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The SA in the Radical Imagination of the Long Weimar Republic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2013
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Hitler's storm battalions, the SA—their creation, organization, and worldview—have been the object of extensive scholarly study. A key factor in the victory of National Socialism, the SA has been understood above all as an exemplar of the political violence that helped to destabilize Germany's first parliamentary democracy. Attention to the role of the storm troopers in the Nazi seizure of power—a narrative in which the SA is centrally embedded, and in which it has been largely confined in the scholarship—has tended to foreclose other lines of analysis. Indeed, the metanymic linkage of the SA to the “failure of Weimar” has prevented scholars from considering the complex ideological and social field in which the storm troopers operated as the site of contingency that it was for contemporaries. Alongside a marching, singing, monolithic SA, policing the streets against National Socialism's enemies—an SA appropriate to the long-dominant scholarly focus on the reasons for Weimar's failure and Nazism's rise—another SA exists, one that had to be spoken for, indoctrinated, won over, infiltrated, and surveilled; an SA around which moral persuasion and ideological discussion played at least as prominent a role as the political violence that has so dominated the analytic concerns of historians and social scientists; an SA that attracted the attention of self-styled revolutionaries of every stripe in the seething chaos of Weimar politics, revolutionaries who sensed in the not-quite-closed ambit of the SA's political commitments—and in classed and gendered cultural assumptions with which these commitments were bound up—the utopian horizons of the possible, both before and after January 30, 1933.
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References
1 Essential studies of the SA include Reichardt, Sven, Faschistische Kampfbünde. Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2002)Google Scholar; Campbell, Bruce, The SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998)Google Scholar; Longerich, Peter, Die Braunen Bataillone. Geschichte der SA (Munich: Beck, 1989)Google Scholar; Reiche, Eric G., The Development of the SA in Nürnberg, 1922–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bessel, Richard, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: The Stormtroopers in Eastern Germany, 1925–1934 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Jamin, Mathilde, Zwischen den Klassen. Zur Sozialstruktur der SA-Führerschaft (Wuppertal: Hammer, 1984)Google Scholar; Fischer, Conan, Stormtroopers: A Social, Economic, and Ideological Analysis, 1929–35 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983)Google Scholar; Merkl, Peter H., The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
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22 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (hereafter GStA PK), Rep. 77, Tit. 4043, Nr. 302, “Rundschreiben Nr. 4 der Sektion Geneisenau Sept. 1930.”
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27 “Das Ende der SA Revolte?,” Kölnische Zeitung, no. 189, April 8, 1931, quoted in Stennes, “Gründe und Auswirkungen des Zwistes Hitler-Stennes,” HA 73/1551, Reichsministerium des Innern, May 13, 1931.
28 The training focused on eliminating any possible doubts about where lines were drawn between “Revolutionary National Socialism” and Marxism (the former avoided the “three mistakes” of the latter: “internationalism,” “class war,” and “materialism”).
29 On the Ulm trial, see Bucher, Peter, Der Reichswehrprozess. Der Hochverrat der Ulmer Reichswehroffiziere 1929/30 (Boppard am Rhein: H. Boldt, 1967).Google Scholar
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31 “Das Ende der SA Revolte?,” Kölnische Zeitung, no. 189, April 8, 1931, quoted in Stennes, “Gründe und Auswirkungen des Zwistes Hitler-Stennes,” HA 73/1551, Reichsministerium des Innern, May 13, 1931.
32 “Ost Express,” Pravda, no. 80, April 7, 1931, quoted in Stennes, “Gründe und Auswirkungen des Zwistes Hitler-Stennes,” HA 73/1551, Reichsministerium des Innern, May 13, 1931.
33 The KPD appears, in fact, to have played a role in fomenting the tensions that led up to the revolt. See Schuster, Kurt G. P., Der Rote Frontkämpferbund 1924–1929. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Organisationsstruktur eines politischen Kampfbundes (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1975)Google Scholar. Stennes also appears to have had ties to the Soviet embassy in Berlin; see “Auszugsweiser Bericht in Sachen Stennes u. Genossen,” June 6, 1933, Institut für Zeitgeschichte (hereafter IfZ) 1887/56.
34 Die Welt am Abend, no. 82, April 9, 1931, BArch, 26073.
35 According to Mathilde Jamin, only ten percent of the SA leadership were workers as compared to some fifty to fifty-five percent of the rank and file. See Jamin, Zwischen den Klassen, 369–71. See also Longerich, Die Braunen Bataillone, 144–47.
36 HA 56/1368, Landeskriminalpolizeiamt (IA) Berlin, May 1, 1931, “Rechtsradikale Bewegung. N.S.D.A.P. 1.) Die Stennes-Revolte.”
37 Welt am Abend, no. 82, April 9, 1931, BArch, 26073. This view was echoed by a speaker at a meeting of the KPD's propaganda apparatus in Berlin, who argued that Stennes had “the assignment, conscious or unconscious, of preventing . . . rebellious SA proletarians from marching into the camp of the class struggle.” See IfZ Munich, MA 644, untitled fragment, probably from “Informationsmaterial (Faschismus).”
38 Völkischer Beobachter, April 4, 1931.
39 HA 17/325, “Nationalsozialisten Berlin!” See also HA 4/83, “Wie es zur Stennes-Aktion kam!”
40 HA 17/325, “Nationalsozialisten Berlin!”
41 HA 4/83, “Wie es zur Stennes-Aktion kam!” On the highly loaded quality of calling the NSDAP a “club” instead of a “party,” see Chickering, Roger, “Political Mobilization and Associational Life: Some Thoughts on the National Socialist German Workers' Club (e.V.),” in Elections, Mass Politics, and Social Change in Modern Germany: New Perspectives, ed. Jones, Larry Eugene and Retallack, James (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 307–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 HA 17/325, “Erklärung und Aufruf.”
43 The Communist strategy of cell building and subversion in enemy organizations—the internal weakening of these seen as being a necessary prerequisite for the revolution—is well documented, if little studied. Efforts in the Reichswehr appear to have produced little fruit, but the Schutzpolizei appear to have been well infiltrated. “By the end of the 1920s,” wrote Bernd Kaufmann, “there was probably hardly a large city in Germany in which the KPD was not anchored in the Schutzpolizei with illegal contacts or party cells.” Kaufmann, Bernd et al. , Der Nachrichtendienst der KPD 1919–1937 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1993)Google Scholar. “Schupo newspapers” put together from information obtained by members of underground Communist cells, replaying police concerns with a Communist spin, were published in a number of cities. Among these were Der Rote Gummiknüppel (Berlin), Der Gute Konrad (Berlin-East), Rund um den Tschako (Leipzig), and Der Schupo (Bavaria). Kaufmann et al., Der Nachrichtendienst der KPD, 209. See also Gilensen, Viktor, “Die Komintern und die ‘paramilitarischen Formationen’ der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands (1926–1932),” Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte 5, no. 1 (2001): 15, 30–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nancy Aumann lists some twenty-nine different papers produced for the Schutzpolizei and army that had already appeared by 1929; Nancy Aumann, “From Legality to Illegality: The Communist Party of Germany in Transition, 1930–1933” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982), 283. A district conference of Red Schupo cells was organized in Berlin at the beginning of 1931. See the “Entschließung der I. Reichskonferenz der Roten Schupozellen” in “Was Fordert Die Opposition in den Polizeibeamten-Verbänden?,” Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR in Bundesarchiv, Zentrales Parteiarchiv (hereafter SAPMO-BArch), I 2/8/11–12 FBS 308/13058. At the conference, a Reich leader of the Red Schupo cells was elected and a resolution adopted calling on Schutzpolizisten not to allow themselves to be misused for the oppression of the workers. See Kaufmann et al., Der Nachrichtendienst der KPD, 209–10; Aumann, “From Legality to Illegality,” 268.
44 Each formation disposed of its own “enemy department” (Gegnerapparat), which was responsible for assigning propaganda troops to areas where the nationalist Verbände were particularly strong. See SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/6, “Die Zersetzungsarbeit,” 1926, 48.
45 See, for example, Die junge Garde. Zeitung d. Werktätigen Jugend in Stadt und Land. Zentralorgan der Kommunistischen Jugendverbandes Deutschlands Sektion K.J.I., various issues in spring and autumn 1931.
46 IfZ Munich, MA 644, “Der Rote Angriff, auf dem Prenzlauer Berg. Kampforgan gegen den Faschismus. Herausgegeben von K.P.D. Nord-Ost.”
47 “Liebe Freunde!” read the note typed at the top of a sheet of text for a fake SA flyer intended for KPD regional subgroups in late 1933; “[i]n the following a rough draft of a flyer for the SA. With regard to distribution, it is especially important to take care that the flyer gets into the hands of Nazi supporters, especially SS and SA people. Greetings, R.L. [Reichsleitung];” “An alle UBL,” October 1933, Nordrhein-Westfälisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Düsseldorf-Mauerstrasse (hereafter NWHStA), R34. The text of the flyer is signed “Die Leitung der Oppositionsgruppe in der SA und SS.” Such efforts—before and after 1933—were later justified in the historiography of the German Democratic Republic as a necessary part of the struggle against fascism; see Doehler, Edgar and Fischer, Egbert, Revolutionäre Militärpolitik gegen faschistische Gefahr. Militärpolitische Probleme des Antifaschistischen Kampfes der KPD von 1929 bis 1933 (Berlin: Militärverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1982).Google Scholar
48 NWHStA, Essen, November 8, 1933. The top of the master copy of the flyer bears a note from the district leadership of the KPD that advised activists to see that the flyer came into the possession of SA and SS men; NWHStA, “An alle UBL. Anfang Oktober 1933.”
49 GStA PK, Rep. 77, Tit. 4043, Nr. 302, “Rundschreiben Nr. 4 der Sektion Geneisenau Sept. 1930.” The reference is to the “Programmerklärung zur nationalen und sozialen Befreiung des deutschen Volkes,” an attempt to bolster the KPD's “patriotic” credentials unveiled during the campaign for the Reichstag elections of September 1930. The full text is reprinted in Weber, Hermann, ed., Der deutsche Kommunismus. Dokumente (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1963), 58–65.Google Scholar
50 BArch, NS/23-431; Der Oberste SA-Führer, den 8.12.1932, Betreff: “Obergruppe V (Dresden) meldet.” “These Communist agents,” the report continued, “are distributed as follows in the SA: in Dresden, 26; Leipzig, 28; Chemnitz, 42; Plauen, 11; Zwickau, 18; Berlin, 164.”
51 Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv (hereafter BLHA), Pr Br Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium, Tit. 95, Sekt 9, Teil 2, Nr. 183, “NSDAP Wochenberichte Nr. 3,” August 4, 1932.
52 An SA Sturmführer by the name of Bassler personally saw to the creation and printing of Der Freiheitskämpfer while he wore the uniform of the SA; see HA 17/325, SA Gruppe Nord-West to OSAF, June 16, 1931.
53 Der Freiheitskämpfer, no. 2, June 1931, HA 17/325. For example, at a meeting of the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus in Cologne in October 1931; PP Köln to RP Köln, October 13, 1931.
54 HA 17/325, SA Gruppe Nord-West to OSAF, June 16, 1931.
55 BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 278, “Die Strasser + Opposition in Gau Hamburg,” August 10, 1932, re meeting of August 3, 1932. A Sturmbannführer warned his superiors about Die Sturmfahne later in the year, noting that a local SA man had been found with one in his apartment; Sturmbann II/15: Abt-1c, Wandsbek, December 12, 1932. BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330.
56 GStA PK, Rep. 77, Tit. 4043, Nr. 237, “Befehl an alle Führungen” (Oct. 14, 1932), OP Provinz Westfalen, February 17, 1932.
57 The guidelines laid out recommendations for topics of discussion based on current conditions within the Nazi movement. See BLHA, Pr Br Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium, Tit. 95, Sekt 9, Teil 2, Nr. 183, “Anleitungen für Diskussionen mit Kameraden der SA.”
58 BLHA, Pr Br Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium, Tit. 95, Sekt. 9, Teil 2, Nr. 183, “SA Kameraden!” The NSDAP appears to have made some attempts to combat the KPD, using its own methods. Guidelines for the party's intelligence service called for the collection of all enemy propaganda publications and “a systematic monitoring of all enemy press productions;” HA 71/1553, “Richtlinien für den Auf- und Ausbau des Nachrichtendienstes,” November 1931, 2–3. The propaganda department of the NSDAP in Munich requested, in October 1931, that regional and local party groups identify former Communists in their groups for use in combating Communist propaganda. “To be able to combat the Communist agitation using so-called former National Socialists,” it urged, “we are asking you to provide us with the addresses of as many as possible of the party comrades who have come over to us from the Communist camp;” Propaganda-Abteilung, Gau München-Oberbayern, October 13, 1931, HA 71/1553. Propaganda guidelines from late 1931 urged agents of the party's Nachrichtendienst who worked within Communist organizations to seek positions of influence from which they could function more securely and successfully. The “number one political task” of this party intelligence service was the “immediate assimilation of collected material on cases of corruption, misconduct of enemy leaders, and Bolshevistic dirty tricks;” HA 71/1553, “Ausbau des Nachrichtendienstes.”
59 Organs of the “SA opposition groups” listed in the Communist journal Aufbruch include, by city, Sturm, Freiheitsadler, Freiheitsarmee (Berlin); Kameradenbriefe (Saxony); Roter Sturm (Anhalt-Dessau); Sturmfahne, Sturmbriefe (Hamburg); Sturm über Essen (Essen); Sturmsignale, Alarm (Düsseldorf); SA-Kamerad (Cologne); Sturmsoldat (Düren); SA-Revolution (Bonn); SA-Post (Frankfurt am Main); Nation und Revolution (Stuttgart); Der revolutionäre Freiheitskämpfer (Nuremberg); Revolutionäre Freiheit (Würzburg); Sturmbanner, Front-Appell (Munich). See Aufbruch, 2. Jg., Nr. 9, December 1932, 6; BArch.
60 BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330, Die Sturmfahne, Jahrgang 1932, Nr. 8.
61 BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330, Die Sturmfahne, Jahrgang 1932, Nr. 7.
62 BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330, Die Sturmfahne, Jahrgang 1932, Nr. 11.
63 Der SA Kamerad, August 1933, BArch M 5070. A similar theme is taken up in Alarm. Kampfblatt der Revolutionäre SA-Leute der Standarte 39, May 1933, BArch M 5072.
64 Der Freiheitskämpfer, June 1931, HA 17/325.
65 Die Sturmfahne (n.d.), BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330.
66 Das Sprachrohr, December 1930, IfZ Munich, MA 644. The political police in Berlin identified Das Sprachrohr as a “known Communist Zersetzungsschrift for the NSDAP and SA” (I.A.II., Berlin, June 13, 1931; IfZ Munich, MA 644). See also the discussion in Aumann, “From Legality to Illegality,” 292–94.
67 Das Sprachrohr, December 1930, IfZ Munich, MA 644.
68 Das Sprachrohr, April 1931, no. 3, BLHA, Pr Br Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium, Tit. 95, Sekt 9, Teil 2, Nr. 185.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid.
71 Die Sturmfahne, 1931, BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330.
72 C. Fischer, Stormtroopers, 151. This may have been the “Hitler Internationale” (“we are the real German working men, we want a free fatherland”) referred to by Striefler, Christian, Kampf um die Macht. Kommunisten und Nationalsozialisten am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Propyläen, 1993), 79–81.Google Scholar
73 Die Sturmfahne was “published by a few soldiers of the German revolution. The oppositional SA comrades from Hamburg” and signed by the “Circle of oppositional SA comrades of Standarten 9, 15, 45, 76.”
74 Swett, Pamela, Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 1929–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. Both the NSDAP and the KPD worried openly about defections to the enemy, the KPD even founding, in at least one instance, a “fluctuation committee” charged with the task of tracing membership losses to the NSDAP. See Swett, Neighbors and Enemies, 212. See also Böhnke, Wilfried, Die NSDAP in Ruhrgebiet 1920–1933 (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1974), 157Google Scholar. Böhnke noted the multisided discussions that took place in the cities of the Ruhr in the latter half of 1932 between Communists, activists from the Strasser group, and members of the SA and SS. See also Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists?, and Fischer, Conan, The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
75 GStA PK, Rep. 77, Tit. 4043, Nr. 312, PP Köln to RP Köln, October 17, 1932. The police president noted that yet another National Socialist opposition group, the Deutsche Jugendwehr, had been formed and was made up entirely of former SA and Hitler Youth members.
76 On Kayser's criticism of the NSDAP, see “Krach im Kölner Naziladen,” Rheinische Zeitung, no. 88, April 13, 1932.
77 OP Rheinprovinz to Prussian IM, October 22, 1931.
78 At a KgdF meeting in Cologne on October 10, 31; PP Köln to RP Köln, October 13, 1931.
79 GStA PK, Rep. 77, Tit. 4043, Nr. 302, “Rundschreiben Nr. 4 der Sektion Geneisenau Sept. 1930.”
80 GStA PK, Rep. 77, Tit. 4043, Nr. 312, Standartenbefehl vom 5.9.32 in PP Köln to RP Köln, October 17, 1932.
81 Heider, Paul, Antifaschistischer Kampf und revolutionäre Militärpolitik (Berlin: Militärverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1976), 109.Google Scholar
82 Microfilm collection Widerstand als “Hochverrat.” Die Verfahren gegen deutsche Reichsangehörige vor dem Reichsgericht, dem Volksgerichtshof und dem Reichskriegsgericht, Munich, 1998 (hereafter WaH), 0226, 8 J 438/ 35 g, 17.
83 See C. Fischer, Stormtroopers, chap. 6–8; and Swett, Neighbors and Enemies, especially chap. 4.
84 Rudolf Diels, the chief of the Prussian Gestapo, called it the “uprising of the Berlin SA”; Diels, Rudolf, Lucifer ante Portas. Zwischen Severing und Heydrich (Zurich: Interverlag, 1949), 142.Google Scholar
85 Noth, Ernst Erich, Die Tragödie der deutschen Jugend (Frankfurt am Main: Glotzi Verlag, 2002), 136Google Scholar. Münzenberg, Willi, Propaganda als Waffe (Paris: Éditions du Carrefour, 1937), 164Google Scholar. After months of violence with the onset of the regime, argued Münzenberg, the “little man” who had wanted socialism was “happy to come away with his life”; 158.
86 Crüger, Herbert, Verschwiegene Zeiten. Vom geheimen Apparat der KPD ins Gefängnis der Staatssicherheit (Berlin: LinksDruck Verlag, 1990), 58.Google Scholar
87 Guérin, The Brown Plague, 118.
88 Ibid., 199–20.
89 Ibid.
90 Nyomarkay, Joseph, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1967), 124.Google Scholar
91 The idea of a Second Revolution, which became so closely linked with the idea of socialism propagated by the SA and other radical sectors of the Nazi movement, appears to have originated—in a somewhat different iteration—with Gregor Strasser in 1925, who against the first revolution (of 1918) posited a “spiritual revolution” or “revolution of the soul.” See Lane, Barbara Miller, “Nazi Ideology,” in Nazi Ideology Before 1933: A Documentation, ed. Lane, Barbara Miller and Rupp, Leila J. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1978), 23–24Google Scholar. In a slightly different iteration, his brother Otto defined the war itself as the first revolution; ibid., 24. Ernst Röhm first used the term to refer to a follow-up to the Machtergreifung in April 1933; see Nyomarkay, Charisma and Factionalism, 124.
92 Noth, Die Tragödie, 213.
93 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, Betr. SA (June 15, 1934).
94 SAPMO-BArch I 2/706/13.
95 “I'm an old SA man, you can talk to me,” he allegedly said, “but watch out for the Märzgefallene, they're informers.” SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, “Betr. SA, 1.8.34.”
96 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, “Betr. SA, 11.4.34.”
97 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, 2-3, “Lagebericht Nr. 7 vom 6.IV.–19.IV.34.”
98 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, “Stimmung der SA-Männer. Abteilung Ie.” From “Betr. SA-Lagebericht” (Nov. 10, 1934).
99 Sopade, June/July 1934, 206.
100 Sopade, May/June 1934, 145.
101 Ibid., 144–45.
102 Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, 234. The Communist intelligence apparatus complained in June 1934 that units of Department Ie were being built within every SA unit. See “Zur Revolutionäre Arbeit in den NS-Organisationen Anfang Juni, 1934,” SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25.
103 Sopade, May/June 1934, 146. In Berlin, the Feldpolizei helped to control the worst excesses of the SA, but in a manner hardly consistent with the principles of law and order. Rudolf Diels wrote that “SA men, Communists, and entirely innocent citizens, whom the Feldpolizei had beaten up without distinction” were imprisoned in its detention center in Berlin; Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, 189.
104 Vossische Zeitung, July 18, 1933.
105 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, “Betr. Differenzen und Stimmungsbilder aus den fasch. Organisationen” (Feb. 21, 1934).
106 Herbert, Best, 141, 142.
107 Zersetzungsschriften noted in a report of early 1935 included Der Rote Stoßtrupp (sent through the mail to Nazi officials in Potsdam and addressed to “all honest party comrades, comrades of the SA, SS, and HJ”) and in Berlin, Der Rote Angriff, no. 12, “Organ der revolutionäre SA-Brigade 32”; Bericht Nr. 20, Der Oberste SA-Führer, Stabsabteilung, February 22, 1934, BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330. Another report noted, among other incidents, that an “Open letter to the HJ” had appeared in Hannover, which was designed to look like the work of an SA man; Bericht Nr. 11, Der Oberste SA-Führer, Stabsabteilung, September 21, 1934, BArch, Sammlung Schumacher 330.
108 NWHStA, Essen, November 8, 1933.
109 BLHA, Pr Br Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium Berlin, Tit. 95, Sekt 9, Teil 2, Nr. 185.
110 SA Sturmbanner, IfZ Munich, MA 644.
111 Microfilm collection Widerstand als “Hochverrat.” Die Verfahren gegen deutsche Reichsangehörige vor dem Reichsgericht, dem Volksgerichtshof und dem Reichskriegsgericht, Munich, 1998 (hereafter WaH) 0017, 14c/8 J 1547/31, 27–28.
112 Merson, Allan, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985), 122–27Google Scholar. On the resistance activity of the KPD in Western Germany, see Peukert, Detlev, Die KPD im Widerstand. Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein und Ruhr 1933 bis 1945 (Wuppertal: Hammer, 1980).Google Scholar
113 An official in Düsseldorf reported in August 1933 that the following KPD papers had been found in his area of administration since the end of April: Der Revolutionär (Wuppertal, March/April 1933), Mit Sichel und Hammer (Wuppertal, March/April 1933), An Arbeiter und Bauern, Gewerkschaftszeitung, Spartakus, Ruhr-Echo, Die Freiheit, Die rote Fahne, Kruppscher Jungproleten, Die Solidarität, Das Tribunal, Rot-Sport; Regierungs-Präsident Düsseldorf to Preuß InnenMin, Aug. 30, 1933.
114 Sandvoß, Hans-Ranier, Widerstand 1933–1945. Widerstand in Kreuzberg (Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, 1996), 101.Google Scholar
115 Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, 153. Diels's contention is supported by Wollenberg, Erich, The Red Army (London: Secker & Warburg, 1938), 708Google Scholar. Fest, Joachim makes a similar claim in The Face of the Third Reich (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), 220.Google Scholar
116 Longerich, Die Braunen Bataillone, 193.
117 Gisevius, Hans Bernd, To the Bitter End (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 105Google Scholar. Waite echoed this figure; Waite, Robert G. L., Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 274Google Scholar. Conan Fischer doubted that the percentage was so high for Germany as a whole but acknowledged that the number was still significant; C. Fischer, German Communists, 190.
118 Sandvoß, Widerstand, 103.
119 Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, 524.
120 Albert Grzesinski, head of the Berlin police force in 1930–32, said that thirty percent of the Berlin SA was made up of Communists by 1932; Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde, 524.
121 They are collected in BArch, NS/23-9.
122 NWHStA, Düsseldorf, April 6, 1933. Peter Kramer, the former leader of a KPD Ortsgruppe in the Ruhr, joined the SA to protect himself from arrest; NWHStA, Dü 21231, Kramer, Peter. Werner Kraus went a step further, passing himself off as a junior officer, even though he was only a simple SA man; NWHStA, D 34045, Kraus, Werner.
123 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, March 16, 1934, 4.
124 National Archives, German Documents, Reel 85, cited in Nyomarkay, Charisma and Factionalism. For a justificatory treatment of the KPD's activity within the SA and other Nazi organizations after 1933 from the perspective of the GDR, see Heider, Antifaschistischer Kampf, 93–114.
125 Merson, Communist Resistance.
126 Crüger, Verschwiegene Zeiten, 58.
127 These included “SA opposition” papers Der Rote Sturm (The Red Storm) and Die Rote Standarte (The Red Standard).
128 Crüger, Verschwiegene Zeiten, 61. According to Crüger, the leader of the home knew that Crüger had left the Hitler Youth to join the Strasser movement, but not of his activity for the KPD. Crüger's radical posture provoked no opposition from the leader of the home, who was quite forthright in proclaiming the goal of the school to be the preparation of students for the coming Second Revolution.
129 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, “Lagebericht Nr. 7 vom 6.IV.-19.IV.34.” The activist estimated that the Sturm comprised two-thirds workers, the remainder being made up of white-collar workers (Angestellte) and the sons of small tradesmen (Söhne Kleingewerbetreibender).
130 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/4, “. . . der Gestapomethoden und Konspiration. Beispiels und Lehren für den unterirdischen Kampf.”
131 Weissbuch über die Erschiessungen des 30. Juni (Paris: Éditions du Carrefour, 1935), 154.Google Scholar
132 BLHA, Pr Br Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium, Tit. 95, Sekt 9, Teil 2, Nr. 188, “Unsere revolutionäre Arbeit innerhalb der SA,” Sonder-Informationsdienst der RL der RSG. “These ‘commune-cells,’” the guidelines continued, “otherwise known as the ‘Opposition,’ must draw up a program of demands and work together in the closest association with RFB (to be hastily rebuilt) and its revolutionary Sturms. They must publish opposition leaflets and newspapers for the Sturms and Standarten.” BLHA, Pr Br Rep. 30 Berlin C Polizeipräsidium, Tit. 95, Sekt 9, Teil 2, Nr. 188, “Unsere revolutionäre Arbeit innerhalb der SA,” Sonder-Informationsdienst der RL der RSG.” The demands appeared in the flyer SA-Mann Erwache! distributed by the KPD in the Rheinland; NWHStA, Essen, November 8, 1933.
133 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/13, “An den Gegner, über den Gegner, vom Gegner, Nr. 1, Februar 1935.”
134 The group that would become known as Neu Beginnen—originally called the Leninist Organization, or simply “Die Org”—was founded in 1929 by Walter Löwenheim (code name “Miles”). The name Neu Beginnen came from a 1933 pamphlet of Löwenheim's. The founding of the group was a direct response to the KPD's Social Fascism strategy. Löwenheim criticized the inability of the two working-class parties to form a united front against fascism, arguing that the disagreement about whether it was possible to make a revolution at the present historical juncture had introduced an unnecessary and dangerous rift into the working-class movement. The SPD, Löwenheim argued, was too closely identified with the Weimar system to act effectively against it, while the KPD was a meaningless sect, prevented by a “false idea of its own role” from winning over the masses; see Stöver, Bernd, ed., Berichte über die Lage in Deutschland. Die Lagemeldungen der Gruppe Neu Beginnen aus dem Dritten Reich 1933–1936 (Bonn: Verlag J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1996), 27Google Scholar. Prior to 1933 the membership came largely from the political leadership schools of the SPD and KPD. Neu Beginnen drew on sympathizers at universities in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Berlin; see Foitzik, Zwischen den Fronten, 28.
135 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, “Betr. Miles - Bericht,” March 2, 1934, 4.
136 The Black Front addressed the affair in its series titled “Huttenbriefe. The Black Front speaks to the German People.” An article titled “Hitler's Betrayal of the SA” closed with the slogans “Down with the reaction! Long live the socialist revolution! Down with Hitler! Hail Germany.” Otto Strasser—whose brother Gregor had been among the victims of the SS murder squads—called for continued struggle in an uncharacteristically bloodthirsty tone: “The Second Revolution is on the march—over the corpses of Goebbels, Göring, and Hitler—to a new Germany of socialist justice and national freedom.” WaH 0038, 17 J 94/34, 14.
137 Quoted in the introduction to Berichte über die Lage in Deutschland, li.
138 Rätsch-Langejürgen, Birgit, Das Prinzip Widerstand. Leben und Wirken von Ernst Niekisch (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1997), 117.Google Scholar
139 Noth, Die Tragödie, 215–19.
140 WaH 0718, 8 J 444/35, 10.
141 An invaluable source for the study of the Strasser opposition after 1933 and of the Alltagsgeschichte of resistance in Berlin under the Nazis generally is the series Widerstand 1933-1945, edited by Hans-Ranier Sandvoß. The work's volumes on the various city districts combine rich firsthand accounts with concise and helpful essays.
142 WaH 0718, 8 J 444/35, 10.
143 Ibid., 7.
144 Ibid., 21.
145 Copies of these flyers are, unfortunately, not extant.
146 WaH 0718, 8 J 444/35, 22–28.
147 WaH 0222, 8 J 381/34, 4, 19. “Hitler's only strength,” Simon wrote, “is the trust [of the people]. Everything else is bluff or force. These factors still exist today; but for how long? A revolutionary has time.”
148 Münzenberg, Propaganda als Waffe, 157.
149 NWHStA, Dü 21231, Kramer, Peter.
150 NWHStA, D 6615, Wankum, Konrad, Oct. 29, 1886. The incident took place in 1935; the authorities decided that Wankum had done his duty and let him off.
151 NWHStA, Ge 12594. K.M., Düsseldorf-Gerresheim, Aug. 31, 1933. “An den Herrn Standartenführer Hauptmann a.D. Lohbeck.”
152 NWHStA, D 24480 Hess, Adolf; PP Duisberg-Hamborn (March 24, 1934).
153 NWHStA, Stapo Duisberg-Hamborn to Stapo Düss (July 15, 1935).
154 SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, “Betr. Miles - Bericht,” March 2, 1934, 4. Work in the SA for these Communists consisted mainly of meetings in apartments in groups of four, where “schoolwork” was carried out. Every ten days a small newspaper, Der Rote Kämpfer, was published, but it was mainly intended for the activists themselves. A police agent's report on the KPD's attempt to establish a Schutzstaffel Scheringer in Berlin just two weeks before the Nazi seizure of power illustrates well the dubious nature of such undertakings. Schutzstaffel members were to appear at meetings throughout Berlin wearing SA uniforms with a Soviet armband replacing the swastika. Franz Lange of the Bundesleitung was to speak at the founding meeting scheduled for January 18—disaffected storm troopers were to be found to appear at the founding meeting “if possible;” see “Bericht über die Sitzung der Nazibearbeiter im Bereich des UB. 5” (Jan. 17, 1933); IfZ Munich, MA 644, frame 867 110. “Scheringer Staffeln” existed also in Hannover, Hamburg, and Cologne, composed largely or completely of RFB men; see Striefler, Kampf um die Macht, 140–41.
155 “Bericht des Hannoverschen Polizeipräsident an den Regierungspräsidenten über den Stand der kommunistischen Bewegung,” June 7, 1933, in Mlynek, Klaus, ed., Gestapo Hannover Meldet . . . Polizei- und Regierungsberichte für das mittlere uns südliche Niedersachsen zwischen 1933 und 1937 (Hildesheim: Veröffentlichungen der historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, 1986), 47.Google Scholar
156 It had not actually been he but another activist who had advised the young man to enter the SA. SAPMO-BArch, I 2/705/25, March 16, 1934, 3.
157 Ibid., 4.
158 The recommendations of the Berlin party organization published in June included “the maintenance and buildup of the SA newspapers that have appeared up until now . . . and the use of all opportunities yielded by the SA to penetrate the other military organizations or units”; see SAPMO-BArch I 2/705/4, “Über die antimilitärische Arbeit (Berliner Vorschläge) June 1935.” Further recommendations published in August read “The work within the SA stands in the center of [our] antimilitary tasks. . . . The goals of this work are the creation of (a) a network of strongholds in the SA throughout the entire Reich; (b) firm groups and cells in the most important storm battalions and special formations (NSKK, Pioneer Sturms); (c) the revolutionizing of entire Sturms; (d) regular publication of SA opposition newspapers and flyers through opposition groups in the SA.” See SAPMO-BArch I 2/705/4, “Vorschläge zur Verbesserung der mil. pol. Arbeit,” August 26, 1935. The Kayser group in Cologne continued to publish leaflets and hold discussion groups through December 1935. An affiliated group in Essen held out until 1936 before it was uncovered and broken by the Gestapo.
159 Sopade, April/May 1934, 19.
160 On the “Reich Athletic Competition,” see Brown, Weimar Radicals, 121-3. On the SA in the period after the blood purge of June 30, 1934, see Campbell, Bruce, “The SA after the Röhm Purge,” Journal of Contemporary History 28 (1993): 659–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
161 On the latter, see Canning, Kathleen, “The Politics of Symbols, Semantics, and Sentiments in the Weimar Republic,” Central European History 43 (2010): 567–580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar