pp. 25–6, with further references.

105.Kessinger, Die Nationalsozialisten in Berlin-Neukölln 1925–1933, p. 98.

106.Sven Reichardt, ‘Violence and Community: A Micro-Study on Nazi Storm Troopers’, Central European History 46:2 (2013), pp. 275–97; reprinted in slightly modified form as Sven Reichardt, ‘Vergemeinschaftung durch Gewalt: Der SA-“Mördersturm 33” in Berlin-Charlottenburg’, in SA-Terror als Herrschaftssicherung, ed. Hördler, pp. 110–29.

107.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Extract from Munich Police’s Lagebericht, no. 101, Munich, 9 June 1931; Helmut von Klotz, Wir gestalten durch unser Führerkorps die Zukunft! (Berlin: Arbeiter-Parteikorrespondenz, 1932), p. 4.

108.Chris Bowlby, ‘Blutmai 1929: Police, Parties and Proletarians in a Berlin Confrontation’, Historical Journal 29:1 (1986), pp. 137–58; Thomas Kurz, ‘Blutmai’: Sozialdemokraten und Kommunisten im Brennpunkt der Berliner Ereignisse von 1929 (Bonn: Dietz, 1988); Léon Schirmann, Altonaer Blutsonntag, 17. Juli 1932: Dichtungen und Wahrheit (Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 1994); McElligott, Contested City, pp. 192–4; Trauthig, Im Kampf um Glauben und Kirche, p. 54.

109.Robert Gerwarth emphasizes that throughout the 1920s a cross-party consensus that the use of violence was a legitimate if not necessary tool of politics survived among the young and radical political activists that came to the fore in the latter part of the decade and into the 1930s. See Gerwarth, ‘Rechte Gewaltgemeinschaften und die Stadt nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, p. 115.

110.Grzesinski, Inside Germany, p. 130.

111.As quoted in Reschke, Kampf um den Kiez, p. 100.

112.University and City Library of Cologne, Archives (UAK), Zugang 386, no. 294: Public Prosecution Office of Cologne, Bill of indictment against Toni Winkelnkemper et al., 24 April 1931.

113.Josef Frings, later the Archbishop of Cologne and a cardinal, acted as parish priest of St Joseph in Cologne-Braunsfeld between 1928 and 1937. He gained wider popularity in post-war Germany when he defended the frequent stealing of food and coal out of necessity in the extraordinarily cold winter of 1946–7. Such acts became known as fringsen, meaning ‘to whip’ or to ‘snitch’ by leave of Frings. See Norbert Trippen, Joseph Kardinal Frings (1887–1978). Band 1: Sein Wirken für das Erzbistum Köln und für die Kirche in Deutschland (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003).

114.See the letter from the Public Prosecution Office of Cologne to the President of the University of Cologne, 21 July 1931. On this second verdict, see in particular ‘Keine Sühne für den Nazi-Überfall in Braunsfeld!’, Lokalanzeiger, 10 October 1931 (morning edition). Both in UAK, Zugang 386, no. 294.

115.Gerhard Nebel, ‘Alles Gefühl ist leiblich’: Ein Stück Autobiographie, ed. Nicolai Riedel (Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 2003), pp. 130–31.

116.Paul, Aufstand der Bilder, pp. 133–4.

117.The Nazis at times referred to this shopping mile as ‘Kohnfürstendamm’, alluding to the pretended high presence of Jews there. See Kjøstved, ‘Dynamics of Mobilisation’, p. 341.

118.Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt, pp. 211–21; Hecht, Deutsche Juden und Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik, pp. 236–68.

119.Herbert Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD, pp. 152–3.

120.For statistical details on unemployment in Germany at this time, see Statistiken zu Detlev Humann: ‘Arbeitsschlacht’: Arbeitsbeschaffung und Propaganda in der NS-Zeit 1933–1939 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011), pp. 10–20, www.wallstein-verlag.de/Statistiken_Humann_AS.pdf. For the high number of unemployed in the SA, see Theodor Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes: Soziographischer Versuch auf statistischer Grundlage (Stuttgart: Enke, 1932), pp. 110–11.

121.Kessinger, Die Nationalsozialisten in Berlin-Neukölln, p. 99; Reschke, Kampf um den Kiez, p. 128; Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, p. 85.

122.Grant, Stormtroopers and Crisis in the Nazi Movement, p. 31. On 1 February 1933 the SA in the city reported a 75 per cent unemployment rate (Fischer, Stormtroopers, p. 48).

123.NSDAP party members contributed to the SA’s budget by paying 10 and, from September 1930 onward, 20 pfennig to the group on a monthly basis. The SA therefore had a clear financial interest in its members also joining the party. See Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 134; Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, p. 160. On the high turnover rates in the SA in the early 1930s, see Jamin, ‘Zur Rolle der SA im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, pp. 331–3.

124.Mann, Fascists, p. 168. For a more detailed discussion of this subject, see Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 45–9; Hattenhorst, Magdeburg 1933, pp. 106–10.

125.Walter Struve, ‘Arbeiter und Nationalsozialismus in Osterode am Harz bis 1933’, in Norddeutschland im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Frank Bajohr (Hamburg: Forschungsstelle für die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus in Hamburg, 1993), pp. 67–82, here p. 75.

126.Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, p. 46.

127.There is extensive older research on the social composition of the SA, partly driven by the desire to demonstrate that the SA did not really take hold in working-class areas, despite its partial successes there. More recent studies, however, suggest that the SA indeed appealed to workers as the economic situation began to deteriorate starting in 1929. See Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 81–5; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 310–23; Schmiechen-Ackermann, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Arbeitermilieus’, pp. 268–9, 322–35; Mann, Fascists, pp. 167–8.

128.On the decline of alcohol consumption between 1929 and 1933 and its social and fiscal consequences, see Thomas Welskopp, ‘Halbleer oder halbvoll? Alkoholwirtschaft, Alkoholkonsum und Konsumkultur in den Vereinigten Staaten und im Deutschen Reich in der Zwischenkriegszeit: Biergeschichte(n)’, in Die vielen Gesichter des Konsums: Westfalen, Deutschland und die USA 1850–2000, ed. Michael Prinz (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016), pp. 183–207, here pp. 201–5. For a comprehensive analysis of the SA storm taverns, see Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 449–68.

129.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 130–1; GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, no. 311, p. 4: Der Oberste SA-Führer on ‘Arbeitsdienstpflicht’, 31 December 1931.

130.Gesamtverband der christlichen Gewerkschaften Deutschlands (ed.), Jahrbuch der christlichen Gewerkschaften 1932: Bericht über das Jahr 1931 (Berlin: Christlicher Gewerkschaftsverlag, 1932), pp. 76–7.

131.These figures are taken from the synopsis provided by Reichardt in Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 258–9.

132.BArch Berlin, NS 26/2521: Letter from Hellmuth v. Mücke to Herr Friedrich, 29 August 1929 (emphasis in original). Mücke’s anger was partly motivated by his personal quarrels with the Saxon NSDAP leader Mutschmann and the SA-Obergruppenführer von Killinger, but his letter also attests to more widespread criticism of the party’s propaganda, which played on short-lived emotions without providing lasting intellectual guidance. On this subject, see Paul, Aufstand der Bilder, pp. 51–2. For similar criticism from a disappointed former Nazi activist who had joined the ranks of the SPD, see Helmut von Klotz, Wir gestalten durch unser Führerkorps die Zukunft!; Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD, pp. 140–89.

133.In October 1927 Stennes was promoted to the position of OSAF-Ost, ‘the leader of the SA in East Germany’. See Patrick Moreau, Nationalsozialismus von links. Die ‘Kampfgemeinschaft Revolutionärer Nationalsozialisten’ und die ‘Schwarze Front’ Otto Straßers 1930–1935 (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1984), pp. 12–101; Reinhard Kühnl, Die nationalsozialistische Linke 1925–1930 (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1966).

134.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, p. 6: ‘Wo stehen wir?’, Das Sprachrohr. Organ der Berliner NSDAP, November 1930. For a clearsighted 1930 analysis of the incommensurate nature of the Nazis’ economic and social positions, see Decour, Philisterburg, pp. 88–9.

135.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, pp. 61: ‘Politische Schulung der SA: Was trennt uns von der NSDAP?’, typescript, 6 October 1931; Siemens, ‘Prügelpropaganda’, p. 36.

136.For details, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 105–10.

137.One reason for the dissatisfaction of these men was that they had requested to be considered as candidates for parliament in the upcoming elections but after initial concessions were bypassed by Hitler and Goebbels. For details, see Sauer, ‘Goebbels “Rabauken”. Zur Geschichte der SA in Berlin-Brandenburg’, in Berlin in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Uwe Schaper (Berlin: Jahrbuch des Landesarchivs, 2006), pp. 107–64, here pp. 121–2; Moreau, Nationalsozialismus von links, pp. 71–81; Bernhard Fulda, Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 159–62.

138.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Ernst Röhm, Decree of 31 March 1931.

139.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, no. 32, pp. 147–9: Police President Berlin, Abt. IA, on the NSDAP in the capital, 27 November 1930.

140.On these events, see the excellent memorandum (most likely provided by the Berlin police): ‘Gründe und Auswirkungen des Zwists Hitler-Stennes’, in RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 97–110.

141.The new name of this joint group was Nationalsozialistische Kampfgemeinschaft Deutschland. See RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, pp. 13–14: NSKD (Nationalsozialistische Kampfgemeinschaft Deutschland), Die Oberste SA-Führung, SABE 6 [= SA-Befehl 6] from 6 June 1931. For a characteristic impression of this group’s self-image as working-class militants, see also their song ‘Arbeiter, Bauern, Soldaten’, which was sung to the tune of ‘Brüder aus Zechen und Gruben’, itself a National Socialist reworking of the famous Socialist ‘Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit’; ibid., p. 40.

142.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, pp. 20–2, here p. 20: Nationalsozialistische Kampfbewegung, SA-Befehl No. 4, undated. Against this background, Jamin’s verdict that ‘socialist’ or ‘revolutionary’ ideas were only of secondary importance in the two Stennes revolts should be revised; see Jamin, ‘Zur Rolle der SA im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, p. 334.

143.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, p. 14: NSKD, Die Oberste SA-Führung, SABE 6 from 6 June 1931.

144.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, pp. 7–8: G. Kübler, Die ‘R.K.’ (Revolutionäre Kämpfer), transcript of the second letter ‘Schulungsbriefe der Kampfgemeinschaft Revolutionärer Nationalsozialisten’, March 1931.

145.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, p. 55: Mitteilung Nr. 18 des Landeskriminalamts IA Berlin der Preußischen Polizei, 15 September 1931; Gailus and Siemens, ‘Hass und Begeisterung bilden Spalier’, pp. 107, 142; Krüger, ‘Die Brigade Ehrhardt’, p. 122.

146.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, pp. 20–2, here p. 20: Nationalsozialistische Kampfbewegung, SA-Befehl Nr. 4, undated; Moreau, Nationalsozialismus von links, pp. 41–71, 102–99. On the organization of the regional groups of the Stennes SA, see also ‘Anlage 1 zu Sabe 7’, in RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, pp. 30–1. On Stennes’s post-1934 biography, see Charles Drage, The Amiable Prussian (London: Blond, 1958), pp. 105–92; Mechthild Leutner (ed.), Deutschland und China 1937–1949: Politik – Militär – Wirtschaft – Kultur. Eine Quellensammlung (Berlin: Akademie, 1998), pp. 67, 108.

147.Open letter to Hitler, published in Nachrichten für Stadt und Land, 10 September 1931, as quoted in Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, pp. 184–5.

148.For a recent survey of the most prominent ‘corruption scandals’ in the Weimar Republic, see Annika Klein, Korruption und Korruptionsskandale in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2014).

149.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 97–110, here p. 101: ‘Gründe und Auswirkungen des Zwists Hitler-Stennes’.

150.Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil 1, Band 2/II, p. 361 (entry from 11 September 1932).

151.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Transcript of the Munich police’s Lagebericht from 20 October 1932.

152.BArch Berlin, NS 23/337, p. 228: Development of SA membership between July 1932 and January 1933.

153.Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, pp. 166–80; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 267–9.

154.Mechthild Hempe, Ländliche Gesellschaft in der Krise: Mecklenburg in der Weimarer Republik (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), pp. 57–128, 181–99.

155.Schuster, Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen ‘Machtergreifung’, pp. 94–5.

156.See Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes, p. 114; as well as the historical studies cited below.

157.Matthiesen, Greifswald in Vorpommern, p. 221.

158.Heinrich Schoene, born on 25 November 1889 in Berlin, had a remarkable career in the Third Reich. In February 1934 he was appointed Police President of the city of Königsberg as well as SA-Gruppenführer Ostmark. Starting 1 September 1941 he served as the General Commissar for the Volhynia and Podolia general district in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Schoene died in April 1945. For details of his biography, see BArch Berlin, SA 400003464 (Schoene, Heinrich). On his involvement in the mistreatment of civilians in Ukraine, see Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA, and London: Belknap, 2004), pp. 267–8.

159.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4043, no. 309, pp. 337–8: Report on speeches of the leader of the SA-Gruppe Ober-Nord, Major a.d. Dinglage [Karl Dincklage] and his adjutant Schöhne [Heinrich Schoene], 8 March 1929.

160.BArch Berlin, NS 23/1239: Heinrich Schoene, Gaubefehl, 10 May 1929.

161.See in particular Alexander Otto-Morris, Rebellion in the Province: The Landvolkbewegung and the Rise of National Socialism in Schleswig-Holstein (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013); idem, ‘“Bauer, wahre dein Recht!” Landvolkbewegung und Nationalsozialismus 1928/30’, in ‘Siegeszug in der Nordmark’: Schleswig-Holstein und der Nationalsozialismus 1925–1950. Schlaglichter – Studien – Rekonstruktionen, ed. Kay Dohnke et al. (Kiel: Arbeitskreis zur Erforschung des Nationalsozialismus in Schleswig-Holstein, 2009), pp. 55–74; Gerhard Stoltenberg, Politische Strömungen im schleswig-holsteinischen Landvolk 1918–1933: Ein Beitrag zur politischen Meinungsbildung in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962), pp. 128–81; Rudolf Heberle, Landbevölkerung und Nationalsozialismus: Eine soziologische Untersuchung der politischen Willensbildung in Schleswig-Holstein 1918–1932 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1963). For a similar development in Western Pomerania, see Matthiesen, Greifswald in Vorpommern, pp. 220–38.

162.Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933, pp. 472–8; Gerhard Reifferscheid, ‘Die NSDAP in Ostpreußen: Besonderheiten ihrer Ausbreitung und Tätigkeit’, Zeitschrift für die Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ermlands 39 (1978), pp. 61–85, here pp. 64, 67; Schnabel, ‘Die NSDAP in Württemberg 1928–1933’; GStA PK, VI. HA, NL Daluege, no. 9, pp. 20–4: Regierungsrat Bach (Darmstadt), ‘Die Entwicklung der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung in Hessen, besonders im Odenwald’; GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, vol. 311, p. 318: Racliffe (Polizeimajor), ‘Denkschrift über Kampfvorbereitung und Kampfgrundsätze radikaler Organisationen’, 1931. On the NSDAP’s rural campaigns in Bavaria, see Geoffrey Pridham, Hitler’s Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, 1923–1933 (London: Hart-Davis, 1973), pp. 224–36.

163.Pridham, Hitler’s Rise to Power, p. 229.

164.Bösch, Das konservative Milieu, pp. 116–32. For similar processes in small towns, see Koshar, ‘From Stammtisch to Party’; Bergerson, Ordinary Germans in Extraordinary Times.

165.Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933, pp. 324–432; Adelheid von Saldern, ‘Sozialmilieus und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus in Norddeutschland (1930–1933)’, in Norddeutschland im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Frank Bajohr (Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 1993), pp. 20–52, here p. 36.

166.Mühlberger, Hitler’s Followers, p. 164. In rural Bavaria, the situation was markedly different from that in the north of Germany. In the south, members of the lower classes, both skilled and unskilled labourers, prevailed. See ibid., pp. 165–6.

167.Bösch, Das konservative Milieu, p. 119.

168.Pridham, Hitler’s Rise to Power, p. 131.

169.Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933, pp. 324–9.

170.Hans-Helmuth Krenzlin, Das NSKK: Wesen, Aufgaben und Aufbau des Nationalsozialistischen Kraftfahrkorps, dargestellt an einem Abriß seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1939), p. 7.

171.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 143–53, here pp. 148–9: Memorandum of the Baden police, Die SA und SS der NSDAP, Karlsruhe, 15 May 1931; Hochstetter, Motorisierung und ‘Volksgemeinschaft’, pp. 21–39; Krenzlin, Das NSKK, pp. 9–11. On working-class youth’s excitement about the NSKK, see Michael Zimmermann, ‘Ausbruchshoffnung: Junge Bergleute in den Dreißiger Jahren’, in ‘Die Jahre weiß man nicht, wo man die heute hinsetzen soll’: Faschismuserfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet, ed. Lutz Niethammer (Bonn: Dietz, 1983), pp. 97–132, here pp. 101–2.

172.In those parts of the countryside with a predominantly Catholic population, the organization of the SA largely happened later and recruited followers less successfully, even if local varieties were considerable. See Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture and the Countryside, pp. 112–15, with further references.

173.Benjamin Schröder, ‘Stately Ceremony and Carnival: Voting and Social Pressure in Germany and Britain between the World Wars’, Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 23:1 (2013), pp. 41–63, here pp. 61, 63.

174.For a more detailed analysis of this subject, see Daniel Siemens, ‘Gegen den “gesinnungs-schwachen Stimmzettelträger”: Emotion und Praxis im Wahlkampf der späten Weimarer Republik’, in Kultur und Praxis der Wahlen: Eine Geschichte der modernen Demokratie, ed. Hedwig Richter and Hubertus Buchstein (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2017), pp. 215–36.

175.On von Obernitz, see Utho Grieser, Himmlers Mann in Nürnberg. Der Fall Benno Martin: Eine Studie zur Struktur des Dritten Reiches in der ‘Stadt der Reichsparteitage’ (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv, 1974), pp. 44–61.

176.On the sympathies of considerable parts of the East German nobility toward the NSDAP in the late 1920s and early 1930s, see Bergien, Die bellizistische Republik, pp. 308–23; Malinowski and Reichardt, ‘Die Reihen fest geschlossen?’

177.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4013, no. 311, pp. 210–14: SA-Untergruppe Oberschlesien, ‘Besondere Anordnung: Propagandastürme für die Wahlarbeit’, 22 March 1932.

178.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4013, no. 311, p. 65: Report of Regierungsrat Dr Müller.

179.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4043, no. 311, p. 5: Der Oberste SA-Führer on propaganda marches, 7 January 1932. As the discussions among Red Front Fighters about the participation of women in street marches demonstrate, such a prohibition was not unique to the NSDAP, but was a characteristic element of the ‘masculine’ character of Weimar’s street politics. For a detailed discussion of this problem, see Daniel Siemens, ‘Erobern statt Verführen: Die Kategorie Geschlecht in der Politik der Straße der Weimarer Republik’, in Geschlechter(un)ordnung und Politik in der Weimarer Republik, ed. Gabriele Metzler and Dirk Schumann (Bonn: Dietz, 2016), pp. 255–77.

180.Moritz Föllmer has recently argued that Nazism allowed for more room for individual development than previously claimed. However, he largely concentrates his analysis on German men and women originating from the middle classes, broadly defined. While I agree with Föllmer’s general conclusion that the Nazi regime promoted individual self-transformation, aspects of class should be given stronger emphasis in such an examination. The history of the stormtroopers, as provided in this study, clearly elucidates the limits of inter-class dynamics and individual empowerment. See Moritz Föllmer, ‘The Subjective Dimension of Nazism’, Historical Journal 56:4 (2013), pp. 1,107–32.

181.Stefan Jonsson, Crowds and Democracy: The Idea and Image of the Masses from Revolution to Fascism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 250.

182.Siegfried Kracauer, ‘The Mass Ornament’, in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. and ed. Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 75–86, here esp. pp. 75–6, 84–6.

183.Ibid., pp. 76, 79.

184.Theweleit, Male Fantasies.

185.This observation is also in line with the sociological findings of Lewis A. Coser, who observed that ‘greedy’ organizations ‘tend to consider stable sexual ties a threat to total allegiance and commitment which they require of all or of some of their members’. See Coser, Greedy Institutions, p. 136.

186.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 372–437, here p. 386: Werner von Fichte, typescript of a booklet on the SA, untitled and undated, sixty-five pages.

187.Ferdinand Tuohy, Craziways, Europe (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), p. 18, as quoted in Angela Schwarz, ‘British Visitors to National Socialist Germany’,  Journal of Contemporary History 28:3 (1993), pp. 487–509, here pp. 490–1. The guidelines for SA physicians from 20 April 1931 requested that they regularly lecture the rank and file on personal hygiene, nourishment, and sexual diseases. To prevent acquiring the latter, physicians were urged to propagate beliefs about sexual abstinence. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: [Reichsarzt] Paul Hocheisen, ‘Anweisung betr. Aufgaben und Tätigkeit der SA-Ärzte’, 20 April 1931.

188.Kracauer, ‘Mass Ornament’, pp. 85–6.

189.Speech of Joseph Goebbels on the occasion of the opening of the Berlin Auto Show, 17 February 1939, as quoted in Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 196.

190.Goebbels, Speech in the Heidelberg Civic Centre on 7 July 1943, as quoted in ibid., p. 196.

191.This tendency even dominated much of the historiography on the ‘rise’ of National Socialism until the 1980s; see Oded Heilbronner, ‘The Role of Nazi Antisemitism in the Nazi Party’s Activity and Propaganda: A Regional Historiographical Study’, Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 35 (1990), pp. 397–439.

192.Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (ed.), Eine Aussprache über die Judenfrage zwischen Dr. Margarete Adam (mit einem Nachwort: Warum habe ich nationalsozialistisch gewählt) und Dr. Eva Reichmann-Jungmann (Berlin: Centralverein, 1930/1931), pp. 19, 23.

193.For details on this meeting, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin and Bonn: Dietz, 1987), pp. 432–4.

194.Letter from Ernst Brandi to his son F. H. Brandi from 7 March 1932, as quoted in Werner Abelshauser, Ruhrkohle und Politik: Ernst Brandi 1875–1933. Eine Biographie (Essen: Klartext, 2009), p. 71.

195.Ibid., p. 90.

196.Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Die deutschen Bevölkerungsschichten und der Nationalsozialismus’, in Kracauer, Essays, Feuilletons, Rezensionen 5:4, pp. 433–45, here p. 439.

197.Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 110–11.

198.Letter from Ernst Brandi to his son F. H. Brandi from 7 March 1932, as quoted in Abelshauser, Ruhrkohle und Politik, p. 71.

199.On the industry’s support of the NSDAP and its limits, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., ‘“Alliance of Elites” as a Cause of Weimar’s Collapse and Hitler’s Triumph?’, in Die deutsche Staatskrise 1930–1933, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992), pp. 205–14; Jürgen John, ‘Zur politischen Rolle der Großindustrie in der Weimarer Staatskrise. Gesicherte Erkenntnisse und strittige Meinungen’, in Die deutsche Staatskrise 1930–1933, pp. 215–37.

200.Hamburger Echo, no. 250 from 18 October 1932, as quoted in McElligott, ‘“. . . und so kam es zu einer schweren Schlägerei” ’, p. 72.

201.This term is used by Grzesinski, Inside Germany, p. 130.

202.Deutsche Hochschule für Politik (ed.), Seminar für SA-Führer: Winter-Lehrgang 1937/38 (Berlin: Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, 1937), p. 16.

203.Friedrich Lenger, Metropolen der Moderne: Eine europäische Stadtgeschichte seit 1850 (Munich: Beck, 2013), p. 393. The studies mentioned are Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik; Blasius, Weimars Ende; and Fulda, Press and Politics.

204.For different angles on this development, see Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung: Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2007); Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany; Bergien, Die bellizistische Republik; Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen.

205.Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe, pp. 646–80.

206.Several SA leaders, among them Wilhelm Stegmann in Nuremberg, were advocating by late 1932 for a return to the Wehrverband strategy should Hindenburg continue to refuse to appoint Hitler as chancellor. After internal disagreements, Stegmann in early 1933 left the NSDAP and organized the Freikorps Franken, which grew to between 2,000 and 3,000 men strong. The events of 30 January 1933 prepared the ground for further agitation by this and similar groups. See Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 163–4.

207.Fulda, Press and Politics, p. 201; Lenger, Metropolen der Moderne, p. 393.

208.Sebastian Ulrich, Der Weimar-Komplex: Das Scheitern der ersten deutschen Demokratie und die politische Kultur der frühen Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009), esp. pp. 79–143, 376–535.

209.According to Heinrich Bennecke, SA Chief of Staff Röhm was not present on this occasion. Instead, he attended a social evening at the SA--Reichsführerschule in Munich and followed the events on the radio; Peschel (ed.), Die SA in Sachsen vor der ‘Machtübernahme’, p. 76.

210.Peter Fritzsche, The Turbulent World of Franz Göll: An Ordinary Berliner Writes the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 149.

211.As quoted in Bernt Engelmann, Im Gleichschritt marsch: Wie wir die Nazizeit erlebten 1933–1939 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1982), p. 51. For a detailed, yet slightly exaggerated, description of the ‘magnitude’ of this parade, based on later memoirs and Nazi newspaper coverage, see Peter Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 139–41.

Chapter 3

1.First printed in Encyclopedia Italiana, vol. 14 (1932), as quoted in Benito Mussolini, ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’, in his Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions (Rome: Ardita, 1935), pp. 5–42, here p. 8.

2.Ernst Bloch, ‘Reminder: Hitler’s Force’, in Heritage of Our Times (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 145–8, here p. 147 (originally published as ‘Erinnerung: Hitlers Gewalt’, Das Tage-Buch 5:15 [1924], 12 April, pp. 474–7).

3.Ibid., p. 146.

4.Martin Blinkhorn, Fascism and the Right in Europe, 1919–1945 (Harlow: Pearson, 2000), pp. 19–24.

5.Patrizia Dogliani, ‘Propaganda and Youth’, in The Oxford Handbook of Fascism, ed. R. J. B. Bosworth (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 185–202, here p. 186.

6.See Michael Geyer, ‘The Militarization of Europe 1914–1945’, in The Militarization of the Western World, ed. John R. Gillis (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), pp. 65–102. Rüdiger Bergien has lately criticized the rather loose use of the term ‘militarization’ in many studies and has instead suggested ‘bellicism’ as a substitute; Bergien, Die bellizistische Republik, pp. 33–7. I nevertheless prefer the established ‘militarization’ as long as a very narrow understanding of this term is avoided that equates militarization exclusively with preparation for conventional war.

7.See, in particular, Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika, pp. 231–310.

8.For a recent summary, see Rohkrämer, Die fatale Attraktion des Nationalsozialismus, pp. 151–60.

9.See, among others, O’Sullivan, Fascism, pp. 33–84.

10.See Kater, ‘Ansätze zu einer Soziologie der SA’, pp. 815–17; Campbell, SA Generals, pp. 29–79. However, other researchers have emphasized that the SA was not always such a ‘young’ organization as the party propaganda portrayed it. In the Black Forest, for example, the early SA activists were predominantly in their mid- to late thirties. See Heilbronner, Catholicism, Political Culture and the Countryside, pp. 62–3.

11.For a critical position, see Benninghaus, ‘Das Geschlecht der Generation’.

12.Ernst Günther Gründel, Die Sendung der jungen Generation (Munich: Beck, 1932). The phenomenon of this self-declared ‘war youth generation’ has been analysed extensively; see Andrew Donson, Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 59–107; Herbert, Best; Helmut Lethen, Cool Conduct: The Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany (Berkeley, CA, and London: University of California Press, 2002); Daniel Siemens, ‘Kühle Romantiker: Zum Geschichtsverständnis der “jungen Generation” in der Weimarer Republik’, in Die Kunst der Geschichte: Historiographie, Ästhetik, Erzählung, ed. Martin Baumeister, Moritz Föllmer, and Philipp Müller (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), pp. 189–214; Christian Ingrao, Believe and Destroy: Intellectuals and the SS War Machine (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), pp. 3–16.

13.Gerwarth, ‘Central European Counter-Revolution’, p. 181.

14.Ibid.

15.Weisbrod, ‘Gewalt in der Politik’, p. 393. However, at least in Erlangen, students’ excitement for such units was limited. Only a minority of those students who had received military training during the war years or had actively fought in battle registered for these ‘student companies’. See Manfred Franze, Die Erlanger Studentenschaft 1918–1945 (Würzburg: Schöningh, 1972), pp. 29–31.

16.Othmar Plöckinger, ‘Adolf Hitler als Hörer an der Universität München im Jahr 1919: Zum Verhältnis zwischen Reichswehr und Universität’, in Die Universität München im Dritten Reich: Aufsätze. Teil II, ed. Elisabeth Kraus (Munich: Utz, 2008), pp. 13–47, here pp. 14–17; von Oerzen, Die deutschen Freikorps 1918–1923, pp. 422–31 (in particular the sections on Leipzig and Würzburg).

17.In Budapest the membership of highly violent student battalions that perceived themselves as auxiliary police forces increased from 3,000 men in 1919 to 10,000 men in the summer of the following year. See Bodó, ‘Heroes or Thieves?’, pp. 94–5; Gerwarth, ‘Rechte Gewaltgemeinschaften und die Stadt nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, pp. 118–19.

18.Chris Millington, ‘Political Violence in Interwar France’, History Compass 10:3 (2013), pp. 246–59, here p. 249; Dominique Borne and Henri Dubief, La crise des années 30: 1929–1928 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989), p. 93; Xavier Cheneseau, Camelots du Roi: Les troupes de choc royalistes (1908–1936) (Boulogne: Éditions Défi, 1997), pp. 46–7.

19.Plöckinger, ‘Adolf Hitler als Hörer an der Universität München’, pp. 15–16.

20.The Bavarian Einwohnerwehren also integrated members of the Reichswehr-Zeitfreiwilligen units after the latter were dissolved under the Versailles Peace Treaty on 1 April 1920. See BayHStA IV, Bestand Reichswehr, Brigade 23: Letter from the Reichswehrgruppenkommando no. 4 on ‘Auflösung der Reichswehr-Zeitfreiwilligen’, 9 March 1920.

21.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803, pp. 174–83: An early list of SA members (from Maurice), presumably intercepted by the police in September 1921.

22.Hambrecht, Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Mittel- und Oberfranken, pp. 45–6.

23.Geoffrey Giles, Students and National Socialism in Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 26; Steinke, Fritz Bauer oder Auschwitz vor Gericht, p. 54. In the early 1930s SA units that consisted exclusively of students mushroomed in German university towns. In Cologne, for example, the law student Heinz Siepen was appointed the first leader of the local SA university Sturm, see GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4043, vol. 311, p. 52.

24.On the ‘Heißsporn’ Klintzsch, see the characterization of the writer Ferdinand Lindner from September 1921 in LArch Freiburg, F 179/4 Nr. 110, p. 9.

25.Frank Bajohr, ‘Unser Hotel ist judenfrei’: Bäder-Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2003), pp. 73–88.

26.Heinz Wegener, Das Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium – Die Landesschule Templin: Ein berlin-brandenburgisches Gymnasium im Mahlstrom der deutschen Geschichte 1607–2007 (Berlin: Berlin Story, 2007), pp. 113–15; Walsdorff, ‘Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch’.

27.LArch Freiburg, F 179/4 no. 110, pp. 15–22, here p. 17: Offenburg regional court, Record of interrogation of Hans Ulrich Klintzsch, 16 September 1921.

28.Email from the archive of the Technical University (TU) of Munich to the author from 7 June 2016; LKA Stuttgart, A 127, no. 1293: Personal information form Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch (1949/50). I have also checked with Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) student registers for the years 1921 to 1925–6, but to no avail. Digitized registers with the names of professors and students are available from LMU’s university library website, epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/view/lmu/pverz.html.

29.LArch Freiburg, F 179/4 no. 153, pp. 81–3, here p. 83: Tübingen local court, Record of interrogation of Dietrich von Jagow, 2 February 1922; Brigitte Riethmüller and Hermann-Arndt Riethmüller, Osiander. Die Geschichte einer Buchhandlung, http://www.osiander.de/download/Osiander_Geschichte_Stand_2013.pdf.

30.Barbara Hachmann, ‘Der “Degen”. Dietrich von Jagow, SA-Obergruppenführer’, in Die Führer der Provinz: NS-Biographien aus Baden und Württemberg, ed. Michael Kißener and Joachim Scholtyseck (Konstanz: UKV, 1997), pp. 267–87, here pp. 271–2; Ernst Piper, Alfred Rosenberg: Hitlers Chefideologe (Munich: Blessing, 2005), p. 52; Rafael Binkowski, Die Entwicklung der Parteien in Herrenberg 1918–1933: Ausprägungen der Parteienentwicklung auf lokaler Ebene in der Weimarer Republik am Beispiel der Stadt Herrenberg und anderer südwestdeutscher Vergleichsstädte, university diss., Universität Stuttgart, 2007, http://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/opus/volltexte/2007/3273/, pp. 296–7, 313–14.

31.Hermann Schützinger, ‘Tübingen’, Die Weltbühne 22:2 (1926), no. 32, 10 August, pp. 207–10, here 209–10. Actual historical research has come to very similar conclusions, and not only for Tübingen: ‘The cultural political milieu that operated at German universities tended toward the political Right, and like their professors, German students tended to be nationalists, anti-Communists, and anti-Semitic, a perfect match for the burgeoning Nazi party’; see Hilary Earl, ‘“Bad Nazis and Other Germans”: The fate of SS-Einsatzgruppen Commander Martin Sandberger in Postwar Germany’, in A Nazi Past: Recasting German Identity in Postwar Europe, ed. David A. Messenger and Katrin Paehler (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2015), pp. 57–82, here pp. 60–1. For a balanced assessment that emphasizes the widespread sympathy for the Nazi movement at Tübingen University but at the same time points to the fact that Nazi organizations for a long time did not recruit there more easily than elsewhere, see Hans-Joachim Lang, ‘Die Universität Tübingen im Nationalsozialismus’, in Forschung – Lehre – Unrecht: Die Universität Tübingen im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Ernst Seidl (Tübingen: MUT, 2015), pp. 33–49.

32.The students were led by the Hochschulring deutscher Art under the young Theodor Eschenburg. See Benigna Schönhagen, ‘Stadt und Universität Tübingen in der NS-Zeit’, in Die Universität Tübingen im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Urban Wiesing et al. (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), pp. 731–58, here p. 743; Uwe Dietrich Adam, Hochschule und Nationalsozialismus: Die Universität Tübingen im Dritten Reich (Tübingen: Mohr, 1977), p. 22; Trauthig, Im Kampf um Glauben und Kirche, p. 64. On Gumbel, see in particular Christian Jansen, Emil Julius Gumbel: Porträt eines Zivilisten(Heidelberg: Wunderhorn, 1991).

33.Adam, Hochschule und Nationalsozialismus, pp. 22–3. Initially, however, the SA did not allow for the formation of genuine student Stürme, as this was perceived to be a new form of elitism that ran contrary to the party’s ideal of a Volksgemeinschaft transgressing class boundaries. The situation changed fundamentally in 1932 with the establishment of the new Studentenbundorganisation that attempted to intensify the paramilitary training offered at German universities. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Transcript of the Munich police’s Lagebericht from 20 October 1932.

34.By the Nazis’ own accounting, forty-eight SA leaders and between 600 and 700 rank-and-file SA men were members of the National Socialist Student League as early as 1929; see Baldur von Schirach, Wille und Weg des Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Studentenbundes (Munich: NSDAP, 1929), p. 11. Historians’ opinions on this issue differ considerably. Michael Kater in the 1970s argued that student activism in the SA remained limited, despite the prominent place that the union of ‘brain and hand’ – that is, of students and workers – occupied in Nazi propaganda. In reality, Kater claimed, no more than 40 per cent of all students who were members of the National Socialist Student League also became members of the SA. Yet whether or not this is a small number – given the importance of the National Socialist Student League in many German universities starting in 1928 – seems highly debatable; Michael Kater, Studentenschaft und Rechtsradikalismus in Deutschland 1918–1933: Eine sozialgeschichtliche Studie zur Bildungskrise in der Weimarer Republik (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1975), pp. 186–97. Contrary to Kater, contemporaries like Theodor Geiger identified middle-class male youth and in particular students as the ‘pillars of national activism’; Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes, p. 115. On the rise of the National Socialist Student League and its relation to the SA, see also Giles, Students and National Socialism in Germany, pp. 44–100; Michael Grüttner, Studenten im Dritten Reich (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995), pp. 19–61; Schön, Die Entstehung des Nationalsozialismus in Hessen, pp. 104–16.

35.As an example of such reasoning, see LArch Freiburg, F 179/4 Nr. 110, pp. 15–22, here p. 19: Offenburg regional court, Record of interrogation of Hans Ulrich Klintzsch, 16 September 1921. Students with more liberal tendencies likewise stressed that they felt called to shape the people’s community; see Fritz Söhlmann, ‘Akademiker und Volksgemeinschaft. Die Aufgabe einer studentischen Selbstverwaltung’, Der Jungdeutsche, 27 June 1929, in GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4043, no. 160, p. 90.

36.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 372–437, here p. 374: Werner von Fichte, Typescript of a booklet on the SA, untitled and undated, sixty-five pages.

37.On the development of and positions within the German youth movement, see the recent publications by Ahrens, Bündische Jugend, and Barbara Stambolis (ed.), Die Jugendbewegung und ihre Wirkungen: Prägungen, Vernetzungen, gesellschaftliche Einflussnahmen (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2015). For examples of the biographical overlap of the youth movement and the NSDAP, see BArch Berlin, NS 26/370: Letter from Rudolf Schmidt, ‘Anschriften Egerland’, undated.

38.Instructive in this respect is a travel report from the SA-Sturmführer Horst Wessel, who cycled from Berlin to an NSDAP party rally held in Nuremberg in 1927. He interwove his description of the German landscape and its people with political deliberations. See Gailus and Siemens (eds), ‘Hass und Begeisterung bilden Spalier’, pp. 157–183.

39.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 372–437, here pp. 374–5: Werner von Fichte, Typescript of a booklet on the SA.

40.Stefan Vogt, ‘Strange Encounters: Social Democracy and Radical Nationalism in Weimar Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History 45:2 (2010), pp. 253–81; idem, Nationaler Sozialismus und Soziale Demokratie: Die sozialdemokratische Junge Rechte 1918–1945 (Bonn: Dietz, 2006).

41.Carl Mierendorff, ‘Republik’, in Sozialistische Monatshefte 38:2, 1932, p. 793, as quoted in Vogt, Nationaler Sozialismus und Soziale Demokratie, p. 222.

42.Alfred Weber uses the term ‘authoritarian democracy’ approvingly in Das Ende der Demokratie? Ein Vortrag (Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1931), p. 23. See also Carl Mierendorff, ‘Wahlreform, die Losung der jungen Generation’, Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus 1 (1930), pp. 342–9. The most elaborate and influential manifestos are Edgar J. Jung, Die Herrschaft der Minderwertigen: Ihr Zerfall und ihre Ablösung durch ein Neues Reich (Berlin: Verlag Deutsche Rundschau, 1930); and the less idealistic Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlags-Anstalt, 1932).

43.August Rathmann, ‘Neuer Anfang sozialdemokratischer Politik?’, Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus 1 (1930), pp. 388–95, here p. 390. In similar terms the German jurist Karl Loewenstein in exile noted a few years later that ‘the emotional past of early liberalism and democracy cannot be revived. Nowadays, people do not want to die for liberty’; Karl Loewenstein, ‘Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights’, The American Political Science Review 31:3 (1937), pp. 417–32, here p. 428.

44.For a more detailed discussion, see Elizabeth Harvey, ‘The Cult of Youth’, in A Companion to Europe 1900–1945, ed. Gordon Martel (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 66–81, esp. pp. 75–8; Kater, Hitler Youth, p. 10.

45.Kater, Hitler Youth, p. 382.

46.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803: Transcript of a blank form of an SA declaration of engagement (Verpflichtungsschein).

47.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 190–1. See also Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 673–9. Nazi propaganda likewise emphasized the importance of women for the SA. The SA-Obergruppenführer and police president of Frankfurt am Main, Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, in 1940 praised the contribution of women to the SA, particularly their highly active role in spreading Nazi propaganda from mouth to mouth during the Kampfzeit and their provision of comfort to their husbands and partners in times of crisis. See Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, ‘Unsere Frauen’, Die SA 1:34 (1940), pp. 5–6.

48.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Paragraph 6 of the Satzung der Sturmabteilung der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei, 17 September 1926, modified on 31 May 1927.

49.BayHStA IV, Bestand Stahlhelm, no. 97: Stahlhelm-Führerspiegel (draft from September 1931), paragraph XIV.

50.For a similar conclusion, see Eley, Nazism as Fascism, pp. 92–3. By 1930 the Frauenabteilung, or ‘Women’s Department’, was no longer under the control of the SA. See RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 143–53, here p. 143: Memorandum of the Baden police, Die SA und SS der NSDAP, Karlsruhe, 15 May 1931.

51.See also Axel Fehlhaber, Detlef Garz, and Sandra Kirsch, ‘“Wie ich Nationalsozialistin wurde” – Erste Annäherungen an eine Typologie weiblichen Engagements in der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung auf Basis der Abel-Collection’, sozialersinn 8:2 (2007), pp. 357–83.

52.Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford, CA (HILA), Theodore Fred Abel Papers, Box 1, no. F44: Hilde Boehm-Stoltz, Warum und wie ich zum Nationalsozialismus kam (1933). By 1932, Boehm-Stoltz had already published an article in the Nazi press: see Hilde Boehm-Stoltz, ‘Die Nationalsozialistin und die Familie’, Völkischer Beobachter, 20 January 1932, as quoted in Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 32.

53.HILA, Theodore Fred Abel Papers, Box 1, no. F36: Hertha von Reuß, ‘Wie ich zur NSDAP kam’ (1933).

54.Ibid., Box 1, no. F41: Marlene Heder, ‘Wie es kam, daß wir zwei Schwestern mit 19 und 20 Jahren schon zu den alten oder wenigstens älteren Kämpfern der Bewegung gehören’ (1933).

55.See also Lara Hensch: ‘“Wir aber sind mitten im Kampf aufgewachsen” – Erster Weltkrieg und “Kampfzeit” in Selbstdarstellungen früher SA-Männer’, in Bürgerkriegsarmee, ed. Müller and Zilkenat, pp. 331–53.

56.In this respect a recent attempt by Joachim C. Häberlen to identify women as actors in Weimar’s violent street politics is only partly convincing. He provides compelling evidence for Communist women’s activities but does not prove that National Socialist women were equally active. See Joachim C. Häberlen, ‘“Weiter haben sich zwei Frauenpersonen besonders hervorgetan”: Zur Rolle von Frauen in der Straßenpolitik am Ende der Weimarer Republik’, L’Homme: Europäische Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 23:1 (2012), pp. 91–105. On the persistent gender imbalance within the Communist Party, see Sewell, ‘Bolshevizing Communist Women’.

57.On women’s motives for joining the NSDAP prior to 1933, see also Marit A. Berntson and Brian Ault, ‘Gender and Nazism: Women Joiners of the Pre-1933 Nazi Party’, American Behavioral Scientist 49:9 (1998), pp. 1,193–1,218; Boak, ‘Mobilising Women for Hitler’.

58.Lore Snyckers, ‘Wie SA-Frauen’, Die SA 1:34 (1940), p. 7. For a short biographical sketch of her husband, see ‘SA-Sturmbannführer Dr. Hans Snyckers’, Die SA 2:9 (1941), p. 12. Hans Snyckers later served as Kulturreferent for the German Embassy in Bratislava; Frank-Rutger Hausmann, ‘Auch im Krieg schweigen die Musen nicht’: Die Deutschen Wissenschaftlichen Institute im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), p. 322.

59.Hattenhorst, Magdeburg 1933, p. 110.

60.Riccardo Bavaj, Die Ambivalenz der Moderne im Nationalsozialismus: Eine Bilanz der Forschung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003). On the increasing number of female students beginning in the second half of the 1930s, see Grüttner, Studenten im Dritten Reich, pp. 119–26; on women’s room for (professional) development in the Third Reich, see the pioneering work by Kirsten Heinsohn, Barbara Vogel, and Ulrike Weckel (eds), Zwischen Karriere und Verfolgung: Handlungsspielräume von Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1997); for recent overviews on gender and National Socialism, see Matthew Stibbe, ‘In and Beyond the Racial State: Gender and National Socialism, 1933–1955’, Politics, Religion & Ideology 13:2 (2012), pp. 159–78; Johanna Gehmacher and Gabriella Hauch (eds), Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte des Nationalsozialismus: Fragestellungen, Perspektiven, neue Forschungen (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2007).

61.Schweyer, Politische Geheimverbände, p. 108.

62.Hermann Schützinger, Bürgerkrieg (Leipzig: Oldenburg, 1924), pp. 56, 59. See also BArch Berlin, R1501/20234: ‘Auch ein Reichsbannerführer: Aus der Vergangenheit des Herrn Schützinger’, Berliner Börsenzeitung, 1 May 1932.

63.On the diverse political youth organizations of this period, see Wolfgang Krabbe, Die gescheiterte Zukunft der Ersten Republik: Jugendorganisationen bürgerlicher Parteien im Weimarer Staat (1918–1933) (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1995); Irmtraud Götz von Olenhusen, ‘Die Krise der jungen Generation und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus: Eine Analyse der Jugendorganisationen der Weimarer Zeit’, Jahrbuch des Archivs der Deutschen Jugendbewegung 12 (1980), pp. 53–86.

64.For an introduction, see Jan Plamper, Geschichte und Gefühl: Grundlagen der Emotionsgeschichte (Munich: Siedler, 2012), with further references.

65.Pioneering in this respect was Wolfgang Schieder (ed.), Faschismus als soziale Bewegung: Deutschland und Italien im Vergleich, 2nd edn (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983).

66.On Behrendt’s biography, see Katja Windisch, Gestalten sozialen Wandels: Die Entwicklungssoziologie Richard F. Behrendts (Bern: Lang, 2005), pp. 19–31.

67.Richard F. Behrendt, Politischer Aktivismus: Ein Versuch zur Soziologie und Psychologie der Politik (Leipzig: Hirschfeld, 1932). For a more detailed analysis of this book, see Daniel Siemens, ‘Politische Gewalt als emotionale Befriedigung’, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 13:1 (2016), pp. 172–8.

68.It was Georg Lukácz who originally coined the term ‘transcendental homelessness’ in his Die Theorie des Romans (Berlin: Cassirer, 1920).

69.Behrendt, Politischer Aktivismus, pp. 57–61.

70.In line with such deliberations are the memoirs of the teacher and intellectual Gerhard Nebel, who, as a radical socialist, in late 1932 participated in several clashes with ideological opponents ‘with deep satisfaction’; Nebel, ‘Alles Gefühl ist leiblich’, p. 130.

71.This was the main idea proposed by Herman Schmalenbach, ‘Die soziologische Kategorie des Bundes’, Die Dioskuren: Jahrbuch für Geisteswissenschaften 1 (1922), pp. 35–105. This essay influenced Behrendt’s writing tremendously. On Schmalenbach’s concept, see also Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 390–3.

72.Behrendt, Politischer Aktivismus, pp. 62, 80–1, 96–103, 106. Independently of Behrendt, Thomas Rohkrämer recently came to a similar conclusion; see Rohkrämer, Die fatale Attraktion des Nationalsozialismus, pp. 148–9.

73.Ludwig Holländer, ‘Klarheit, Arbeit, Mut!’, CV-Zeitung, 19 September 1930, p. 1.

74.For the concept of ‘emotional communities’, see Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 1–31; and, recently, idem, Generations of Feelings: A History of Emotions, 600–1700 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 4–6. For the current debate on the difference between affects and emotions and the social relevance of both, see Edward J. Lawler, ‘An Affect Theory of Social Exchange’, American Journal of Sociology 107:2 (2001), pp. 321–52; Anna M. Parkinson, An Emotional State: The Politics of Emotion in Postwar West German Culture (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015), pp. 10–24.

75.Joachim Raschke, Soziale Bewegungen: Ein historisch-systematischer Grundriß, 2nd edn (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1988), p. 77.

76.Ibid., pp. 54, 305–7.

77.Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 32.

78.Ibid.

79.The terms Bund and Fascism are also semantically closely connected, as the Italian word fascio that gave Fascism its name originally meant ‘bundle’ or ‘bunch’. See ibid., p. 390.

80.Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Der Nationalsozialismus: Bewegung, Führerherrschaft, Verbrechen (Munich: Beck, 2009); Arif Dirlik, ‘Mao Zedong: Charismatic Leadership and the Contradictions of Socialist Revolution’, in Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements: The Revolutionary Power of Ordinary Men and Women, ed. Jan Willem Stutje (New York: Berghahn, 2012), pp. 117–37; Richard R. Fagan, ‘Charismatic Authority and the Leadership of Fidel Castro, Part 1’, Western Political Quarterly 18:2 (1965), pp. 275–84.

81.Thomas Welskopp, ‘Incendiary Personalities: Uncommon Comments on Charisma in Social Movements’, in Stutje, Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements, pp. 164–79, here pp. 164, 169.

82.Welskopp, ‘Incendiary Personalities’, p. 165. Already in the early 1920s the German philosopher Helmuth Plessner came to similar conclusions; see his Grenzen der Gemeinschaft: Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002 [1924]), pp. 43–8.

83.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6803: Guidelines for the formation of a stormtrooper unit, 16 May 1922.

84.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: OSAF, Decree no. 2. See also Noakes, Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, p. 182.

85.BArch Berlin, R 9361/II, no. 16746: Letter from Otto Herzog to the Reichsuschla, 26 August 1932.

86.Welskopp, ‘Incendiary Personalities’, p. 171.

87.Gehrig, Im Dienste der nationalsozialistischen Volkstumspolitik in Lothringen, p. 33. See also Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 418–21, 468–74; Wacherfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 164–87.

88.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 44, p. 2: ‘Eine Dankespflicht’, Der Nationale Sozialist, 17 May 1930.

89.Ibid., Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 44, p. 9: Extract from the ‘Mitteilungen des Landeskriminalamts (IA) Berlin’, 15 November 1930.

90.Ibid., p. 18: ‘SA-Befehl Nr. 6’, Völkischer Beobachter, 6 May 1931.

91.Ibid., p. 22: Proclamation of the NSDAP Leipzig (typescript), April 1931.

92.One of these women was Marie von Trotha, who regularly accepted stormtroopers into her house in the beach resort of Groß-Möllen in Pomerania, today’s Polish Mielno. A collection of stormtroopers’ letters to her is stored in BArch Berlin, NS 26/326.

93.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 44, p. 26: Ernst Röhm, Order from 12 March 1931.

94.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: OSAF, Erlaß Nr. 2. The Communists pursued a very similar strategy; see BArch Berlin, NS 23/431: Typescript of ‘Communist Fighting Principles’ (1931/1932).

95.Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes, p. 115.

96.In the previous two years all SA equipment had had to be ordered from the so-called SA-Wirtschaftsstelle in Munich, which was run by a party member named Rottenberg. See StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Extract from the Lagebericht of Berlin Police, no. 128, 20 February 1929.

97.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Extracts from the Lagebericht of Munich Police, no. 77, 7 May 1929.

98.BArch Berlin, NS 26/372: Letter from the Danzig HJ to Rudolf Schmidt, 31 August 1930.

99.This aspect is cleverly exploited in early SA films, particularly S.A. Mann Brand from 1933.

100.His official entry date was 1 April 1931, and his membership number was 508,889. See Elisabeth Timm, Hugo Ferdinand Boss (1895–1948) und die Firma Hugo Boss: Eine Dokumentation (Metzingen: 1999), http://www.metzingen-zwangsarbeit.de/hugo_boss.pdf, p. 4.

101.Unless noted otherwise, all information in this paragraph is taken from Roman Köster, Hugo Boss, 1924–1945: Die Geschichte einer Kleiderfabrik zwischen Weimarer Republik und ‘Drittem Reich’ (Munich: Beck, 2011), pp. 24–33.

102.According to a survey from 1942, approximately half of the German textile industry was Jewish-owned. Four years later these companies represented less than 1 per cent of the industry; Köster, Hugo Boss, p. 39.

103.Irene Guenther, Nazi Chic? Fashioning Women in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004).

104.Timm, Hugo Ferdinand Boss, p. 31; Köster, Hugo Boss, p. 30.

105.Petra Bräutigam, Mittelständische Unternehmer im Nationalsozialismus: Wirtschaftliche Entwicklungen und soziale Verhaltensweisen in der Schuh- und Lederindustrie Badens und Württembergs (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), pp. 147–50.

106.As early as 1924 the Communist daily Die Rote Fahne ran an advertisement for the Klassen-Kampf Zigarette (KKZ) – literally ‘class struggle cigarettes’ – and promised that Red Aid, the Communist self-defence organization, would obtain a ‘certain percentage’ of the monthly sales. Unfortunately, no further information is available on this apparently short-lived attempt to fuse consumption and politics. The original advertisement from Die Rote Fahne, no. 147 from 2 November 1924, is reprinted in Gert-Joachim Glaessner, Detlef Lehnert, and Klaus Sühl (eds), Studien zur Arbeiterbewegung und Arbeiterkultur in Berlin (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1989), p. 11.

107.Sandra Schünemann, ‘Bilderwelten, Markengesichter und Marktgesetze: Werbung und Produktpolitik der Reemtsma Cigarettenfabriken zwischen 1920 und 1960’, in Wirtschaft – Kultur – Geschichte: Positionen und Perspektiven, ed. Susanne Hilger and Achim Landwehr (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2011), pp. 111–32, here pp. 116–18, 123–4.

108.Ibid., p. 118.

109.This sentiment is best reflected in Hans Fallada’s 1932 novel Kleiner Mann, was nun?, published in English as Little Man, What Now? (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1933).

110.Schünemann, ‘Bilderwelten’, pp. 119–21.

111.Holger Starke, ‘Dampfschokolade, Neumünchner Bier und allerfeinster Korn’, in Dresdner Geschichtsbuch, ed. Stadtmuseum Dresden (Altenburg: DZA-Verlag, 1995), pp. 119–50, here pp. 137–42.

112.Thomas Grosche, ‘Arthur Dressler: Die Firma Sturm – Zigaretten für die SA’, in Braune Karrieren: Dresdner Täter und Akteure im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Christine Piper, Mike Schmeitzner, and Gerhard Nader (Dresden: Sandstein, 2012), pp. 193–9, here p. 193; Erik Lindner, Die Reemtsmas: Geschichte einer deutschen Unternehmerfamilie (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2007), pp. 69–70; Grant, Stormtroopers and the Crisis in the Nazi Movement, pp. 99–106.

113.One central reason why the SA engaged in business affairs was its lack of financial independence from the NSDAP. Every stormtrooper was expected to join the party and pay membership duties, which in part were used by the NSDAP to finance the SA. See Lindner, Die Reemtsmas, p. 70.

114.Grosche, ‘Dressler’, p. 193. Bettenhausen had made a fortune in the previous decades through his flourishing chain of station bookshops, which operated under both the former Habsburg monarchy and the German Reich. His credit seems to have been high and quite risky, given the marginal status of the NSDAP in 1929–30. However, it seems to have paid off in several forms later: Bettenhausen’s company was one of the major distributors of newspapers and magazines in the Third Reich, and the Nazis even entrusted him with organizing the bookselling industry in occupied Poland. See Christine Haug, Reisen und Lesen im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung: Die Geschichte des Bahnhofs- und Verkehrsbuchhandels in Deutschland von seinen Anfängen um 1850 bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), pp. 155–7.

115.Grosche, ‘Dressler’, pp. 193–4.

116.Lindner, Die Reemtsmas, p. 70.

117.Grosche, ‘Dressler’, pp. 194–6.

118.Lindner, Die Reemtsmas, p. 70.

119.Ibid., pp. 78, 81.

120.See several regional reports to the OSAF from the summer and autumn of 1932, in BArch Berlin, NS 23/474.

121.BArch Berlin, NS 23/474, p. 105,070: Report of the SA-Gruppe West, 21 September 1932; ibid., p. 105,188: Report of the SA-Untergruppe Oberschlesien, 22 September 1932.

122.BArch Berlin, NS 23/474, p. 105,178: Letter from the Gruppenführer of the SA-Gruppe Schlesien to OSAF, 22 September 1932.

123.GStA PK, XX. HA, Rep. 240 B 31 c, pp. 191–201, here p. 191: Typescript of ‘Wie kam es nun zum 1. August 1932?’

124.The brands of this company, which were actually produced by the Gera-based cigarette company Mahalesi (led by Paul Rother), were named ‘Spielman’ (3 pfennig), ‘Kommando’ (4 pfennig), ‘Staffel’ (5 pfennig), and ‘Neue Arena’ (6 pfennig). See BArch Berlin, NS 23/474, p. 105,144: Letter from SA-Standartenführer Heinrich Löwenstein, Kassel, to Sturmbann I – V/83, 14 July 1932; ibid., p. 105,151: Letter from NSDAP Gera, 20 May 1932.

125.BArch Berlin, NS 23/474, p. 105,174: Letter from SA-Mittelschlesien Süd to OSAF, 26 September 1932.

126.Grosche, ‘Dressler’, p. 194.

127.Thomas Grosche, Die Zigarettenindustrie in Dresden – Von den Anfängen bis zum zweiten Weltkrieg, MA diss. (unpublished), TU Dresden, 2009, pp. 71–2. I am grateful to Thomas Grosche for providing me with a copy of his work.

128.Industrie- und Handelskammer Dresden, Chronik, http://www.dresden.ihk.de/150jahre/chronik.html.

129.Lindner, Die Reemtsmas, pp. 91–2.

130.Ibid., pp. 72–141, esp. pp. 88–90.

131.Ibid., pp. 92, 114–19. According to National Socialist sources, the largest German cigarette producers had invested 3 million reichsmark on advertising in party newspapers and magazines in 1932 alone; BArch Berlin, NS 23/474, p. 105,123: Letter from the Führer of the SA-Gruppe Franken, W. Stegmann.

132.Grosche, Die Zigarettenindustrie, pp. 76–7, with further references.

133.Grosche, ‘Dressler’, p. 198.

134.Schünemann, ‘Bilderwelten’, p. 125.

135.On the interrelations between the Christian churches and the Nazi stormtroopers, see Bergen, Twisted Cross, in particular pp. 70–81; Gailus, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus; Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich; Klauspeter Reumann (ed.), Kirche und Nationalsozialismus: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Kirchenkampfes in den evangelischen Landeskirchen Schleswig-Holsteins(Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz, 1988); Siemens, The Making of a Nazi Hero, pp. 126–7.

136.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4043, no. 423, p. 79: Prussian Minister of the Interior, Notation from 20 August 1931 (signed Dr Gräser).

137.See his lengthy (and querulous) letter to the East Prussian Gauleiter Koch, 22 April 1932, in GStA PK, XX. HA, Rep. 240 B 27 d+e, pp. 168–77. On the Nazis’ ‘deadly hate’ for the Centre Party, see Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes, p. 112; on their problem of winning over Catholic voters, see Falter, Hitlers Wähler, pp. 177–88.

138.According to the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall, in 1930 only about 120 out of 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany were members of the Nazi Party. However, he argues that the number of supporters was certainly much bigger, particularly given the fact that the churches ‘discouraged their clergy from formally joining any political party’; Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, p. 76.

139.All facts and quotations in this paragraph are taken from Trauthig’s excellent study on Württemberg’s Protestants, Im Kampf um Glauben und Kirche, pp. 55–67. Benedikt Brunner has recently demonstrated to what extent such ‘male’ rhetoric of religious battle even shaped the autobiographies of Protestant theologians in the first two decades after 1945; Benedikt Brunner, ‘Geschlechterordnung im Kirchenkampf: Konstruktion von Gender in der autobiographischen Verarbeitung der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus’, in ‘sichtbar unsichtbar: Geschlechterwissen in (auto-)biographischen Texten’, ed. Maria Heidegger et al. (Bielefeld: transcript, 2015), pp. 103–17.

140.A telling example is the provost Ernst Szymanowski, who later changed his surname into Biberstein. In his parish in Bad Segeberg he would hold church services in front of entire SA units and dressed in the brown shirt himself on these occasions. He even put pressure on other pastors who did not conform to his views by sending stormtroopers to disturb their services. See Stephan Linck, ‘Eine mörderische Karriere: der Schleswig-holsteinische Theologe Ernst Szymanowski/Biberstein’, in Manfred Gailus and Clemens Vollnhals (eds), Für ein artgemäßes Christentum der Tat: Völkische Theologie im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2016), pp. 239–59, here pp. 244, 246.

141.Heinrich Rendtorff, ‘Kirche und Nationalsozialismus’, Das evangelische Hamburg 25 (1931), pp. 166–7 (first published in Mecklenburgische Zeitung, 23 April 1931).

142.Trauthig, Im Kampf um Glauben und Kirche, pp. 60–1. Wurm was a central figure of German Protestantism in the twentieth century. On his fierce opposition to Allied denazification procedures after the Second World War, see his Memorandum by the Evangelical Church in Germany on the Question of War Crimes Trials before American Military Courts (Waiblingen-Stuttgart: Stürner, 1949); Jon David K. Wyneken, ‘Memory as Diplomatic Leverage: Evangelical Bishop Theophil Wurm and War Crimes Trials, 1948–1952’, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 19:2 (2006), pp. 368–88.

143.Manfred Gailus, ‘1933 als protestantisches Erlebnis: emphatische Selbsttransformation und Spaltung’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 29:4 (2003), pp. 481–511.

144.Kurt Hutten, Nationalsozialismus und Christentum (Stuttgart: Evangelischer Volksbund, 1932), p. 31. On the Protestants’ generally welcoming attitude to the Nazis between 1930 and 1934, see also Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Vierter Band: Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914–1949 (Munich: Beck, 2003), pp. 797–804.

145.Hansjörg Buss, ‘“Für arteigene Frömmigkeit – über alle Konfessionen und Dogmen hinweg”. Gerhard Meyer und der Bund für Deutsche Kirche’, in Gailus and Vollnhals (eds), Für ein artgemäßes Christentum der Tat, pp. 119–33, here pp. 121, 124.

146.Ralf Czubatynski, ‘Domprediger Ernst Martin (1885–1974) im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Kirchenpolitik in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus’, in Sachsen-Anhalt: Beiträge zur Kultur und Landesgeschichte 15 (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1999), pp. 101–24, here pp. 112–13; Hattenhorst, Magdeburg 1933, pp. 120–3.

147.Czubatynski, ‘Domprediger Ernst Martin’, pp. 114–23.

148.Franz Tügel, ‘Kirche und Nationalsozialismus’, Das evangelische Hamburg 26 (1932), pp. 52–6, here pp. 53–4.

149.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 26–32, 220–3.

150.Stehn, ‘Über die politische Betätigung der Pastoren’, Das evangelische Hamburg 25 (1931), p. 357.

151.In Württemberg the Protestant Church temporarily prohibited their pastors from participating in political party activities on 29 September 1932; Trauthig, Im Kampf um Glauben und Kirche, p. 58. In reaction to such orders, the liberal press in November 1932 reported that Röhm had requested every SA group in the Reich to appoint an ‘SA clergyman’ to consecrate party flags and provide pastoral care for the stormtroopers. Such pastors, the newspapers reported, were required to be party members and were to be supervised by Ludwig Münchmeyer, a notorious antisemite and former Protestant pastor who since 1930 represented the NSDAP in the Reichstag. Two weeks later, however, the Nazi paper Der Völkische Beobachter disclaimed such rumours. With the appointment of Hitler to the position of Reichskanzler soon afterwards, the Nazi Party no longer needed to rely on specially chosen pastors. Some upright dissenters notwithstanding, local clergymen now happily performed services for the party – another indicator that National Socialism had struck a chord with many Protestant pastors in the previous years. See ‘Pfarrer als Sturmbannführer’, Vossische Zeitung, 4 November 1932, p. 2; Kater, ‘Ansätze zu einer Soziologie der SA’, p. 807. On Münchmeyer, see Gerhard Lindemann, ‘Typisch jüdisch’: Die Stellung der Ev.-luth. Landeskirche Hannovers zu Antijudaismus, Judenfeindschaft und Antisemitismus 1919–1949 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1998), pp. 136–220.

152.In Holzkirchen, a market town south of Munich, the local priest reported that four-fifths of his believers were National Socialist; Pridham, Hitler’s Rise to Power, p. 157.

153.Ibid., p. 168.

154.Ibid., pp. 166–9, 177.

155.Hastings, Catholicism and the Roots of Nazism, pp. 107–42, 168–70. See also idem, ‘How “Catholic” Was the Early Nazi Movement? Religion, Race, and Culture in Munich, 1919–1924’, Central European History 36:3 (2003), pp. 383–433; Thomas Forstner, ‘Braune Priester – Katholische Geistliche im Spannungsfeld von Katholizismus und Nationalsozialismus’, in Täter und Komplizen in Theologie und Kirchen 1933–1945, ed. Manfred Gailus, 2nd edn (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015), pp. 113–39.

156.Pridham, Hitler’s Rise to Power, pp. 164–5.

157.On 28 April, SA Chief of Staff Röhm was among those present in the church, and he met at least twice with the archbishop. See the entries from 27 and 29 April 1933 in Faulhaber-Edition, Critical Online Edition of the Diaries of Michael Kardinal von Faulhaber (1911–1952): http://p.faulhaber-edition.de/exist/apps/faulhaber/dokument.html?collid=1933&sortby=year&doctype=bb&docidno=BB_06393_0542r; http://p.faulhaber-edition.de/exist/apps/faulhaber/dokument.html?collid=1933&sortby=year&doctype=bb&docidno=BB_09263_0030s.

158.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl 4043, no. 311, pp. 275–85: Hans Georg Hofmann (ed.), Pflichtenlehre des Sturm-Abteilungsmannes (SA-Katechismus) (Dießen: Huber, undated [1934]), p. 10.

159.Werner Betcke (ed.), Der kleine Katechismus Dr. Martin Luthers für den braunen Mann (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1934), pp. 4, 24.

160.Klintzsch’s father, the pastor Johannes Paul Klintzsch, had died on 11 September 1920, at the age of fifty-nine. The father of Horst Wessel, the pastor Ludwig Wessel, had died on 9 May 1922, at the age of forty-two; Stadt Lübbenau, Letter to the author from 8 May 2015; Siemens, Making of a Nazi Hero, p. 27.

161.Walsdorff, ‘Hans Ulrich Klintzsch’, p. 1,257; LKA Stuttgart, A 127, no. 1293 (personnel file of Hans Ulrich Klintzsch). His appointment by the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg was partly financed with donations from the Evangelical-Lutheran churches in the USA. Klintzsch quit the job as a catechet in 1952 when he was granted an officer pension. He died in Berlin on 17 August 1959.

162.Emil Maurice, Letter to the pastor of Gettorf, dated 3 June 1924, as quoted in Sigmund, Des Führers bester Freund, p. 29.

163.Andrew Wackerfuss in his case study of the Hamburg SA likewise stresses the importance of religious beliefs for understanding the stormtrooper mentality. See Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 218–23.

164.StA München, Pol. Dir. 6804: Police report from the NSDAP’s Christmas Party in the Bürgerbräukeller, 18 December 1922. On this occasion, the well-known Bavarian humorist Weiß Ferdl also contributed to the popularity of the event.

165.Ibid.

166.Joseph Berchtold, ‘Auferstehung’, S.A.-Mann, March 1929, as cited in StA München, Pol. Dir. 6805: Extracts from Munich’s Police Lagebericht, no. 77, 7 May 1929. On the biography of Berchtold, see Hein, Elite für Volk und Führer?, pp. 42–3, 69–70.

167.See Jürgen W. Falter, ‘The Young Membership of the NSDAP between 1925 and 1933: A Demographic and Social Profile’, Historical Social Research, Supplement 25 (2013), pp. 260–79, here pp. 271–2; Jörg Thierfelder and Eberhard Röhm, ‘Die evangelischen Landeskirchen von Baden und Württemberg in der Spätphase der Weimarer Republik und zu Beginn des Dritten Reiches’, in Die Machtergreifung in Südwestdeutschland, ed. Thomas Schnabel, pp. 219–56, here p. 229.

168.Otto Wagener, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, ed. Henry Ashby Turner (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 19–21, as cited in Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, p. 66.

169.Ibid.

170.See Charlotte Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum: Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995); Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870–1990 (Berkeley, CA: University of Berkeley Press, 2000), pp. 35–40.

171.The idea of a ‘muscular Christianity’ was popular in the first half of the twentieth century in North America and western Europe alike. In Germany its proponents usually referred to such ideas as a ‘Germanization of the Christian faith’. See Clifford Puttney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Arthur Bonus, Von Stöcker zu Naumann: Ein Wort zur Germanisierung des Christentums (Heilbronn: Salzer, 1896); Rainer Lächele, ‘Protestantismus und völkische Religion im deutschen Kaiserreich’, in Handbuch zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918, ed. Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. Ulbricht (Munich: Saur, 1999), pp. 149–63. Such ideas even resonated among the Catholic priesthood in interwar Germany; see Forstner, ‘Braune Priester’, pp. 131–3. For an instructive case study on the Protestant pastor Gustav von Bodelschwingh, who in the Third Reich recruited SA students of Protestant theology to his settlement project in Dünne near Bielefeld using similar arguments, see Ulrich Rottschäfer, ‘Gustav von Bodelschwingh und die Gründung des Sammelvikariats in Dünne’, Jahrbuch für Westfälische Kirchengeschichte 89 (1995), pp. 216–47, here pp. 223–31. I am grateful to Johannes Lübeck, Tangermünde, for pointing me to this article.

172.See the instructive contributions in Matthew Feldman and Marius Turda (eds), Clerical Fascism in Interwar Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2008).

173.From the recent literature, see Dylan Riley, The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870–1945 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), as well as the contributions in Alejandro Quiroga and Miguel Angel des Arco (eds), Right-Wing Spain in the Civil War Era: Soldiers of God and Apostles of the Fatherland, 1914–1945 (London: Continuum, 2012).

174.Rory Yeomans, ‘Militant Women, Warrior Men and Revolutionary Personae: The New Ustasha Man and Woman in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945’, Slavonic and East European Review 83:4 (2005), pp. 685–732, here p. 705.

175.As quoted in Stephen Fischer-Galati (ed.), Man, State, and Society in East European History (London: Pall Mall, 1970), p. 330. For a comparative investigation into the religious elements of the Romanian and Croatian Fascist movements, see the excellent study by Radu Harald Dinu, Faschismus, Religion und Gewalt in Südosteuropa: Die Legion Erzengel Michael und die Ustaša im historischen Vergleich (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), pp. 204–52.

176.Hofmann, Pflichtenlehre des Sturm-Abteilungsmannes, p. 11. Irrespective of those promises, the relations between the National Socialist regime and the churches soon became complicated.

177.Bergen, Twisted Cross, p. 71.

178.The printmaker Schwarzkopf was born on 11 April 1893 in Bonn, educated in the 1910s at the Kunstgewerbeschule Düsseldorf, and, in 1933, appointed professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1937 he became a leader in the National Socialist German Lecturers League and was also elected president of the Malkasten artists’ association, a position he held until 1945. He served again as its president beginning in 1956. Schwarzkopf died on 31 May 1963 in Düsseldorf. On his biography and works, see Dietrich Grünewald, ‘Der Totentanz bei Rethel, Ille und Schwarzkopf’, Deutsche Comicforschung 5 (2009), pp. 21–32, here pp. 30–2; Sabine Schroyen, Bildquellen zur Geschichte des Künstlervereins Malkasten in Düsseldorf. Künstler und ihre Werke in den Sammlungen (Düsseldorf: Grupello, 2001), pp. 34–6, 316–18.

179.See in particular the reproductions in Oberste SA-Führung, . . . wurde die SA eingesetzt: Politische Soldaten erzählen von wenig beachteten Frontabschnitten unserer Zeit (Munich: Eher, 1938), pp. 43, 55, 91.

180.For details, see Grünewald, ‘Der Totentanz bei Rethel’; Alfred Rethel, Auch ein Todtentanz, 11th edn (Leipzig, Schlicke, 1879); Hans Jürgen Imiela, ‘Alfred Rethel und der Tod’, in Der Tod in Dichtung, Philosophie und Kunst, 2nd edn, ed. Hans Helmut Jansen (Darmstadt: Steinkopff, 1989), pp. 371–9.

181.Grünewald, ‘Der Totentanz bei Rethel’, p. 27.

182.Der Kampf der SA: Eine Bildfolge nach 6 Holzschnitten von Prof. Richard Schwarzkopf (advertising brochure), in LArch Ludwigsburg, PL 505 Bü 12. For earlier versions in which Life defeats Death, see Grünewald, ‘Der Totentanz bei Rethel’, p. 32.

183.Besides German Passion, the series was also referred to as The Fight of the SA and Totentanz der SA; Schroyen, Bildquellen zur Geschichte des Künstlervereins Malkasten, p. 35.

184.Fest, ‘Ernst Röhm und die verlorene Generation’, p. 190.

185.Ibid., pp. 191, 193.

186.Emre Sencer, ‘Fear and Loathing in Berlin: German Military Culture at the Turn of the 1930s’, German Studies Review 37:1 (2014), pp. 19–39, here p. 22. In reality, this erosion of authority began during the last two years of the war.

187.Horst von Metzsch, ‘Nie wieder ein solches Jahrzehnt!’, Militär-Wochenblatt, 4 July 1929, as quoted in Sencer, ‘Fear and Loathing in Berlin’, p. 23.

188.Until 1928 the relationship between the Reichswehr and the NSDAP was distant – partly as a result of long-term mutual antagonism between the two in the wake of the failed November 1923 putsch, and partly because of the consolidation of Weimar democracy in the mid-1920s. On 5 December 1928 Hitler even formally prohibited members of his party from joining the Reichswehr, thereby indirectly acknowledging the military’s self-image as an institution ‘above politics’. See Peter Bucher, Der Reichswehrprozeß: Der Hochverrat der Ulmer Reichswehroffiziere 1929/30, Militärgeschichtliche Studien 4 (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1967), p. 9.

189.Bucher, Der Reichswehrprozeß, p. 11.

190.Timothy S. Brown, ‘Richard Scheringer, the KPD and the Politics of Class and Nation in Germany, 1922–1969’, Contemporary European History 14:3 (2005), pp. 317–46, here pp. 323–5; Bucher, Der Reichswehrprozeß, pp. 110–13.

191.Sencer, ‘Fear and Loathing in Berlin’, p. 25.

192.For a detailed discussion of Ludin’s biography and later career, see the following note and chapter 10.

193.Bucher, Der Reichswehrprozeß, p. 130; Brown, ‘Richard Scheringer’, pp. 323, 337.

194.Ernst Niekisch, Erinnerungen eines deutschen Revolutionärs. Erster Band: Gewagtes Leben 1889–1945 (Cologne: Wissenschaft und Politik, 1974), p. 185.

195.Eckart Kehr, ‘Zur Soziologie der Reichswehr’, Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus 1 (1930), pp. 156–64, here p. 163.

196.On the complex relationship between the German nobility and the SA, see Malinowski and Reichardt, ‘Die Reihen fest geschlossen?’

197.Peter Hoffmann, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Brüder (Stuttgart: DVA, 1992), p. 101. On the ‘George circle’ and George’s ideas of a ‘secret Germany’, see Thomas Karlauf, Stefan George: Die Entdeckung des Charisma (Munich: Blessing, 2007); Robert E. Norton, Secret Germany. Literary Modernism and Visual Culture: Stefan George and His Circle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

198.Hoffmann, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, p. 103. Eberhard Zeller in his biography of Stauffenberg likewise mentions the man’s sympathy toward Scheringer, Ludin, and Wendt, but insists that this sympathy should not be taken as a political endorsement of the Nazi Party. See Eberhard Zeller, Oberst Claus Graf Stauffenberg: Ein Lebensbild (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2008 [1994]), p. 25.

199.Hans Roschmann, Erinnerungen eines ‘Kämpferischen Schwaben’ (Überlingen: self-published, undated [1985]), pp. 37–8.

200.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, p. 201: Röhm, SABE (SA-Befehl) from 13 January 1931. On the collaboration of the Reichswehr and the SA in border-protection efforts, see also IfZ Archive, ED 414, vol. 181: ‘Stabschef Röhm im Kieler Hitler-Prozeß’, Hamburger Tageblatt, 11 July 1932, p. 12.

201.For details, see in particular RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 47, pp. 352–62: ‘Material zur Frage der Militarisierung der SA’, September 1931.

202.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, no. 311, pp. 25–6: Report from the Berlin Police President to the Regierungspräsident in Düsseldorf, 4 February 1932.

Chapter 4

1.Ernst Röhm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters (1928), as translated and quoted in Röhm, The Memoirs of Ernst Röhm, p. 237.

2.Erich Koch-Weser, ‘Der deutsche Mensch’, Vossische Zeitung, 1 February 1933 (morning edition), pp. 1–2.

3.Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules (Paris: F. Alcan, 1895); for the English version, see The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: Unwin, 1897).

4.Several years after Koch-Weser’s statement, British historians put forth a very similar argument to explain the German psyche. In 1941, Lewis B. Namier wrote: ‘It is the lack of moral self-courage, self-assurance, and independence in the individual German which makes him seek safety, self-assertion and superlative power in and through his State and nation, and which makes him glorify them beyond all bounds of sense and reason.’ Lewis B. Namier, ‘Both Slaves and Masters’, Time & Tide, 5 July 1941, as quoted in Jörg Später, Vansittart: Britische Debatten über Deutsche und Nazis 1902–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), p. 220.

5.The literature on this topic is exhaustive. From the most recent publications, see Wachsmann, KL, pp. 23–78; Irene Mayer-von Götz, Terror im Zentrum der Macht: Die frühen Konzentrationslager in Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 2008); as well as the contributions in Nikolaus Wachsmann and Sybille Steinbacher (eds), Die Linke im Visier: Zur Errichtung der Konzentrationslager 1933(Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014); and those in Hördler (ed.), SA-Terror als Herrschaftssicherung. For overviews of the political history of 1933, see in particular Andreas Wirsching (ed.), Das Jahr 1933: Die nationalsozialistische Machteroberung und die deutsche Gesellschaft (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2009); Richard Bessel, ‘The Nazi Capture of Power’, Journal of Contemporary History39:2 (2004), pp. 169–88, as well as the literature in the following notes.

6.Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Noonday Press, 1998), p. 17.

7.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 720, Opis 1, no. 43, p. 80: Letter from the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Adolf Wagner, to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, 26 April 1933 (typescript); BArch Berlin, R1501/20234: ‘Reichsbanner nun auch in Sachsen verboten’, Der Montag, 13 March 1933.

8.GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4043, no. 14, pp. 2–3: SA-Gruppenführer Schlesien (Edmund Heines), Gruppenbefehl no. 32, Breslau, 24 April 1933, and draft of a telegram from the Prussian Minister President sent to all SA, SS, and Stahlhelm formations in East Prussia, Silesia, and the Grenzmark, undated; German Foreign Ministry, Political Archives (PAAA), R 99246, p. 90: Order of Ernst Röhm on matters of ‘Auslandsdeutsche’ in the SA, 27 November 1933.

9.Klaus Schwabe and Rolf Reichardt (eds), Gerhard Ritter: Ein politischer Historiker in seinen Briefen (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1984), p. 66.

10.Alexander Mitscherlich, Ein Leben für die Psychoanalyse: Anmerkungen zu meiner Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), p. 111, as quoted in Tobias Freimüller, ‘Verdrängung und Bewältigung: Alexander Mitscherlich und die NS-Vergangenheit’, in Freimüller (ed.), Psychoanalyse und Protest: Alexander Mitscherlich und die ‘Achtundsechziger’ (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), pp. 118–32, here p. 121.

11.As quoted in Fritzsche, Turbulent World of Franz Göll, p. 147.

12.Röhm did not approve of such demands, because he regarded them as attempts to organize private interests under the umbrella of the SA. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Oberster SA-Führer, Circular Letter on ‘Sondergliederungen’, 5 July 1933.

13.BArch Berlin, NS 1/388, pp. 126–8, here p. 126: Letter from Elfriede Conti to Martin Bormann, 3 March 1933.

14.LArch Berlin, A Rep. 003-04-01, p. 101: Letter from Karl Ernst to the Staatskommissar of the capital city of Berlin (Julius Lippert), 26 July 1933.

15.Detlev Humann, ‘“Alte Kämpfer” in der neuen Zeit: Die sonderbare Arbeitsvermittlung für NS-Parteigänger nach 1933’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 98:2 (2011), pp. 173–94, here pp. 174–5.

16.Ibid., pp. 176–7.

17.Ibid., pp. 178–83.

18.Ulrich Klein, ‘SA-Terror und Bevölkerung in Wuppertal 1933/34’, in Detlev Peukert and Jürgen Reulecke (eds), Die Reihen fast geschlossen: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1986), pp. 45–61, here p. 56.

19.Christian Meyer, Semantiken des Privaten in autobiographischen Deutungen des Nationalsozialismus 1939/1940, PhD diss., Bielefeld University, 2015, pp. 154–7.

20.According to official reports, SA unemployment had been reduced by up to 80 per cent by the spring of 1934. For examples, see Humann, ‘“Alte Kämpfer” in der neuen Zeit’, pp. 185–6, 192. The situation in the southwest was less promising, as there only a third of all unemployed ‘Old Fighters’ had been placed in jobs by the end of 1933; Gunter Mai, ‘Die Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation: Zum Verhältnis von Arbeiterschaft und Nationalsozialismus’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 31:4 (1981), pp. 573–613, here p. 601.

21.Humann, ‘“Alte Kämpfer” in der neuen Zeit’, p. 185.

22.Frank Bajohr appropriately characterized the NSDAP as the party of ‘organized self-pity’; see Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure: Korruption in der NS-Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001), pp. 13, 22–4.

23.On the SA-Hilfswerklager and their funding, see Detlev Humann, ‘Verwahranstalten mit Fantasiegehältern?: Die Hilfswerklager der SA für arbeitslose “alte Kämpfer”’, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 97:4 (2010), pp. 425–36; Fischer, Stormtroopers, pp. 130–3.

24.Peter Schyga, Goslar 1918–1945: Von der nationalen Stadt zur Reichsbauernstadt des Nationalsozialismus (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 1999), p. 137.

25.The stormtroopers of the ‘Austrian Legion’ were particularly notorious in this respect; see Schafranek, Söldner für den ‘Anschluss’, pp. 174–205; Humann, ‘Verwahranstalten mit Fantasiegehältern?’, p. 426, n. 4.

26.The original advertisement is included in BArch Berlin, NS 23/204.

27.BArch Berlin, NS 23/204: Letter from Müller to Rudolf Hess, 23 April 1934.

28.On the social gulf between the SA leadership and ‘ordinary’ SA men, see Kater, ‘Ansätze zu einer Soziologie der SA’. On the widespread corruption in the Third Reich, see Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure. On the SA, see here esp. pp. 17–34.

29.Fritz Tobias, Der Reichstagsbrand: Legende und Wirklichkeit (Rastatt: Grote, 1962); Hans Mommsen, ‘Der Reichstagsbrand und seine politischen Folgen’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 12:4 (1964), pp. 351–413.

30.Hett, Burning the Reichstag, pp. 318–23. Hett’s book is the latest in a list of contributions to the so-called Reichstag fire controversy over which historians of twentieth-century German history in particular have fought bitterly. For critical interventions against the Tobias/Mommsen faction, see Hans Schneider (ed.), Neues vom Reichstagsbrand? Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: BWV, 2004); Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel, Der Reichstagsbrand: Wie Geschichte gemacht wird (Berlin: edition q, 2001); Jürgen Schmädeke, Alexander Bahar, and Wilfried Kugel, ‘Der Reichstagsbrand in neuem Licht’, Historische Zeitschrift 269:3 (1999), pp. 603–51. As was to be expected, Hett’s work provoked a defence of the single-perpetrator thesis; see Richard J. Evans, ‘The Conspiracists’, London Literary Review of Books 36:9 (2014), pp. 3–9; also Hett’s and Evans’s subsequent replies, both published in the London Literary Review of Books 36:11 (2014).

31.Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik, p. 186; Hermann Weber, ‘Zum Verhältnis von Komintern, Sowjetstaat und KPD’, in Hermann Weber, Jakov Drabkin, and Bernhard H. Bayerlein (eds), Deutschland, Russland, Komintern I: Überblicke, Analysen, Diskussionen. Neue Perspektiven auf die Geschichte der KPD und die Deutsch-Russischen Beziehungen (1918–1943) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), pp. 9–139, here p. 102, with further references.

32.For a particularly dreadful case, see GSt PK, XX. HA, Rep. 240 B 29 a–g, p. 153: Letter from Fräuling Itzig, the daughter of a Jewish cattle dealer, to Hermann Göring, 15 March 1933. On the anti-Jewish boycott actions, see Hannah Ahlheim, ‘Deutsche, kauft nicht bei Juden!’ Antisemitismus und politischer Boykott in Deutschland 1924 bis 1935, 2nd edn (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), pp. 241–62; Christoph Kreutzmüller, Ausverkauf: Die Vernichtung der jüdischen Gewerbetätigkeit in Berlin 1930–1945 (Berlin: Metropol, 2012), pp. 123–45, 219–38.

33.BArch Berlin, NS 23/409: ‘Schacht Issues Debt Warning’, Evening Sun (New York), 7 April 1933.

34.Johannes Tuchel, ‘Organisationsgeschichte der “frühen” Konzentrationslager’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Diestel (eds), Instrumentarium der Macht: Frühe Konzentrationslager 1933–1937 (Berlin: Metropol, 2003), pp. 9–26, here p. 11; Karin Orth, Das System der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Eine politische Organisationsgeschichte (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999), p. 23; Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz, p. 68. The peak of the arrests occurred in the spring of 1933. Between February and April of that year alone 45,000 people were held in confinement.

35.For an overview of the different types of early concentration camps, see Tuchel, ‘Organisationsgeschichte der “frühen” Konzentrationslager’, pp. 13–15; Jan Erik Schulte, ‘Das KZ-System in der Region: Konzentrationslager im Rheinland und in Westfalen 1933–1945’, in his (ed.), Konzentrationslager im Rheinland und in Westfalen 1933–1945: Zentrale Steuerung und regionale Initiative (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005), pp. xi–xli. On the importance of Dachau as a ‘model camp’, see Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz, pp. 133–5; and Christopher Dillon, Dachau and the SS: A Schooling in Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

36.Irene von Götz, ‘Die frühen Konzentrationslager in Berlin’, in Bürgerkriegsarmee, ed. Müller and Zilkenat, pp. 131–46, here p. 132.

37.A particularly drastic example of SA violence in Berlin was the so-called ‘Köpenick murder week’, or ‘Köpenick’s blood week’. Between 21 and 26 June 1933 stormtroopers arrested up to 500 people and killed at least 23 of them. See in particular Stefan Hördler, ‘Ideologie, Machtinzenierung und Exzess: Taten und Täter der Köpenicker Blutwoche’, in Stefan Hörder (ed.), SA-Terror als Herrschaftssicherung, ed. Hördler, pp. 83–104. On the local knowledge of the early concentrations camps with regard to those in the Rhineland and Westphalia, see also Schulte, ‘Das KZ-System in der Region’, p. xxiii.

38.See, for example, the case of the quarryman Hugo Rappenhöner, who hanged himself after being released from internment in the SA Porz prison; BArch Berlin, NS 23/889: Report from the Oberstaatsanwalt Cologne to the Prussian Minister of Justice, 13 December 1933.

39.Irene von Götz, ‘Die Errichtung der Konzentrationslager in Berlin 1933: Entfesselter SA-Terror in der Reichshauptstadt’, in Die Linke im Visier: Zur Errichtung der Konzentrationslager 1933, ed. Nikolaus Wachsmann and Sybille Steinbacher (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014), pp. 70–83, here p. 73.

40.Sascha Münzel and Eckart Schörle, Erfurt Feldstraße: Ein frühes Lager im Nationalsozialismus (Erfurt: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen, 2012), p. 50.

41.Julia Pietsch, ‘Stigmatisierung von Juden in frühen Konzentrationslagern: Die “Judenkompanie” des Konzentrationslagers Oranienburg 1933/34’, in Marco Brenneisen et al. (eds), Stigmatisierung–Marginalisierung–Verfolgung: Beiträge des 19. Workshops zur Geschichte und Gedächtnisgeschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager (Berlin: Metropol, 2015), pp. 99–120, here pp. 109–13; Veronika Springmann, Gunst und Gewalt: Sport in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern, diss., Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, 2015; Will Greif [Peter Blachstein], ‘Juden’, Freies Deutschland, 6 April 1939, as reprinted in Peter Blachstein, ‘In uns lebt die Fahne der Freiheit’: Zeugnisse zum frühen Konzentrationslager Burg Hohnstein, ed. Norbert Haase and Mike Schmeizner (Dresden: Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten zur Erinnerung an die Opfer politischer Gewaltherrschaft, 2005), pp. 126–8.

42.Gebhard Aders, ‘Terror gegen Andersdenkende: Das SA-Lager am Hochkreuz in Köln-Porz’, in Instrumentarium der Macht: Frühe Konzentrationslager 1933–1937, ed. Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Diestel (Berlin: Metropol, 2003), pp. 179–88, here p. 184.

43.Norbert Haase, ‘Das Konzentrationslager Hohnstein 1933/34 und seine Überlieferung in der deutschen Emigration’, in Blachstein, ‘In uns lebt die Fahne der Freiheit’, pp. 8–22, here p. 15; Mike Schmeizner, ‘Diktaturerfahrung und politische Konsequenz: Zur Biographie des deutsch-jüdischen Sozialisten Peter Blachstein, 1911–1977’, in ibid., pp. 23–55, here p. 33.

44.Prior to 1939, women never constituted more than 10 per cent of all prisoners in the Third Reich. See Jane Caplan, ‘Gender and the Concentration Camps’, in Jane Caplan and Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds), Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 82–107, here p. 83; Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz, p. 7.

45.Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik, p. 186.

46.See also the pioneering article by Caplan, ‘Gender and the Concentration Camps’, esp. pp. 86–95.

47.Kim Wünschmann observed similar effects in her analysis of the strategies employed by Jewish men interned in Germany after 9 November 1938, and Brian Feltman has recently identified an analogous process adopted by the German prisoners of war during and after the First World War. See Kim Wünschmann, ‘Die Konzentrationslagererfahrungen deutsch-jüdischer Männer nach dem Novemberpogrom 1938: Geschlechtergeschichtliche Überlegungen zu männlichem Selbstverständnis und Rollenbild’, in Susanne Heim, Beate Meyer, and Francis R. Nicosia (eds), ‘Wer bleibt, opfert seine Jahre, vielleicht sein Leben’: Deutsche Juden 1938–1941 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010), pp. 39–58; Brian K. Feltman, The Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

48.Pietsch, ‘Stigmatisierung von Juden in frühen Konzentrationslagern’; Kim Wünschmann, ‘Cementing the Enemy Category: Arrest and Imprisonment of German Jews in Nazi Concentration Camps 1933–8/9’, Journal of Contemporary History 45:3 (2010), pp. 576–600; Jürgen Matthäus, ‘Verfolgung, Ausbeutung, Vernichtung: Jüdische Häftlinge im System der Konzentrationslager’, in Günter Morsch and Susanne zur Nieden (eds), Jüdische Häftlinge im Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen 1936–1945 (Berlin: Hentrich, 2004), pp. 64–89; Caplan, ‘Gender and the Concentration Camps’, p. 87. On the Jewish welfare home in Wolzig, see Claudia Prestel, Jugend in Not: Fürsorgeerziehung in deutsch-jüdischer Gesellschaft (1901–1933) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2003), pp. 313–40, and for the SA raid of March 1933 and its consequences, pp. 336–7; as well as the detailed report by the CV-Verein, available in English in Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman, Jewish Responses to Persecution, vol. 1: 1933–1938 (Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2010), pp. 75–7.

49.Gerhart Seger, Oranienburg: Erster authentischer Bericht eines aus dem Konzentrationslager Geflüchteten, mit einem Geleitwort von Heinrich Mann (Karlsbad: Graphia, 1934), reprinted in Irene A. Diekmann and Klaus Wettig (eds), Konzentrationslager Oranienburg: Augenzeugenberichte aus dem Jahre 1933: Gerhart Seger, Reichstagsabgeordneter der SPD; Max Abraham, Prediger aus Rathenow (Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2003), pp. 15–89. A few months later Werner Schäfer, the ambitious commandant of the Oranienburg camp, replied with the book Konzentrationslager Oranienburg: Das Anti-Braunbuch über das erste deutsche Konzentrationslager (Berlin: Buch- und Tiefdruck-Gesellschaft, 1934). See the instructive article by Paul Moore, ‘“The Truth about the Concentration Camps”: Werner Schäfer’s Anti-Brown Book and the Transnational Debate on Early Nazi Terror’, in German History 34 (2016), advanced access, published 3 October 2016.

50.Diekmann and Wettig, Konzentrationslager Oranienburg, pp. 62–5, here p. 64. Seger’s negative characterization of his guards at least helped him uphold his own masculine identity. On this psychological coping mechanism, see also Wünschmann, ‘Die Konzentrationslagererfahrungen deutsch-jüdischer Männer nach dem Novemberpogrom 1938’, pp. 49–50.

51.Diekmann and Wettig, Konzentrationslager Oranienburg, p. 65.

52.Will Greif, ‘Handwerker’, Freies Deutschland, 27 April 1939, as reprinted in Blachstein, ‘In uns lebt die Fahne der Freiheit’, pp. 132–4.

53.Diekmann and Wettig, Konzentrationslager Oranienburg, pp. 64–5; Will Greif, ‘Rekruten’, Freies Deutschland, 23 March 1939, as reprinted in Blachstein, ‘In uns lebt die Fahne der Freiheit’, pp. 121–3.

54.Günter Morsch and Agnes Ohm (eds), Terror in der Provinz Brandenburg: Frühe Konzentrationslager 1933/34 (Berlin: Metropol, 2014), p. 70; Haase, ‘Das Konzentrationslager Hohnstein 1933/34’, pp. 13–14.

55.Volker Bendig, ‘Unter Regie der SA: Das Konzentrationslager Börnicke und das Nebenlager Meissnershof im Osthavelland’, in Instrumentarium der Macht, ed. Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Diestel, pp. 97–101.

56.Eike Wolgast, ‘Die Studierenden’, in Wolfgang U. Eckart, Volker Sellin, and Eike Wolgast (eds), Die Universität Heidelberg im Nationalsozialismus (Heidelberg: Springer, 2006), pp. 57–94, here p. 60; Axel W. Bauer, Karin Langsch, and Wolfgang U. Eckart, ‘Die Universitätsklinik und Poliklinik für Mund-, Zahn- und Kiefernkrankheiten’, in ibid., pp. 1,031–41, here pp. 1,033–4.

57.Julia Deinert, Die Studierenden der Universität Rostock im Dritten Reich, PhD diss., Universität Rostock, 2010, pp. 72–3. For other examples of the SA’s public display of its captives, see Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz, pp. 32–4.

58.Volker Friedrich Drecktrah, ‘Die “Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit” der Marine-SA Cuxhaven von 1933 und deren Ahndung nach 1945’, in Alfred Gottwaldt et al. (eds), NS-Gewaltherrschaft: Beiträge zur historischen Forschung und juristischen Aufarbeitung (Berlin: Hentrich, 2005), pp. 118–34, here pp. 131–3.

59.To provide just one example, in the Upper Silesian town of Beuthen a group of SA men on 22 July 1935 paraded a female Christian hairdresser who was engaged to a Jewish man through the streets of the town. The woman had to carry a sign that identified her as a ‘race defiler’; her hair was cut short, and she is said to have been blackened with bitumen. See RGVA, Fond 721, Opis 1, no. 2604, p. 2: Letter from the CV-Verein, Landesverband Oberschlesien, to CV-Verein, Berlin, 23 July 1935. For similar examples, see Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte 2 (1935), p. 811.

60.Dorothee Wierling, Eine Familie im Krieg: Leben, Sterben und Schreiben 1914–1918 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013), pp. 394–5.

61.Julie Braun-Vogelstein (ed.), Otto Braun aus nachgelassenen Schriften eines Frühvollendeten (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1919). This book was reprinted several times before 1931 and sold approximately 100,000 copies; Wierling, Eine Familie im Krieg, pp. 380, 383–9.

62.On Litten, see Hett, Crossing Hitler; on Kronheim, see Andrea Löw and Hubert Schneider, ‘Dr. Walter Kronheim’, in Bochumer Anwalt- und Notarverein (ed.), Zeit ohne Recht: Justiz in Bochum nach 1933 (Recklinghausen: Bitter, 2002), pp. 140–1; Schmidt, Überwachen und Dienen, p. 327. For an overview of the Jewish lawyers in the capital, see Simone Ladwig-Winters, Anwalt ohne Recht: Das Schicksal jüdischer Rechtsanwälte in Berlin nach 1933, 2nd edn (Berlin: be.bra, 2007).

63.Ludwig Foerder, who according to Alfred Wiener refused to compromise in his pursuit of right and justice, fled Germany in 1933 and temporarily settled in Prague, where he and his wife were ‘found wandering in a demented state’ in the spring of 1934. Foerder later emigrated to Palestine, where he died in relative isolation. His wife was arrested in the German-occupied Netherlands and subsequently murdered in the Holocaust. For insight into Foerder’s political activities, see his two pamphlets Antisemitismus und Justiz (Berlin: Philo, 1924) and Die Stellung des Centralvereins zu den innerjüdischen Fragen in den Jahren 1919–1926: Eine Denkschrift für Vereinsmitglieder (Breslau: Volkswacht, 1927). On Foerder’s life, see Joseph Walk, Kurzbiographien zur Geschichte der Juden 1918–1945 (Munich: Saur, 1988), p. 94; Alfred Wiener, ‘In Memory of Ludwig Foerder’, AJR Information 9:8 (1954), p. 4; and the article ‘Dr. Foerder, Wife Return to Health’, originally published 1 June 1934 and here quoted in JTA Archive, http://www.jta.org/1934/06/01/archive/dr-foerder-wife-return-to-health.

64.Abraham Ascher, A Community Under Siege: The Jews of Breslau under Nazism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 76–7.

65.By 30 April 1934, 574 Jewish judges and prosecutors had left their jobs. In Prussia alone more than 700 Jewish lawyers had been denied admission to the courts by late 1933. See Wolfgang Benz, ‘Jüdische Juristen unter dem nationalsozialistischen Regime: Von der Entrechtung zur Verfolgung und Vernichtung’, in Justiz und Judentum, ed. Gerhard Pauli (Düsseldorf: Justizministerium des Landes NRW, 1999), pp. 19–36, here pp. 23–6.

66.Stephan A. Glienke, Die NS-Vergangenheit späterer niedersächsischer Landtagsabgeordneter: Abschlussbericht zu einem Projekt der Historischen Kommission für Niedersachen und Bremen im Auftrag des Niedersächsischen Landtages (Hannover: Niedersächsischer Landtag, 2012), p. 64.

67.For details, see Uwe Lohalm, ‘“Bis in die letzten Kriegstage intakt und voll funktionsfähig”: Der öffentliche Dienst in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945’, in Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann and Steffi Kaltenborn (eds), Stadtgeschichte in der NS-Zeit: Fallstudien aus Sachsen-Anhalt und vergleichende Perspektiven (Münster: Lit, 2005), pp. 53–65, esp. pp. 55–6.

68.For a short biographical sketch of Werner von Fichte, a great-grandson of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte and former leader of the Bund Wiking, see Münzel and Schörle, Erfurt Feldstraße, pp. 23–4.

69.Ted Harrison, ‘“Alter Kämpfer” im Widerstand: Graf Helldorff, die NS-Bewegung und die Opposition gegen Hitler’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 45 (1997), pp. 385–423, here p. 395.

70.Glienke, Die NS-Vergangenheit späterer niedersächsischer Landtagsabgeordneter, p. 65.

71.Klein, ‘SA-Terror und Bevölkerung in Wuppertal’, pp. 47–8.

72.On Helldorff, who later joined the men of the (predominantly) military resistance group led by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and was executed in 1944, see Harrison, ‘“Alter Kämpfer” im Widerstand’.

73.Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen, pp. 323–32; Götz, ‘Die Errichtung der Konzentrationslager’, p. 70; Tuchel, ‘Organisationsgeschichte der “frühen” Konzentrationslager’, p. 12.

74.‘Röverstaat Oldenburg!’, Vorwärts, 31 July 1932; ‘S.A.-Leute werden Polizisten’, Vorwärts, 29 July 1932, both in GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, titl. 4043, no. 311, pp. 418–20. With this move Röver nearly doubled the regular police forces, which previously were only 320 men strong.

75.Abraham Ascher, Was Hitler a Riddle? Western Democracies and National Socialism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), p. 22.

76.Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen, pp. 324–5.

77.In Bavaria even two types of auxiliary police were introduced by order of Reichskommissar Franz von Epp: a ‘political auxiliary police’ to be recruited exclusively from the ranks of the SS, and a ‘security auxiliary police’, consisting of SA and Stahlhelm men. See BayHStA IV, Stahlhelm, no. 392: The Commissarial State Minister of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior on ‘Einberufung und Verwendung von Hilfspolizei in Bayern’, 27 March 1933.

78.See Michael Schneider, Unterm Hakenkreuz: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung 1933 bis 1939 (Bonn: Dietz, 1999); idem, ‘Verfolgt, unterdrückt und aus dem Land getrieben: Das Ende der Arbeiterbewegung im Frühjahr 1933’, in Wachsmann and Steinbacher, Die Linke im Visier, pp. 31–51, here pp. 43–6; Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen, pp. 332–6.

79.Frank Boblenz and Bernhard Post, Die Machtübernahme in Thüringen 1932/33 (Erfurt: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen, 2013), p. 36.

80.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Bavarian Ministry of Finance, Letter on ‘Sonderbeauftragte bei den Bezirksämtern und Sonderbevollmächtigte bei den Regierungen’, undated.

81.See Wolfgang Edler von Zander, Das SA-Feldjägerkorps: Eine vergessene Einheit der Geschichte (Wolfenbüttel: Melchior, 2014), p. 26.

82.Schepura, Nationalsozialismus in der pfälzischen Provinz, p. 282.

83.See, for example, Klein, ‘SA-Terror und Bevölkerung in Wuppertal’, pp. 47–8.

84.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Letter from Hanns Günther von Obernitz to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, 20 July 1933.

85.On Martin’s biography, see in particular Grieser, Himmlers Mann in Nürnberg.

86.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Letter from Dr Benno Martin to the Bavarian Minister President, 20 July 1933.

87.In the years prior to 1933, Nazi leaders had threatened to carry out severe reprisals against policemen after the takeover of power. Wilhelm Loeper, the Gauleiter of Magdeburg-Anhalt, even boasted in 1932 that policemen who would not toe the party line were to be ‘gunned down with Reichswehr cannons’; Schumann, Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer Republik, p. 345.

88.Schyga, Goslar 1918–1945, pp. 139, 142–6; Ingo von Münch, Gesetze des NS-Staates: Dokumente eines Unrechtssystems (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), p. 93.

89.Schyga, Goslar 1918–1945, p. 147.

90.BArch Berlin, NS 23/708: Letter from Röhm on SA-Feldpolizei, 11 August 1933.

91.BArch Berlin, NS 23/708: Letter from Röhm on Feldjägerkorps in Prussia, 31 October 1933; GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a, no. 12004, pp. 134–6: OSAF on Feldjägerkorps in Prussia, 7 October 1933; Schmidt, Schützen und Dienen, pp. 328–9. For a collection of documents related to the Feldjägerkorps, see Zander, Das SA-Feldjägerkorps.

92.Several eyewitnesses later claimed that Walter Fritsch was directly involved in the executions that took place between 30 June and 2 July 1934 in Berlin; Rainer Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’: Politik und Staatsumbaupläne im Büro des Stellvertreters des Reichskanzlers in den Jahren 1933/1934, diss., Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 2016, ch. 6.3.1 with further references.

93.BArch Berlin, NS 23/708: Letter from Röhm on Feldjägerkorps in Bavaria, 27 February 1934.

94.Ibid.: SA-Gruppe Hansa, ‘Standort-Befehl 14/35’, 8 March 1935.

95.Ibid., NS 23/708: Letter from Lutze to the Reich Minister of the Interior, 23 May 1935.

96.Klaus Wisotzky, ‘Zwischen Integration und Opposition: Aspekte des Arbeiterverhaltens im Nationalsozialismus’, in Anselm Faust (ed.), Verfolgung und Widerstand im Rheinland und Westfalen 1933–1945 (Cologne: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1992), pp. 137–51, here p. 140. This feeling of humiliation was aggravated by the tendency of the SA men to undertake their raids when drunk; see Monika Hinterberger, ‘Menschen wie wir’, in Marlene Zinken (ed.), Der unverstellte Blick: Unsere Mütter (aus)gezeichnet durch die Zeit 1938 bis 1958: Töchter erinnern sich(Opladen and Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich, 2008), pp. 106–10, here p. 108.

97.Häberlen, Vertrauen und Politik im Alltag, pp. 9–12, 50–62, 82–92.

98.This argument was common as early as 1931. See, for example, Knickerbocker, German Crisis, p. 46.

99.On the strategy of the men who rallied around von Papen, see Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’, and Roshan Magub, A Life Cut Short: Edgar Julius Jung (1894–1934): Political Theorist and Man of Action. A Political Biography (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press/Camden House, forthcoming).

100.The following paragraph on Böhme and the SA violence that occurred in Chemnitz is based on my article ‘SA-Gewalt, nationalsozialistische “Revolution” und Staatsräson’, in Die Linke im Visier, ed. Wachsmann and Steinbacher, pp. 191–213.

101.See Albrecht Böhme, Psychotherapie und Kastration: Die Bedeutung der Psychotherapie als Erziehungs- und Ausscheidungsmethode für sexuell Abwegige und Sittlichkeitsverbrecher, dar-gestellt an Fällen aus der Kriminalpraxis, unter Heranziehung der Graphologie als Hilfswissenschaft; mit Einführung in das Sterilisations- und Kastrationsrecht sowie in Fragen der Vorbeugung gegen das Verbrechen, mit Ausblick auf Fragen der Gesetzgebung und Strafrechtspflege (Munich: Lehmanns, 1935).

102.Siemens, ‘SA-Gewalt, nationalsozialistische “Revolution” und Staatsräson’, pp. 195–6, with further references.

103.Albrecht Böhme, Wider den Rechtsbruch der Staatsführung, unpublished manuscript, Munich 1958, pp. 9, 21.

104.World Committee for the Victims of German Fascism (ed.), The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag, with an introduction by Lord Marley (London: Gollancz, 1933), pp. 341–51.

105.Siemens, ‘SA-Gewalt, nationalsozialistische “Revolution” und Staatsräson’, p. 197.

106.IfZ, Archives, F 92, pp. 98, 101: Albrecht Böhme, Polizeilicher Gesamtbericht über die Vorfälle in Chemnitz für die Zeit von April bis Mitte Juni 1933.

107.Siemens, ‘SA-Gewalt, nationalsozialistische “Revolution” und Staatsräson’, pp. 202–6.

108.Letter from Friedrich von Bodelschwingh to a Jewish physician, April 1933, as quoted in Barbara Degen, Bethel in der NS-Zeit: Die verschwiegene Geschichte (Waldkirchen: VAS, 2014), p. 262.

109.For the very similar position of Martin Niemöller, another prominent representative of the Protestant churches, see Matthew D. Hockenos, ‘Pastor Martin Niemöller, German Protestantism, and German National Identity, 1933–1937’, in John Carter Wood (ed.), Christianity and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe: Conflict, Community, and the Social Order (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), pp. 113–30, here pp. 115–18.

110.GSt PK, XX. HA, Rep. 240 B 27 d+e, pp. 88–9: Typescript of three Easter cards, April 1933.

111.All quotations are taken from Trauthig, Im Kampf um Glauben und Kirche, pp. 296–8. For a more in-depth discussion of the positions taken by the Protestant churches in 1933, see also Hermann Beck, ‘Anti-Semitic Violence “From Below”: Attacks and Protestant Church Responses in Germany in 1933’, Politics, Religion & Ideology 14:3 (2013), pp. 395–411, esp. pp. 407–9; Gailus, ‘1933 als protestantisches Erlebnis’.

112.On this ambivalence, see in particular Peter Reichel, Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reiches: Gewalt und Faszination des deutschen Faschismus (Hamburg: Ellert & Richter, 2006 [1991]).

113.Schwarz, ‘British Visitors’, pp. 499–500.

114.Ascher, Was Hitler a Riddle?, p. 42.

115.BayHStA IV, Stahlhelm, no. 181: Report from the SA special representative in Bad Aibling to the SA, Brigade Chiemgau, 24 August 1933.

116.BayHStA IV, Stahlhelm, no. 108: Letter from the Stahlhelm-Ortsgruppe Rosenheim to Bezirksführer Willmer in Prien, 20 June 1933.

117.RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 500, Opis 4, no. 268, p. 6: Letter from the SA-Gruppe Berlin-Brandenburg to the Geheime Staatspolizeiamt, 20 October 1933.

118.Lothar Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich 1933–1940: Anpassung und Unterwerfung in der Ära Grüttner (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988), p. 329; Michael Grüttner, Brandstifter und Biedermänner: Deutschland 1933–1939 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2015), p. 101. The German authorities learned of the exact wording of this decree only in June 1935. On the problem of keeping the decree hidden from the general public, see BArch Berlin, NS 23/889: Letter from the lawyer and ‘SA-Rechtsberater’ Walter Luetgebrune to Ernst Röhm, 5 March 1934.

119.BArch Berlin, NS 23/889: Typescript of Röhm’s decree from 31 July 1933.

120.Reichsjustizministerium und Statistisches Reichsamt (ed.), Kriminalstatistik für das Jahr 1932, p. 12.

121.Instructive in this respect is GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a, no. 12004, p. 49: Hellmuth Türpitz, ‘Etwas vom Recht der SA’, Deutsche Zeitung, 6 January 1934. Plans for an ‘SA disciplinary law’ were ultimately abandoned in the summer of 1934. On 20 July 1934 the Reich Minister of Justice, Franz Gürtner, informed the German legal bodies that ‘a special SA judiciary does not exist and will not be introduced’; GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a, no. 12,004, p. 115.

122.On Schoene, see also chapter 2.

123.For a detailed account of the negotiations and scoldings that occurred behind the scenes, see Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich 1933–1940, pp. 337–45.

124.GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 84a, no. 12004, p. 5: Letter from Heinrich Schoene to the Oberlandesgerichtspräsident Kiel, 10 July 1933.

125.Ibid., p. 6: Letter from Heinrich Schoene to Hanns Kerrl, 10 July 1933. Both letters are also quoted in Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich, p. 339.

126.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Decree of the Prussian Minister President from 30 October 1933, printed in Ministerialblatt für die Preußische Innere Verwaltung 1933, Part 1, no. 56, pp. 1,303–4; ibid.: OSAF, Decree of 12 March 1933.

127.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Confidential Order of Röhm, 20 March 1933.

128.Ibid.: Extract from Schwäbischer Merkur, 30 May 1933.

129.For details on this development in Prussia, see Schuster, Die SA, pp. 261–4.

130.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Letter from the Reich Minister of the Interior to the Länder governments, 16 August 1933.

131.Ibid.: Letter from OSAF to the Bavarian Minister President, 9 March 1934.

132.Until 1 September 1933, they were called ‘special commissioners’ (Sonderkommissare); see Hoser, ‘Sturmabteilung (SA)’.

133.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Letter from the Bavarian Ministry of Finance on ‘Sonderbeauftragte bei den Bezirksämtern und Sonderbevollmächtigte bei den Regierungen’, undated.

134.Ibid.: Protocol of the Meeting of Siebert, Wagner, Frank, Himmler, and Röhm, 20 October 1933.

135.BayHStA, StK, no. 7579: Letter from the Bavarian State Bank, Munich branch, to the directorate of the Bavarian Staatsbank, 5 July 1934.

136.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 159, 184.

137.On the history of the Stahlhelm, see Anke Hoffstadt, ‘Eine Frage der Ehre – zur “Beziehungsgeschichte” von “Stahlhelm: Bund der Frontsoldaten” und SA’, in Bürgerkriegsarmee, ed. Müller and Zilkenat, pp. 267–96; Joachim Tautz, Militaristische Jugendpolitik in der Weimarer Republik: Die Jugendorganisationen des Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten: Jungstahlhelm und Scharnhorst, Bund deutscher Jungmannen (Regensburg: Roderer, 1998); Remco Schaumann, ‘Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, in Bielefeld und im Regierungsbezirk Minden 1918–1935’, Jahresbericht des Historischen Vereins für die Grafschaft Ravensberg 83 (1996), pp. 139–98. Still indispensable are also the pioneering study by Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm, and idem., ‘Das Ende des “Stahlhelm”’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 13:4 (1965), pp. 446–51.

138.Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm, pp. 55–63; Schaumann, Der Stahlhelm, p. 139.

139.Schaumann, Der Stahlhelm, p. 164.

140.Hoffstadt, ‘Eine Frage der Ehre’, pp. 273–7.

141.BArch Berlin, NS 23/474: Report from SA--Standartenführer Gottlob Berger, SA--Untergruppe Württemberg, from 21 September 1932.

142.‘Ein Sündenregister: Düsterberg über die Nationalsozialisten’, Berliner Tageblatt, 8 February 1933, as quoted in British Library (London), Stahlhelmberichte 1933, vol. 2, unpaginated.

143.On Seldte’s career in 1933, see Rüdiger Hachtmann, ‘Seldte, Franz’, in Neue deutsche Biographie, vol. 24 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2010), pp. 215–16.

144.BayHStA IV, Stahlhelm, no. 99: Letter from Major Mündel, Constance, to Franz Seldte, 18 April 1933. In turn, the Nazis suspected that former ‘Marxists’ had successfully infiltrated regional Stahlhelm units; see BArch Berlin, NS 23/409: Note of the SA--Untergruppe Hamburg, 4 July 1933.

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.

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.

25.Next to the secondary literature already mentioned, see also Evans, Third Reich in Power, pp. 31–41; Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 319–44; Otto Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt . . .’: Hitlers ‘Röhm-Putsch’-Morde vor Gericht (Munich: Beck, 1993); Susanne zur Nieden and Sven Reichardt, ‘Skandale als Instrument des Machtkampfes in der NS-Führung’, in Martin Sabrow (ed.), Skandal und Diktatur: Öffentliche Empörung im NS-Staat und in der DDR (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), pp. 33–58; Charles Bloch, Die SA und die Krise des NS-Regimes 1934 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), pp. 96–116; Max Gallo, The Night of the Long Knives: Hitler’s Purge of Roehm and the S.A. Brown Shirts (Godalming and Surrey: Fontana, 1972).

26.The political diary of Viktor Lutze is today stored in the archives of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn (FES). The story of how it landed there is worth a chapter of its own. In the final stages of the Second World War the Lutze family in Bevergern – allegedly out of fear of Allied confiscations – handed over the diary to friends who lived in the city of Werne and had promised to keep an eye on it. Yet, in November 1945, the diary was in possession of the U.S. journalist William Chester, who had come to Germany to cover the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Unsure of the diary’s authenticity, Chester showed it in the same month to the former Nuremberg police president and SS-Obergruppenführer Benno Martin, who was in Allied internment. Martin confirmed the authenticity of the diary and provided a handwritten ‘expert opinion’ on the notebook’s blank pages. In 1957 the above-mentioned extracts of the diary were published in the Frankfurter Rundschau. Subsequently, Anton Hoch, the archivist of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich (IfZ), attempted to buy the diary for the institute’s library and contacted Chester, who was then living in Togo, offering $1,000 for the diary. However, all attempts by the IfZ to get hold of the diary were unsuccessful. Instead, in early 1959, Chester gave it to Georges Spénale, at the time the French Haut Commissaire Spéciale for Togo. Eleven years later Spénale – who had become a member of the French Assemblée Nationale – travelled to Bonn and presented the diary to the FES. Since then it has been held in the special collections of the FES archive and can only be consulted with the consent of Karl Lutze, a nephew of Viktor who represents the family’s interests. See the Viktor Lutze Papers at FES. Additional information was provided by Karl Lutze and Anja Kruke at the FES.

27.For a short biographical sketch of Lutze, see Marcus Weidner, ‘Lutze, Viktor’, in Die Straßenbenennungspraxis in Westfalen und Lippe während des Nationalsozialismus: Datenbank der Straßenbenennungen 1933–1945, http://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/nstopo/strnam/Begriff_211.html, with further references.

28.Bloch, Die SA und die Krise des NS-Regimes, p. 155.

29.Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, p. 358.

30.Niekisch, Das Reich der niederen Dämonen, p. 167.

31.Hans Rudolf Wahl, ‘Antisemitismus in der NS-Wochenzeitung Der SA-Mann’, in Michael Nagel and Moshe Zimmermann (eds), Judenfeindschaft und Antisemitismus in der deutschen Presse über fünf Jahrhunderte: Erscheinungsformen, Rezeption, Debatte und Gegenwehr, vol. 2 (Bremen: edition lumière, 2013), pp. 671–90, here p. 676.

32.A day before, on 21 June, Hitler had met with General Blomberg and Reich President Hindenburg in Gut Neudeck. It seems likely that it was at this meeting that the decisive actions against the SA were discussed and coordinated. See Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’, ch. 6.3, with further references.

33.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 31–5.

34.According to the post-war testimony of Karl Schreyer, Röhm had heard rumours that Hitler planned to replace him with Lutze as early as 26 June 1934 but was lulled into a false sense of security by later reports. See HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Letter from Karl Schreyer to the Munich Police about the events of 30 June 1934, 27 May 1949.

35.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 28–30. Lutze’s verdict on Röhm was largely negative. In Lutze’s eyes, ‘besides his sexual predisposition’, Röhm was ‘too militaristic’ and not enough of a politician. He regarded him as a troublemaker who threatened the political unity of the Nazi camp.

36.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 39–41.

37.Ibid., pp. 41–51.

38.On Röhm’s execution, see Hancock, Ernst Röhm, pp. 160–1; Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 29–36.

39.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Letter from Karl Schreyer to the Munich Police about the events of 30 June 1934, 27 May 1949.

40.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 59–79.

41.Ibid., p. 65. On the night of 1–2 July, Lutze made Erich Reimann, who later became the commander of the SA-Standarte Feldherrnhalle, his adjutant; see BArch Berlin, SA 400003178 (Reimann, Erich): Erich Reimann, Curriculum Vitae, 21 March 1942.

42.Lutze claimed to have personally seen these lists, which provided the basis for Hitler’s ultimate decision of life or death on 30 June 1934. See FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 62.

43.In this paragraph I follow the detailed reconstruction of events by Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’, chs 6.3.1 and 6.3.2. For an instructive case study on the planned Feme murder of Paul Schulz – who in 1934 narrowly escaped execution, not for the first time – see Anke Hoffstadt and Richard Kühl, ‘“Dead Man Walking”: Der “Fememörder” Paul Schulz und seine “Erschießung am 30. Juni 1934”’, Historische Sozialforschung 34:4 (2009), pp. 273–285.

44.As quoted in Mathilde Jamin, ‘Das Ende der “Machtergreifung”: Der 30. Juni 1934 und seine Wahrnehmung in der Bevölkerung’, in Wolfgang Michala (ed.), Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1984), pp. 207–19, here p. 212.

45.ÖstA/AdR, Bürckel/Materie, Karton 206, Mappe 4605: Decree of Adolf Hitler to Chief of Staff Lutze, 30 June 1934 (typescript).

46.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Werner von Blomberg, Order to the Army, translated by the Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro, 1 July 1932.

47.Published in Reichsgesetzblatt I 1934, p. 529. See also Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 46–51.

48.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 66–8. On the tension between the SA and the SS during the ‘Röhm purge’, see also BArch Berlin, NS 26/2540: Report of the SA-Sturmführer Hermann Baecke about the comportment of the SS man Fritz Völker on the night of 30 June–1 July 1934.

49.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Report from Jacob W. S. Wuest, U.S. Military Attaché in Berlin, to the U.S. Department of State, 2 July 1934.

50.BayHStA, StK, no. 7579: Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, situational report, 2 July 1934.

51.Dietmar Schulze, ‘Der “Röhm-Putsch” in der Provinz Sachsen’, in Hallische Beiträge zur Zeitgeschichte, ed. Jana Wüstenhagen and Daniel Bohse (Halle/Saale: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 2005), pp. 9–33, here pp. 9 and 21.

52.StA München, Bestand Polizeidirektion München, Personalakten, Nr. 10007 (Otto Ballerstädt): Testimony of Paul Zell, 18 June 1949.

53.BayHStA, StK, no. 7579: Letter from the Bavarian Minister President, 5 July 1934. Röhm’s mother died on 6 January 1936.

54.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 88. See also Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 38–9.

55.Orth, ‘Der Amtssitz der Opposition?’; idem, Der SD-Mann Johannes Schmidt (Marburg: Tectum, 2012), pp. 102–12.

56.Schulze, ‘Der “Röhm-Putsch” in der Provinz Sachsen’, pp. 25–6.

57.BArch Berlin, NS 23/475: List of the victims of the ‘Röhm purge’, undated.

58.On the ‘Röhm purge’ in Silesia, see Schmidt, ‘Der SA-Führer Hans Ramshorn’, pp. 233–5.

59.Mann, journal entries of 5 July and 11 July 1934, in his Tagebücher 1933–1934, pp. 460–1, 467. Such reasoning is substantiated by Bloch, Die SA und die Krise des NS-Regimes, pp. 165–72. See also Hett, Burning the Reichstag, pp. 122–39.

60.On the case of Wilhelm Schmid, see Gritschneder, ‘Der Führer hat Sie zum Tode verurteilt’, pp. 37–9.

61.Ludecke, I Knew Hitler, p. 554.

62.Nikolai Tolstoy, Night of the Long Knives (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), p. 145.

63.BArch Berlin, NS 23/434: Letter from SA--Obersturmbannführer Lothar Schiedlausky, with two anonymous reports attached, 9 August 1934. See also the detailed information available in HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Letter from Karl Schreyer to the Munich Police about the events of 30 June 1934, 27 May 1949.

64.BArch Berlin, NS 26/2048: Article in the Lübbener Kreisblatt, 18 or 19 August 1934.

65.BArch Berlin, NS 23/204: Letter from Walter Buch to the Führer’s deputy (Rudolf Hess), 2 August 1934.

66.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: Letter from the Silesian SA to the OSAF, 26 July 1934.

67.In the years to come ‘moral failings’ remained a common accusation in many of the disciplinary proceedings carried out against members of the SA. See Campbell, ‘SA after the Röhm Purge’, p. 660.

68.As quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, vol. 1: Triumph, Erster Halbband 1932–1934 (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1965), pp. 423–4.

69.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: Report of SS-Hauptsturmführer Helmut Willich, Stettin, 21 August 1935. This document is also used by Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 144–5.

70.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 24, pp. 25 and 45.

71.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: ‘Geflüster um das Morden’, Neuer Vorwärts: Sozialdemokratisches Wochenblatt, no. 57, 15 July 1934. ‘Hitlerjunge Knax’ was a reference to the feature film Hitlerjunge Quex. Based on a novel by the writer Karl Aloys Schenzinger, the propaganda film was first shown in September 1933 and became a big success in the German cinemas. See Kurt Schilde, ‘“Hitlerjunge Quex” – Eine Welturaufführung am 11. September 1933 in München: Blick hinter die Kulissen des NS-Propagandafilms’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 59:10 (2008), pp. 540–50.

72.BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: Der Führer der Leibstandarte [König], Munich, 30 June 1934.

73.For a recent example, see Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, p. 323.

74.For a list of other homosexual SA leaders, see Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 679–80.

75.As quoted in Hancock, Ernst Röhm, p. 107.

76.Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD, pp. 135–89.

77.Helmuth Klotz, Der Fall Röhm (Berlin-Tempelhof: Self-Publishing, 1932).

78.For a detailed reconstruction of the incident as well as public reactions to it, see Laurie Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 146–73; Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 200–8. The nicknames are quoted according to FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 71. See also Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 681–2.

79.For a detailed analysis of the press coverage, see Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, pp. 160–73. In contrast to Marhoefer, Susanne zur Nieden and Sven Reichardt have argued that homophobic arguments were widespread among the mainstream press coverage of the ‘Röhm scandal’; Susanne zur Nieden and Sven Reichardt, ‘Skandale als Instrument des Machtkampfes in der NS-Führung’, pp. 37–8. Hans Rudolf Wahl has emphasized that Social Democrats in particular in the early 1930s attempted to ‘disclose’ the Nazis’ identity as a genuine homosexual movement; Wahl, ‘Männerbünde, Homosexualitäten und politische Kultur’, pp. 221–2.

80.Ignaz Wrobel [Kurt Tucholsky], ‘Bemerkungen: Röhm’, Die Weltbühne, no. 17 from 26 April 1932, p. 641.

81.Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, p. 154; Alexander Zinn, Die soziale Konstruktion des homosexuellen Nationalsozialisten: Zu Genese und Etablierung eines Stereotyps (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1997); idem, ‘SA, Homosexualität und Faschismus’, p. 410; Andreas Pretzel, ‘Schwule Nazis: Narrative und Desiderate’, in Homosexuelle im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Michael Schwartz (Munich: de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014), pp. 69–76. In many of the early anti-Nazi novels published in the first years of the Third Reich, the homosexuality of the higher-ranking SA leadership figured prominently. See Jörn Meve, ‘“Homosexuelle Nazis”: Zur literarischen Gestaltung eines Stereotyps des Exils bei Ludwig Renn und Hans Siemsen’, Forum Homosexualität und Literatur 11 (1991), pp. 79–100.

82.This view is also advanced by Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, p. 155. See also Wahl, ‘National-Päderasten?’, which provides a careful discussion of this aspect based on the assumption that there are only two mutually exclusive positions: that the SA was marked by homosexuality or that it was not. In the view advanced here, by contrast, the SA is seen as an organization that had homosexual men in its ranks but was less shaped by male homosexual subcultures than Wahl suggests.

83.Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, pp. 163–209.

84.Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 683. On the persecution of male homosexuals in the Third Reich, see Stefan Micheler and Patricia Szobar, ‘Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex-Desiring Men under National Socialism’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 11: 1–2 (2002), pp. 95–130; as well as the pioneering study by Burckhard Jellonnek, Homosexuelle unter dem Hakenkreuz (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1990).

85.For these continuities, see in particular Claudia Bruns and Susanne zur Nieden, ‘“Und unsere germanische Art ruht bekanntlich zentnerschwer auf unserem Triebleben . . .”: Der “arische” Körper als Schauplatz von Deutungskämpfen bei Blüher, Heimsoth und Röhm’, in Paula Diehl (ed.), Körper im Nationalsozialismus: Bilder und Praxen (Munich: W. Fink, 2006), pp. 111–28. For a critical view of Blüher’s influence in the SA, see Reichardt, ‘Homosexualität und SA-Führer’, p. 739.

86.For a detailed discussion, see Jason Crouthamel, ‘“Comradship” and “Friendship”: Masculinity and Militarisation in Germany’s Homosexual Emancipation Movement after the First World War’, Gender & History 23:1 (2011), pp. 111–29, esp. pp. 118–26. See also Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic, pp. 151–2, as well as above, chapter 4.

87.On the homosexual networks in the Silesian SA prior to the summer of 1934, see Schmidt, ‘Der SA-Führer Hans Ramshorn’, pp. 226–7; on Karl Ernst and his ‘entourage’, see Wahl, ‘National-Päderasten?’ On homosexual networks in the SA more generally, see Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, p. 680.

88.See also Pretzel, ‘Schwule Nazis’, p. 69.

89.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Letter from George S. Messersmith, Legation of the United States of America, to William Philipps, Under Secretary of State, 18 August 1934.

90.Werner Otto Müller-Hill, journal entry from 21 July 1944, in his ‘Man hat es kommen sehen und ist dennoch erschüttert’: Das Kriegstagebuch eines deutschen Richters 1944/45 (Munich: Siedler, 2012), p. 59.

91.‘Hitler: Ich warte nicht bis 11.00 Uhr’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 14 May 1957, p. 3.

92.Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 1 (1934), pp. 191–5.

93.Jamin, ‘Das Ende der “Machtergreifung”’, p. 215.

94.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 127: Manuskript ‘Betr.: Adolf Hitler’, Kopenhagen, 17 March 1949, p. 6.

95.Mann, journal entry from 13 July 1934, in his Tagebücher 1933–1934, p. 470. For the text of Hitler’s speech, see Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, pp. 410–24.

96.Bösch, Das konservative Milieu, p. 138. For similar examples, see Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, p. 143.

97.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 42: Maximilian Fretter-Pico, Memorandum on the relationship between the Wehrmacht and the Nazi Party.

98.Carl Schmitt, ‘Der Führer schützt das Recht’, Deutsche Juristen Zeitung, 1 August 1934, pp. 945–50, here pp. 946–7.

99.Ibid., p. 947.

100.Carl Schmitt, ‘Nationalsozialismus und Rechtsstaat’, Juristische Wochenschrift 63 (no. 12/13, 24 and 31 March 1934), pp. 713–18.

101.Ibid., pp. 716–17.

102.Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), p. xiii.

103.Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Allan Lane, 2006), p. 101. The view that the ‘Röhm purge’ was first and foremost an attempt to repress the growing resistance of the German working classes is advocated by Gossweiler, Die Röhm-Affäre, pp. 523–4.

104.BayHStA, StK, no. 5256: Letter from the Bavarian Minister of the Interior to the Bavarian Minister President, 14 August 1934.

105.Ibid.: Decree of the Bavarian Minister of the Interior Adolf Wagner, 19 July 1934.

106.Carsten Schröder, ‘Der NS-Schulungsstandort Lockstedter Lager: Von der “Volkssportschule” zur SA-Berufsschule “Lola I”’, Informationen zur schleswig-holsteinischen Zeitgeschichte 37 (2000), pp. 3–26, here p. 12.

107.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 121: Confidential report of U.S. ambassador William E. Dodd, 13 July 1934; BArch Berlin, NS 23/508: ‘Das Schicksal der SA’, Neuer Vorwärts: Sozialdemokratisches Wochenblatt (Karlsbad), 15 July 1934.

108.For this view, see Jamin, ‘Das Ende der “Machtergreifung”’, p. 207.

Chapter 6

1.Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 2 (1935), p. 610.

2.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 34: Letter from SA--Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Blessing, Schönlanke, to SA--Gruppenführer Siegfried Kasche, 24 November 1934.

3.On this ‘Nazi morality’, see Wolfgang Bialas, Moralische Ordnungen des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), in particular pp. 9–62; Raphael Groß, Anständig geblieben: Nationalsozialistische Moral (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2010).

4.GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 90 Annex P, Geheime Staatspolizei, no. 79/1, p. 84: ‘Lagebericht für die Provinz Berlin-Brandenburg’, October 1934.

5.Bessel, Political Violence, p. 148.

6.Ibid.; Hochstetter, Motorisierung und ‘Volksgemeinschaft’, p. 73.

7.Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 1 (1934), pp. 761–7, here p. 762.

8.Jürgen Matthäus and Frank Bajohr (eds), Alfred Rosenberg: Die Tagebücher von 1934 bis 1944 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2015), p. 182 (entry from 27 April 1936).

9.HA-Spiegel, Personal Papers of Heinz Höhne, no. 183: J. C. White, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the American Embassy in Berlin, ‘The Present Position of the S.A. in the National Socialist Organization’, 31 December 1934.

10.See Karl Joachim Warnecke, Rechtliche Entwicklung und Stellung der nationalsozialistischen Sturmabteilungen (SA), inaugural diss., Georg-August Universität zu Göttingen, 1935, p. 28.

11.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, pp. 222–3. From March 1935 on, this court was called Disziplinargericht der Obersten SA-Führung. See Jamin, ‘Zur Rolle der SA im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, p. 344.

12.Jamin, ‘Zur Rolle der SA im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, pp. 344–53.

13.Longerich, Geschichte der SA, p. 223.

14.For an instructive collection of cases, see Oberste SA-Führung (ed.), Das Jahr der SA: Vom Parteitag der Ehre zum Parteitag der Arbeit (Munich: Eher, 1939), pp. 70–80; Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 3 (1936), p. 851. For the official SA discourse, see Viktor Lutze, Wesen und Aufgaben der SA: Rede des Stabschefs vor dem Diplomatischen Korps und den Vertretern der ausländischen Presse am 24 Januar 1936 (Munich: Eher, 1939), in particular pp. 20–1. On the stormtroopers as the ‘little guardians of the people’s community’, see Frank Werner, ‘Die kleinen Wächter der “Volksgemeinschaft”: Denunzianten, Boykotteure und Gewaltakteure aus Schaumburg’, in Frank Werner (ed.), Schaumburger Nationalsozialisten: Täter, Komplizen, Profiteure(Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2009), pp. 521–83.

15.OSAF (ed.), . . . wurde die SA eingesetzt, pp. 12, 30–3, 37.

16.See, for example, the information provided in Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 2 (1935), pp. 946–8.

17.Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika, pp. 530–1.

18.Schafranek, Söldner, p. 361.

19.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 34: Letter from SA--Gruppenführer Siegfried Kasche to Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, 18 November 1940.

20.Eugen Kogon, Der SS-Staat: Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (Munich: Alber, 1946).

21.As quoted in GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 90 Annex P, no. 36/1, pp. 19–22: Letter from the Regierungspräsident in Stade to the Prussian Minister President, 21 August 1935. The original German text reads: ‘Die Roten sind bezwungen / Am Boden liegt das ganze Bonzenpack / Und schon erhebt sich frech der fette Spießer / Der nie gekämpft und nie geblutet hat // Ihr Spießer und Bonzen, wir sind auf der Wacht / Wir sind die Alten noch heut / Wir haben geblutet, gekämpft und geschafft / Für Deutschland, doch niemals für Euch // Drum vorwärts, drum vorwärts, die Straße frei / Ihr Spießer, schert Euch nach Haus! / Ihr Spießer, schert Euch nach Haus! / Wir schlagen Euch sämtliche Knochen entzwei / Und räuchern die Tempel Euch aus!’ Another radical SA song of the time is provided in Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 2 (1935), p. 608.

22.Fritz Stern, ‘Five Germans I Have Known’, European Review 10:4 (2002), pp. 429–45, here p. 432.

23.Gottfried Oy and Christoph Schneider (eds), Die Schärfe der Konkretion: Reinhard Strecker, 1968 und der Nationalsozialismus in der bundesdeutschen Historiografie (Essen: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2014), 42–3. On the booming field of the history of sound, see the recent dissertation by Huw D. Hallam, National Socialism and Its Musical Afterlife, PhD diss., King’s College London, 2013, esp. pp. 50–87.

24.Marlene Zinken, ‘Ein dehnbares Haus’, in Marlene Zinken (ed.), Der unverstellte Blick, pp. 30–9, here p. 33. For an example of an SA march turned violent attack on passers-by, see GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 90 Annex P, no. 36/1, p. 34: ‘Ereignismeldung’, 12 September 1935.

25.All information in the previous paragraph is taken from BayHStA, MInn, no. 73686: ‘Bericht über die Vorfälle in Weildorf’, undated. Cases of local SAs mounting Der Stürmer showcases were common; see GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 90 Annex P, no. 36/1, pp. 48–50: ‘Auszug aus dem Lagebericht des Regierungspräsidenten in Wiesbaden vom 30 August 1935’.

26.Letter from Josef Gruber, Markt Teisendorf, from 27 May 2015 to the author, referring to the record in Rainer Wilfinger, Heimatbuch Teisendorf: Markt und Land (Teisendorf: Markt Teisendorf, 2001), p. 456. ‘Resistance’ is used here according to the definition of the pioneering ‘Bavarian project’, which in the 1970s analysed life under National Socialism from a bottom-up perspective. See Michael Wildt, ‘Das “Bayern-Projekt”, die Alltagsforschung und die “Volksgemeinschaft”’, in Norbert Frei (ed.), Martin Broszat, der ‘Staat Hitlers’ und die Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), pp. 119–29.

27.See Friedemann Bedürftig, ‘Hitlers braune Bataillone: Vom Kampfverband zum Parteifluchtweg’, Die Zeit, 1 December 1989, p. 55.

28.Alan E. Steinweis, Kristallnacht 1938 (London: Belknap, 2009), p. 4. On the problems of the competing terms to describe these events (Kristallnacht, November Pogrom, or Reichspogromnacht), see ibid., pp. 1–4.

29.For an overview, see the excellent studies by Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung; Ahlheim, ‘Deutsche, kauft nicht bei Juden!’, pp. 319–403; Saul Friedländer, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden (Munich: dtv, 2008), pp. 129–91; Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 70–89; as well as the more specialized literature discussed below.

30.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Report of the Breslau Police President to the District President of Lower Silesia, 9 July 1935.

31.LArch Berlin, A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, tit. 95, no. 21617: Kripo-Tagebuch Berlin-Schöneberg, ‘Zwischenfall mit SA-Angehörigen’, 10 October 1935. According to a Gestapo report from the summer of 1934, between 80 and 90 per cent of all crimes committed by stormtroopers were carried out in a state of intoxication. See GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 90 Annex P Geheime Staatspolizei, no. 76/2, p. 24: ‘Lagebericht für die Provinz Berlin-Brandenburg’, July 1934.

32.LArch Berlin, A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, tit. 95, no. 21638: Berliner Schutzpolizei, ‘Ungerechtfertigtes Verhalten von Volksgenossen gegen Polizeibeamte’, 22 July 1935.

33.This argument was most forcefully established by Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung. For a critical discussion of the range of Wildt’s argument, in particular with regard to rural milieus, see Jill Stephenson, ‘The Volksgemeinschaft and the Problems of Permeability: The Persistence of Traditional Attitudes in Württemberg Villages’, German History 34:1 (2016), pp. 49–69.

34.Lutze, Wesen und Aufgaben der SA, p. 16.

35.Wünschmann, Before Auschwitz, pp. 168–210; Faludi, Die Juni-Aktion, pp. 35–54.

36.As quoted in Paul Jandl, ‘Statt zu bezahlen, wurde ausgespuckt’, Die Welt, 26 October 2013, p. 26. See also Vilma Neuwirth, Glockengasse 29: Eine jüdische Arbeiterfamilie in Wien (Vienna: Milena Verlag, 2008).

37.Michael Wildt, ‘Einleitung’, in: Hans Reichmann, Deutscher Bürger und verfolgter Jude: Novemberpogrom und KZ Sachsenhausen 1937 bis 1939, ed. Michael Wildt (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 1–37, here p. 17.

38.Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Amt V (ed.), Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung (Erlaßsammlung), Berlin, undated [1943], pp. 81–2.

39.Christian Faludi, ‘Die “Juni-Aktion” im Kontext der Judenpolitik 1938’, in Christian Faludi (ed.), Die ‘Juni-Aktion’ 1938: Eine Dokumentation zur Radikalisierung der Judenverfolgung (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013), pp. 9–102, here p. 64.

40.Franz Alfred Six, ‘Report on the “Jew Action” in Berlin between 17 June and 21 June 1938’, in Faludi, Die ‘Juni-Aktion’ 1938, pp. 298–301, here p. 299.

41.See diverse articles of Paris newspapers, 14–16 June 1938, in Faludi, Die ‘Juni-Aktion’ 1938, pp. 225–7, here p. 226. For photographs of vandalized Jewish shops in the eastern districts of Berlin, see Christoph Kreutzmüller, Hermann Simon, and Elisabeth Weber (eds), Ein Pogrom im Juni: Fotos antisemitischer Schmierereien in Berlin, 1938 (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2013).

42.Faludi, ‘Die “Juni-Aktion” im Kontext der Judenpolitik 1938’, pp. 65–7.

43.Hans Reichmann, Deutscher Bürger und verfolgter Jude, p. 75.

44.BArch Berlin, NS 23/1174: Letter from the Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Adolf Wagner, to the Gauleiter Wächtler, Streicher, Helmuth, Wahl, and Bürckel, 31 October 1938.

45.Götz Aly et al. (eds), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, vol. 2: Deutsches Reich 1938–August 1939, ed. Susanne Heim (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), p. 415; Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 5 (1938), p. 1,187; Stefanie Fischer, Ökonomisches Vertrauen und antisemitische Gewalt: Jüdische Viehhändler in Mittelfranken (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014), pp. 286–7.

46.Much has been written about Kristallnacht and its background on the national, regional, and local levels. For an excellent recent survey, see Steinweis, Kristallnacht 1938, with further references. On the participation of women and children, see Aly et al. (eds), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, vol. 2, p. 377; Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 5 (1938), p. 1,191. For a collection of eyewitness accounts, see Matthäus and Roseman, Jewish Responses, vol. 1, pp. 341–78; and Uta Gerhard and Thomas Karlauf (eds), Nie mehr zurück in dieses Land: Augenzeugen berichten über die Novemberpogrome 1938 (Berlin: List, 2009). On the visual aspects of the violence, see in particular Christoph Kreutzmüller and Bjoern Weigel, Kristallnacht? Bilder der Novemberpogrome 1938 in Berlin (Berlin: Kulturprojekte Berlin, 2013). On its international repercussions, see Colin McCullough and Nathan Wilson (eds), Violence, Memory, and History: Western Perceptions of Kristallnacht (New York and London: Routledge, 2015).

47.BArch Berlin 23/515: Joachim Meyer-Quade, Report of the SA--Gruppe Nordmark on the action of the night of 9–10 November 1938. Additional information is taken from Christa Geckeler, ‘Novemberpogrom in Kiel’, https://kiel.de/kultur/stadtarchiv/erinnerungstage/index.php?id=95.

48.See Frank Bajohr and Christoph Strupp (eds), Fremde Blicke auf das ‘Dritte Reich’: Berichte ausländischer Diplomaten über Herrschaft und Gesellschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011), pp. 501–20.

49.Monika Hinterberger, ‘Menschen wie wir’, in Zinken, Der unverstellte Blick, pp. 106–10, here p. 108.

50.Bernd Wagner, Psychiatrie und Gesellschaft in der Moderne: Geisteskrankenfürsorge in der Provinz Westfalen zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Regime (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996), p. 460.

51.Peter Schyga, NS-Macht und evangelische Kirche in Bad Harzburg (Wolfenbüttel: Landeskirchenamt, 2013), pp. 98–9.

52.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 124.

53.Aly et al. (eds), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, vol. 2, p. 387; Fischer, Ökonomisches Vertrauen und antisemitische Gewalt, p. 285; Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 5 (1938), p. 1,198; ÖStA/AdR/‘Bürckel’-Nachträge: Karton rot 5: Letter from the Ortsgruppenleiter Untere Donaustraße/Vienna to the Gestapo, 9 February 1939.

54.Aly et al. (eds), Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden, vol. 2, p. 401.

55.Gerhard Ritter, Letter to his mother, Freiburg, 24 November 1938, in Gerhard Ritter: Ein politischer Historiker in seinen Briefen, p. 339. Foreign diplomats repeatedly noticed that many Germans were appalled by the pogrom; see Bajohr and Strupp, Fremde Blicke auf das ‘Dritte Reich’, pp. 503, 509–12. For the widespread negative reactions of the population in the newly integrated Sudetenland, see Volker Zimmermann, Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat: Politik und Stimmung der Bevölkerung im Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945) (Essen: Klartext, 1999), pp. 106–7; Jörg Osterloh, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung im Reichsgau Sudetenland 1938–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006), pp. 218–21.

56.See the detailed introduction by Thomas Vogel, ‘Wilm Hosenfeld – ein deutsches Leben’, in Wilm Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuchte jeden zu retten’: Das Leben eines deutschen Offiziers in Briefen und Tagebüchern, ed. Thomas Vogel and Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2004), pp. 1–146, in particular pp. 21–36. On the NSDAP’s appeal to the German elementary teachers, see Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik, pp. 421–32. On the significance to the SA of teachers and pastors in the countryside, see also Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 2 (1935), p. 611.

57.Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuchte jeden zu retten’, p. 208. Otmar Welck, who in 1940 became the adjutant of the ‘Higher SS and Police Leader’ Josef Berkelmann in German-annexed Lorraine, remembered his time as an SA-Truppführer between 1931 and 1935 in a similarly positive way; see Gehrig, Im Dienste der nationalsozialistischen Volkstumspolitik in Lothringen, pp. 29–36.

58.On the pogroms in Hesse that began on 7 November, see Steinweis, Kristallnacht 1938, pp. 22–35. One of Hosenfeld’s very few remarks on the Jews during these years is from 25 November 1936: ‘In the evening I attended a political meeting on the Jews. Very modest deliberations’; Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuchte jeden zu retten’, p. 217.

59.Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuchte jeden zu retten’, pp. 210, 219, 234.

60.Ibid., pp. 214–15, 229, 235–6.

61.Ernst Klee, Die SA Jesu Christi: Die Kirchen im Banne Hitlers (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1989); Siemens, The Making of a Nazi Hero, pp. 132–4.

62.Riley, The Civic Foundation of Fascism in Europe, pp. 72–112.

63.More popular were only football and athletics, see Henning Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus: Pflege der ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ und Vorbereitung auf den Krieg (1933–1945) (Münster: Ardey, 2010), p. 20.

64.The Deutsche Reichsbund Kyffhäuser, an umbrella organization for the diverse veterans’ organizations, comprised 2.5 million members in 1929. See Frank Bösch, ‘Militante Geselligkeit: Formierungsformen der bürgerlichen Vereinswelt zwischen Revolution und Nationalsozialismus’, in Wolfgang Hardtwig, Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), pp. 151–82, here p. 164.

65.Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 18–23; Bösch, ‘Militante Geselligkeit’, here p. 159.

66.Bösch, ‘Militante Geselligkeit’, p. 172.

67.For details, see Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 29–39. The attraction of ‘SA sports’ is also emphasized by Szejnmann, Nazism in Central Germany, pp. 151–2.

68.Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, p. 41.

69.The SA’s ‘mass sports’ built on the Wehrsport of the Weimar years. Physical training, particularly boxing and jiu jitsu, but also skiing, handball, and motorcycling were popular; see Christiane Eisenberg, ‘English sports’ und deutsche Bürger: Eine Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1800–1939(Paderborn: Schöningh, 1999), pp. 327–30, 389–91; Berno Bahro, Der SS-Sport: Organisation – Funktion – Bedeutung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013), pp. 27–2, 37–8; Michael B. Barrett, Soldiers, Sportsmen, and Politicians: Military Sport in Germany, 1924–1935, PhD diss., University of Massachusetts–Amherst, 1977; Arnd Krüger and Frank von Lojewski, ‘Ausgewählte Aspekte des Wehrsports in Niedersachsen in der Weimarer Zeit’, in Hans Langenfeld and Stefan Nielsen (eds), Beiträge zur Sportgeschichte Niedersachsens, vol. 2: Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, NISH, 1998), pp. 124–47. Regional studies suggest that the SA’s influence on mass sports between 1933 and 1939 differed substantially from region to region; see, for example, Florian Lueke, Geschichte des Sports in Lippe: Menschen – Vereine – Politik: Eine vergleichende regionalgeschichtliche Studie (Lage: Lippe Verlag, 2015), pp. 302–7.

70.Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, p. 48.

71.Eisenberg, ‘English sports’ und deutsche Bürger, p. 393.

72.Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, p. 50.

73.On the SA rider storms, see Schuster, Die SA, pp. 171–2; Bahro, Der SS-Sport, p. 225; GSt PK, I. HA, Rep. 77 titl. 4043, vol. 311, p. 321: Racliffe (Polizeimajor), ‘Denkschrift über Kampfvorbereitung und Kampfgrundsätze radikaler Organisationen’. For an early example of the fight between the SA and the SS over such rider units, see Christiane Rothländer, Die Anfänge der Wiener SS (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 160–2.

74.Deutsche Reiter Zeitung, no. 7 (1934), p. 122, as quoted in Nele Maya Fahnenbruck, ‘. . . reitet für Deutschland’: Pferdesport und Politik im Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Verlag die Werkstatt, 2013), p. 238.

75.Publications like Der Stürmer blended existing prejudices against ‘professional sports’ with antisemitism, claiming that ‘foreign races’ had seized control over German riding activities, and horseracing in particular. See Fahnenbruck, ‘. . . reitet für Deutschland’, pp. 238–9; Bayer, Die SA, pp. 26–7.

76.In this respect I follow Fahnenbruck’s interpretation and disagree with Bahro, who in his study on SS sports comes to a somewhat contradictory conclusion. Bahro stresses that the Reichssportführer and the SS managed to refute the leadership claims of the SA prior to 1936, only to acknowledge two pages later the SA’s ‘numerical ascendance’ with regard to the distribution of the obligatory Reiterscheine, or ‘rider’s permits’. In 1935 more than 88,000 riders were organized in the SA, compared to only 12,000 in the SS; Bahro, Der SS-Sport, pp. 231, 233, 236.

77.Fahnenbruck, ‘. . . reitet für Deutschland’, p. 240.

78.Ibid., pp. 246–7. The OSAF attempted to maintain its influence over the riders’ clubs in the countryside well into the war years; see BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Note of SA-Obergruppenführer Max Jüttner, 5 November 1940.

79.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 34: Report on ‘Veranstaltung der SA--Gruppe Hansa und der Schützenvereine des Standortes Groß-Hamburg’, 1 December 1938.

80.This is the unanimous conclusion of Borggräfe, Fahnenbruck, and Bösch in their respective studies: Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 53–6, 96–102; Fahnenbruck, ‘. . . reitet für Deutschland’, pp. 157–8; Bösch, ‘Militante Geselligkeit’.

81.For several examples of SA violence directed against non-Jewish Germans on the occasion of the (mock) Reichstag elections of 10 April 1938, see Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 5 (1938), pp. 415–24.

82.Borggräfe, Schützenvereine im Nationalsozialismus, pp. 47–53, 81–6.

83.Sven Reichardt even claimed that, for the stormtroopers, it was a kind of ‘character test to be opposed to all sorts of middle-class culture’; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, pp. 643–6. But what seems plausible for the urban ‘Old Fighters’ is less convincing for those men living in small-town and rural Germany.

84.Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuchte jeden zu retten’, p. 219.

85.Ibid., p. 236. The SA units in the Palatinate were called on to perform similar collections in the late 1930s; see Schepua, Nationalsozialismus in der pfälzischen Provinz, p. 284.

86.Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuchte jeden zu retten’, p. 234.

87.Fritz Otto Böhmig, Briefe aus dem Felde 15.8.1939–15.8.1943 (unpublished typescript), p. 18. I am grateful to Stephanie Bird, London, who provided me with a copy of this correspondence.

88.Ibid., p. 69.

89.Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuchte jeden zu retten’, pp. 429 and 696.

90.Ibid., p. 754.

91.For introductory overviews of this entangled history, see John T. Lauridsen, Nazism and the Radical Right in Austria 1918–1934 (Copenhagen: Royal Library, 2007), in particular pp. 296–312; Bruce F. Pauley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism(London: Macmillan, 1981). For a comprehensive analysis of political violence in Austria during the interwar years, see Gerhard Botz, Gewalt in der Politik: Attentate, Zusammenstöße, Putschversuche, Unruhen in Österreich 1918 bis 1938 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1983). For further literature, see Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, pp. 19–23.

92.For recent general surveys, see Florian Wenninger and Lucile Dreidemy (eds), Das Dollfuß-Schuschnigg-Regime 1933–1938: Vermessung eines Forschungsfeldes (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013); Ilse Raither-Zatloukal, Christiane Rothländer, and Pia Schölnberger (eds), Österreich 1933–1938: Interdisziplinäre Annäherungen an das Dollfuß-/Schuschnigg-Regime (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012). On the putsch of July 1934, see Schafranek, Sommerfest mit Preisschießen; Hans Schafranek and Herbert Blatnik (eds), Vom NS-Verbot zum ‘Anschluss’: Steierische Nationalsozialisten 1933–1938(Vienna: Czernin, 2015), with further references. On the internment of Nazis in Austria, see Pia Schölnberger, ‘“Ein Leben ohne Freiheit ist kein Leben”: Das “Anhaltelager” Wöllersdorf 1933–1938’, in Raither-Zatloukal, Rothländer, and Schölnberger, Österreich 1933–1938, pp. 94–107. For the perspective of the illegal Nazis, see Edgar Traugott, Elisabethpromenade 7/9 (Brünn: Rohrer, 1940).

93.Rothländer, Die Anfänge der Wiener SS, pp. 451–7.

94.Instructive in this respect is ÖStA/AdR, MGH Wien, MHv 61/34, pp. 7–39: Verdict of the Vienna Military Tribunal against the Viennese SA leader Fritz Hamburger, 13 February 1935.

95.This number was the total for the five years between 1933 and 1938 and comprised long-standing legionaries as well as those who were only briefly in the Austrian Legion. The actual number of legionaries at any given moment was thus always below 10,000. For details, see Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, pp. 46–60.

96.ÖStA/AVA, Justiz, Allgemein, Sig. 6 A 3236 (NSDAP, Österreichische Legion 1934–1936): Bundeskanzleramt, Information on the Austrian Legion, 23 March 1936.

97.On the Austrian Legion, see in particular the comprehensive monograph by Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss; idem, ‘Die steirischen Angehörigen der Österreichischen Legion: Regionale und lokale Herkunft, Alters- und Berufsstruktur, NSDAP- und SA-Mitgliederentwicklung, Führungspersonal (Biografien)’, in Schafranek and Blatnik, Vom NS-Verbot zum ‘Anschluss’, pp. 83–124; idem, ‘Österreichische Nationalsozialisten in der Illegalität 1933–1938: Ein Forschungsbericht’, in Das Dollfuß-Schuschnigg-Regime 1933–1938: Vermessung eines Forschungsfeldes, ed. Wenninger and Dreidemy, pp. 105–37. For the official National Socialist historiography, see Otto Bokisch and Gustav A. Zirbs (eds), Der Österreichische Legionär: Aus Erinnerungen und Archiv, aus Tagebüchern und Blättern (Vienna: Österreichische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1940).

98.Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, p. 168.

99.Ibid., pp. 193–205 (example on p. 199).

100.Ibid., pp. 132–46, 156–8.

101.Ibid., p. 157.

102.ÖStA/AVA, Justiz, Allgemein, Sign. 6 A 3627, Mappe 6682: Letter from the BKA in the criminal case of Josef Artur Fischer, born 25 November 1914 in Wolfurt. The German-Austrian agreement of 11 July 1936 facilitated such returns; see Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, pp. 315–19.

103.BArch Berlin, NS 23/892: Durchführungsbestimmungen der Österreichischen SA--Brigade 2.

104.ÖStA/AdR, NS-Vermittlungsstelle, Karton 43, Mappe 200: Letter from the NS-Vermittlungsstelle to Dr Hammerschmid, 25 August 1938; SA Austria, ‘Lagebericht über die Liquidierung der Österr. Legion’, 22 June 1938.

105.Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, pp. 351–8.

106.Bajohr and Strupp (eds), Fremde Blicke auf das ‘Dritte Reich’, pp. 481–2; Schafranek, Söldner für den Anschluss, p. 42.

107.ÖStA/AdR, Gauakt 245.169 (Kurt Barisani): Claim to the NS-Betreuungs- und Wiedergutmachungsstelle des Gaues Wien, 1 December 1938; ÖStA/AdR, Gauakt 92.698 (Alexander Cseri): Letter from the Polizeidirektion Wien to Bundesministerium des Inneren, 4 April 1948.

108.ÖstA/AdR, ‘Bürckel’/Nachträge: Karton rot 9, Nr. 60 (Korrespondenz Oberste SA-Führung 1938–1939: Anonymous letter from an ‘SA man of Sturm III’, May 1938).

109.A letter from the National Socialist Placement Bureau in Vienna (NS-Vermittlungsstelle Wien) from 10 March 1939 is particularly instructive in this respect. In it the Vermittlungsstelle supported the ‘Aryanization request’ (Arisierungsantrag) of the stormtrooper Wilhelm Walliczek using the argument that because Walliczek would only be capable of work to a limited extent, ‘it would be highly advisable to provide him with a new existence by the way of Aryanization’; ÖStA/AdR, NS-Vermittlungsstelle, Karton 43, Mappe 197: Letter from the NS-Vermittlungsstelle Wien to Vermögensverkehrsstelle Wien, 10 March 1939; Schafranek, Söldner für den ‘Anschluss’, pp. 390–1.

110.‘Mitteilung der Gruppe (Legionsdienstanrechnung)’, in SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 14/15 (July/August 1941).

111.Whereas the role of the SA in the destabilization of Austria prior to March 1938, as well as its behaviour in the months that followed, is well established, its contribution to the annexation of the Sudeten and the Memel regions in 1938–9 has rarely been touched upon (a notable exception is Dölling, ‘Grenzüberschreitende Gewalttätigkeit’). From the perspective of the stormtroopers, the SA’s activities in these regions signified a relative comeback of the SA on the domestic scene as well as a successful performance test abroad. Its increased paramilitary activities not only brought new credit to the stormtrooper propaganda that – as we have seen – had started to sound shallow to the ears of many SA men from the Reich but also contributed to an increasingly eastward turn by the OSAF.

112.On the early Nazi organizations in the region, see Dölling, ‘Grenzüberschreitende Gewalttätigkeit’, pp. 242–4.

113.See the paradigmatic remarks in Günther Wolff, Großfahrt vogtländischer Jungen zu den deutschen Siedlungen in Ostgalizien. Sommer 1936 (Plauen: Das junge Volk, 1936), pp. 5 and 35; as well as Andreas Peschel, ‘Die Bündische Jugend’, Dresdner Hefte: Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte26 (2007), pp. 35–42, here pp. 40–1.

114.See Schmidt’s extensive correspondence between 1928 and 1933 in BArch Berlin, NS 26/370-372. With regard to the early SA in the Sudetenland, see in particular the letter from Albert Umlauf, Brüx, of 18 September 1929 in BArch Berlin, NS 26/372; with regard to the problems of the uniform abroad, see Schmidt’s letter to Alfred Günzel, 13 February 1931, in BArch Berlin, NS 26/370. On the continuity of such student travels, see Elizabeth Harvey, ‘Emissaries of Nazism: German Student Travellers in Romania and Yugoslavia in the 1930s’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 22:1 (2011), pp. 135–60.

115.Despite this development it is important to note that Henlein’s Heimatbund acted quite independently of the NSDAP in the Reich until 1935. The popular narrative of the German ‘fifth column’ is to an important degree an ex post facto construction that oversimplifies the actual tensions within the German camp. See Mark Cornwall, ‘“A Leap into Ice-Cold Water”: The Manoeuvres of the Henlein Movement in Czechoslovakia, 1933–1938’, in Mark Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans (eds), Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe 1918–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 123–42. For a general picture, see Ronald Smelser, Das Sudetenproblem und das Dritte Reich, 1933–1938: Von der Volkstumspolitik zur nationalsozialistischen Außenpolitik (Munich: Oldenburg, 1980).

116.Caitlin Murdock, ‘Central Policy and Local Practice: The Changing Dynamics of the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands after 1933’, Zeitschrift für Osteuropa-Forschung 53 (2004), pp. 184–99.

117.On the development of the Deutscher Turnverband, see Andreas Luh, Der Deutsche Turnverband in der ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik: Vom völkischen Vereinsbetrieb zur volkspolitischen Bewegung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006). On the founding of the FS, see Werner Röhr, ‘September 1938: Diversion und Demagogie bei der Erzeugung einer Kriegspsychose durch den Hitlerfaschismus und seiner Fünften Kolonne in der CSR’, in Dietrich Eichholtz and Kurt Pätzold (eds), Der Weg in den Krieg: Studien zur Geschichte der Vorkriegsjahre (1935/36 bis 1939)(Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1989), pp. 211–77, here p. 218; as well as idem, ‘Der “Fall Grün” und das Sudetendeutsche Freikorps’, in Hans Henning Hahn (ed.), Hundert Jahre sudetendeutsche Geschichte: Eine völkische Bewegung in drei Staaten (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007), pp. 241–56, here p. 245.

118.Detlef Brandes, Die Sudetendeutschen im Krisenjahr 1938, 2nd edn (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010), pp. 252–87.

119.Dölling, ‘Grenzüberschreitende Gewalttätigkeit’, pp. 247–8.

120.The text of this proclamation is included in ‘Die sudetendeutsche Befreiung: Vom Nürnberger Parteitag bis zum Münchner Abkommen’, Nation und Staat: Deutsche Zeitschrift für das europäische Nationalitätenproblem 12:1 (1938), pp. 33–43, here pp. 36–7. On the Sudeten German Free Corps, see in particular Röhr, ‘Der “Fall Grün”; Dölling, ‘Grenzüberschreitende Gewalttätigkeit’.

121.BArch Berlin, NS 23/477: Letter from the SA-Gruppe Sachsen to the Erziehungshauptamt of the SA, September 1938; Stefan Dölling, Henleins Bürgerkrieger: Das Sudetendeutsche Freikorps zwischen Eigenmobilisierung und Fremdsteuerung durch das 3. Reich, unpublished MA diss., Humboldt University Berlin, 2010, pp. 12–13.

122.Dölling, Henleins Bürgerkrieger, p. 1.

123.Zimmermann, Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat, p. 128. Many leaders of the Sudeten German Free Corps were integrated into the SS; see Dölling, ‘Grenzüberschreitende Gewalttätigkeit’, p. 260.

124.Zimmermann, Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat, p. 127.

125.An example is Toni Sandner, who from the autumn of 1938 onward served as Franz May’s adjutant. Building on his former role in the Deutscher Turnverband, he also occupied the position of ‘SA sports warden’; Zimmermann, Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat, p. 127.

126.Osterloh, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung im Reichsgau Sudetenland, pp. 209–10; Zimmermann, Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat, p. 104; Ralf Gebel, ‘Heim ins Reich!’ Konrad Henlein und der Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938–1945) (Munich: Oldenburg, 1999), pp. 69–80.

127.Franz May was born on 24 January 1903 in Warnsdorf, Sudeten, at that time part of the Habsburg monarchy, and studied from 1920 to 1923 at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. A landscape architect by training, he was elected on the ticket of the Sudeten German Party into the Czech parliament in 1935. Around the same time he clandestinely began working for the Abwehr of the German Wehrmacht. On May’s biography prior to 1939, see the documents in BArch Berlin, SA 4000002816 (May, Franz). On his activities during the Second World War, see chapter 8. After being released from Czechoslovakian detention, May lived in Bavaria and committed himself to German expellee organizations (Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft and the Bund der Vertriebenen).

128.BArch Berlin, SA 4000002816: Letter from Konrad Henlein to Viktor Lutze, 22 November 1941.

129.Zimmermann, Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat, p. 128, n. 57.

130.For details on the political and military developments in Lithuania between 1918 and 1919, see Tomas Balkelis, ‘Demobilization and Remobilization of German and Lithuanian Paramilitaries after the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History 50:1 (2015), pp. 38–57.

131.See Ernst-Albert Plieg, Das Memelland 1920–1939: Deutsche Autonomiebestrebungen im litauischen Gesamtstaat (Würzburg: Holzner, 1962). Unfortunately, the account by Tomas Balkelis (The Making of Modern Lithuania [Basingstoke: Routledge, 2009]) ends in the years 1918–19.

132.Lithuanian Central State Archive (LCVA), Collection no. 383, inventory no. 7, no. 1773, pp. 146–54: Memo of the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stasys Lozoraitis, to the director of the political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Juozas Urbšys, 26 January 1935.

133.The National Socialist press characteristically spoke of a ‘state of war’. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: ‘SA-Appell und Marsch der SA’, Memelwacht (Tilsit), 11 January 1940.

134.‘Die Lage: Litauen’, Nation und Staat: Deutsche Zeitschrift für das europäische Nationalitätenproblem, 12:4 (1939), pp. 245–51, here p. 248.

135.Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (Stuttgart: DVA, 2000), p. 228.

136.Martin Broszat, ‘Die Memeldeutschen Organisationen und der Nationalsozialismus’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 5:3 (1957), pp. 273–8, here p. 274.

137.Broszat, ‘Die Memeldeutschen Organisationen’, pp. 274–5. For details of the complicated relationship between the CSA and the SOVOG, see PAAA, R 84874, pp. 64–90: ‘Anklageschrift in dem Verfahren gegen Dr. Neumann, v. Saß und Genossen (deutsche Übersetzung)’.

138.‘Dr. Ernst Neumann †’, Memelländer Dampfboot: Die Heimatzeitung aller Memelländer, no. 11, 5 June 1955, pp. 3–4.

139.PAAA, R 84874, pp. 58–112: ‘Anklageschrift in dem Verfahren gegen Dr. Neumann, v. Saß und Genossen’.

140.Broszat, ‘Die Memeldeutschen Organisationen’, p. 275; PAAA, R 84874, pp. 105–38: ‘Anklageschrift in dem Verfahren gegen Dr. Neumann, v. Saß und Genossen’.

141.LCVA, Collection no. 383, inventory no. 7, no. 1773, pp. 146–54, here pp. 151–2: Memo of the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stasys Lozoraitis, to the director of the political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Juozas Urbšys, 26 January 1935; PAAA, R 84875: ‘Aufzeichnung v. Grundherr für das Auswärtige Amt vom 27 Oktober 1934’; PAAA, R 84874, pp. 39–45, 56–8: ‘Anklageschrift in dem Verfahren gegen Dr. Neumann, v. Saß und Genossen’.

142.For a German perspective on this trial, see Helmut Jenkis, ‘Der Neumann-Sass-Kriegsgerichtsprozess in Kaunaus 1934/35: Aus deutscher Sicht’, Annaberger Annalen 17 (2009), http://annaberger-annalen.de/jahrbuch/2009/6_Jenkis.pdf. For a Lithuanian perspective, see Algimantas Taskunas, ‘The World’s First Nazi Trial’, Lithuanian Papers 22 (2008), http://jloughnan.tripod.com/lithuania.htm.

143.BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: ‘Memel-SA steht am 30. Januar 1939’, Der Alemanne (Freiburg), 20 January 1939.

144.Ibid.: ‘Die braune Uniform in Memel’, Stuttgarter NS-Kurier, 26 January 1939.

145.Ibid.: ‘Memeldeutsche Sicherheitsabteilung gebildet’, Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung, 10 January 1939.

146.Broszat, ‘Die Memeldeutschen Organisationen’, p. 278.

147.‘Die Lage: Litauen’, Nation und Staat 12:5 (1939), p. 299.

148.There are many indications that even well-informed contemporaries did not know precisely the ways in which these two organizations differed from one other. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: ‘Kowno fragt: Wird die SA gefährlich sein?’, Preußische Zeitung (Königsberg), 12 January 1939.

149.Ralf Meindl, Ostpreußens Gauleiter: Erich Koch – eine politische Biographie (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2007), pp. 243–4.

150.As quoted in ‘Der Wortlaut des Abkommens zwischen Litauen und dem Reich über die Rückgabe Memels’, Nation und Staat: Deutsche Zeitschrift für das europäische Nationalitätenproblem, 12:8 (1939), pp. 560–1.

151.Broszat, ‘Die Memeldeutschen Organisationen’, p. 278.

152.See in particular Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (London and New York: Verso, 2007).

153.For a similar assessment, see Campbell, ‘SA after the Röhm Purge’.

154.Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 5 (1938), p. 849.

Chapter 7

1.Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte, vol. 2 (1935), p. 1,498.

2.See Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg; Czesław Madajczyk (ed.), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1994); Mechthild Rössler and Sabine Schleiermacher (eds), Der ‘Generalplan Ost’: Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993); Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries; Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten; Hartenstein, Neue Dorflandschaften; Heinemann, ‘Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut’; David Blackbourn, Die Eroberung der Natur: Eine Geschichte der deutschen Landschaft (Munich: Siedler, 2006), pp. 319–39; Heinemann and Wagner, Wissenschaft – Planung – Vertreibung; Leniger, Nationalsozialistische ‘Volkstumsarbeit’ und Umsiedlungspolitik; Wolf, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität. On the academic forerunners of the German expansionist policies in the east, see Piper, Alfred Rosenberg, pp. 448–56; Eduard Mühle, ‘Putting the East in Order: German Historians and their Attempts to Rationalise German Eastward Expansion during the 1930s and 1940s’, in Robert L. Nelson (ed.), Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 95–120; Beyrau, ‘Eastern Europe as a “Sub-Germanic Space”’; Ulrich Prehn, Max Hildebert Boehm: Radikales Ordnungsdenken vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis in die Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2013).

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 Dieckmann, ‘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.

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-ObergruppenführerHeinrich 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).

54.StA München, Bestand Staatsanwaltschaften München, Nr. 34835, vol. 1, p. 8: Verdict of the Bratislava People’s Court, 22 June 1948, p. 4.

55.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 159.

56.The soldier and former SA man Kurt Pfau provided a telling example in his war diaries. On 1 September, the first day of the war, Pfau approvingly noted that his unit had burned alleged Polish snipers alive in the first village they had reached on their advance. See Udo Rosowski (ed.), Glückauf zum Untergang: Die Kriegstagebücher des Feldwebels Kurt Pfau 1939–1945 (Brüggen: Literates, 2012), pp. 19–20. For general information on German warfare in Poland, see Jochen Böhler, Auftakt zum Vernichtungskrieg: Die Wehrmacht in Polen 1939 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2006); Michael Alberti, ‘“Niederträchtige Perfidie, gemeine, unermessliche Gier und kalte, berechnende Grausamkeit . . .”: Die “Endlösung der Judenfrage” im Reichsgau Wartheland’, in Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk and Jochen Böhler (eds), Der Judenmord in den eingegliederten polnischen Gebieten 1939–1945 (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2010), pp. 117–42, here pp. 118–20. On the economic exploitation of the Poles, see Lehnstaedt, ‘Das Generalgouvernement als Mobilisierungsreserve’.

57.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, pp. 160–1.

58.Few scholars have written on this particular SA unit. The most detailed account is from Erich Jainek, Standarte Feldherrnhalle: Bewährung an den Brennpunkten des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Rosenheim: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997). Jainek was a former member of the Standarte and as such provides first-hand information. His book suffers from an overtly apologetic tendency but is useful for determining the course of the Feldherrnhalle’s combat operations and gaining insight into the worldview of its members. For basic information on its organization and deployment, see BArch Berlin, NS 23/518: ‘Übersichtsblatt über die Entwicklung der Standarte Feldherrnhalle’ (classified), 1943; Georg Tessin, Verbände und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939–1945, vol. 8: Die Landstreitkräfte 201–280 (Osnabrück: Biblio, 1979), pp. 302–6; Rudolf Absolon, Die Wehrmacht im Dritten Reich, vol. 5: 1. September 1939 bis 18. Dezember 1941 (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1988), pp. 27–8.

59.Rudolf Absolon, Die Wehrmacht im Dritten Reich, vol. 4: 5. Februar bis 31. August (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1979), p. 40.

60.BArch Berlin, NS 23/518: Recruitment guidelines for the SA-Wachstandarte, 20 April 1936.

61.Absolon, Die Wehrmacht, vol. 4, pp. 41–2; Deutsche Dienststelle, Berlin (WASt), Personal-Kartei M-1334/024 (Herbert M.). According to Jainek, there existed between seven and twelve ‘Feldherrnhalle’ branches between 1936 and 1945; see his Soldaten der Standarte Feldherrnhalle, p. 32.

62.Oberste SA-Führung (ed.), Das Jahr der SA, p. 53.

63.Against the backdrop of this involvement, Göring’s merits as leader of the SA in 1923 did not matter much.

64.Absolon, Die Wehrmacht, vol. 4, p. 42.

65.Karl-Heinz Golla, The German Fallschirmtruppe 1936–1941: Its Genesis and Employment in the First Campaigns of the Wehrmacht (Solihull: Helion, 2012), pp. 39–40, 42.

66.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 122.

67.Letter from Erich Reimann to Viktor Lutze, 5 May 1940, in BArch Berlin, SA 400003178 (Reimann, Erich). Erich Reimann was the Feldherrnhalle regimental commander from 20 June 1938 onward. He was born on 17 June 1903 in Berlin and served in the Hamburg police between 1925 and 1930 and again from 1935 to 1936. From 1926 to 1930 he was a member of the Stahlhelm. In 1929 he faced disciplinary proceedings because of the suspicion that he had been involved in politically motivated bombings in Schleswig-Holstein. Reimann was expelled from the police and joined the SA in Altona on 1 May 1930, at a time when his economic situation had deteriorated to such an extent that he accepted work as a travelling salesman. In July 1934, Lutze appointed him his adjutant general. See Reimann’s SA files in BArch Berlin, SA 4000003178 (Reimann, Erich); Absolon, Die Wehrmacht, vol. 4, pp. 42–3.

68.Golla, The German Fallschirmtruppe 1936–1941, p. 45; Wilhelm Rehm, ‘Zwei Jahre Kriegsbewährung der SA’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 16/17 (September/October 1941).

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

70.See, for example, ibid.; ‘Männer der Standarte “Feldherrnhalle” über Kreta’, in Die SA 2:30 (1941) (25 July), p. 4. On the battle of Crete, see Golla, The german Fallschirmtruppe 1936–1941, pp. 403–536; Anthony Beevor, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (London: Penguin, 1991).

71.In this respect it is noteworthy that the Luftwaffe in June 1943 began preparing for the formation of a ‘Fallschirmjäger-regiment Feldherrnhalle (Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 2)’, to be recruited from SA volunteers. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/518: Oberkommando der Wehrmacht on Division Feldherrnhalle, 21 June 1943.

72.Werner Präg and Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Polen, 1939–1945 (Stuttgart: DVA, 1975), p. 292 (entry from 18 October 1940).

73.‘Aus Dienst und Leben der SA’, Die SA 1:40 (1940), p. 14. In Cracow the Feldherrnhalle guarded the Wawel, which during the time of German occupation served as the headquarters of General Governor Frank. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/501, pp. 173–5, here p. 173: ‘Die Aufstellung der SA-Einheit General-Gouvernement’; Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, p. 386 (entry from 17 July 1941).

74.Stephan Lehnstaedt, Okkupation im Osten: Besatzeralltag in Warschau und Minsk (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2010), p. 251.

75.I am grateful to Stephan Lehnstaedt for kindly providing me with his excerpts of this verdict.

76.Friedrich Fromm’s Chief of Staff in his Diensttagebüchern gives a figure of 700 men for the Feldherrnhalle’s membership (entry from 2 September 1939). From 1939 onward, Fromm served as the Chief of Army Armour and as commander of the Replacement Army in the Wehrmacht. The diaries of his Chief of Staff are scheduled for publication in 2016–17 by a group of military historians under the leadership of Bernhard Kroener at the University of Potsdam (in the following cited as ‘Fromm’s Diensttagebücher’). I thank Alexander Kranz for providing me with extracts of the unpublished manuscript and for further advice.

77.August Raben was born on 2 December 1892 in Tarming-Gaard. A fighter pilot in the First World War (leader of the ‘Raben squadron’), he later worked for the Afrikanische Frucht Compagnie and spent some time in Cameroon. He died as battalion commander with the rank of major on 15 June 1940 in Barst-Marienthal, in one of the regiment’s most costly battles, and was buried in the German Soldiers’ Graveyard in Niederbronn-les-Bains. See Thorsten Pietsch, Frontflieger: Die Soldaten der Deutschen Fliegertruppe 1914–1918, http://www.frontflieger.de/3-r-f.html.

78.SA Chief of Staff Lutze repeatedly met with members of the Feldherrnhalle, behind the front lines as well as in the Reich. See Lutze’s report, ‘Besichtigungsfahrt an der Westfront’, Die SA 1:9 (1940) (29 March); ‘Mit dem Stabschef an der Westfront’, in Die SA 1:10 (1940) (5 April).

79.Herbert Böhme was born on 21 April 1898 in Rattwitz in Lower Silesia. He died on 27 December 1943 on the eastern front. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/1408, pp. 19–21, here p. 19: ‘Liste der Ritterkreuzträger, welche der SA angehören bzw. der SA angehört haben’; ‘Kurznachrichten’, in Die SA 1:25 (1940) (12 July); Jainek, Soldaten der Standarte Feldherrnhalle, p. 22.

80.Jörg Ganzenmüller, Das belagerte Leningrad 1941–1944: Die Stadt in den Strategien von Angreifern und Verteidigern (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005); Harrison E. Salisbury, The Siege of Leningrad (London: Seckler & Warburg, 1969) – neither of which make any explicit reference to the 271st Regiment.

81.‘Des verpflichtenden Namens würdig’, in SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 24/25 (May/June 1942); BArch Berlin, NS 23/518: ‘Das Regiment “Feldherrnhalle” hält in zähem Späh- und Stoßtruppkrieg einen Abschnitt der deutschen Hauptlinie in der Sumpfhölle am Wolchow’.

82.Tessin, Verbände und Truppen, vol. 8, p. 303.

83.BArch Berlin, VBS 264, no. 4001006602 (Sponholz, Hans): Typescript of Hitler’s order from 4 May 1943 to integrate the SA-Regiment Feldherrnhalle into the 60th Infantry Division (mot.); Jainek, Soldaten der Standarte Feldherrnhalle, pp. 25–32. Previously, losses were replaced using men from the Infantry Replacement Battalion 203, stationed in Berlin-Spandau, and, from 1942 onward, using soldiers from the Infantry Replacement Battalion 9, under the command of SA-Oberführer August Ritter von Eberlein and based in Potsdam. For details, see http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/InfErsBat/InfErsBatFHH-R.htm.

84.The fact that he was later awarded the Medal of Remembrance for 13 March 1938, the date of the Anschluss of Austria, suggests that he might have joined the SA just before that event.

85.For the biographical information on Karl A., see Deutsche Dienststelle, Personal-Kartei A-259/0553.

86.For the biographical information on Herbert M., see Deutsche Dienststelle, Personal-Kartei M-1334/024.

87.At about the same time, still only twenty years old, Kurt M. agreed to serve for an unlimited time in the Wehrmacht. As he was still underage, his father, an accountant (Rechnungsinspekteur), had to approve this decision.

88.For the biographical information on Kurt M., see Deutsche Dienststelle, Personal-Kartei M-1643/588.

89.The OSAF’s description of the Feldherrnhalle is instructive in this respect. On the one hand, its propagandists insisted that the Feldherrnhalle was open to all men aged eighteen or older who were of good health and of proper race (rassische Eignung) and had not been subject to prosecution (with the exception of charges for ‘politically motivated’ misdoings). On the other hand, they repeatedly emphasized that the Feldherrnhalle’s political education was deliberately simple and ‘artless’ (natürlich), as a purely academic approach would only cause confusion among the men of the Feldherrnhalle who were deemed ‘simple minded and feeling’ (einfach denkende und empfindende Menschen). Oberste SA-Führung (ed.), Das Jahr der SA, pp. 49–50.

90.Carola Tischler, ‘Von Geister- und anderen Stimmen: Der Rundfunk als Waffe im Kampf gegen “die Deutschen” im Großen Vaterländischen Krieg’, in Karl Eimermacher and Astrid Volpert (eds), Verführungen der Gewalt: Russen und Deutsche im Ersten und Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: Fink, 2005), pp. 467–506, here p. 467.

91.Brown, ‘SA in the Radical Imagination’, pp. 258–68. On the KPD’s infiltration tactics, see also BArch Berlin, NS 23/431: Circular from OSAF on the Communist Movement, 24 April 1933.

92.Tischler, ‘Von Geister- und anderen Stimmen’, p. 473; Fritz Erpenbeck, ‘Hier spricht der Sender der SA-Fronde . . .’, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Rundfunks: deutscher demokratischer Rundfunk 4 (1974), pp. 7–15, here pp. 8–9. On GS1, see Jerome S. Berg, On the Short Waves 1923–1945: Broadcast Listening in the Pioneer Days of Radio (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), p. 220.

93.Patrick Merziger, ‘Humour in the Volksgemeinschaft: The Disappearance of Destructive Satire in National Socialist Germany’, in Martina Kessel and Patrick Merziger (eds), The Politics of Humour: Laughter, Inclusion, and Exclusion in the Twentieth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 131–52.

94.Erpenbeck, ‘Hier spricht der Sender der SA-Fronde’, pp. 12–14.

95.Ibid., pp. 13–14. It is impossible to verify the truth of these accounts, but in light of what we know about the German mentality at war, they do not seem to have been totally exaggerated.

96.On this (largely unsuccessful) strategy, see the documents in Hermann Weber, Jakov Drabkin, and Bernhard H. Bayerlein (eds), Deutschland, Russland, Komintern. II: Dokumente (1918–1943): Nach der Archivrevolution: Neuerschlossene Quellen zu der Geschichte der KPD und den deutsch-russischen Beziehungen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), pp. 989–95, 1,080–1, 1,097–1,100.

97.Annette Weinke, Die Verfolgung von NS-Tätern im geteilten Deutschland: Vergangenheitsbewältigungen 1949–1969, oder: Eine deutsch-deutsche Beziehungsgeschichte im Kalten Krieg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), pp. 63–75. The generation that particularly benefited from these politics was that born in the 1920s or early 1930s. These individuals often became staunch adherents of the GDR; see Thomas Ahbe and Rainer Gries, ‘Gesellschaftsgeschichte als Generationengeschichte’, in Annegret Schüle, Thomas Ahbe, and Rainer Gries (eds), Die DDR aus generationsgeschichtlicher Perspektive: Eine Inventur (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, 2006), pp. 475–571, here pp. 502–18.

98.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Die Oberste SA-Führung, ‘Aufbau der SA im deutschen Gebiet des früheren polnischen Staates’, 30 October 1939. On an order from Jüttner on 10 November 1939, the SA-Gruppe Sudeten lost ‘its’ share in the operation. Instead, the SA-Gruppe Schlesien was made the only group permitted to operate in Upper Silesia.

99.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Der Oberste SA-Führer, ‘Betr. Gliederung der SA im deutschen Gebiet des früheren polnischen Staates’, 25 January 1940.

100.BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Note from SA-Gruppenführer Georg Mappes, 18 November 1939.

101.Heinrich Hacker, born on 16 June 1892 in Würzburg in Franconia, had attended grammar school, served in the German army in the First World War, and studied at Würzburg University until 1922, when he was forced to abandon his studies, allegedly for financial reasons. He then worked as a salesman for pumice and leather goods. Originally a member of the Stahlhelm and then of the Frontbann, he entered the ranks of the NSDAP in 1925 but quickly left. He became a member of the party again in 1929 and was elected into the Bavarian Landtag in the same year. From 1931 onward, Hacker led the SA-Untergruppe Franken. From 1933 to 1934 he served as one of the SA’s special representatives in Bavaria. He then led the SA--Brigade 6 until 1939. For his biography, see BArch Berlin, SA 4000001265 (Hacker, Heinrich); ‘Kurznachrichten’, Die SA 1:8 (1940) (22 March).

102.Wilhelm Rehm, ‘Aufbau im deutschen Osten’, Die SA 1:2 (1940) (9 February); Baumgärtner, ‘Sturmdienst im Wartheland’, Die SA 2:28 (1941) (11 July); ‘Bassarabiendeutsche in den SA-Wehrmannschaften’, Die SA 2:20 (1941) (16 May).

103.A forthcoming study on the SA by the historian Yves Müller aspires to demonstrate more in detail that these Baltic Germans played an important role in the SA in the newly German-annexed and occupied territories.

104.Baumgärtner, ‘Sturmdienst im Wartheland’, Die SA 2:28 (1941) (11 July). The SA in Southern Styria likewise taught its men German language, history, and geography; see Franz Glatzer, ‘“Sie bauen das Morgen”, Wehrmannschaftsdienst in der Untersteiermark’, in ibid.

105.BArch Berlin, SA 4000001265 (Hacker, Heinrich): Note of SA-Gruppenführers Lehmann, 2 September 1941. On Greiser, see in particular Catherine Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

106.BArch Berlin, SA 4000001265 (Hacker, Heinrich): Letter from Hacker to Lutze, 25 September 1941. For Hacker’s view on the SA’s mission in the east, see his essay ‘Pioniere des Ostens’, Die SA 2:25/26 (1941) (20/27 June), pp. 1–3.

107.Jill Stephenson, The Nazi Organisation of Women (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), p. 191.

108.FES, Viktor Lutze Papers, Political Diary of Viktor Lutze, p. 171. Lutze’s official speech on this occasion was broadcast live on German radio; see ‘Kurznachrichten aus Dienst und Leben der SA’, Die SA 1:5 (1940) (1 March).

109.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: OSAF, ‘Änderung des Anschriftenverzeichnisses’, 17 May 1940. The development of the SA farther west, in Alsace and Lorraine, mirrored the build-up of the SA in the former Polish territories but was less successful. Beginning in February 1941, two SA-Brigaden (Elsaß-Nord, based in Straßburg, and Elsaß-Süd, headquartered in Colmar) were created. They belonged to the SA-Gruppe Oberrhein and initially comprised eight regular Standarten, two Reiterstandarten, and one Marinestandarte; BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Oberste SA-Führung, Gliederung der SA im Elsaß, 19 February 1941. On 27 March 1941 one SA-Brigade based in Metz was assigned to Lorraine and became part of the SA-Gruppe Kurpfalz; BArch Berlin NS 23/510: Die Oberste SA-Führung, Neuaufstellung von SA-Einheiten in Lothringen, 27 March 1941. Finally, the formation of two SA-Standarten for Luxembourg was approved, taking effect on 1 April 1941. They became part of the SA-Gruppe Westmark, headquartered in Koblenz; BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: OSAF on ‘Neugliederung’, 25 April 1941. See also Lothar Kettenacker, Nationalsozialistische Volkstumspolitik im Elsaß (Stuttgart: DVA, 1973), pp. 207–16; Dieter Wolfanger, Die nationalsozialistische Politik in Lothringen (1940–1945), university diss., Universität des Saarlandes (Saarbrücken), 1976, pp. 84–6.

110.Zilich, ‘SA im Protektorat’, in Die SA 2:1 (1941) (3 January), p. 18.

111.Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, p. 292 (entry from 26 October 1940).

112.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Letter from the leader of the Wehr- und Schützenbereitschaften in the General Government, Peltz, to OSAF, 7 November 1941.

113.Dieter Schenk, Krakauer Burg: Die Machtzentrale des Generalgouverneurs Hans Frank 1939–1945 (Berlin: Links, 2010), p. 136.

114.See Daniel Brewing, ‘“Wir müssen um uns schlagen”: Die Alltagspraxis der Partisanenbekämpfung im Generalgouvernement 1942’, in Gewalt und Alltag im besetzen Polen 1939–1945, ed. Böhler and Lehnstaedt, pp. 497–520, with further references.

115.On the rivalry between Frank and Himmler, see Schenk, Krakauer Burg, pp. 130–3.

116.In the spring of 1944, Peltz was called up to the Wehrmacht and was succeeded by SA-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Kühnemund.

117.Gerhard Eisenblätter, Grundlinien der Politik des Reichs gegenüber dem Generalgouvernement, 1939–1945, inaugural diss., Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, 1969, pp. 241–2; BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Hans Frank, Decree on the establishment of the Wehrschützenbereitschaften, 19 December 1941.

118.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: NSDAP and Arbeitsbereich General Gouvernement (Stahl), Anordnung 17/42 (SA, SS und NSKK-Einheiten im Generalgouvernement), 23 April 1942; Eisenblätter, Grundlinien der Politik, pp. 255–6.

119.BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Letters from SA-Oberführer Peltz to OSAF, 21 March 1942, and to the General Government, 5 May 1942.

120.For details of Frank’s position, see Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, pp. 474–5 (entry from 17 March 1942).

121.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Hans Frank, ‘Erlaß über die Überführung der Wehrschützenbereitschaften in SA-Wehrbereitschaften’, 16 April 1942; BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Die Oberste SA-Führung (Jüttner), ‘SA im Generalgouvernement’, 18 May 1942. In return, Frank promised to provide the OSAF with two convalescent homes in the General Government; see BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Cable from SA-Obersturmbannführer Schänzlin to Georg Mappes, 18 April 1942.

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

123.Eisenblätter, Grundlinien der Politik, p. 257.

124.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Die Oberste SA-Führung (Ohrt), ‘An den Aufbaustab der SA im Generalgouvernement’, 16 September 1942. These SA-Standarten were based in Cracow, Warsaw (Warschau, Warschau-Süd, and Warschau-Land), Radom, Lublin, Lemberg, Reichshof, Neu-Sandez, Kielce, and Petrikau-Tomaschow.

125.Eisenblätter, Grundlinien der Politik, pp. 257–8.

126.On the security problems of the years 1942–4 see Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, pp. 642–7, 686–91 (entries from 15 April and 18 June 1943); Brewing, ‘Wir müssen um uns schlagen’, pp. 502–18; Stephan Lehnstaedt, ‘Deutsche in Warschau: Das Alltagsleben der Besatzer 1939–1944’, in Gewalt und Alltag im besetzten Polen 1939–1945, ed. Böhler and Lehnstaedt, pp. 205–28, here pp. 223–7.

127.Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, p. 624 (entry from 22 February 1943).

128.Central’nyj archiv Minoborony Rossii (CAMO), Collection 500, Finding Aid 12450, File 161, p. 11: stenograph of a meeting of Hitler, Keitel, and others on the Berghof on 8 June 1943, http://wwii.germandocsinrussia.org/de/nodes/2297-akte-161-stenogramm-der-besprechung-bei-a-hitler-in-berghof-uber-die-behandlung-der-kriegsgefa#page/1/mode/grid/zoom/1.

129.BArch Berlin, SA 4000003047 (Peltz, Kurt): Letter from Kurt Peltz to Leonhard Gontermann, 22 December 1943.

130.Eisenblätter, Grundlinien der Politik, p. 298. According to an internal SA document, stormtroopers from nineteen SA groups during the war participated in police operations. Five SA groups were also involved in border control activities. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: ‘Der Einsatz der SA im Kriege’, undated. See also BArch Berlin, NS 23/501, pp. 176–8, here p. 177: Report of Hauptsturmführer Behrenbrock about his journey to Vienna, Kracow, and other places, August 1944.

131.See the respective documents in Peltz’s SA file in BArch Berlin, SA 4000003047 (Peltz, Kurt).

132.BArch Berlin, SA 400003178: Letter from Reimann to the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 23 April 1940.

133.BArch Berlin, NS 23/98: Note of SA-Oberführer Siegele, 9 December 1939.

134.Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, pp. 643, 704 (entries from 15 April and 16 July 1943); Władysław Bartoszewski, Der Todesring um Warschau 1939–1944 (Cracow: Interpress, 1969), pp. 189–90.

135.Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, p. 898 (entry from 5 August 1944).

136.A well-known example of SA violence in this region was the murder of the prior of the Cloister Czerna by SA men in September 1944; see Präg and Jacobmeyer (eds), Das Diensttagebuch des deutschen Generalgouverneurs, p. 915 (entry from 26 September 1944). See also the IMT’s examination of Max Jüttner on 14 August 1946 (morning session), http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/08-14-46.asp.

137.‘Der Dienst der SA im Grenzland’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 12 (March 1941), p. 4; Helmuth Ruschnig, ‘Bericht über fünf Monate Arbeit des Kärnter Volksbundes’, as printed in Tone Ferenc (ed.), Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Entnationalisierungspolitik in Slowenien 1941–1945 / Viri o nacistični raznarodovalni politiki v Sloveniji 1941–1945 (Maribor: Založba Obzorja, 1980), document no. 168.

138.BArch Berlin, NS 23/234: SA-Obertruppführer Schmidt, ‘Die Südmark im deutschen Freiheitskampf’.

139.‘Sie haben ihre Aufgabe restlos erfüllt!’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 13 (May 1941), p. 1.

140.Schm[idt], ‘Grenzwacht gegen Banditen’, Illustrierter Beobachter (Feldpostausgabe), no. 31 (1942).

141.Lorenz Ohrt, ‘Grundsätzliche Weisung Nr. 1 der SA-Gruppe Südmark für die Organisation und Ausbildung der Wehrmannschaften in den besetzten slowenischen Gebieten’, 25 June 1941, in Ferenc, Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Entnationalisierungspolitik in Slowenien, document no. 94.

142.For similar attempts in Alsace, see Kettenacker, Nationalsozialistische Volkstumspolitik im Elsaß, pp. 163–84. Bilingual stormtroopers speaking French in public was enough for a formal warning. ‘The use of the French language is unworthy’ for an SA man, an SA leader from Lorraine reasoned; BArch Berlin, NS 45/162: Circular from SA-Standarte Metz on the use of the French language, 28 May 1941.

143.Hans Baron and Franz Tscheligi, ‘Report on the situation in Southern Styria’, 1 May 1942, in Ferenc, Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Entnationalisierungspolitik in Slowenien, document no. 218.

144.Ruschnig, ‘Bericht über fünf Monate Arbeit des Kärnter Volksbundes’, in Ferenc, Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Entnationalisierungspolitik in Slowenien, document no. 168.

145.Joachim Hösler, ‘Sloweniens historische Bürde’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 46 (2006), http://www.bpb.de/apuz/29421/sloweniens-historische-buerde?p=all.

146.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 35: SA-Oberführer Moock, Report, 15 September 1939.

147.Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2013), pp. 327–38; Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945 (Berlin: Ullstein, 2004), pp. 192–5.

148.BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: Gustaf Deuchler, ‘Die Bewährung der SA bei der Groß-Katastrophe Hamburgs’, 16 December 1943.

149.Hans Erich Wagner, ‘SA-Kameradschaft im Kriege’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 18/19 (November/December 1941); Wilhelm Rehm, ‘Zwei Jahre Kriegsbewährung der SA’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark, no. 16/17 (September/October 1941).

150.See, for example, NS 23/227: ‘SA an der Front’, Essener Volkszeitung, 10 October 1939; ‘Aus Dienst und Leben der SA’, Die SA 2:23/24 (1941) (6/13 June), p. 26.

151.For these figures (although without reference to the SA), see Christian Kretschmer, ‘Kriegsgefangene im Visier von Werkschutz, Kriminalpolizei und Landwacht: Bewachung, Fluchtprävention und Kriegsfahndung’, in KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme (ed.), Polizei, Verfolgung und Gesellschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2013), pp. 147–55. For an instructive case study, see NS 23/227: SA-Sturm 14/5 in Hirschaid/Franconia, Report on the murder of an SA-Rottenführer, 8 June 1943.

152.BArch Berlin, NS 6/857: Decree of the OSAF (Jüttner), 24 April 1942; Letter from his deputy Ohrt, 25 June 1942.

153.BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: ‘Zwölfhundert Herde wurden geborgen’, Hannoversche Zeitung, 15 December 1943.

154.Wilhelm Rehm, ‘Zwei Jahre Kriegsbewährung der SA’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 16/17 (September/October 1941).

155.BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: Gustaf Deuchler, ‘Die Bewährung der SA bei der Groß-Katastrophe Hamburgs’, 16 December 1943.

156.PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 34: Letter from SA-Sturmführer Fritz Hancke to SA-Gruppenführer Siegfried Kasche, 25 August 1941.

157.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: Letter from Viktor Hölscher to Hans Sponholz, 15 June 1942.

158.BArch Berlin, NS 23/234: Hans Sponholz, secret mood report from Munich, 23 September 1942.

159.Since the second half of the 1930s, the OSAF had glorified the stormtroopers as the bearers of the ‘traditional male virtues’ that allegedly distinguished the German people from others. See, among others, BArch Berlin, NS 23/238: Radio speech by Viktor Lutze, 3 July 1939.

160.Mai, ‘Die Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellen-Organisation’, here pp. 600–2. A well-known example of temporary cooperation between Nazi and Communist unionists was the strike by workers from Berlin’s public transport company in the autumn of 1932; see Klaus Rainer Röhl, Nähe zum Gegner: Kommunisten und Nationalsozialisten im Berliner BVG-Streik von 1932(Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1994).

161.See in particular Humann, ‘Verwahranstalten mit Fantasiegehältern?’

162.For an overview of the history of these schools, see BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: Herbert Merker, ‘SA-Berufsschulen’; Martin Kipp, ‘Privilegien für “alte Kämpfer”: Zur Geschichte der SA-Berufsschulen’, in Manfred Heinemann (ed.), Erziehung und Schulung im Dritten Reich, vol. 1: Kindergarten, Schule, Jugend, Berufserziehung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980), pp. 289–300. The school in Lockstedter -Lager provided training for members of the Nordmark SA as early as 1931; Schröder, ‘Der NS-Schulungsstandort’, p. 9.

163.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Public Notice of the SA-Berufsschule Lockstedter Lager, October 1939.

164.On the SA professional schools, see also Kipp, ‘Privilegien für “alte Kämpfer”’; Volker Herrmann, Vom Arbeitsmarkt zum Arbeitseinsatz: Zur Geschichte der Reichsanstalt für Arbeitsvermittlung und Arbeitslosenversicherung 1929 bis 1939 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1993), p. 291.

165.Schröder, ‘Der NS-Schulungsstandort’, p. 12.

166.For details, see ibid., pp. 15–17.

167.BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: Letter from the Reichsarbeitsministerium to OSAF, 24 January 1939; Letter from the Reichsarbeitsministerium to OSAF, 16 April 1940.

168.Kipp, ‘Privilegien für “alte Kämpfer”’, p. 298; ‘Kurznachrichten’, Die SA 1:8 (1940) (22 March); ‘Kurznachrichten aus Dienst und Leben der SA’, Die SA 1:13/14 (1940) (26 April).

169.BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: OSAF decree from 15 October 1942; Schröder, ‘Der NS-Schulungsstandort’, p. 13. The plans for Westerstede, which included a cinema and a large gathering hall, were deemed ‘exemplary’. Similar buildings were also planned for Schulitz.

170.Kipp, ‘Privilegien für “alte Kämpfer”’, p. 297.

171.The contract between the Industriegemeinschaft and the SA was signed on 1 July 1941; see BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: Protocol of the meeting of the Industriegemeinschaft and OSAF in Berlin, 22 January 1942.

172.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Letter from the Einstellungszentrale for the SA professional schools, 12 December 1941.

173.BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: Protocol of the meeting of the Industriegemeinschaft and OSAF in Berlin, 22 January 1942.

174.At least in theory, the period of schooling was meant to serve as a probation period, with successful graduates automatically accepted into the SA as regular members. If and to what extent these principles were practically applied, however, is not known. There were also plans to create ‘SA shipyard storms’ that would be allowed to meet during working hours. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: Protocol of the meeting of the Industriegemeinschaft and OSAF in Berlin, 22 January 1942.

175.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Letter from the head of the SA-Gruppe Nordmark, October 1939.

176.BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: Letter from the OSAF to Middendorff, 4 June 1942.

177.The SA also regarded the schools as a way to increase its budget: the shipbuilding industry was required to pay 3.20 reichsmark per day per man to the SA, while the apprentices were only paid 0.50 reichsmark per day. See BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Administrative directive of the SA leadership, 14 July 1941.

178.BArch Berlin, NS 23/70: Report from the OSAF’s ‘Inspektion Erziehung und Führerausbildung’ (Merker), 4 July 1942.

179.Ibid.: Letter from Middendorff to the OSAF, 25 June 1942.

180.Ibid.: Report from the OSAF’s ‘Inspektion Erziehung und Führerausbildung’ (Merker), 4 July 1942.

181.Herbert Merker, born on 15 June 1901 in Bornstedt near Potsdam, joined the NSDAP in 1925. Previously a member of the Freikorps Hülsen (1919), the Stahlhelm (1922–3), and the Frontbann (1924), he served as a local and regional NSDAP leader in Westphalia between 1925 and 1927 before returning to his home region. On 25 September 1930 he was promoted to Organisationsleiter in Brandenburg and assumed other party functions in the years to come. He was sentenced for various political offences several times between 1931 and 1933. Imprisoned from 30 June to 3 August 1934 in the notorious Columbia House Prison in Berlin, Merker narrowly survived the ‘Röhm purge’ and on 28 February 1937 was promoted to SA-Brigadeführer. See BArch Berlin, SA 4000002858 (Merker, Herbert).

182.As quoted in ‘Befehl ausgeführt!’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 13 (May 1941).

183.The name change from ‘school’ to ‘camp’ was due to internal rivalries and was also a consequence of the fact that as ever more forced labourers were recruited, the character of the schools changed from that of a ‘camp’ to that of a ‘prison’. See the correspondence on these matters from the summer and autumn of 1942 in BArch Berlin, NS 23/70.

184.Ibid.: Report from the OSAF’s ‘Inspektion Erziehung und Führerausbildung’ (Merker), 4 July 1942.

185.Goebbels commented in his diary that ‘unfortunately’ Schepmann’s speech had been only of secondary importance and that even the Führer had been informed about Schepmann’s failure. ‘The SA is extremely unlucky. Never in its existence did it possess a leader of stature’; Goebbels, diary entry from 27 October 1943, as quoted in Müller, ‘Wilhelm Schepmann’, p. 525, n. 61.

186.It is telling that Schepmann shortly after his appointment as Chief of Staff formally prohibited the term ‘SA spirit’ from being used in SA correspondence and propaganda. He likewise dissolved the ‘Cultural Circle of the SA’ (Kulturkreis der SA) on the argument that there was no particular SA culture, but only a German culture influenced by National Socialism. See BArch Berlin, NS 19/2119: Speech of Wilhelm Schepmann in Posen, 6 October 1943.

187.Ibid. On Schepmann’s ‘servility’ toward Himmler, see also Müller, ‘Wilhelm Schepmann’, p. 524.

188.This figure is provided by Jamin, ‘Zur Rolle der SA im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, p. 357.

189.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Wilhelm Schepmann, ‘Weltanschauliche Ausrichtung für den totalen Einsatz’, 6 December 1944, here topic 6, ‘Kampf gegen Nörgler und Gerüchtemacher’. For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Wagner, ‘Die letzte Schlacht der “alten Kämpfer”’, pp. 31–40.

190.Müller-Hill, ‘Man hat es kommen sehen und ist dennoch erschüttert’, p. 28 (diary entry from 5 April 1944).

191.On the developments that occurred prior to this appointment as well as its consequences, see Franz W. Seidler, ‘Deutscher Volkssturm’: Das letzte Aufgebot 1944/45 (Munich: Herbig, 1989), pp. 35–47; Müller, ‘Wilhelm Schepmann’, pp. 528–30.

192.BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: ‘Zweiter Großeinsatz des Volkskriegs’, Front und Heimat 49 (October 1944).

193.Willy Timm, Freikorps ‘Sauerland’ im Deutschen Volkssturm: Südwestfalens letztes Aufgebot 1944/45 (Unna: Hellweg, 1993), pp. 22 and 29.

194.BArch Berlin, NS 23/510: Decree no. 3/44 from the leader of the SA-Brigade 94 Oberdonau, SA-Standartenführer Faller, 21 September 1944.

195.Seidler, ‘Deutscher Volkssturm’, pp. 142–5.

196.BArch Berlin, NS 23/227: ‘Die Bedeutung der SA im Volkssturm’, Nürnberger Neueste Nachrichten, 21 October 1944.

197.Timm, Freikorps ‘Sauerland’ im Deutschen Volkssturm, p. 34.

198.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Wilhelm Schepmann, ‘Weltanschauliche Ausrichtung für den totalen Einsatz’, 6 December 1944, here topic 8, ‘Der SA-Mann ist immer im Dienst’.

199.Schepmann thereby followed the official propaganda, which urged leaders to draw this historical parallel as often as possible. See Seidler, ‘Deutscher Volkssturm’, pp. 261–3.

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

201.See also Saul K. Padover, Lügendetektor: Vernehmungen im besetzten Deutschland 1944/45 (Munich: Econ, 2001), esp. pp. 278–9 (first published in English in 1946 under the title Experiment in Germany: The Story of an American Intelligence Officer).

202.See, for example, ‘SA Geist schlägt den Bolschewismus’, Die SA 2:34 (1941) (22 August), p. 4; Walther Nibbe, ‘Den Kampf, den Horst Wessel begonnen, im braunen Gewand der SA . . .’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 16/17 (September/October 1941), pp. 1–2. On the Nazi interpretation of the Second World War as an eschatological battle from 1941 onwards, see Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden, pp. 534–48.

203.See the published quotations from (alleged) war letters: ‘Feldpostbriefe’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 16/17 (September/October 1941); ‘Streiflichter aus dem Sowjetparadies’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 18/19 (November/December 1941); ‘Streiflichter aus dem Sowjetparadies’, SA in Feldgrau: Feldpostbriefe der SA-Gruppe Südmark 20/21 (January/February 1942). Even those soldiers who did not buy into such cheap Nazi propaganda, like the teacher Konrad Jarausch, insisted on categorical differences between ‘Russians’ and ‘Bolshevists’. The ordinary Russian people, Jarausch noted, are ‘still human beings as ourselves’, whereas the ‘Bolshevist element proper’ (das Eigentlich-Bolschewistische) and the ‘Jewish element’ needed to be mercilessly eradicated. See Jarausch and Arnold, ‘Das stille Sterben’, pp. 330–1, 335.

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

205.On the widespread war-weariness in 1944–5, see Keller, Volksgemeinschaft am Ende; Kershaw, The End. On the violence exercised by fanatical National Socialists in the last months of the war, see Wagner, ‘Die letzte Schlacht der “alten Kämpfer”’, and Jens-Christian Wagner, ‘Kriegsende und Befreiung 1945 in Niedersachsen’, in his (ed.) 70 Tage Gewalt, Mord, Befreiung: Das Kriegsende 1945 in Niedersachsen (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015), pp. 6–12.

206.Patricia Heberer, ‘The American Military Commission Trials of 1945’, in Nathan Stoltzfus and Henry Friedlander (eds), Nazi Crimes and the Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 43–62, here pp. 46–8. On the lynchings committed by stormtroopers, see also Overy, Bombing War, pp. 480–1.

207.BArch Berlin, NS 23/515: Wilhelm Schepmann, ‘Weltanschauliche Ausrichtung für den totalen Einsatz’, 6 December 1944, here topic 5, ‘Verhalten gegenüber Fremdvölkischen’.

208.Heide Nowitzki, Wer waren die Zwangsarbeiter in der Herforder Landwirtschaft 1939–1945? Eine exemplarische Untersuchung, unpublished MA thesis, Bielefeld University, 2016, pp. 30, 42–3.

209.Wagner, ‘Die letzte Schlacht der “alten Kämpfer”’, p. 38.

210.It is not without irony that in 1946–7 several hundred Jewish DPs (displaced persons) were temporarily housed in this building. See ‘Schliersee – Jüdisches DP-Lager’, http://www.after-the-shoah.org/index.php?id=25&tx_aftertheshoah_aftertheshoah[object]=160&tx_aftertheshoah_aftertheshoah[action]=show&tx_aftertheshoah_aftertheshoah[controller]=Object&cHash=209684030cd2f4f5f097c0aa9c4098f4.

211.For details on this SA school, see Friedrich, Spuren des Nationalsozialismus im bayerischen Oberland, pp. 56–71.

212.Until February 1945, Schepmann and his family lived in Dresden. After they were ‘bombed out’, they moved to Caputh near Potsdam and arrived in Schliersee in early April; IfZ Archive, ED 467, vol. 51, p. 5.

213.Wagner, ‘Die letzte Schlacht der “alten Kämpfer”’, p. 27.

214.Jens-Christian Wagner, ‘Kriegsende und Befreiung 1945 in Niedersachsen’, p. 7.

215.Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (Cambridge and London: Belknap, 2011), pp. 228–33; Eleonore Lappin-Eppel, ‘Die Todesmärsche ungarischer Jüdinnen und Juden durch die Steiermark’, in Heimo Halbrainer, Gerald Lamprecht, and Ursula Mindler (eds), NS-Herrschaft in der Steiermark: Positionen und Diskurse (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 385–410, here pp. 401–10; idem, Ungarisch-jüdische Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbeiterinnen in Österreich 1944/45: Arbeitseinsatz – Todesmärsche – Folgen (Wien: Lit, 2010).

216.Biddiscombe, ‘End of the Freebooter Tradition’, pp. 70–1. For details on the military action of the Freikorps Sauerland, including cases of violence against civilians, see Timm, Freikorps ‘Sauerland’ im Deutschen Volkssturm, pp. 49–69.

217.Biddiscombe, ‘End of the Freebooter Tradition’, pp. 71–2. The total death toll on this night was sixteen. On the ‘Penzberg murder night’ and its background, see also Tenfelde, Proletarische Provinz, pp. 369–82.

218.As quoted in Friedrich, Spuren des Nationalsozialismus, p. 70.

219.As quoted in Mathias Brüggemann, ‘In der Weser schwammen SA-Uniformen’, Neue Westfälische, 6 April 2015, http://www.nw.de/lokal/kreis_hoexter/hoexter/hoexter/20424355_In-der-Weser-schwammen-SA-Uniformen.html.

220.For similar ideas, see the statement of Thomas Kühne at the conference ‘Der Ort der “Volksgemeinschaft”’ in Hanover in June 2015, here quoted according to Johannes Hürter and Matthias Uhl, ‘Hitler in Vinnica: Ein neues Dokument zur Krise im September 1942’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 63:4 (2015), pp. 581–639, here p. 598.

221.Blatman, The Death Marches, p. 419.

Chapter 9

1.SA--Rottenführer Schwalke, ‘Wir sind das ordnende unter den Völkern’, Die SA 2:28 (1941) (11 July), pp. 1–2.

2.This hotel, situated at Wilhelmsplatz, had also been Hitler’s choice of accommodation in the capital in the years leading up to 1933.

3.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2 (Personal Notes of the Ambassador Adolf-Heinz Beckerle I: 20 July 1941–16 February 1943), pp. 1–2 (entry from 20 July 1941).

4.Klaus Thörner, ‘Der ganze Südosten ist unser Hinterland’: Deutsche Südosteuropapläne von 1840 bis 1945, university diss., University of Oldenburg, 2000, pp. 421–5, 447, 496–7, http://oops.uni-oldenburg.de/409/1/442.pdf.

5.For short biographies of these men, see the respective entries in Auswärtiges Amt (ed.), Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000–8), vol. 1, pp. 88–9 (Beckerle); vol. 2, pp. 414–15 (von Jagow); vol. 2, p. 480 (Kasche); vol. 2, p. 532 (von Killinger); vol. 3, p. 131 (Ludin). On Beckerle, see also Susanne Meinl, ‘Adolf Heinz Beckerle, Frankfurter SA-Führer, Polizeipräsident und Diplomat’, http://www.ffmhist.de/ffm33–45/portal01/mitte.php?transfer=t_ak_beckerle_01. For a general introduction to the German envoys with SA backgrounds, see Eckart Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit: Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik (Munich: Blessing, 2010), pp. 165–6; Sebastian Weitkamp, ‘Kooperativtäter – die Beteiligung des Auswärtigen Amtes an der NS-Gewaltpolitik jenseits der “Endlösung”’, in Hürter and Mayer, Das Auswärtige Amt und die NS-Diktatur, pp. 197–217, here pp. 213–15; Browning, ‘Unterstaatssekretär Martin Luther’, pp. 327–8; Weinke, Die Verfolgung von NS-Tätern, pp. 258–86.

6.For the recent controversies on continuities and change in the German Foreign Service before and after 1945, see Conze, Das Amt und die Vergangenheit; Martin Sabrow and Christian Mentel (eds), Das Auswärtige Amt und seine umstrittene Vergangenheit: Eine deutsche Debatte (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2013); Johannes Hürter and Michael Mayer (eds), Das Auswärtige Amt in der NS-Diktatur (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014); Thomas W. Maulucci, ‘German Diplomats and the Myth of the Two Foreign Offices’, in David Messenger and Katrin Paehler (eds), A Nazi Past: Recasting German Identity in Postwar Europe (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2015), pp. 139–67. In all four publications the SA diplomats are dealt with in a few footnotes, if they are mentioned at all.

7.In this respect it is worth remembering that for Hitler and his generation the establishment of a military dictatorship during the First World War under the two Supreme Army Commanders Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff had constituted a central element of their political socialization. Hitler consistently tried to avoid situations that could lead to greater independence of the military to the detriment of the NSDAP’s ideological goals.

8.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 98 (entry from 13 November 1941). Luther was promoted to the rank of SA-Brigade General in 1942. For details about Luther and his central role at the Foreign Office, see Christopher Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland 1940–1943 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978); idem, ‘Unterstaatssekretär Martin Luther’; Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich: Diplomatie im Schatten der ‘Endlösung’ (Berlin: Siedler, 1987), pp. 205–7; idem, ‘Martin Luther – Aufstieg und Fall eines Unterstaatssekretärs’, in Ronald Smelser, Enrico Syring, and Rainer Zitelmann (eds), Die braune Elite II (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993), pp. 179–92.

9.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 9 (entry from 27 July 1941). For early career diplomats’ criticism of ‘party mercenaries’, see also Maulucci, ‘German Diplomats and the Myth of the Two Foreign Offices’, p. 146.

10.After the war Beckerle emphasized his family, religious, and patriotic background. See Weinke, Die Verfolgung von NS-Tätern im Geteilten Deutschland, p. 264.

11.See, for example, his diary entries from 25 January 1942, 5 February 1942, and 6 March 1943: PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, pp. 143 and 150; idem, vol. 59/3 (Personal Notes of the Ambassador Adolf-Heinz Beckerle II: 17 February 1943–9 August 1944), p. 9. Similarly, Siegfried Kasche had a golden notebook in which he noted his maxims and reflect-ions, covering the years 1938 to 1944; PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 24.

12.Heinz Edelmann [Adolf-Heinz Beckerle], Wir wollten arbeiten: Erlebnisse deutscher Auswanderer in Südamerika (Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg, 1942). This book tells the story of one individual’s fate while also charting the general political developments of the time: the main character decides to return to Germany precisely when he receives the news of Hitler’s release from prison.

13.Email from Henning von Jagow to the author, 5 April 2015.

14.On these journeys von Killinger was accompanied by Edmund Veesenmayer, who later became his rival, and by his SA comrade Willy Roedel, who would later become his right-hand man in Bratislava and Bucharest. In Romania, Roedel also built the national branch of the Deutscher Informationsdienst III, von Ribbentrop’s personal intelligence service within the Foreign Office. See Igor-Philip Matić, Edmund Veesenmayer: Agent und Diplomat der nationalsozialistischen Expansionspolitik (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002), pp. 91–4; Khristoforov, Oberfiurer SA Villi Redel, pp. 48–55.

15.Strictly speaking, von Killinger only partly belonged to the group of SA diplomats appointed to their posts for political reasons in 1940–1, as he seems to have been a Versorgungsfall, an accomplished party leader in need of a suitable position who kept aloof from politics. He was born in 1886 and was therefore, on average, fifteen years older than his fellow SA generals. His publications from the Weimar years testify to his mercenary mentality; see Manfred von Killinger, Ernstes und Heiteres aus dem Putschleben (Berlin: Vormarsch, 1928); idem, Die SA in Wort und Bild(Leipzig: Kittler, 1933). For details on von Killinger’s political career in Saxony during the 1930s, see Andreas Wagner, Mutschmann gegen von Killinger: Konfliktlinien zwischen Gauleiter und SA-Führer während des Aufstiegs der NSDAP und der ‘Machtergreifung’ im Freistaat Sachsen(Beucha: Sax, 2001); on other aspects of his life, see the detailed but overly sympathetic portrait by Bert Wawrzinek, Manfred von Killinger (1886–1944): Ein politischer Soldat zwischen Freikorps und Auswärtigem Amt (Preußisch Oldendorf: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003).

16.They thus formed a particular kind of ‘elite network’ that Rüdiger Hachtmann has recently referred to as the ‘lubricating oil of the NS system’. See Rüdiger Hachtmann, ‘Allerorten Mobilisierung? Vorschläge, wie mit Schlagworten in der Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der NS-Diktatur umzugehen ist’, in Oliver Werner (ed.), Mobilisierung im Nationalsozialismus: Institutionen und Regionen in der Kriegswirtschaft und der Verwaltung des ‘Dritten Reiches’ 1936 bis 1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2013), pp. 69–85, here pp. 79–83.

17.Henning von Jagow remembers a trip his family took to Styria with the Kasche family in the early 1940s, as well as family holidays with the Ludin children after the Second World War. Erla Ludin was his godmother. He also remembers that Kasche’s widow later repeatedly visited the von Jagow family in Dingelsdorf on Lake Constance.

18.See the correspondence in PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 3.

19.See also the memorandum of a meeting between 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.

20.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 69 (entry from 4 October 1941). According to Rosenberg’s diary, he had initially recommended Erich Koch, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, for this post. See Matthäus and Bajohr (eds), Alfred Rosenberg: Die Tagebücher, pp. 397–9 (entry from 20 July 1941). Rosenberg and Kasche met ‘for a first detailed conference on the future Reichskommissariat Russland’ in late September. See ibid., p. 424.

21.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 73 (entry from 10 October 1941). In contrast, von Jagow’s son Henning von Jagow, born in 1934, remembers the years in Hungary as ‘happy times’ for his parents. However, because of the many social obligations of the German ambassador, he and his siblings ‘often missed their parents’ and were raised primarily by a governess; email from Henning von Jagow to the author, 5 April 2015.

22.Ibid.

23.See Michael Wildt, An Uncompromising Generation: The Nazi Leadership of the Reich Security Main Office (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010) (first published in German as Generation des Unbedingten: Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002).

24.BArch Berlin, NS 19/2798, pp. 1–3: Letter from SS-Brigadeführer Gottlob Berger to Himmler, 17 April 1941. On this point, see also Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich, pp. 205–6; Browning, ‘Unterstaatssekretär Martin Luther’, p. 327.

25.After the war, Fritz von Twardowsky was appointed vice-director of the Bundespresseamt (Federal Press Office) in 1950 and served as ambassador to Mexico from 1952 to 1955. Noteworthy in this context is a book that von Twardowsky published shortly before his death, at the age of eighty: Fritz von Twardowsky, Anfänge der deutschen Kulturpolitik im Ausland (Bonn: Inter Nationes, 1970).

26.The memoirs of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, a Wehrmacht general, former vice-chancellor of Austria, and plenipotentiary general in the Independent State of Croatia, confirm this information. According to von Horstenau, Lutze had complained to von Ribbentrop that only SS men were being enlisted in the service of the Foreign Office. Von Ribbentrop had then agreed to appoint four high-ranking SA men as envoys. See Horstenau, Ein General im Zwielicht, vol. 3, p. 91. On Horstenau, see also Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg, ‘“From My Point of View, I Never Ceased Being a Good Austrian”: The Ideology and Career of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau’, in Martyn Rady and Rebecca Haynes (eds), In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 313–28.

27.BArch Berlin, NS 19/3872, pp. 1–2: Letter from SS-Brigadeführer Gottlob Berger to Himmler, 26 April 1941.

28.For a detailed analysis, see chapter 7.

29.Horstenau, Ein General im Zwielicht, vol. 3, pp. 188–9. Theodor Habicht, the former NSDAP Landesinspektor for Austria, confirmed this view. In a diary entry he noted that Himmler and Rosenberg would have an ‘open conflict’ because of the latter’s ‘leaning’ on the SA (BArch-Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau, MSg 2/12955, Diary of Theodor Habicht, entry from 7 July 1941). I am grateful to Felix Römer, London, for providing me with extracts of Habicht’s diaries. On the continuing close relations between Rosenberg and the SA, see also RGVA, Osobyi Archives, Fond 1212, Opis 2, no. 17, pp. 47–50: Protocol of a meeting between SA-Obergruppenführer Luyken and Dr Stellrecht in the Dienststelle Reichsleiter Rosenberg, 19 July 1943.

30.An English translation of this memorandum (Nuremberg document 221-L) is printed in full in U.S. Government Printing Office, Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945: Series D, vol. 13, pp. 149–56.

31.Memorandum of a meeting between Hitler, Rosenberg, Göring, and Field Marshal Keitel in the Führer’s headquarters, 16 July 1941, p. 150.

32.On Schepmann’s and Bennecke’s biographies, see the information provided in the previous chapters. On Manthey, see Joachim Lilla, Martin Döring, and Andreas Schulz (eds), Statisten in Uniform: Die Mitglieder des Reichstags 1933–1945: Ein biographisches Handbuch: Unter Einbeziehung der völkischen und nationalsozialistischen Reichstagsabgeordneten ab Mai 1924(Düsseldorf: Droste, 2004), p. 399. On Drechsler, see Sven Jüngerkes, ‘Bürokratie als Stabilisierungs- und Destabilisierungsmechanismus: Das “Reichskommissariat für das Ostland” 1941–1944’, in Sven Reichardt and Wolfgang Seibel (eds), Der prekäre Staat: Herrschen und Verwalten im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2010), pp. 275–98, here p. 279, with further references.

33.Memorandum of a meeting between Hitler, Rosenberg, Göring, and Field Marshal Keitel in the Führer’s headquarters, 16 July 1941, p. 153.

34.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: Dr Otto, ‘SA-Obergruppenführer und Diplomat’ (autumn 1941). Mark Mazower has recently argued that the Nazi idea of a European ‘community of peoples’ has to be seen as a deliberate attempt to overcome the contractions of the League of Nations when it came to matters of minority rights and national sovereignty, and that it was more strongly rooted in traditional ideas of international law than is usually claimed; Mark Mazower, ‘National Socialism and the Search for International Order’, Bulletin of the GHI 50 (2012), pp. 9–26.

35.BArch Berlin, NS 23/166: Letter from SA-Gruppenführer Thomas Girgensohn to OSAF Schrifttum, 10 November 1941.

36.This view was shared by von Horstenau, who saw Kasche’s appointment as envoy to Croatia as a herald of the ‘Reichskommissariat Kroatien’. See Horstenau, Ein General im Zwielicht, vol. 3, p. 90.

37.Memorandum of a meeting between Hitler, Rosenberg, Göring, and Field Marshal Keitel in the Führer’s headquarters, 16 July 1941, p. 150.

38.On von Jagow’s activities in the spring of 1933, see HStA Stuttgart (Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart), E 130 b Bü 1859.

39.On von Jagow as Reichskommissar in Württemberg, see Jill Stephenson, Hitler’s Home Front: Württemberg under the Nazis (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), pp. 42–3; Hachmann, ‘Der “Degen”’, pp. 277–9. On Beckerle as police president, see Meinl, ‘Adolf Heinz Beckerle’.

40.As quoted in von Horstenau, Ein General im Zwielicht, vol. 3, p. 90.

41.In addition to the following landmark studies (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews [London: W. H. Allen, 1961]; Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 [New York: HarperCollins, 1997], vol. 2: The Years of Extermination[New York: HarperCollins, 2007]; Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung [Munich: Piper, 1998]), notable exceptions include the comparative studies by Martin Dean, Robbing the Jews: The Confiscation of Jewish Property in the Holocaust, 1933–1945 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Christopher Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt: Das Referat D III der Abteilung Deutschland 1940–1943 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010) [first published in English as The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office]; Eduard Nižňanský, ‘The Discussions of Nazi Germany on the Deportation of Jews in 1942 – The Examples of Slovakia, Rumania and Hungary’, in Historický časopis 59 (2011), Supplement, pp. 111–36. See also Max Münz’s pioneering but nowadays forgotten dissertation dealing with the legal consequences of German policies toward its eastern European allies: Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland während der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft, inaugural diss., Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität zu Frankfurt am Main, 1958.

42.See esp. Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei 1939–1945: Politischer Alltag zwischen Kooperation und Eigensinn (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003), pp. 335–9.

43.Dean, Robbing the Jews, pp. 317–22.

44.Nižňanský, ‘The Discussions of Nazi Germany on the Deportation of Jews in 1942’, p. 112.

45.See esp. Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, pp. 143–74.

46.Jozef Tiso, Die Wahrheit über die Slowakei: Verteidigungsrede gehalten am 17. und 18. März 1947 vor dem ‘National’-Gericht in Bratislava, ed. by Jon Sekera (published ‘in exile’, 1948), p. 48.

47.Lotte Weiss, Meine zwei Leben: Erinnerungen einer Holocaust-Überlebenden (Münster: Lit, 2010), pp. 176–7.

48.Tiso, Die Wahrheit über die Slowakei, p. 167.

49.Dean, Robbing the Jews, pp. 319–20.

50.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, pp. 52–6, here p. 54: Testimony made under oath by Aron Grünhut, 13 January 1960; Oskar Neumann, Im Schatten des Todes: Vom Schicksalskampf des slowakischen Judentums (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1956), p. 53.

51.Cable of Ludin to the German Foreign Office, 4 December 1941, in Nižňanský (ed.), Holokaust na Slovensku, vol. 4, pp. 111–12.

52.Neumann, Im Schatten des Todes, pp. 67, 96–8. In August 1944 the FS was integrated into the Heimatschutz Slowakei; StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 4, p. 780: Testimony of Walter Postl, 23 June 1967.

53.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 103–5: Testimony of Ferdinand Durcansky, 28 February 1964; StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, p. 86: Verbal note from the Deutsche Gesandtschaft Bratislava to the Slovakian Ministry of the Interior, 1 May 1942.

54.Cable from Ludin to the German Foreign Office, 6 April 1942, in Nižňanský (ed.), Holokaust na Slovensku, vol. 4, p. 127.

55.Nižňanský, ‘The Discussions of Nazi Germany on the Deportation of Jews in 1942’, p. 119.

56.Ibid., p. 120.

57.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 34–6: Letter from Franz Karmasin to Heinrich Himmler, 29 July 1942.

58.Ibid., p. 135: Notation of the Staatsanwaltschaft München, 10 July 1964. Wisliceny’s counterpart in Slovakia was the ‘Jew king’ Anton Vosek, head of Department XIV of the Slovak Ministry of the Interior; Neumann, Im Schatten des Todes, p. 65. On the role of the SS advisors in Slovakia – but without any reference to Ludin – see Tatjana Tönsmeyer, ‘The German Advisors in Slovakia, 1939–1945: Conflict of Co-operation?’, in Mark Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans (eds), Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe 1918–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 169–84.

59.PAAA, Personalakten, no. 9246, p. 40: Cable from the Foreign Office to Ludin, 26 July 1944. It is not clear when precisely this meeting took place.

60.Dean, Robbing the Jews, p. 324; StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften München, no. 34835, vol. 2, pp. 257–8: Notation of the Bavarian Landeskriminalamt München, 8 January 1965.

61.In October 1938 the party changed its name to Deutsche Partei.

62.After 1945, Karmasin took refuge in the American sector of occupied Germany, initially living under a false name. The Bratislava People’s Court sentenced him to death (in absentia) on 22 June 1948. However, the German authorities did not hand him over, and in the West, Karmasin made a second career as a journalist and a functionary of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, an expellee organization of the Slovakian Germans. Rumours in post-war Germany claimed that he had received substantial help from former SA-Obersturmbannführer Hans Gmelin, Ludin’s adjutant at the German Embassy in Bratislava between 1941 and 1945 and from 1954 to 1974 the elected mayor of Tübingen. Karmasin, who was also a member of the revanchist Witikobund, escaped punishment and died a free man on 25 June 1970. For details on his life, see Lubomir Lipták, Franz Karmasin opät na scene (Bratislava: Vyd-vo Polit. Lit., 1962), as well as the extensive files of the Munich prosecutor in StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vols 1–33.

63.Wagner, Sudeten SA in Polen.

64.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 12–19: BDC-Documents of Franz Karmasin.

65.In this respect, see also StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, pp. 52–6: Testimony made under oath by Aron Grünhut, 13 January 1960.

66.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 21808, pp. 34–6: Letter from Franz Karmasin to Heinrich Himmler, 29 July 1942.

67.Such an interpretation is in line with Ludin’s defence strategy after the war; see StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 3, p. 560: Testimony of Norbert Münz, 14 October 1965. For Karmasin’s view, see StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 5, pp. 1,215–16: Testimony of Franz Karmasin, 28 October 1969.

68.StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 1, p. 86: Verbal note from the Deutsche Gesandtschaft Bratislava to the Slovakian Ministry of the Interior, 1 May 1942.

69.Ibid., vol. 6, p. 1,290: Testimony of Josef Hotovy, 14 November 1969. Contrary to my findings, Ludin’s proxy Hans Gmelin in 1970 claimed that Ludin had threatened to resign and volunteer for service at the front lines once Tiso had informed him about the systematic killing of the Jews in 1942. See StA München, Staatsanwaltschaften, no. 34835, vol. 6, p. 1,454: Testimony of Hans Gmelin, 5 March 1970.

70.Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, pp. 111–12. For a contrary judgement, see Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, p. 280.

71.Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, p. 280. Such literary comparisons were not limited to Kasche, however. Rudolf Rahn in Italy, for example, was known as the ‘Karl May of the diplomats’; see Lutz Klinkhammer, Zwischen Bündnis und Besatzung: Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Republik von Salò 1943–1945 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993), p. 142. For Hitler’s and Kasche’s views on Croatian politics, views that slowly drifted apart in 1943 and 1944, see in particular Kasche’s memos on his meetings with Hitler on 29 October 1943, 30 March 1944, and 16 September 1944, in PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 23, pp. 5–17.

72.Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, pp. 280–1; Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, pp. 195–6. For a detailed discussion of the nature of the Ustaša regime’s antisemitism, see ibid., pp. 136–46.

73.A detailed discussion of the Ustaša regime’s atrocities and Kasche’s benevolence toward the Croatian position is beyond the reach of this study. See the excellent analysis by Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Ivo Goldstein, The Holocaust in Croatia (Pittsburgh, PA: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016); and Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, as well as the more partisan account of Lazo M. Kostich, The Holocaust in the ‘Independent State of Croatia’: An Account Based on German, Italian and Other Sources (Chicago, IL: Liberty, 1981), pp. 6–7, 43–6, 145–6.

74.For Kasche’s perspective on this meeting, see his telegram to the Foreign Office of 4 June 1941, in Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Series D, vol. XII: 1937–1941 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), pp. 796–8.

75.Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, p. 204, with further references.

76.Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office, p. 93.

77.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 209.

78.Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs, p. 413.

79.Ibid., p. 419.

80.Conze et al., Das Amt und die Vergangenheit, pp. 280–1.

81.For a detailed discussion (with slightly lower figures for those deported and killed in Auschwitz), see Tomislav Dulić, ‘Mass Killing in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945: A Case for Comparative Research’, Journal of Genocide Research 8:3 (2006), pp. 255–81.

82.Gerhard Köpernik, Faschisten im KZ: Rumäniens Eiserne Garde und das Dritte Reich (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2014), pp. 97–103; Andrej Angrick, ‘Rumänien, die SS und die Vernichtung der Juden’, in Mariana Hausleitner, Brigitte Mihok, and Juliane Wetzel (eds), Rumänien und der Holocaust: Zu den Massenverbrechen in Transnistrien 1941–1944 (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), pp. 113–38, here p. 122; Michael Kroner, ‘Ahnungslosigkeit oder Hochverrat? Manfred von Killinger in Bukarest 1941–1944’, Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter: Zeitschrift für Literatur und Kunst, Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte 43 (1994), pp. 123–32.

83.Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Series D, vol. XII: 1937–1941, pp. 11, 18–20, 140–4. See also Antonescu’s letter to von Killinger from 25 February 1941, in IfZ Archiv, Bestand Reichsführer-SS, MA 325, vol. 1, pp. 9,017–19.

84.Wawrzinek, Manfred von Killinger, p. 210.

85.Ion Georghe, Rumäniens Weg zum Satellitenstaat (Heidelberg: Vowinckel, 1952), pp. 124–8; Kroner, ‘Ahnungslosigkeit oder Hochverrat?’, p. 124.

86.Based on, among other things, the diary entries of Romanian politicians, the German-Romanian historian Michael Kroner has suggested that von Killinger might have been involved in negotiations between the Romanian government and the Allies, and therefore may have deliberately misinformed the Foreign Office. However, this thesis seems largely based on unsubstantiated speculation. See Kroner, ‘Ahnungslosigkeit oder Hochverrat?’, pp. 124–8.

87.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 144.

88.On Richter, Lecca, and their relationship, see Dennis Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally: Ion Antonescu and His Regime, Romania, 1940–1944 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 113, 121–2.

89.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 164.

90.Wolfgang Benz, ‘Der “vergessene Holocaust”: Der Sonderfall Rumänien: Okkupation und Verfolgung von Minderheiten im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel, Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 9–13.

91.Jews were not the only victims of this policy of forced homogenization. Up to 30,000 Romani people were also deported to Transnistria, the majority of whom did not survive. See Brigitte Mihok, ‘Die Verfolgung der Roma: Ein verdrängtes Kapitel der rumänischen Geschichte’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel, Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 25–31.

92.Mariana Hausleitner, ‘Großverbrechen im rumänischen Transnistrien 1941–1944’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel, Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 15–24; Dalia Ofer, ‘The Holocaust in Transnistria: A Special Case of Genocide’, in Lucjan Dobroszycki and Jeffrey S. Gurock (eds), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945 (New York: Sharpe, 1993), pp. 133–54. Ofer also discusses the fate of the local Jews of Transnistria, the vast majority of whom were killed by German Einsatzgruppen in the first days of the occupation.

93.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, p. 165.

94.Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, pp. 163–4; Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 205–29.

95.Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 213–14.

96.Richter had used this term as early as April 1942 in an article in the Bukarester Tageblatt; see Lya Benjamin, ‘Die “Judenfrage” in Rumänien im Spiegel des “Bukarester Tageblatts”’, in Hausleitner, Mihok, and Wetzel (eds), Rumänien und der Holocaust, pp. 139–52, here p. 141.

97.As quoted in Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, pp. 210–11.

98.However, in the spring of 1943, von Killinger intervened on behalf of the Reich to prevent the emigration of Jewish children from Romania; see Deletant, Hitler’s Forgotten Ally, p. 216.

99.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 156 (entry from 19 February 1942).

100.IfZ Archiv, Bestand Befehlshaber Serbien, MA 512, pp. 917–18: Cable from Beckerle to the Foreign Office, 27 July 1941.

101.Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), p. 48.

102.Stefan Troebst, ‘Rettung, Überleben oder Vernichtung? Geschichtspolitische Kontroversen über Bulgarien und den Holocaust’, Südosteuropa: Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft 59:1 (2011), pp. 97–127, here pp. 104–5; Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, p. 172.

103.Dean, Robbing the Jews, pp. 335–7.

104.Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, pp. 51 and 69.

105.Browning, Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Auswärtige Amt, pp. 172–3; Chary, The bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, pp. 72–3.

106.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 313 (entry from 16 February 1943).

107.Dean, Robbing the Jews, p. 339.

108.Beckerle’s diary entry from 3 March 1943, in which he summarizes a talk with Dannecker, makes it plain that he had been informed about these deportation plans and approved of them: ‘Starting on 15 March, eight trains shall leave, deporting 20,000 Jews (2,500 per train). As it will not completely work out, 2,000 Jews from Sofia shall be included. It is thought best to deport the most influential Jews who always create trouble when it comes to Aryanizations. I disapprove of resorting to Sofia, as this will make a lot of noise and endangers the whole action for the future. First, away with the other Jews, and afterwards, [we deport] all Jews from Sofia together!’; PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 7 (entry from 3 March 1943).

109.Todorov Tzvetan, The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews Survived the Holocaust (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), pp. 8–11.

110.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 48 (entry from 10 May 1943).

111.Todorov, The Fragility of Goodness, p. 13; PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 80 (entry from 21 July 1943).

112.Christian Neef, ‘Die schlimmste Stunde’, Der Spiegel, 24 October 2011, http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-81136856.html.

113.‘Streiflichter aus Litzmannstadt’, in Rudolf von Elmayer-Veestenbrugg (ed.), SA-Männer im feldgrauen Rock: Taten und Erlebnisse von SA-Männern in den Kriegsjahren 1939–1940 (Leipzig: v. Hase & Koehler, 1941), pp. 30–4, here pp. 31–2. Beckerle’s obsession with ‘Jewish dirt’ did not prevent him from moving into an ‘Aryanized’ villa in Frankfurt by the end of the 1930s; see Meinl, ‘Adolf Heinz Beckerle’.

114.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, pp. 150 and 217 (entries from 4 February and 20 August 1942).

115.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 67 (entry from 19 June 1943).

116.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, pp. 86 and 235 (entries from 26 October 1941 and 15 September 1942). According to his diaries, Beckerle often slept late and spent whole days sunbathing on his terrace.

117.PAAA, Personalakten, no. 647, pp. 27–9: SD-Report to the Foreign Office on the flight of the Germans from Bulgaria, 18 December 1944.

118.On von Jagow’s biography, see the very well-informed article by Hachmann, ‘Der “Degen”’, pp. 267–87.

119.Even in wartime, life as a German diplomat in Hungary between 1941 and early 1944 was not unpleasant. In late August 1941 von Jagow demanded additional funds to buy ‘greater amounts of food, drinks and tobacco’ from one of the free ports of Hamburg, Lisbon, or Trieste, as luxury goods of sufficient quality were not available in Hungary; PAAA, Personalakten, no. 6681, p. 15: Letter from von Jagow to the Foreign Office, 30 August 1941.

120.Hachmann, ‘Der “Degen”’, p. 284.

121.The German deliberations on this matter also included financial considerations. A partial deportation – in which all ‘illegal’ Jews in Hungary were deported – would require as many resources as a total deportation, Eichmann argued. See Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, p. 524.

122.Münz, Die Verantwortlichkeit für die Judenverfolgungen im Ausland, pp. 180–95. See also Veesenmayer’s memorandum from April 1943, in Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918–1945, Series E, vol. XI: 1941–1945, pp. 78–80.

123.There were important exceptions, however, as Hungary deported Jews who did not hold Hungarian citizenship as early as 1941. Best-known in this regard is the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre of late August 1941, in which German Einsatzgruppen and SS forces in Ukraine murdered more than 20,000 Jews previously deported from Hungary. See Andrej Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord: Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003), pp. 196–206; Randolph L. Braham, ‘The Kamenets Podolsk and Délvidék Massacres: Prelude to the Holocaust in Hungary’, Yad Vashem Studies 9 (1973), pp. 133–56.

124.Margit Szöllösi-Janze, Die Pfeilkreuzlerbewegung in Ungarn: Historischer Kontext, Entwicklung und Herrschaft (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), pp. 426 and 432.

125.Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, p. 530; Randolph L. Braham, The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry: A Documentary Account (New York: Pro Arte, 1963), p. 160. This was a consequence of von Ribbentrop’s demand that diplomatic efforts to start the deportation of all Jews from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Denmark be intensified; see the note from Luther to Weizäcker from 24 September 1942, in ibid., p. 133.

126.Ibid., pp. 165–71; Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung, p. 530.

127.See the information provided in Veesenmayer’s personnel file at the Foreign Office in PAAA, Personalakten, no. 15789. When paying his first official visit to the king, Veesenmayer expressed the expectation that the Hungarians would fight side by side with the Germans and, after the ‘elimination of all subversive elements that threatened the people of Hungary and its state’ (nach Ausschaltung aller staats- und volkszersetzender Elemente), a phrase referring to the Jews, would ultimately win the war. See ibid., p. 30.

128.Krisztian Ungváry, ‘Robbing the Dead: The Hungarian Contribution to the Holocaust’, in Beata Kosmala and Feliks Tych (eds), Facing the Nazi Genocide: Non-Jews and Jews in Europe (Berlin: Metropol, 2004), pp. 231–61, here pp. 231–3.

129.Figures according to Szöllösi-Janze, Die Pfeilkreuzlerbewegung in Ungarn, p. 426.

130.After leaving Hungary in the spring of 1944, von Jagow’s wife and seven children, including a recently born baby, moved from Budapest to the shores of Lake Balaton and then to the more secure Groß-Münche in the Warthegau. It seems likely that the mansion the family inhabited there was one of the estates the SA had acquired in the early 1940s with the intent of transforming it into an SA leadership school after the war (see also chapter 7), but further research is needed to verify this. With the Russian troops approaching, the von Jagow family in late 1944 or early 1945 fled to Berlin and then to the city of Constance in March 1945. I would like to thank Henning von Jagow for his patience in answering my questions on his family’s history in the last months of the war.

131.Erich Murawski, Der deutsche Wehrmachtsbericht 1939–1945: Ein Beitrag zur Untersuchung der geistigen Kriegsführung: Mit einer Dokumentation der Wehrmachtsberichte vom 1.7.1944 bis zum 9.5.1945 (Boppard am Rhein: Boldt, 1962), pp. 443–4.

132.Klinkhammer, Zwischen Bündnis und Besatzung, pp. 148–50.

133.Hachmann, ‘Der “Degen”’, p. 286; Rudolf Rahn, Ruheloses Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen (Stuttgart and Zurich: Europäischer Buchklub, 1951), p. 440; email from Henning von Jagow to the author, 5 April 2015.

134.Moshe Zimmermann, ‘Das Auswärtige Amt und der Holocaust’, in Johannes Hürter and Michael Mayer (eds), Das Auswärtige Amt in der NS-Diktatur (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014), pp. 165–76, here p. 173.

135.Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, p. 390.

136.Horstenau, Ein General im Zwielicht, vol. 3, p. 90. See also Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich, p. 206, with further references.

137.Horstenau, Ein General im Zwielicht, vol. 3, p. 91.

138.An extensive discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this book. See the instructive remarks on the necessity of such an approach in Magnus Brechtken, ‘Auswärtiges Amt, Sicherheitsdienst und Reichssicherheitshauptamt 1933 bis 1942’, in Das Auswärtige Amt in der NS-Diktatur, ed. Hürter and Mayer, pp. 151–64, here pp. 163–4.

139.See, among others, the detailed analysis of Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, ‘Die Neuordnung in Rumänien und die Legionärsbewegung Codreanus’, Die SA 1:38 (1940), pp. 6–12.

140.Wagner, Sudeten SA in Polen, unpaginated.

141.IfZ Archiv, Bestand Sicherheitsdienst Reichsführer-SS, MA 650, pp. 4,982–8: SD-Report from SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Börsch on the political situation in Slovakia, 1943.

142.PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/2, p. 156 (entry from 19 February 1942).

143.See Kasche’s detailed justification of his position in a letter to von Ribbentrop from 5 November 1943, in PAAA, Personal Papers of Siegfried Kasche, vol. 23, pp. 26–30, esp. pp. 27–8.

144.As quoted in Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, p. 75. For Beckerle’s naive trust in his Bulgarian counterparts, see PAAA, Gesandtschaft Sofia, vol. 59/3, p. 4 (entries from 23 and 24 February 1943).

145.See Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries.

146.Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich, pp. 256–61.

147.PAAA, Personalakten, no. 9246, pp. 54–6: Göpfert to the German Foreign Office, 27 October 1944.

148.Kroner, ‘Ahnungslosigkeit oder Hochverrat?’, p. 131.

149.For the verdict, see USHMM, RG-57.004: Selected Records of Trials of the National Court of Slovakia, Including the Jozef Tiso Trial, 1910–1975. On these trials, see also Bradley Abrams, ‘The Politics of Retribution: The Trial of Jozef Tiso in the Czechoslovak Environment’, in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (eds), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 252–89.

150.For the verdict against Kasche, see HDA, HR-HDA-1561, Sg 013.0.47, File Slavko Kvaternik and others. The bill of indictment against Kasche, written by Jakov Blazevic, the chief prosecutor of the People’s Republic of Croatia, accused him of having contributed to ‘the physical destruction of our peoples and the looting of our property’. More precisely, it mentioned his role in the infamous conference held at the German Embassy on 4 June 1941, as well as his contribution to the ‘organization of terror, arrest and torture of the Yugoslav Jews’. Kasche was also held responsible for his collaboration with the Ustaša in the persecution of Communists and for the formation of so-called volunteer brigades that fought on the side of the Germans in the Second World War. I am grateful to Bojan Aleksov in London for his help in translating relevant passages of these documents.

151.PAAA, Personalakten, no. 647, pp. 23–4: Information provided by the Swiss Embassy, 5 October 1944; ‘Russians Arrest Nazi Ministers’, Manchester Guardian, 22 September 1944, p. 5.

152.Meinl, ‘Adolf Heinz Beckerle’; Neef, ‘Die schlimmste Stunde’.

153.For details on Beckerle’s trials, see Weinke, Die Verfolgung von NS-Tätern, pp. 258–86; Meinl, ‘Adolf Heinz Beckerle’.

154.The surviving members of the von Jagow and Ludin families still keep in touch today. After the war, the Ludin children spent several summer holidays at the von Jagow family home near Dingelsdorf on Lake Constance, and the von Jagows visited the Ludins at the (now demolished) Schlösslehof near Ostrach in Upper Swabia; email from Henning von Jagow to the author, 5 April 2015.

155.Malte Ludin, 2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß, BRD, 2005. See also Régine-Mihal Friedman, ‘All About My Mother – On Malte Ludin’s Film 2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß (2005)’, in José Brunner (ed.), Mütterliche Macht und väterliche Autorität: Elternbilder im deutschen Diskurs (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), pp. 152–81.

156.For the long-term impact of this ‘family heritage’, see also the book by Ludin’s granddaughter Alexandra Senfft, Schweigen tut weh: Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte (Hamburg: Classen, 2007).

157.Ernst von Salomon, Der Fragebogen, 19th edn (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011), pp. 635–68.

158.Malte Ludin, ‘Hanns Elard Ludin’. For a detailed and convincing analysis of Salomon’s novel and the reasons for its success in the early 1950s, see Parkinson, An Emotional State, pp. 73–111 (on Ludin, see pp. 102–3). For a general analysis of this intergenerational phenomenon, see Harald Welzer, Opa war kein Nazi: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002). Interestingly, even recent historical scholarship tends to see Ludin as a comparatively ‘moderate’ figure, ignoring his vital role in the Holocaust in Slovakia. See Tatjana Tönsmeyer, ‘Von der Schutzfreundschaft zur Okkupationsmacht: Die Wahrnehmung des deutschen Einflusses durch die slowakische Elite’, in Monika Glettler, L’ubomír Lipták, and Alena Míškova (eds), Geteilt, besetzt, beherrscht: Die Tschechoslowakei 1938–1945: Reichsgau Sudetenland, Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, Slowakei (Essen: Klartext, 2004), pp. 311–25, here p. 316.

159.Letter from Dr Carola Wolf to Henning von Jagow, 23 January 2003, as quoted in an email from Henning von Jagow to the author, 5 April 2015.

160.In this context Ernst von Weizäcker is the most prominent case. For a balanced assessment, see Lars Lüdicke, ‘Offizier und Diplomat: Ernst von Weizäcker im Kaiserreich, Weimarer Republik und “Drittem Reich”’, in Jan Erik Schulte and Michael Wala (eds), Widerstand und Auswärtiges Amt: Diplomaten gegen Hitler (Munich: Siedler, 2013), pp. 225–49.

161.PAAA, B 83, no. 761: Letter from Hans Kasche to the Ministry of Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany, 10 January 1954. I am grateful to Annette Weinke, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, for directing me to this document.

162.StA München, Spruchkammerakten, K 843, p. 70: Letter from Hans Kasche to Berufungskammer München, 16 September 1954.

163.See the two verdicts from 1954 in StA München, Spruchkammerakten, K 843. For the German authorities, the 1947 verdict of the Croatian State Court was irrelevant. In such cases, ‘substantial legal guarantees’ of the defendants had not been granted, the Foreign Office informed the Kasche family. See StA München, Spruchkammerakten, K 843, p. 67: Letter from the Foreign Office to Hans Kasche, 23 February 1954.

164.On Kiesinger’s time in the Foreign Office, see Philipp Gassert, Kurt Georg Kiesinger 1904–1988: Kanzler zwischen den Zeiten (Munich: DVA, 2006), pp. 105–49.

165.PAAA, B 83, no. 761: Letter from Hans-Günther Kasche to Willy Brandt, 16 May 1968.

Chapter 10

1.Hans Rosenthal, ‘Das gibt’s nur einmal – Noten, die verboten wurden’, as quoted in Thomas Henschke, Hans Rosenthal: Ein Leben für die Unterhaltung (Berlin: Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, 1999), p. 161.

2.See Almut Giesecke, ‘Nachwort’, in Hans Fallada, Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Berlin: Aufbau, 2013), pp. 687–99; Carsten Gansel and Werner Liersch (eds), Zeit vergessen, Zeit erinnern: Hans Fallada und das kulturelle Gedächtnis (Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2008).

3.This holds true even if one considers that Fallada had actually written his novel accepting a suggestion by Johannes R. Becher, the president of the ‘Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands’ and, from 1954, the GDR’s first culture secretary (Minister für Kultur).

4.For a general assessment of this aspect of post-war (West) Germany, see Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), first published in German as Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (Munich: Beck, 1996).

5.UAK, Archives, Zugang 726 (Theodor Klefisch), File 2, no. 11: Affidavit of the merchant and former SA man Dietrich Bölken, 8 June 1946; File 3, no. 37: Affidavit of the railroad employee and former SA man Reiner Pittinger, 7 June 1946.

6.See also the introduction to this book.

7.This title alludes to Eugen Kogon’s eye-opening 1946 analysis, Der SS-Staat.

8.See, above all, the expert opinions of Buchheim and Broszat in Anatomie des SS-Staates, pp. 218–25, 336–51.

9.Lawrence Douglas, ‘The Didactic Trial: Filtering History and Memory into the Courtroom’, European Review 14:4 (2006), pp. 513–22, here p. 514.

10.Article 6 of the Agreement for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis, and Charter of the International Military Tribunal, London, 8 August 1945; http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/350. On the legal aspects of the ‘crimes against humanity’ category, see also the detailed analysis by Daniel Marc Segesser, ‘Der Tatbestand Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit’, in Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller (eds), NMT: Die Nürnberger Militärtribunale zwischen Geschichte, Gerechtigkeit und Rechtsschöpfung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013), pp. 586–604.

11.Initially, only those members of the SA who by the end of the war held the rank of Sturmbannführer or higher were to be arrested and detained by the Allied forces. By late 1944 the number of those stormtroopers was expected to total about 30,000 men; US Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair: Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (ed.), Handbook for Military Government in Germany prior to Defeat or Surrender (December 1944), unpaginated, http://www.history.army.mil/reference/Finding%20Aids/Mil_gov.pdf.

12.Statement of the President of the IMT, Geoffrey Lawrence, 30 September, in Secretariat of the Tribunal under the Jurisdiction of the Allied Control Authority for Germany (ed.) (hereafter Secretariat of the Tribunal), Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945–1 October 1946, The Blue Series (Nuremberg, 1947–8), vol. 22, p. 413.

13.IfZ Archive, ZS 251/1: Max Jüttner, ‘Führung, Aufgaben und Tätigkeit der SA und Nürnberger Prozess’.

14.Ibid., pp. 3–4. Dr Robert Servatius defended the Thuringian Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel and the NSDAP leadership corps before the IMT and later also served as the defence lawyer for Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem; Priemel and Stiller, NMT, pp. 761–2.

15.IfZ Archive, ZS 251/1, pp. 11–12, 22: Max Jüttner, ‘Führung, Aufgaben und Tätigkeit der SA’.

16.Dorothea Gaitner, ‘Robert Gerhard Storey, a Prosecution Counsel at Nuremberg Trials’, The New York Times, 18 January 1981, http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/18/obituaries/robert-gerard-storey-a-prosecution-counsel-at-nuremberg-trials.html.

17.Statement of Robert G. Storey, 18 December 1945, in Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 4, p. 124.

18.Ibid., p. 125.

19.Ibid., p. 151.

20.Statement of Robert G. Storey, 19 December 1945, in Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 4, p. 138.

21.Soviet Chief Prosecutor Roman Rudenko made a similar point on 2 March 1946; see Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 8, p. 473.

22.See chapter 6.

23.On Schellenberg, see Reinhard R. Doerries, Hitler’s Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence: Allied Interrogations of Walter Schellenberg (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

24.Statement of Robert G. Storey, 19 December 1945, in Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 4, p. 158.

25.Ibid., p. 159.

26.The biography of Georg Boehm (1900–52), a Nuremberg-based lawyer since 1929, is virtually unknown. Martin Löffler (25 January 1905–4 February 1987) was a member of the DVP between 1927 and 1933 and received his PhD in law from Tübingen University in 1928. He opened a solicitor’s office in Stuttgart in 1933 and joined the Reiter-SA. In Nuremberg he thus also acted in a kind of self-defence. During the Second World War, Löffler served in the Wehrmacht in, among other places, Africa, before he was appointed a military judge in 1944. After the Third Reich fell, he became one of the leading authorities in press law in the Federal Republic. For a short biographical sketch, see his entry in the Munzinger archive, as well as the information provided on the homepage of the solicitor’s office he founded, at http://www.rae-loeffler.de/geschichte.php. At the IMT, Klefisch acted as the lawyer of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, at least until 15 November 1945; Christoph Safferling and Philipp Graebke, ‘Strafverteidigung im Nürnberger Hauptkriegsverbrecherprozess: Strategien und Wirkung’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 123:1 (2011), pp. 47–81, here p. 49; Hubert Seliger, Politische Anwälte? Die Verteidiger der Nürnberger Prozesse (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2016), pp. 191–3.

27.So far no biographical study of Theodor Klefisch exists. On his reputation in Weimar Germany, see Ismar Lachmann, ‘Die Größen der Berliner Advocatur’, Das Kriminal-Magazin 3:29 (August 1931), http://www.anwaltsgeschichte.de/kriminal-magazin/kriminal-magazin.html.

28.Seliger, Politische Anwälte?, pp. 192–3; Statement of Geoffrey Lawrence, 15 August, in Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 21, p. 175.

29.For details, see Hoffstadt, ‘Stahlhelm und SA’, pp. 270–7.

30.Statement of Georg Boehm, 28 August 1946, in Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 22, p. 157.

31.This number was the estimate given by Dr Kuboschok, the defence lawyer for the former Reichsregierung, at the Nuremberg hearings on 28 February 1946; see ibid., vol. 8, p. 392.

32.Statement of Martin Löffler, 1 March 1946, in ibid., vol. 8, p. 415. It remains unclear whether this statement was correct and, if so, how many former SA men were actually elected.

33.Statement of Justice Jackson, 28 February 1946, in ibid., vol. 8, p. 370.

34.Statement of Martin Löffler, 1 March 1946, in ibid., vol. 8, p. 409.

35.Ibid., p. 410.

36.Ibid., p. 411.

37.See the ‘canonical’ work by Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1946). For a recent discussion, see Barbara Wolbring, ‘Nationales Stigma und persönliche Schuld: Die Debatte über Kollektivschuld in der Nachkriegszeit’, Historische Zeitschrift 289:2 (2009), pp. 325–64; Markus Urban, ‘Kollektivschuld durch die Hintertür? Die Wahrnehmung der NMT in der westdeutschen Öffentlichkeit, 1946–1951’, in Priemel and Stiller, NMT, pp. 684–718. For a broader discussion of resentment in post-war Europe, see Frank Biess, ‘Feelings in the Aftermath: Toward a History of Postwar Emotions’, in Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller (eds), Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe (New York: Berghahn, 2010), pp. 30–48, esp. pp. 40–2.

38.Verdict of the International Military Tribunal, 30 September 1946, in Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 22, p. 518.

39.Ibid., vol. 22, p. 519. On the Jewish ghetto in Kaunas, see Jürgen Matthäus, ‘Das Ghetto Kaunas und die “Endlösung” in Litauen’, in Wolfgang Benz and Marion Neiss (eds), Judenmord in Litauen (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), pp. 97–112; Christoph Dieckmann, ‘Das Ghetto und das Konzentrationslager in Kaunas, 1941–1944’, in Ulrich Herbert, Karin Orth, and Christoph Dieckmann (eds), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager – Entwicklung und Struktur, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998), pp. 439–71.

40.Verdict of the IMT, in Secretariat of the Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, vol. 22, p. 519.

41.Donald Bloxham, ‘Prosecuting the Past in the Postwar Decade’, in David Bankier and Dan Michman (eds), Holocaust and Justice: Representation and Historiography of the Holocaust in Post-War Trials (Jerusalem and New York: Yad Vashem, 2010), pp. 23–43, esp. pp. 37–9. On the methodological problems of assessing the German reactions to the IMT, see H. Krösche, ‘Abseits der Vergangenheit: Das Interesse der deutschen Nachkriegsöffentlichkeit am Nürnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher 1945/46’, in Jörg Osterloh and Clemens Vollnhals (eds), NS-Prozesse und deutsche Öffentlichkeit: Besatzungszeit, frühe Bundesrepublik und DDR (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), pp. 93–105.

42.The lawyers of the SS adopted a similar defence strategy, but – hardly surprisingly – failed to achieve comparable results. See Kim C. Priemel, ‘Beyond the Saturation Point of Horror: The Holocaust at Nuremberg Revisited’, The Journal of Modern European History 14:4 (2016), pp. 522–47.

43.UAK, Archives, Zugang 726, File 2: Letter from Theodor Klefisch to an unknown addressee, 5 November 1946.

44.See the comprehensive collection of cases in Edith Raim, Justiz zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie: Wiederaufbau und Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen in Westdeutschland 1945–1949 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013), pp. 659–944, as well as the database Nazi Crimes on Trial: German Trial Judgements Concerning National Socialist Homicidal Crimes 1945–2012, ed. Christiaan F. Rüter and Dick W. de Mildt, http://www1.jur.uva.nl/junsv.

45.Carina Baganz, ‘“Milde gegen die Verbrecher wäre Verbrechen gegen die Opfer”: Die Hohnstein-Prozesse 1949’, in Osterloh and Vollnhals, NS-Prozesse und deutsche Öffentlichkeit, pp. 207–20.

46.Weinke, Die Verfolgung von NS-Tätern im geteilten Deutschland; Andreas Eichmüller, ‘Die strafrechtliche Verfolgung von NS-Verbrechern und die Öffentlichkeit in der frühen Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949–1958’, in Osterloh and Vollnhals, NS-Prozesse und deutsche Öffentlichkeit, pp. 53–73, here p. 54.

47.Carina Baganz, ‘Vom Wachmann zum Inoffiziellen Mitarbeiter: Täter der frühen sächsischen Konzentrationslager und ihr Wirken für die Staatssicherheit’, in Günther Heydemann, Jan Erik Schulte, and Francesca Weil (eds), Sachsen und der Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), pp. 351–64.

48.As quoted in Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen, ‘Erinnern, Vergessen und Verdrängen – Überlegungen zur Unfähigkeit zu trauern’, in Sibylle Drews (ed.), Freund in der Gegenwart: Alexander Mitscherlichs Gesellschaftskritik (Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel, 2006), pp. 23–34, here p. 23.

49.The tendency of many Germans to deny any emotional or deliberate involvement in the National Socialist ‘project’ was evident as early as 1945. Committed Nazis seem to have disappeared overnight, with only disappointed or embittered ‘victims’ of the regime remaining who now turned against the previously much-loved Führer. For a very early analysis of this phenomenon, see Saul Padover, Experiment in Germany: The Story of an American Intelligence Officer (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1946). For the term ‘little guardians of the people’s community’, see Werner, ‘Die kleinen Wächter der “Volksgemeinschaft”’.

50.Eichmüller, ‘Die strafrechtliche Verfolgung von NS-Verbrechen’, p. 55.

51.See chapter 9.

52.LArch NRW-Westfalen (Landesarchiv NRW, Abt. Westfalen), Staatsanwaltschaft Dortmund, nos 1293–1305, 1542–6.

53.LArch Hannover (Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover), Nds. 171, no. 25522.

54.LArch Freiburg, V 1, Nr. 2473: Badisches Staatskommissariat für politische Säuberung, Verdict of the Spruchkammer Freiburg in the proceedings against Dietrich von Jagow, 13 February 1950.

55.Bernhard Gotto, ‘Die Erfindung eines “anständigen Nationalsozialismus”: Vergangenheitspolitik der schwäbischen Verwaltungsbeamten in der Nachkriegszeit’, in Peter Fassl (ed.), Das Kriegsende in Bayerisch-Schwaben 1945: Wissenschaftliche Tagung der Heimatpflege des Bezirks Schwaben in Zusammenarbeit mit der Schwabenakademie Irsee am 8/9 April 2005 (Augsburg: Wißner, 2006), pp. 263–83, esp. pp. 282–3.

56.‘Otto Straßer und der Solidarismus’, Arbeiter-Zeitung (Vienna), no. 9, 12 January 1949, p. 2, http://www.arbeiter-zeitung.at/cgi-bin/archiv/flash.pl?seite=19490112_A02;html=1.

57.‘Senat stellt Strafantrag’, Hamburger Abendblatt, 12 March 1952, p. 3. I am grateful to Christoph Strupp for providing me with a copy of this article.

58.BayHStA, MSo, Nr. 1929: Letter from the Treuchtlingen Municipal Council to the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, 17 August 1956. In this case the municipal council had demanded clemency for Andreas Güntner, who from 1933 to 1944 had served as mayor of Treuchtlingen. In 1950 he was sentenced to a prison term of three and a half years because of his participation in the ‘anti-Jewish pogrom in Treuchtlingen’.

59.On Gmelin’s education and his professional and political career in the 1930s, see the information provided in his SA files, in BArch Berlin, SA 4000001096; as well as in his personnel file with the Reich Ministry of Justice, in BArch Berlin, R/3001/57470 and 57471.

60.BArch Berlin, R/3001/57470, p. 41: Letter from the Reich Minister of Justice to the Foreign Office, 23 April 1941. In 1944, Gmelin praised his boss as an ‘outstanding personage’; IfZ Archiv, MA 650, pp. 4,995–5,000, here p. 4,999: SD note on Gmelin’s lecture at a party leadership meeting in Vienna, 14 January 1944. On the relationship of Ludin and Gmelin, see also Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich und die Slowakei, pp. 89–90. According to Gmelin’s daughter, her father ‘took care’ of Ludin’s widow Erla and her children after the war; email from Dr Herta Däubler-Gmelin to the author, 26 February 2015.

61.Information provided by Niklas Krawinkel, Marburg, who is currently writing his PhD thesis on Gmelin under the supervision of Eckart Conze. I am also grateful to Krawinkel for providing me with a copy of Gmelin’s denazification file.

62.IfZ Archiv, MA 650, pp. 4,995–5,000, here p. 4,999: SD note on Gmelin’s lecture at a party leadership meeting in Vienna, 14 January 1944.

63.BArch Berlin, R 9354/601: Letter from R. Brandt to SS-Standartenführer Leg. Rat Wagner in the Foreign Office, 4 December 1944.

64.On the living conditions in these camps, which ultimately did not ‘re-educate’ the former National Socialist leadership but instead provided an echo chamber for their reconstruction of the past, see Christof Strauß, ‘Zwischen Apathie und Selbstrechtfertigung: Die Internierung NS-belasteter Personen in Württemberg-Baden’, in Paul Hoser and Reinhard Baumann (eds), Kriegsende und Neubeginn: Die Besatzungszeit im schwäbisch-alemannischen Raum (Konstanz: UKV, 2003), pp. 287–313.

65.LArch Sigmaringen, Wü13 T 2, Nr. 2108/068: Verdict against Hans Gmelin, 13 July 1948.

66.This argument was frequently voiced in German politics post-Second World War. The best-known case is that of Chancellor Willy Brandt, who, as a young Socialist, had escaped Nazi persecution by going into exile in Sweden and Norway and later had to defend himself against accusations of not having been a patriot. See Mergel, Propaganda nach Hitler, pp. 217–18.

67.StA Tübingen (Stadtarchiv Tübingen), ZGS-1: Hans Gmelin, election speech from 24 September 1954, Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 2 October 1954.

68.Gerhard Ebeling, ‘Wiederkehr des Nationalsozialismus’, in Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 27 October 1954.

69.‘Thema des Tages: Wiederkehr des Nationalsozialismus’, in Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 28 October 1954. Such accusations and demands to stop the current denazification proceedings were common; see Strauß, ‘Zwischen Apathie und Selbstrechtfertigung’, pp. 310–13.

70.‘Fortsetzung der Debatte über “Wiederkehr des Nationalsozialismus”: Sind wir in Tübingen schon wieder so weit?’ in Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 30 October 1954.

71.‘Die meisten Einsender sagen: Nein’, in Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 2 November 1954.

72.For Gmelin’s post-war career, see also the instructive account by Hans-Joachim Lang, ‘Die rechte Hand des Botschafters’, Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 28 April 2005.

73.Critics, however, argue that Gmelin’s involvement in the Holocaust should prevent him from being labelled an ‘honorary citizen’, an honour bestowed on him by the Tübingen city council in 1975. See Gerlind Strasdeit, ‘Stellungnahme für die Fraktion DIE LINKE in Tübingen’, 18 December 2014, http://www.die-linke-bw.de/nc/magazin/aus_den_kreis_und_ortsverbaenden/detail/zurueck/magazin/artikel/solange-hans-gmelin-ehrenbuerger-von-tuebingen-ist-bleibt-die-scheefstrassen-umbenennung-ein-ink.

74.Email from Dr Herta Däubler-Gmelin to the author, 26 February 2015.

75.On Bennecke’s activities in the SA, see esp. chapter 4 as well as Peschel, Die SA in Sachsen vor der ‘Machtübernahme’, pp. 7–22. Mike Schmeitzner of the Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung at the TU Dresden is currently preparing a biographical study of Bennecke that will provide further details of his life both prior to and after 1945.

76.Documents from the Hausarchiv, the internal archive of the IfZ, demonstrate that critical collaborations with formerly high-ranking National Socialists were common. For example, the files that contain the institute’s correspondence with Bennecke also enclose similar and usually extremely polite correspondence with former SS heavyweights Werner Best and Gottlob Berger. Researchers with the IfZ certainly aimed at and in many cases succeeded in extracting inside knowledge from these figures for use in critical historical scholarship. However, it also seems vital to analyse if, when, and why the former Nazis were successful in giving their partisan views on the Nazi past the stamp of scholarly excellence. See Nicolas Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker: Erforschung und Erinnerung (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), pp. 270–321; Hett, Burning the Reichstag, pp. 283–308. On the formation of the IfZ, see also Winfried Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), pp. 229–42; and John Gimbel, ‘The Origins of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte: Scholarship, Politics and American Occupation’, American Historical Review 70:3 (1964–5), pp. 714–31.

77.See, for example, Bennecke’s interviews with the former SA leader Franz Pfeffer von Salomon and the Nazi writer Hans Zöberlein in IfZ Archive, ZS 177 and ZS 319. For Bennecke’s memorandum of the Reich SA-Hochschulamt, see IfZ Archive, ZS 1685-1, pp. 21–4.

78.IfZ Archive, ID 200/177: Letter from Anton Hoch to Heinrich Bennecke, 25 May 1962; IfZ Archive, ID 300/23: Internal note by Thilo Vogelsang, 17 November 1958.

79.IfZ Archive, ID 200/177: Contract signed by Bennecke and Helmut Krausnick, director of the IfZ, 5 July 1963.

80.The surviving documents do not provide a clear explanation for this decision, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that the appointment of a former Nazi functionary had the potential to harm the institute’s reputation. IfZ Archive, ID 300/23: Internal note of the IfZ, 8 May 1963. The same document is also included in IfZ Archive, ID 103/85, p. 127.

81.Heinrich Bennecke, Hitler und die SA (Munich and Vienna: Olzog, 1962); idem, Die Reichswehr und der ‘Röhm-Putsch’ (Munich and Vienna: Olzog, 1964). After the publication of Hitler und die SA, Bennecke intended to send one copy to IfZ director Krausnick with the dedication ‘To Dr Krausnick with many thanks for the help of the Institute for Contemporary Research’; IfZ Archive, ID 300/23: Letter from Bennecke to Thilo Vogelsang, 2 November 1962. In a letter to Krausnick, Bennecke remarked that his book was ‘basically produced in the Institute’ (Sie entstand ja im wesentlichen im Institut für Zeitgeschichte); IfZ Archive, ID 103/85, p. 128: Letter from Bennecke to Krausnick, 25 November 1962.

82.IfZ Archive, ID 200/177: Internal note from the IfZ, 13 February 1963.

83.Peschel, Die SA in Sachsen vor der ‘Machtübernahme’, pp. 23–77. The IfZ files include an unsigned draft contract between the Federal Archives and Bennecke for a study on the SA in Saxony prior to the Nazi takeover of power; IfZ Archive, ID 200/177.

84.IfZ Archive, ID 300/23: ‘Entwurf eines Vorworts’. Bennecke distinguished between ‘four distinct periods’ of the SA’s history: The period up to 1923, the one between 1926 and April 1932, the one between June 1932 and 30 June 1934, and the one after 30 June 1934.

85.Peschel, Die SA in Sachsen vor der ‘Machtübernahme’, p. 21.

86.Bennecke, Hitler und die SA, pp. 28–30.

87.Ibid., p. 194.

88.Instructive in this respect is Schmerbach, Der Kampf der Kommunistischen Partei, pp. 118–20.

89.Bennecke, Hitler und die SA, pp. 197–200.

90.For the rather ambivalent reviews, see ibid., pp. 78–82.

91.For a lucid discussion of this important problem, see Habbo Knoch, ‘Review of Nicolas Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker: Erforschung und Erinnerung, H-Soz-Kult’, 4 February 2004, http://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-2433.

92.See the examples in Klaus Große-Kracht, Die zankende Zunft: Historische Kontroversen in Deutschland nach 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005).

93.Höhne, Mordsache Röhm.

94.On the long-lived myth of the ‘clean Wehrmacht’, see Ben Shepherd, ‘The Clean Wehrmacht, the War of Extermination, and Beyond’, Historical Journal 52:2 (2009), pp. 455–73; Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Hannes Heer, and Birgit Otte (eds), Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996).

95.Karsten Wilke, Die ‘Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit’ (HIAG), 1950–1990: Veteranen der Waffen-SS in der Bundesrepublik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011).

96.Hans Hermann Karl Sponholz, born 9 April 1902 in Kolberg, volunteered for a Jungmannenkommando in his home town in the last year of the First World War, at the age of sixteen. After falling severely ill in a prisoner-of-war camp, he spent two years in the sickbay. Sponholz’s health remained fragile for the rest of his life. From 1921 to 1923 he was a member of the Verband nationalgesinnter Soldaten, and from 1924 to 1931 he belonged to the Stahlhelm. On 1 July 1931 he joined the SA in Flatow and three months later entered the ranks of the NSDAP. Sponholz was exempt from regular SA duty but fought very effectively with words. Struggling to make a living from his modestly successful novels, he became a full-time SA leader on 15 January 1934. From 1937 onward the father of five children lived in Munich, where he rose to become one of the principal propagandists of the SA. On his biography, see BArch Berlin, VBS 264, no. 4001006602 (Sponholz, Hans) and SA 4000003627 (Sponholz, Hans).

97.Hans Sponholz, ‘Naturschutz in der Defensive’, Natur und Landschaft: Zeitschrift für Freunde und Schützer der Deutschen Heimat 41:9 (1966), pp. 191–3, here p. 193. For more on the ‘brown heritage’ of the West German environmentalist movement after the Second World War, see the pioneering Joachim Radkau and Frank Uekötter (eds), Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus(Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2003); Franz-Josef Brüggemeier and Jens Ivo Engels (eds), Natur- und Umweltschutz nach 1945: Konzepte, Konflikte, Kompetenzen (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2005).

98.Michael Seeholzer, ‘Hans Sponholz – von Nazivergangenheit eingeholt’, Merkur, 5 October 2013, http://www.merkur.de/lokales/ebersberg/ebersberg/hans-sponholz-nazi-vergangenheit-eingeholt-3148688.html. On Lorenz and National Socialism, see Benedikt Föger and Klaus Taschwer (eds), Die andere Seite des Spiegels: Konrad Lorenz und der Nationalsozialismus (Vienna: Czernin, 2001).

99.‘Hans Sponholz’, in Wikipedia.org, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Sponholz, date accessed: 28 October 2015.

100.For paradigmatic statements as well as self-critical reflections, see the contributions in Hannes Heer and Volker Ullrich (eds), Geschichte entdecken: Erfahrungen und Projekte der neuen Geschichtsbewegung (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1985) and Alf Lüdtke, Alltagsgeschichte: Zur Rekonstruktion historischer Erfahrungen und Lebensweisen (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1989); idem, ‘Arbeiten und Dabeisein: Wie Alltagsgeschichte den Nationalsozialismus erklärt’, in Axel Lubinski (ed.), Historie und Eigen-Sinn: Festschrift für Jan Peters zum 65. Geburtstag (Weimar: Böhlau, 1997), pp. 75–86.

101.For the discovery of this place and its early exploration, see Kurt Schilde, Rolf Scholz, and Sylvia Walleczek (eds), SA-Gefängnis Papestraße: Spuren und Zeugnisse (Berlin: Overall Verlag, 1996). More recently, see Irene von Götz and Petra Zwaka (eds), SA-Gefängnis Papestraße: Ein frühes Konzentrationslager in Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 2013). For information on Berlin’s central institution for the remembrance of the Nazi terror, the Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, see Reinhard Rürup (ed.), 10 Jahre Topographie des Terrors (Berlin: Topographie des Terrors, 1997).

102.For a historical sketch of ‘Köpenick’s blood murder week’, see Yves Müller, ‘Vom Traditionskabinett zur Gedenkstätte Köpenicker Blutwoche’, in SA-Terror als Herrschaftssicherung, ed. Hördler, pp. 232–45.

103.See Stephan Buchloh, ‘Pervers, jugendgefährdend, staatsfeindlich’: Zensur in der Ära Adenauer als Spiegel des gesellschaftlichen Klimas (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002), pp. 142–5, here p. 144.

104.See, in particular, Nationalrat der Nationalen Front des Demokratischen Deutschland (ed.), Braunbuch: Kriegs- und Naziverbrecher in der Bundesrepublik: Staat, Wirtschaft, Armee, Verwaltung, Justiz, Wissenschaft (Berlin: Staatsverlag der DDR, 1968); there were several editions under slightly different titles between 1959 and 1981.

105.Der Spiegel, no. 34, 5 May 1968, quoted in Varon, Bringing the War Home, p. 39.

106.Lorenz Jäger, Adorno: A Political Biography (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 192.

107.Interview of Ernst Fraenkel with the Berliner Morgenpost, 11 November 1967, as quoted in Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, ‘“Den mörderischen Alltag bei seinem richtigen Namen nennen”: Linke Protestbewegungen,  jüdische Remigranten und die Erinnerung an Massenverbrechen in den 1960er Jahren’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 62:7/8 (2014), pp. 600–19, here p. 612. In turn, the most radical students denounced Fraenkel as a ‘reactionary’; see ibid. and Simone Ladwig-Winters, Ernst Fraenkel: Ein politisches Leben (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009), pp. 318–25.

108.Uwe Siemon-Netto, ‘The 68er Regime in Germany’, Orbis 48:4 (2004), pp. 641–56, here p. 645.

109.Berliner Extra-Dienst, April 1968, quoted in Varon, Bringing the War Home, p. 40.

110.For a summary of these events, including the quote from Schmalz-Jacobsen, see Human Rights Watch Helsinki (ed.), ‘Germany for Germans’: Xenophobia and Racist Violence in Germany (Helsinki: Human Rights Watch 1995), http://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/Germany.htm.

111.For an overview of the actual situation and the historical references of current neo-Nazis, see Alexander Häusler and Jan Schedler (eds), Autonome Nationalisten: Neonazismus in Bewegung (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2011); Ulli Jentsch and Frank Metzger, ‘Die “Blutzeugen der Bewegung” im Blick des heutigen Neonazismus’, in Bürgerkriegsarmee, ed. Müller and Zilkenat, pp. 417–32.

Conclusion

1.Peter Sachse, SA-Männer von Leipzig: Ein Beitrag zur Rassenkunde Deutschlands (Leipzig: Werkgemeinschaft, 1934), pp. 7–12, 21, 29, 50, 55, 60. As Sachse informed his readers, his dissertation supervisor Professor Otto Reche had suggested this topic to him in the spring of 1932, precisely at a time when the authorities had banned the SA. He thus deliberately subverted the government’s attempts to diminish the public prominence of the stormtroopers. Reche had also taken care to obtain the consent of the NSDAP’s Reich Leadership Office, and, in 1933, had contrived the patronage of the new Minister President, SA-Obergruppenführer Manfred von Killinger.

2.Gerhard Wolf, ‘Negotiating Germanness: National Socialist Germanisation Policy in the Wartheland’, Journal of Genocide Research, forthcoming; idem, Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität.

3.In this respect it is instructive to take earlier ideas of a new ‘German race’ into account, as formulated between 1932 and 1934 by the SA men and academics Friedrich Merkenschlager, a biologist, and the anthropologist Karl Saller. Both men challenged the paradigm of the superiority of an allegedly ‘pure’ and ‘nordic’ race and instead advocated for a ‘racial mixture’ (Rassenmischung). They did not perceive the German race as an absolute given, but as a fragile equilibrium that could only be maintained by allowing for constant variation. See Cornelia Essner, Die ‘Nürnberger Gesetze’ oder Die Verwaltung des Rassenwahns 1933–1945 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), pp. 62–75. I am grateful to Stefan Boberg, Berlin, for directing me to this study.

4.Jonsson, Crowds and Democracy, p. xvi.

5.On ‘individuality’ and ‘personality’, see the pioneering work by Warren I. Susman, ‘“Personality” and the Making of  Twentieth-Century Culture’, in New Directions in American Intellectual History, ed. John Higham and Paul K. Conkin (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), pp. 212–26; for the importance of individual empowerment in the Nazi ‘people’s community’, see also Moritz Föllmer, Individuality and Modernity in Berlin: Self and Society from Weimar to the Wall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), esp. pp. 105–31.

6.Steuwer, ‘Was meint und nützt das Sprechen von der “Volksgemeinschaft”?’, p. 520.

7.Stefan Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen: Zur Soziologie des Holocausts (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014), pp. 102–3.

8.See already Harold D. Lasswell, ‘The Garrison State’, American Journal of Sociology 46:4 (1941) 4, pp. 455–468, here p. 461.

9.See above, chapter 8.

10.Loewenstein, ‘Militant Democracy’, p. 418.

11.Pendas, ‘Explaining the Third Reich’, p. 595. For an elaborate discussion of this point, see Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); for a more sceptical view of the persuasiveness of the appeal of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft, see Geoff Eley, Nazism as Fascism, pp. 13–58, here p. 28.