Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

  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 Eine exemplarische Untersuchung, unpublished MA thesis, Bielefeld University, 2016, pp. 30, 42–3.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 19
38 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.