Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens

Overview

The first full history of the Nazi Stormtroopers whose muscle brought Hitler to power, with revelations concerning their longevity and their contributions to the Holocaust

Germany’s Stormtroopers engaged in a vicious siege of violence that propelled the National Socialists to power in the 1930s. Known also as the SA or Brownshirts, these “ordinary” men waged a loosely structured campaign of intimidation and savagery across the nation from the 1920s to the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, when Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm and many other SA leaders were assassinated on Hitler’s orders.
 
In this deeply researched history, Daniel Siemens explores not only the roots of the SA and its swift decapitation but also its previously unrecognized transformation into a million-member Nazi organization, its activities in German-occupied territories during World War II, and its particular contributions to the Holocaust. The author provides portraits of individual members and their victims and examines their milieu, culture, and ideology. His book tells the long-overdue story of the SA and its devastating impact on German citizens and the fate of their country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300246599
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	08/27/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	504
Sales rank:	866,708
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Daniel Siemens is professor of European history at Newcastle University. He is the author of three previous books and has published widely on European and U.S. history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Table of Contents

List of Plates ix

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction: A Night of Violence xiv

Part I

1 Turmoil in Post-War Germany and the Origins of the Nazi SA 3

2 Stormtrooper Street Politics: Mobilization in Times of Crisis 32

3 The Brown Cult of Youth and Violence in the Weimar Republic 75

Part II

4 Terror, Excitement, and Frustration 117

5 The 'Röhm Purge' and the Myth of the Homosexual Nazi 157

Part III

6 The Transformation of the SA between 1934 and 1939 183

7 Streetfighters into Farmers? The Brownshirts and the 'Germanization' of the European East 217

8 Stormtroopers in the Second World War 237

9 SA Diplomats and the Holocaust in Southeastern Europe 280

Part IV

10 'Not Guilty': The Legacy of the SA in Germany after Second World War 307

Concision: Stormtroopers and National Socialism 329

Notes 339

Index 446

Editorial Reviews

Weighty, well argued, thorough and deeply researched.”—Richard J. Evans, London Review of Books

“[An] excellent new history of the Sturmableilungen. . . a convincing thesis, supported with immense scholarship and research in national, regional, and local archives, providing a rich and detailed history.”
—Taylor Downing, Military History Monthly

“Brings a genuine rigour to the subject. He is not content simply to retread the stereotypical, half-formed narrative of the SA. . . Siemens portrays the SA as an integral part of the Nazi vision for society.”
—Roger Moorhouse, BBC History

“An exhaustive examination . . . [a]  revelatory scholarly survey . . . assiduously researched and filled with illustrative examples and case studies covering the development of the SA, its role in a fight against Versailles and Weimar, its cruelties, its survival, and its legacy today.  . . . A considerable work that promises to be the preferred text in English on the brown-shirted stormtroopers for some time to come.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Siemens’s book is now the definitive narrative account of the SA."—Richard Steigmann-Gall, Journal of Modern History

Winner of the Outstanding Academic Title for 2018 award sponsored by Choice

"This excellent and original book is a tour de force, original, scholarly, and readable, as well as being informed by a solid grounding in the latest theoretical literature. I recommend it with great enthusiasm." Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany

"An excellent contribution to the vast literature on Nazi Germany. Based on meticulous research, Daniel Siemens’ Stormtroopers is not only the most comprehensive but also the best history of Hitler’s Brownshirts available in any language." Robert Gerwarth, author of Hitler's Hangman
 

"A definitive study of the Stormtroopers. It offers genuinely new perspectives, integrating the familiar story of SA violence with the important history of that organization from 1934 to 1945. Quite simply, this is the best book on its subject." Richard Bessel, author of Germany 1945
 

"Daniel Siemens demonstrates in this excellent piece of scholarship that the SA did not, as is often assumed, fade into insignificance after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 but continued to function until the very last days of the war and played a significant role in the Holocaust, in the Occupied Territories and on the home front. Thoroughly researched and very readable, Siemens has made an important contribution to our understanding of an often ignored aspect of the Third Reich." Adrian Weale, author of The SS

"For the foreseeable future, Daniel Siemens’s study will be the book of reference on the National Socialist stormtroopers." Professor Michael Wildt, Humboldt University Berlin 

From the Publisher

★ 2017-09-04
An exhaustive examination of Hitler's Sturmabteilungen, aka the SA.As Siemens (History, Philosophy, and Theology/Bielefeld Univ.; The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel, 2013, tec.) reports in this revelatory scholarly survey, the SA, founded soon after the Treaty of Versailles in the 1920s, was once not the only popular substitute for Germany's demolished war machine; it soon became the sole "people's militia" serving as an adjunct of the nascent Nazi Party. The stormtroopers were generally undereducated and unemployed young men with a gang mentality, and they shared a love of uniforms and a distinct hatred of Bolsheviks and Jews. Hitler often wore the stormtroopers' uniform, made by Hugo Boss. The SA became so powerful as their rancorous numbers increased that the Führer had their erstwhile leader, Ernst Röhm, murdered along with many others during the notorious "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934. The SA, no longer a threat to the regime, still had important functions under their new boss, Heinrich Himmler, and the group took a prominent role in the murder of Jews. Stormtroopers were instrumental in the deadly Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, and they excelled as guards in prisons and concentration camps. During the war, a few stormtroopers were selected to resettle on farms in enemy territory, and some were appointed as diplomats in occupied regions. Many others were drafted into the Wehrmacht, where their sociopathic tendencies were well-employed. Siemens' book, land-mined with Teutonic compound nouns, is decidedly not a pop history. It is a scholarly work, assiduously researched and filled with illustrative examples and case studies covering the development of the SA, its role in a fight against Versailles and Weimar, its cruelties, its survival, and its legacy today. It will be a significant source of discussion and an influence on the historiography of the Third Reich. A considerable work that promises to be the preferred text in English on the brown-shirted stormtroopers for some time to come.

Kirkus Reviews