Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  Third, the SA’s ‘Germanization’ policies have to be seen in the context of the pre-military training of the German people, carried out in close cooperation with the Wehrmacht and the Hitler Youth. The SA’s paramilitary education comprised both practical exercises, such as physical training and shooting lessons, and politische Erziehungsarbeit, or ‘political education’.96 This multifaceted programme not only targeted stormtroopers living in the Old Reich, insisting that racially based settlements were a ‘prerequisite for the fulfilment of the regime’s economic, domestic and racial objectives’,97 but also represented an important contribution to the German colonization attempts in eastern Europe.98 In this context more research is needed to determine the importance of Volksdeutsche within the SA, and in the General Government in particular. The following chapter will analyse more fully the SA formations of the General Government that were created from April 1942 onward, partly by incorporating the previously established ‘defensive border guards’ (Wehrschützenbereitschaften).99 Within the history of the stormtroopers, one can therefore draw a line from the 1920s to the 1940s. Already in the early years after the First World War, the idea that the nascent SA, in line with other Wehrverbände, had been called to defend the legitimate interests of the German people living in the borderlands of the German Reich was prevalent.100 Ten years later, this idea became more radical with the rise of the German settlement movement, which attempted to intensify the existing German ‘internal colonization’ project along racial and political lines. By the 1940s, the emphasis had shifted from internal to external colonization, looking toward the conquest of new German territories in the European east. The Volksgemeinschaft came to be understood as a Wehrgemeinschaft, with the implementation of the settlement initiatives postponed until peacetime.101 Nevertheless, the idea of racial superiority and the SA’s alleged settlement mission continued to inspire its ‘defensive activities’ against increasing ‘partisan attacks’ until the last phase of the Second World War. Although the actual settlement of stormtroopers in eastern Europe failed, the movement’s concepts of race, discipline, and self-defence contributed to the radicalization of the people’s community in the occupied territories.

  8

  STORMTROOPERS IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

  As the Führer’s most loyal followers, we, the stormtroopers, know only two things in our lives: faithfulness towards the Führer until the last breath and fanaticism in our everyday lives, and, if necessary, in battle.

  — Wilhelm Schepmann, 19441

  The role of the SA during the Second World War has not been studied in detail.2 Some historians, however, have long felt that the violence exercised by SA men in the preceding two decades must have had an impact on how the Wehrmacht, the SD-Einsatzgruppen, the auxiliary police forces, and the SS fought this war, not only because many SA men were now drafted into the Wehrmacht. It is evident that the Brownshirts, as a mass organization as well as a paramilitary force, did not play a major strategic role in the war, but the regular SA man, ideologically reliable and accustomed to physical violence, did. In line with this argument, Michael Mann has observed that although the SA as an organization was for a second time ‘sidelined’ after Kristallnacht in 1938, ‘many of its hard-core members were transferred to other killing institutions’. Given the circumstances, going to war seemed a logical next step to those ‘Old Fighters’ who had built considerable careers in violence.3 The propagandists of the OSAF recognized such a linkage early on. SA-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Rehm, a Protestant pastor, secondary schoolteacher, and leader of the Deutsche Christen (DC) in the mid-1930s, claimed in 1941 that ‘the unique victories of the German Wehrmacht’ were at least substantially due to the SA’s readiness for action (Einsatzbereitschaft), willingness to sacrifice, comradeship, and community spirit.4

  This chapter seeks to study how the individual conditioning in the SA, Nazi ideology, personal commitments, and strategic war efforts influenced and mutually reinforced each other. It also re-evaluates the importance of the SA within the framework of the National Socialist mass organizations during the war years. The SA was severely weakened by the drafting of the vast majority of its younger members into the Wehrmacht. Yet, contrary to what has often been believed, the SA did not sink into oblivion but attempted to seize the opportunities and initial territorial gains provided by the Second World War to expand its field of activities, both during the conflict and in the imagined post-war era. As late as March 1944, high-ranking SA leaders met for a three-day workshop in Posen in the Warthegau. As the official programme indicates, they not only discussed the problems of the day, but attended lectures on very general historical and political questions, including ‘The form of rule in the Roman Empire’, ‘The reign of the Mongolians’, ‘The foundations of the British Empire, and ‘The dollar imperialism’. Among the lecturers were two prominent SS officers, SS-Oberführer Franz Six, speaking on England, and SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, lecturing on the German mission in the European east. SA Chief of Staff Wilhelm Schepmann, who had succeeded Viktor Lutze and the interim leader Max Jüttner in August 1943, gave a speech on ‘The idea of the Reich as a political mandate’.5 The climax of the meeting was a mustering of the SA leaders in the city and a public speech delivered by Alfred Rosenberg on ‘The Empire of the Germans’.6 Despite these triumphant themes, participants were advised to bring their food stamps and were warned not to frequent restaurants and bars apart from a few carefully selected and specially secured establishments.7 The contrast between the wide-ranging lectures on the problems of imperial rule and the everyday security problems within the region is indicative of the discrepancy between the persistently grandiose ambitions of the Nazi leaders and the increasing improbability of their achievement. Grotesque as it may appear today, this widening gulf offers yet another strong indicator that the SA once again became a relevant political factor in the last stages of the Third Reich. The following chapter will demonstrate why.

  The SA and the Wehrmacht

  The relationship between the Wehrmacht and the SA improved considerably in the second half of the 1930s. For sure, mutual distrust and hostilities on both sides following the showdown of 1934 did not vanish overnight, but with the passage of time and the territorial expansion of the Third Reich between 1935 and 1939, at least a working relationship could be established. More and more, it became Himmler’s SS that rivalled the Wehrmacht, not the ‘tamed’ SA. Bold self-confidence and far-reaching political ambitions no longer characterized the commanders of the SA; instead, deference to the will of both Hitler and the Wehrmacht prevailed. The moderate comeback of the SA as a paramilitary organization and its initially clandestine but later official operations in Austria and Czechoslovakia boosted its morale, yet this stimulus was achieved through actions that were completely in line with the aims of Hitler and the military and no longer reflected the ‘social revolutionary’ inclinations of the pre-1934 period.

  With the expansion of the German Reich and its preparations for war, the profile of the SA rose at the end of the 1930s. The high point of this political rehabilitation was Hitler’s decree of 19 January 1939 in which he assigned responsibility for the pre-military and ideological training of the German men to the SA (Plate 25). Every German man between eighteen and twenty-one who fulfilled the preconditions for regular armed service now had the ‘moral obligation’ to earn the SA-Wehrabzeichen, the new term for the SA Sports Badge, issued since 1933 but available to non-SA members only beginning in 1935.8 Preparatory training to acquire this badge lay in the hands of the SA, which was ordered to establish so-called SA-Wehrmannschaften, literally ‘SA Defence Teams’. The men in the Wehrmannschaften were to receive regular ideological and physical training from full-time SA instructors, a mission that provided the latter with a job guarantee.9 According to plans from the summer of 1939, 20,000 permanent positions in the SA were needed to fulfil this task, which would have more than doubled the figure of 6,000 full-time SA leaders employed at that time.10 The fin
ancial funds for the new jobs were to come from the army, which was to transfer 11.7 million reichsmark to the SA on a month-by-month basis.11

  As a result of the beginning of the war, such a massive enlargement of personnel did not take place. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1940, the OSAF boasted that nearly 13,000 SA-Stürme were involved in the training of the Wehrmannschaften, which by then comprised some two million men.12 This figure was probably too high for 1940, but it seems plausible that between 1939 and 1942 more than two million men overall successfully participated in the three-month SA training courses.13 Through this programme the Nazi Party aimed at increasing the German men’s fighting strength while also monitoring and disciplining them. ‘Blood and soil, people and ground [Erde], folkdom [Volkstum] and national space [Volksraum]’ were to be the leading points of the National Socialist military education (Wehrerziehung) in the SA-Wehrmannschaften, Max Luyken informed his fellow SA generals in a speech from the first half of 1939.14 In such a way the NSDAP was able to get a firm grip on those German men who were too old for the Hitler Youth but too young for military service. Besides this group, the SA-Wehrmannschaften was also intended to comprise all reserves and those soldiers who had successfully fulfilled their military service.15 This organizational framework, which combined comprehensive control with constant indoctrination, constituted yet another component of the Nazis’ ‘totalitarian’ ambition never to let German men be free again, as Hitler stated in a speech in Reichenberg on 2 December 1938.16

  Viktor Lutze’s personal notes provide background information on the genesis of Hitler’s important yet often underestimated decree of 19 January 1939, devolving responsibility for the education of German men to the SA. Lutze recorded that Hitler had summoned him to the Obersalzberg in the days after 9 November 1938 for a ‘debate about Feldherrnhalle’ and, in a personal conversation, had requested that Lutze discuss future regulations for pre- and post-military education (Wehrerziehung) with Walther von Brauchitsch, the chief of the Army High Command. Hitler asked Lutze and von Brauchitsch to create a report that could provide the basis for a new regulatory framework. Both sides were well aware that this decree would partially redefine their mutual relations. In the following weeks, Lutze claimed to have discussed matters extensively with von Brauchitsch, Franz Halder, Göring, and Erich Raeder, the leader of the Naval High Command.17 He also credited his Stabsführer and SA-Obergruppenführer Otto Herzog with having had a decisive influence in these negotiations.18 After an accord was reached and confirmed by Hitler, Lutze commented enthusiastically: ‘After all these long years this is the first step from exclusively ideological party work to a great task that, if understood properly, to my mind forms one of the most fundamental prerequisites for Germany’s future. In such a way the political soldier will form close bonds with the soldier in arms [Waffensoldat], the readiness for war [Wehrbereitschaft] will be closely intertwined with the military strength [Wehrkraft], the party will be connected to the Wehrmacht.’19 However, after this cry of joy, Lutze conceded that competing National Socialist organizations, particularly the SS, the Hitler Youth, and the NSKK, had immediately attempted to block the revaluation of the SA after the decree of 19 January 1939.20

  This decree and the subsequent regulations issued by Lutze in the following months highlight that this effort aimed at nothing less than the total political and ideological submission of the Wehrmacht to the NSDAP and its Führer. Consequently, the SA’s attempt to organizationally cement its new power resulted in the establishment of an SA-Wehrstab, literally the ‘SA Staff for military matters’, on 1 June 1939, which was headed by Georg von Neufville, subsequently the commander of Infantry Regiment 195.21 The SA in 1939 thus was given a new purpose that, had it been carried out, would have made it an important organization for a very substantial proportion of German men. The military historian Manfred Messerschmidt has rightly called this development a ‘kind of recompense’ for the SA’s humiliation in 1934.22

  Yet, the SA’s feelings of satisfaction were short-lived. The outbreak of the Second World War just weeks after the SA-Wehrstab was established decisively changed the situation – and, once again, to the disadvantage of the stormtroopers. Some 467,000 men, or 32 per cent of all members, were drafted into the Wehrmacht in August and September 1939 alone. By late 1940 the figure had risen to 741,208, or 53 per cent of all able SA men.23 As a result, regular SA service in the German Reich could not always be fulfilled. What is more, the moment a stormtrooper was drafted, the OSAF lost control of him, as his formal affiliation to the NSDAP and the SA was held in abeyance during his service.24 Among those drafted from the ranks of the SA was Neufville himself, who was called to the front and died on 3 November 1941 following wounds sustained at the Battle of Moscow.25 Nevertheless, Lutze and other high-ranking SA generals continued to view the January 1939 decree on the SA-Wehrmannschaften as a starting point for further growth.

  A telling example of the uplifted spirit of the OSAF in these months can be found in a lengthy letter written by Max Jüttner in April 1941. Jüttner was at that time responsible for ‘leadership education’ (Führerausbildung) within the SA. In this letter he claimed that it was first and foremost thanks to the SA’s educational efforts that a unique ‘spiritual and emotional defence community’ (seelisch-geistige Wehrgemeinschaft) had been established in recent years. This community could be found in the battle zones as well as on the home front, Jüttner asserted, and he consequently concluded that it would be the SA’s future task to secure this ‘defence community of German men’ and to ensure its continuation by future generations. He repeatedly stressed that this community was to be exclusively male, stating that the current distribution of male and female roles in Nazi Germany would likely remain a permanent feature of German life in the foreseeable future.26

  The OSAF’s ultimate yet ever more utopian aim was to establish the stormtroopers as a major political and social force in a German-dominated post-war central Europe that would be based on allegedly male virtues such as readiness for action, paramilitary training, and ideological firmness. In line with such ambitions, the SA planned a propaganda offensive in Fascist Europe shortly after the outbreak of the war. Toward this end its Aufklärungsdienst, a kind of intelligence and propaganda service, had a brochure on ‘The History of the SA’ printed in Italian and Spanish in November 1939. According to the contract with the publisher, the astonishingly high number of 850,000 copies were to be produced and distributed. However, the brochure never reached its audience, as the Foreign Office’s Language Service regarded the translations as extremely unsatisfactory, and, in the end, the Nazi regime blocked the publication’s distribution.27

  Such incidents were certainly disconcerting for Lutze and the OSAF, but they constituted only a small problem compared to the major obstacle that the organization faced during the war years: the constant loss of manpower. By early 1941 up to 70 per cent of all rank-and-file stormtroopers and more than 80 per cent of high-ranking officials in the SA had been sent to fight.28 This drainage of members decisively weakened the SA in the Reich, but at the same time it impacted on the Wehrmacht. The armed forces did not simply swallow up the former stormtroopers and thereby render them invisible.29 As the exemplary study of the Rhenish-Westphalian Infantry Division 253 by the historian Christoph Rass demonstrates, slightly more than one-third of all soldiers in this division were or had been members of one or more National Socialist organizations. A closer look reveals that the overwhelming majority (85.6 per cent) had been members of the Hitler Youth or the SA (or both), whereas the proportion of soldiers with affiliations to the SS and the NSDAP did not exceed 4.9 and 3.7 per cent respectively. Of all soldiers in this division, 13.7 per cent were SA men and 18.9 per cent were former members of the Hitler Youth.30 Rass also analysed the correlation between memberships and age brackets, distinguishing three groups: a cohort born before 1910, another cohort born between 1910 and 1915, and still another born after 1916. In the first cohort only 11.6 per cent of all so
ldiers were members of a Nazi organization. These ‘Old Fighters’ were, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly members of the SA, SS, and NSDAP. In the second cohort the SA and the HJ began to dominate, with 38.6 per cent being members of one or more Nazi organizations. In the third cohort, consisting of the youngest soldiers, the Hitler Youth predominated, and 62 per cent were affiliated with one or more Nazi organizations.31

  These statistics demonstrate that it was not the ‘Old Fighters’ with their previous ideological training who composed the majority of Wehrmacht soldiers, but a younger generation, born in the 1910s, who had generally joined the SA in 1933 or later, at around the age of eighteen. This ‘post-war youth generation’, politically socialized in the last years of the Weimar Republic and subsequently ‘educated’ under the Nazi regime, overwhelmingly lacked any personal experience with the political battle of the late 1920s and early 1930s that was so often glorified in Nazi propaganda. This ‘second generation’ of SA men, who numerically dominated among those Wehrmacht soldiers with National Socialist affiliation, were therefore less shaped by the ‘glorious’ years of the SA than by their own experience of the transformation of the SA into a hybrid of a pre-military training organization and a politically controlled social welfare institution.32

  These findings are not representative of all units in a technical sense. However, Infantry Division 253 was in many ways a typical Wehrmacht unit, fighting on both the western and eastern fronts.33 Based on Rass’s evidence, it makes sense to distinguish two groups when speaking of former SA men-turned-soldiers in the Second World War: the minority of ‘Old Fighters’ and the considerably larger group of younger men whose adolescence had coincided with the establishment of the Third Reich. These latter SA men had been shaped by their education under the swastika, with its emphasis on paramilitary training and personal hardening and its diminution of intellectual engagement, as well as by the need to conform to a given order and to accept the prerogative of the NSDAP at all costs. A considerable number of these younger soldiers had already served in the Wehrmacht before the war as a result of the reintroduction of conscription in 1935.