Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  Penetrating German Society

  One stormtrooper whose personal comments on the SA in the mid- and late 1930s have survived was Wilhelm Hosenfeld, a village teacher and later army officer who became known to the wider public in recent years as the man who helped the Polish-Jewish musician and composer Władysław Szpilman, immortalized in Roman Polanski’s 2002 film The Pianist. While Hosenfeld’s help for Jewish and Polish civilians in occupied Warsaw during his time with the Wehrmacht earned him the title of ‘Righteous among the Nations’ from Yad Vashem, in the context of this book his earlier remarks as an SA-Truppführer, a position comparable to a technical sergeant, are of particular interest.

  Hosenfeld, an observant Catholic, joined the SA on 15 April 1933. Throughout the 1930s he lived in the small village of Thalau in Hesse, near the city of Fulda. This region was very pious, rural, and poor – a far cry from the big cities with their predominantly proletarian SA-Stürme that historians have often taken as representative of the whole organization. Hosenfeld – attracted by the SA’s comradeship and paramilitary sports culture, which reminded him of his youth in the Wandervogel movement – was soon promoted to lead the small SA-Sturm in Thalau.56 ‘In the uniform of the SA man one is no longer a free agent. One represents the larger community,’ Hosenfeld noted enthusiastically on 19 January 1936.57 According to his diary entries and notes from the time, he initially shared the national exhilaration that spread throughout Germany in the wake of the National Socialist ‘revolution’ and seemed to enjoy his activities as SA-Truppführer, at least until 1936, when more and more sceptical comments start to prevail in his diaries. The murder of Ernst Röhm and its impact on the SA do not appear in his writings – nor do the antisemitic activities of the SA, even in 1938.58 Instead, what Hosenfeld mentions repeatedly are the stormtroopers’ athletic competitions,59 propaganda marches in the region and on the occasion of the Reichsparteitage in Nuremberg – Hosenfeld participated in 1936 and 1938 – and social evenings with his comrades.60

  This selective choice of events is remarkable particularly because Hosenfeld otherwise appears an alert observer of the social transformations of the early years of the Third Reich. His comments demonstrate that one should be careful not to dismiss the sporting and social activities of the SA in these years as peripheral. For Hosenfeld, a happily married father of five, ‘SA community’ in the countryside was not based on bloody clashes with political opponents or attacks on Jews. Nor did he take an interest in the SA as a tool for professional advancement, using it like an ‘old boys’ network’, as Blessing did. Rather, the SA provided Hosenfeld with a new and welcome form of manly sociability, building on older ideas of a nation in arms as well as the rather modern idea of the necessity of physically training one’s body. In the same way that it had appealed to the Christian deacons who joined the SA in large numbers in the early 1930s,61 the SA proved attractive to the village teacher Hosenfeld for three reasons. It gave him the opportunity to exercise power and develop his leadership skills, it provided him with social recognition, and it allowed him to actively but safely participate in the Nazi project of a ‘German awakening’.

  These attractions were not specific to Hosenfeld, as an analysis of the SA’s influence on the German associations, particularly those in small cities and villages, makes clear. Two fields of activity that were highly popular in small-town and rural Germany in the 1930s and increasingly fell under the control of the stormtroopers demonstrate this influence: shooting associations and riding clubs. Unlike the research on other European Fascist or para-Fascist regimes like in Spain, for which Dylan Riley has recently demonstrated the extent to which Fascist rule relied on its penetration of traditional associations, such a perspective has been largely absent from studies on the early years of the Third Reich.62 Yet it is highly instructive for a history of the SA. As has been demonstrated above, the SA’s ‘conquest’ of Germany’s rural areas had already been successful in the years prior to the Nazi takeover of power. Building on this strategy, the SA in the early years of the Third Reich continued and even intensified its attempts to establish itself as an indispensable organization that combined political ambitions with small-town sociability.

  The first field of activity in which the SA’s strategy was most successful was the assimilation of the German shooting associations. For a long time the domain of the influential and the powerful, shooting clubs began to mushroom in the early days of the Weimar Republic, expanding to the middle and lower-middle classes. Small-scale calibre shooting, introduced in 1920, quickly achieved such popularity that only five years later, in 1925, it had become the third most popular sport in Germany, with about 500,000 participants organized in diverse clubs and leagues.63 Even prior to the NSDAP’s rise to prominence and later power, participation in such shooting clubs was not an innocent hobby divorced from politics. As their members’ identity was based on a particular form of masculinity that regarded the ability to defend oneself, one’s family, and one’s homeland as a core value, shooting associations, in line with the even more popular Kriegervereine, or ‘veterans’ associations’, tended to favour national or even nationalist sentiments.64 The organizers of marksmanship festivals in the German provinces openly espoused an intimate connection between the shooting skills to be acquired in the clubs and the larger national mission to enable the German people to break free from the ‘chains’ of Versailles and to overcome the national humiliation they had suffered. Many understood membership in shooting associations to be an alternative form of military service.65

  Such an ideological predisposition facilitated increasing collaboration between the German shooting associations and the SA from the mid-1930s onward, even if former Stahlhelmers, who had represented large portions of the membership of diverse middle-class associations since the 1920s, were anything but amused by any new attempt to drag them into a National Socialist organization. Yet, by and large, the new political situation in the Reich that followed the Nazi takeover intensified the ‘mutual rapprochement’ that already existed between the NSDAP and the millions of Germans who actively enjoyed the associations and clubs of middle-class sociability.66 Unlike the German sports clubs, which since 1933 had lost a considerable portion of their six million members to National Socialist organizations like the SA, the SS, and the HJ, the shooting associations maintained a position of relative independence and strength until the second half of the 1930s.67 In 1937, however, the Deutscher Schützenverband, the umbrella organization for the shooting associations, began to formally integrate into its membership representatives from the Reichskriegsministerium, or ‘Reich Ministry of War’, the OSAF, and the German Labour Front (DAF). In line with the broader militarization of (male) civil life in Germany, the publications issued by the shooting associations began increasingly to highlight their contributions to the ultimate goal of a general German Wehrhaftmachung, or the transformation of a civil society into one able to engage in (defensive) battles and military conflicts.68 The rhetoric was basically identical to that used by the stormtroopers.

  It should therefore come as no surprise that the SA, once its organizational power and reputation were sufficiently consolidated, made an attempt to impose itself on the dense web of German associations that shared its basic ideological values and engaged in similar practices. By 1938 the SA had achieved a monopoly over the ‘physical training and promotion of the Wehrkraft’. In contrast to the Deutscher Reichsbund für Leibesübungen, which was specifically concerned with first-class sports, the SA oversaw mass sports and organized events like the NS-Kampfspiele (first staged in 1937), the National Socialist Fighting Games (Plate 23). These occasions encouraged not top accomplishments by a very few elite sportsmen and sportswomen, but solid performances by teams engaging in sports and paramilitary exercises such as the throwing of hand grenades. The good general fitness of Germany’s male population and its versatility in the use of arms were the first priorities.69 Consequently, beginning in 1938, the Deutscher Schützenverband was
formally headed by SA-Obergruppenführer Max Jüttner, with the former president demoted to the position of deputy. As a kind of welcome gift, and in anticipation of criticism from the shooting associations, the OSAF stressed that it would devote considerable energy and money to the expansion of the shooting sports.70 Over the following months, protests from dissatisfied club members remained rare; and critical remarks referring to the SA taking control of the clubs as an act of piracy date from the post-1945 period and are thus not reliable.71 Already at the end of 1938 the German shooting associations celebrated New Year’s Day with the motto ‘We fight and shoot for Adolf Hitler and his Greater Germany!’72

  Similar developments could be observed within the German riding clubs. Horse-riding had an even more elite status in German society than membership in shooting associations. Yet, even prior to the Nazi takeover of power, the SA had established regional SA-Reiterstürme, or ‘rider storms’, initially as an attempt to win over local dignitaries and influential peasants in rural Germany as well as parts of the urban establishment.73 With the regime firmly in the saddle, however, the SA started to popularize horseback riding as a social activity that would help train German men for war. To quote a typical example of the SA rhetoric: ‘Riding is constant fighting, a constant affirmation of one’s militant desire for success’ (Plate 20).74 As the historian Nele Fahnenbruck has recently demonstrated in a pioneering study, the SA expanded its ‘rider storms’ over the 1930s to such an extent that in 1938 there existed no fewer than 101 SA-Reiterstandarten in Germany. The stormtroopers praised riding as ‘perfect Wehrsport’, an ideal opportunity to train men’s physical abilities and character.75

  The SA’s attempt to win over a considerable portion of German riders competed with similar strategies employed by the SS and the Wehrmacht. Yet, the stormtroopers ultimately had the most wide-reaching appeal and organizational clout.76 After the establishment of the Nationalsozialistisches Reiterkorps (NSRK), the equivalent of the Deutscher Schützenverband, in March 1936, the SA formally oversaw the training of all aspiring riders and – according to its own statements – ‘80 per cent of the entire German riding population’.77 Similar to other sports, riding in the SA did not focus on excellent performances by a few elite riders, but was meant to show real ‘SA spirit’ at work. Consequently, team competitions were more highly valued than those for individual riders. The SA understood its riding competitions as a way of advertising itself by exploiting the interest of village youth in riding and at the same time serving as a symbol for a Volksgemeinschaft that overcame class boundaries through common effort, ideological firmness, and social awareness.78

  By late 1938 the cooperation between the SA and the shooting associations, riding clubs, and general sports clubs had been formally established. High-ranking SA generals controlled all three areas: the sports umbrella organization Reichsbund für Leibesübungen was headed by SA-Obergruppenführer Hans von Tschammer und Osten (who in the OSAF presided over the Hauptamt Kampfspiele); the NS-Reiterkorps was led by SA-Obergruppenführer Karl Litzmann (who in the OSAF was Chef des Hauptamtes Reit- und Fahrausbildung); and the German Shooting Association was presided over by SA-Obergruppenführer Max Jüttner (who in the OSAF was the Chef des Führungshauptamtes).79 This overlap demonstrates that the SA had successfully integrated itself into those branches of German civil life that were related to its new task of overseeing the paramilitary training of German males. The process that led to this result was not a unilateral one of forced coordination but is more adequately described as the solidification of a mutual rapprochement between the NSDAP and the existing middle-class networks and associations. Without a considerable degree of self-mobilization, the process of political subordination could not have unfolded as smoothly as it did.80

  The SA’s political oversight and social infiltration of important branches of German middle-class social life had a lasting effect, even if, on the surface, the regional and local events of the German provinces continued to take place in a traditional way. The most obvious change was that some of the local dignitaries now dressed in Nazi uniforms, but they otherwise did not directly interfere in the proceedings, apart from delivering some welcoming speeches that were hardly ever popular. Yet such an assessment would underestimate the importance of the political shift that had taken place, as well as the lasting clout of NSDAP formations like the SA, whose members – in the blink of an eye – could turn from jovial club mates into watchdogs for the regime with considerable police powers.81 What is more, the SA’s quest for suzerainty would soon facilitate the use of the dense network of associations and clubs it had infiltrated for the prosecution of war.82

  However, not all stormtroopers approved of this new course of action. For many, the long-term rationale behind the SA’s new role was no substitute for the former activities that had powerfully combined political violence against ideological opponents with popular forms of male sociability. These men still wanted to be political activists, not self-satisfied Babbitts.83 Correspondingly, in 1937 and 1938, Wilhelm Hosenfeld’s comments on the SA became less enthusiastic. ‘SA duty: again only few men participated. Most of them had sent excuses, but some others should have shown up. They lack the proper understanding of the SA’s significance, and that will only sink in when real tasks need to be solved,’ he noted in his diary on 15 April 1937.84 Yet satisfying tasks remained few and far between. Instead, the local SA leaders met in September 1938 to discuss the exciting activity of ‘collection of scrap metal’.85 Hosenfeld himself became increasingly unsure about the SA’s mission. In May 1938 he wrote disappointedly that he had just participated in an ‘SA sports day’ in the nearby city of Fulda, but that he had found it off-putting once again: ‘More and more I realize the pointlessness [of the SA].’86 Yet Hosenfeld remained on active SA duty until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1939. For other soldiers with an SA background, active duty with the organization likewise became less important with the beginning of the war. The jurist Fritz Otto Böhmig on 6 June 1940 wrote to his wife how he imagined a weekend à deux: ‘Of course, there must not be SA duty on Sunday morning [. . .] I don’t want to experience how you would react if, on the first Sunday after my return, I got up at six in the morning and went to the SA!!’87 Böhmig’s words imply that he regularly participated in SA duties on weekends prior to the war. In his letter he did not exclude that his wife thought he would continue this former habit once given the opportunity. More than a year later, on 24 August 1941, Böhmig indeed wrote to her that he was preparing a letter to be sent to his former SA-Sturm.88 As the war continued, Hosenfeld and Böhmig both became increasingly estranged from the SA and its ideas. The few remarks Hosenfeld made on the stormtroopers in occupied Warsaw during the war years were mostly negative. For him, this organization was now ‘them’, not ‘us’. He also repeatedly commented on violent acts committed by SA men.89 On the occasion of an ‘SA sports competition’ in Warsaw in September 1943, he informed his wife dryly: ‘A lot of mumbo-jumbo, but few accomplishments. Propaganda is the main thing. It rained the whole day.’90

  Hosenfeld’s attitude was typical for many of those who had initially welcomed the SA’s propaganda only to become frustrated with its development in the years after 1934. Yet there were also others for whom the SA did not decline but increased in importance in the second half of the 1930s. The stormtroopers of the latter category were often those born outside the German Reich’s borders. For them, membership in the SA provided both financial and political advantages that would be realized once the German expansionist policy was implemented. In what follows I will take a closer look at the men in the so-called Austrian Legion and then turn to the newly arranged SA formations in the Sudetenland and the Memelland.

  The Austrian Legion

  Since the formation of the NSDAP and its SA in the early 1920s, close connections between German and Austrian National Socialists had been established and maintained.91 Whereas in the 1920s it had usually been the stormtroopers from the Reich who
had benefited from the assistance of their Austrian brothers in ideology and arms – especially after the failed Hitler Putsch of 1923, when many high-ranking National Socialists found cover and shelter in Austria – ten years later this relationship had been reversed. Now it was the SA in the German Reich that was in a position to help its Austrian comrades, particularly after the authorities in Vienna banned all National Socialist organizations, including the SA, on 19 June 1933. The Austro-Fascist regime under Engelbert Dollfuß and his successor Kurt Schuschnigg actively persecuted those National Socialists who sought an end to the Austrian nation state and a union of Austria with the Third Reich, particularly after the Austrian Hitlerists attempted to violently overthrow the national government in July 1934.92 Despite the Austrian SA’s considerable organizational weaknesses, the teacher Hermann Reschny, since 1926 the leader of the Austrian SA (Hitlerbewegung), made plans to march on Vienna with stormtroopers from Styria and the Reich. In June 1934 the SA leadership in Austria even decided on two hitmen for the assassination of Dollfuß, yet it was the SS man Otto Planetta who in the end carried out the actual murder.93