Army of Evil: A History of the SS (4 page)

Hitler was the outstanding personality within the party, and he assumed leadership as early as 1921. Under his guidance, over the next couple of years the NSDAP steadily built its strength as a local party. The atmosphere in Bavaria—as in much of the rest of the country—remained violent and edgy, but it was also tinged with a strong separatist element: the largely Catholic population saw itself as different from the Protestant north, and many Bavarians resented rule from Berlin. Anger between left and right remained fierce, too, with the communists’ short-lived republic widely remembered as a “reign of horror.”
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The factions that had faced off against each other back then now disrupted each other’s political meetings, with violence often the end result.

Many of the Free Corps had entered into border skirmishes with Germany’s eastern neighbours, initially with the tacit approval of the central government. But pressure from the victorious Allies eventually forced the government to disband and attempt to disarm the Free Corps and other militias in the summer of 1921. Some weapons were surrendered or seized as a result of this campaign, but many remained in circulation, in the hands of both left- and right-wing groups. The German government and High Command were prepared to tolerate this volatile situation for one very good reason. Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Germany’s standing army had been limited to just one hundred thousand men, which obviously left the country vulnerable to attack. However, the militias could potentially provide tens of
thousands more well-armed, well-trained men to defend Germany at a moment’s notice, so it was hardly surprising that the country’s leaders were far from enthusiastic about disarming them.

Around this time, Hitler formed an alliance with a serving army officer—
Hauptmann
(Captain) Ernst Röhm—a Bavarian career soldier who had fought as a company commander during the war. A staunch monarchist, Röhm had participated in the suppression of the revolutionary government in Bavaria. In its aftermath, he had organised an anti-communist
Einwohnerwehr
(Citizens’ Militia), and armed it with a vast quantity of weapons collected from various sources. This militia was subsequently banned when the central government clamped down on the Free Corps, but Röhm retained control of its large arsenal. He also maintained connections with various right-wing groups which had provided the militia’s manpower.

Röhm’s political ambitions were fairly straightforward: he wished to see Germany return to a position of military strength with a reformed army; and he viewed Adolf Hitler as the man to achieve this. He joined the NSDAP and soon set about training the strong-arm men who were employed by the party to keep order at their meetings and protect their speakers. This was done in the party’s euphemistically titled “Gymnastic and Sport Section,”
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with the thugs taught by a group of ex–army officers—many with experience in the Free Corps—whom Röhm recruited specifically for the purpose. In August 1921, the unit was officially named the
Sturmabteilung Hitler
(SA—Assault Detachment Hitler), which was coined to bring to mind the elite “storm troops” that had fought in the trenches.

However, Hitler and Röhm had different ideas about the unit’s role. The party leader saw its members as political soldiers: “a force to stick up election posters, use its knuckle-dusters in meeting-hall fights and impress the discipline-loving Germans by propaganda marches.”
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By contrast, Röhm and his subordinates viewed themselves as a genuine military force. They knew that they had been included in the army’s secret mobilisation plans and had received military training from the
Munich garrison. Hitler’s response to this was to bring in his own man as leader of the SA in early 1923, leaving Röhm to organise yet another militia outside of the party (although he remained a close associate of Hitler). Captain Hermann Goering had won the “Blue Max”
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as commander of the Richthofen fighter squadron during the war and he possessed an air of glamour, as well as considerable military ability. Goering organised a headquarters to coordinate the activities of the various groupings that made up the SA,
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but Hitler remained suspicious of its members’ motives. Consequently, he placed his and his close associates’ personal protection in the hands of a new group that was christened the
Stabswache
(Headquarters Guard). The members of this small group were all close associates of Hitler: working-class ex-soldiers and toughs like Emil Maurice (a former watchmaker and a gunner during the war, born in 1897), Ulrich Graf (who had organised the first
Saalschutz
(Hall Protection) squad—a small, informal band of toughs who had acted as an escort for National Socialist speakers) and Christian Weber. All of these men were fiercely devoted to Hitler both as a person and as their political leader.
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The Headquarters Guard lasted just a few months before it was superseded in May 1923 by a slightly larger and more organised body, named the
Stosstrupp
(Raiding Squad) Adolf Hitler. This was run by another SA member and companion of Hitler, Julius Schreck, and a former army officer turned stationery salesman, Joseph Berchtold. However, Weber, Maurice, Graf and other “old fighters” from the Headquarters Guard still comprised the inner cadre.
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Other members included the future diplomat Walther Hewel, who eventually became the German Foreign Office’s liaison with Hitler’s headquarters during the war.
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The first major test for the SA and the Raiding Squad came in November 1923. The conspiratorial Röhm had allied the SA with several other right-wing paramilitary groups to form the
Kampfbund
(Combat League), which could call on the services of approximately fifteen thousand well-armed men. Meanwhile, General Ludendorff, who had returned from exile in 1920, had begun to involve himself in the politics of the extreme right, seeing groups like the NSDAP as the means to begin national renewal. All of these parties were furious about the French occupation of the Ruhr, which had taken place in response to German non-payment of war reparations in January 1923. The Ruhr was the heart of German heavy industry, so the occupation had a paralysing effect on an already struggling economy. Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno’s government encouraged a policy of passive resistance—through strikes, minor sabotage and non-cooperation—but this led to economic collapse and consequent civil disturbance and unrest. Hyperinflation, caused by Germany’s massive war indebtedness and reparations obligations, only added to this. The NSDAP, among many other groups, advocated radical opposition to the French occupation, and Hitler sought to turn the situation to his advantage by launching the NSDAP on the national stage. In his analysis, if he could mobilise the masses, the state would be unable—and the army unwilling—to oppose them.

With the German economy in ruins, the passive resistance campaign was called off on 26 September. Then, to forestall any trouble with the radical right, which was now operating under the broad patronage of Ludendorff, a state of emergency was declared in Bavaria and power put in the hands of a triumvirate: Gustav Ritter von Kahr as State Commissar; Colonel Hans Ritter von Seisser as Chief of Police; and General Otto von Lossow as head of the Bavarian army. These triumvirs had a similar agenda to Hitler’s—the installation of a military-backed government in Berlin by coup—but they did not share his view that he should play a leading part in it. Throughout October, the Combat League negotiated with the triumvirate to little avail, basically
because neither side trusted the other. Frustrated by the impasse, at the beginning of November Hitler and the Combat League decided to act.

On the evening of 8 November, a force of NSDAP supporters with Hitler at their head surrounded the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, where von Kahr was addressing a meeting commemorating the fifth anniversary of the November revolution. Von Seisser and von Lossow were also in attendance. Berchtold’s Raiding Squad aimed a machine gun at the front door and Hitler entered the hall, waving a pistol and shouting noisily. Then he jumped onto a chair and fired his weapon into the ceiling to gain attention. With all eyes focused on him, he declared that a national revolution had started and that the hall was surrounded by six hundred armed men. Then, ushering the triumvirs into a nearby room, he left it to Goering to quieten the mob.

The intention of this
Putsch
was to inspire something akin to Mussolini’s “March on Rome,” with the radical, patriotic right following the Bavarians’ lead throughout the country and eventually deposing the democratic regime. However, the plan soon started to unravel. The triumvirs reneged on promises they had made at pistol point as soon as they had extricated themselves from National Socialist custody. Then, as Hitler and his followers floundered through the streets, attempting to grab control of the levers of state power in Bavaria, the government, police and army organised their defences. By the next morning, the initiative was firmly back in the hands of the authorities, but in a last, desperate effort, Hitler organised a march through Munich in the hope of attracting popular support. As the rebels reached the central Odeonsplatz via the Residenzstrasse, they were confronted by a police cordon and gunfire broke out, leaving sixteen of the marchers dead and many more wounded. As the blood ran across the cobblestones and into the gutters, Hitler fled, his dream of a national revolution exposed, for now at least, as a puny farce.
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The author’s grandfather was an infantry officer in the British Army between 1915 and 1918. He realised the retreating Germans were finally beaten when he saw their weapons and equipment abandoned by the roadside—the first time they had exhibited such lack of resolve on the Western Front.

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The SPD politicians who supposedly “stabbed the German Army in the back” in November 1918.

*
The name was probably chosen to appeal across the spectrum of political views, from right-wing nationalists to left-wing socialists.

*
The official name of the award was Pour le Mérite. It was the highest Prussian distinction for bravery and leadership in the First World War.

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The SA did not, at this stage, have a formal, coherent organisational structure. Rather, it consisted of a number of units and sub-units, loyal primarily to their own commanders rather than the party.

B
y rights, the ultimate outcome of the
Putsch
should have been oblivion for both Hitler and the NSDAP. Four policemen had been killed in the fighting, and the revolt was an undeniable act of treason, which was supposedly punishable by death. It also clearly demonstrated Hitler’s lack of genuine support among the Bavarian military circles that had been encouraging the militarist nationalist groups and secretly arming the militias. They were certainly contemplating a
coup d’état
themselves, but it was now clear that it would be launched only on their terms, not Hitler’s.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting in the Residenzstrasse, Hitler was treated for a dislocated shoulder by Walter Schultze, an SA doctor, and then bundled into a car that took him to the country house of a wealthy associate, the half-American socialite Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstängl, at Uffing on the Staffelsee, south of Munich. Police found him there two days later and took him to the prison fortress of Landsberg. The prisoner was “depressed but calm, dressed in a white nightgown, his injured left arm in a sling.”
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There was some residual support for the
Putsch
in Bavaria,
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manifested in the form of demonstrations
against the triumvirs, but these did not continue for long. In short, the revolution had failed, its leader was in custody and there was little popular support for a renewal of hostilities. That should have been the end of the matter, and the end of Hitler as a political force.

That was not to be the case because of the close links between the Bavarian government and army and the
Putsch
attempt. The attempted revolution was typically Hitlerite, characterised by “half-baked planning, dilettante improvisation [and] lack of care to detail,”
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but senior figures within the Bavarian establishment had been closely involved with it, too. Once it failed, they had to find a “fall guy,” and Hitler—for his own purposes—was happy to fill that role. A trial for high treason would provide a great propaganda opportunity at the national level and allow him to present himself as the potential saviour of Germany. Furthermore, his knowledge of the triumvirs’ antipathy towards Berlin and the role the local military had played in arming the paramilitaries virtually guaranteed lenient punishment.
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