Top: Paratrooper SA Regiment Feldherrnhalle 1940.
This Fallschirmjäger wears the Luftwaffe paratrooper
helmet, a jump smock (which could be camouflaged), standard combat
trousers and jump boots. He carries the normal infantry combat
equipment, and he is armed with an Erma MPi 40 submachine gun and a
Walther P38 pistol in a leather holster. On the lower left arm he
wears a cuff title reading Feldherrnhalle.
Bottom: Sleeve title of the SA Feldherrnhalle Regiment.
The band was brown, and worn on the lower left arm. It carried the
title Feldherrnhalle written in the somewhat difficult to
read German Sütterlin script. This font, designed by Ludwig
Sütterlin (1865–1917), was introduced in 1915 in Prussia, and
gained importance in Germany from 1920 on. In 1935 it was officially
adopted by the Nazi regime until it was dropped in 1941.
Verstärkter Grenzaufsichtsdienst (VGAD, Reinforced
Border Surveillance Service)
VIKTOR LUTZE
In July 1934 Hitler appointed the loyal and colourless
SA-Obergruppenführer Victor Lutze to replace Röhm. Born on 28
December 1890, Lutze had served as an officer in the First World War,
joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and had risen rapidly in the SA
hierarchy. He was SA leader and deputy Gauleiter in 1924 and
subsequently promoted to the rank of SA-Oberführer in 1928. In 1930
he became a Nazi member of the Reichstag representing the electoral
district of South Hanover-Braunschweig. Appointed Police President of
Hannover in March 1933, Lutze became a member of the Prussian State
Council in the same year. He had never forgiven Röhm for usurping
the leadership of SA, which he considered his by right after
Pfeffer’s departure. The jealous and embittered Lutze had secretly
reported to Hitler on Röhm’s alleged plans. He had helped the SS
intelligence service to forge evidence and draw up death lists for
the Night of the Long Knives. He had accompanied Hitler to Munich to
arrest Röhm. So, when Hitler officially appointed the despicable
traitor Lutze as SA Chief of Staff, he made a good choice. Lutze was
not only an insignificant and contemptible man, self-effacing with
the dull personality of a well-disciplined follower, he had now
become an accomplice soiled with blood, thus a faithful Nazi. Lutze
was a capable and conscientious executive, without any special
abilities and ambition. Hitler made clear to him that henceforth the
role and influence of the SA would be drastically reduced. The Führer
dictated to Lutze the new course of the Sturmabteilung . He demanded
blind obedience from the SA, from its top leaders down to the most
humble ranks. He gave him a special twelve-point order directed
against drinking bouts, parties, automobile trips and unnatural
lewdness among SA members, and declared: ‘I expect all SA leaders
to help to preserve and strengthen the corps in its capacity as a
pure and cleanly institution. In particular, I should like every
mother to be able to allow her son to join the SA without fear that
he may become morally corrupted in their ranks. I want to see men as
SA commanders, not ludicrous monkeys!’
RE-ORGANISATION OF THE SA
Ernst Röhm’s name disappeared rapidly from standard reference
books, as well as from the vocabulary and the consciousness of Nazi
Germany. His name was removed from all SA swords and daggers of
honour, and all portraits and photographs of him were disposed of.
Because Ernst Röhm and his henchmen were filmed next to Hitler in
the 1933 propaganda film Der Sieg des Glauben (‘The Victory of
Faith’), the embarrassed Nazi Party and Führer ordered the
destruction of all copies, leaving only one known to have survived in
Britain. Hitler commissioned the production of another film as a
replacement. The result was Triumph des Willens (‘Triumph of the
Will’), directed by Leni Riefenstahl that chronicled the Nazi Party
rally of autumn 1934 at Nuremberg, this time without the now hated,
disgraced and dead SA leadership.
After the June 1934 purge, the Nazi authorities had no clear
answer to the question of what the function of the SA was to be in
their new state. The Brownshirts, who had believed in Hitler as the
leader of a social revolution, were disinherited by Germany, despite
having marched, fought, suffered, and in many cases died for so many
years in the hope of becoming the cream of the new Nazi society.
After the bloody purge the SA remained a social problem in Germany.
Just as 1933 had been the year of SA expansion and zenith, so 1934
was the year of decline and fall. The Nazi administration could do
nothing else but maintain the permanent members within its structure.
Therefore the SA was never abolished. The organisation did not
disappear, but it never recovered. Many SA men were dismissed and
tried to get back into civil life. Many remained unemployed and
several thousand were directed to emergency work camps. Many went
into the SA Reserve. Some SA men were transferred to police units and
to various Nazi organisations such as the Organisation Todt (OT,
public works building company), the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF, the
National Labour Front), or the Reicharbeitsdienst (RAD, National
Labour Service). A very few were taken by the Army. The
Kyffhauserbund veterans league was reformed independent of the SA and
continued in its former role as an organisation for ex-servicemen.
The SA Brigade Ehrhardt was purged and the remaining element, the few
judged loyal enough, were detached to form part of Himmler’s SS.
The SA did remain a Gliederung of the NSDAP, and although the title
of Obergruppenführer was retained, the ten SA Obergruppen
(districts) were abolished. The largest SA formation was now the
Gruppe (division). As a reward for the role it had played in the June
1934 purge, the SS was made an independent corps, becoming a
Gliederung of the NSDAP in its own right.
The Sondereinheiten (special military units) were disbanded. The
MSA was hived off and all its vehicles and some of its members were
incorporated into the NSKK, which was then raised to the status of an
independent Nazi Party formation. The Flieger-SA was integrated into
Hermann Göring’s newly-created DLV, which became the clandestine
forerunner of the Luftwaffe . Later, in 1936, the Reiter-SA became
the semimilitary Nationalsozialistische Reiter Korps (NSRK, Nazi
Cavalry Corps) headed by its commander Litzmann. The SA-Marine was
not disbanded. It served as an auxiliary to the Kriegsmarine and
performed search-and-rescue operations as well as harbour defence.
The SA Starnbergersee school survived the purge but in February
1936, control passed from the SA to the Nazi Party although the
principal remained an SA officer, SA-Obergruppenführer Julius
Görlitz. The title of the establishment was now NS Deutsche
Oberschule Starnbergersee (National-Socialist German High School
Starnbergersee). In 1941 all connection with the SA was severed.
Pupils were enrolled in the Hitler Jugend , and the staff in the
NSDAP.
The permanent SA-Stabswachten (bodyguards) were disbanded in
mid-1934, and some units were regrouped into a single ceremonial
formation called the Wachstandarte (guard regiment). This was renamed
in September 1936 Standarte Feldherrnhalle (after the building in
Munich which housed a shrine to the fallen Nazis of the failed putsch
of November 1923). The Standarte Feldherrnhalle became a small elite
regiment of armed volunteers employed to guard SA senior officers,
State and Nazi Party buildings and offices. To celebrate Göring’s
birthday in 1936, Lutze appointed him Honorary Commander of this
elite formation, which he accepted gratefully. By that time,
Luftwaffe General Kurt Student was creating a paratrooper force, but
found little response from the reluctant German Army. As a result
Kurt Student was forced to scrounge troopers wherever he could to
bring up his strength. In desperation he turned to Göring who, in a
move for power, ordered that the SA Feldherrnhalle unit be
incorporated into his air force. Lutze and the SA leadership were not
pleased, but did not dare oppose his decision. Student was, of
course, delighted, and in January 1937 the fittest members of the SA
Feldherrnhalle regiment underwent training as parachutists. The unit
became the embryo from which developed the Luftwaffe paratrooper
force, and later a Luftwaffe infantry division. The remaining part of
the SA Feldherrnhalle Regiment was transferred to the German army to
form a battalion within Infantry Regiment 271. This formation
expanded to regimental size in 1940, and to a fully-fledged armoured
corps, named Panzerkorps Feldherrnhalle in 1945. A small detachment
of SA Feldherrnhalle continued to serve under the SA as ceremonial
unit until the end of the Second World War.
All this considerably reduced the size of the SA from supposedly
4.5 million to about 500,000. But here again, the exact number of SA
men after the reconstruction is quite unclear. Despite the
reductions, the number of SA formations continued to grow, but
obviously the newly created units were far below regulation strength.
Thirty-six new Standarten were created in 1935, a further twenty-five
in 1936, thirty in 1937 and forty-two in 1938. Many new members
joined up probably because job prospects or advancement often
depended on evidence of Nazi affiliation.
The once feared and powerful SA organisation was completely
deprived of political power. The men were relegated to a backseat
role, assigned mundane tasks, and the corps turned into a veterans’
association. The days of the radical political bullies had ended with
the death of Ernst Röhm and the purging of the radical elements.
Never again would the SA be in a position to challenge the German
Army, the supremacy of the SS or Hitler’s leadership. The SA, now
chastened and disarmed, provided a physical manifestation of the
power and authority of the Nazi state in public demonstrations such
as the Nuremberg Party Day held in September each year. Until the end
of the war in, the SA continued to exist as Nazi propagandists, as a
sports organisation and as street fund collectors, but it had been
deprived of any real strength.
The SA continued to be an active component of the Winterhilfswerk
(WHW, Winter Help League). This was the official German winter relief
organisation, the ‘socialist’ aspect of Hitler’s image, which
struck a chord among many of the poorer Germans who were recipient of
the charity campaign. The WHW, launched in the winter of 1933/34, was
organised on an annual basis by the Nationalsozialistische
Volkswohlfahrte (NSV, National Socialist People’s Welfare
Organisation). The NSV, headed by SS-Gruppenführer Erich
Hilgenfeldt, was devoted to the welfare of party members and their
families especially mothers and children. The WHW was supported by
members of the SA and NSDAP, Hitler Jugend boys and girls, prominent
artists, civil servants or sportsmen with the aim of collecting
money, food, shoes, blankets, warm clothing and other items for the
poorest Germans. With the help of voluntary contributions, the Nazis
provided hot meals, warm clothes and comfort for the needy. The Jews
were of course excluded from benefiting from the organisation. In the
winter of 1935/36, the WHW organisation collected some 31 million
Reichsmarks. In 1937 helping the WHW was made compulsory. Every
worker had to pay a special winter tax (10 to 15 per cent of their
salary) from October to March. During the Second World War, the
Kriegwinterhilfswerk (KWHK, Wartime Winter Relief Organisation)
continued the activities of the WHW, and collected for the front-line
soldiers, for the widows, and for the civilian victims and homeless
due to the Allied air raids. Failure to give generously could bring
private threats of violence or public shame.
After the 1934 purge, the SA continued to engage in the
dissemination of Nazi racist propaganda and violence at a domestic
level including harassing opponents and smashing Jewish shop windows.
Some SA units participated to the so-called Kristallnacht (Night of
Broken Glass), the anti-Jewish riots of 9 November 1938 when
synagogues were wrecked and destroyed by fire, Jewish-owned stores
and business premises were damaged and pillaged, Jewish homes raided
and looted, Jews arrested, severely maltreated, wounded and about
thirty-six of them murdered.
The SA was also charged of the pre-military training units of the
SA Reserve and the boys of the Hitler Jugend They also trained Nazi
paramilitary militias, namely the DAF Werkscharen (Work squads of the
German Labour Front) and the Organisation Todt Schützkommando
(OT-SK, armed protection squads of the Organisation Todt). The DAF
Werkscharen were formations intended to act as the political shock
troops of the DAF, which had replaced the banned trade unions. It was
a huge organisation that brought all aspect of labour in Germany
under Nazi control. The DAF squads saw to it that discipline, command
and instruction, and Nazi order were respected in all workshops,
plants and factories.
The Organisation Todt (OT) was a conglomerate of public building
companies developed by the Nazi regime. The OT was charged to carry
out civilian public works (for instance highways), but also military
projects (for instance concrete fortifications), and obviously the
Organisation needed an armed police force for protection, and the
OT-SK were created in 1942. The role of the OT-SK included guarding
building sites against theft and sabotage, to be prepared for any
surprise attack on building sites, escorting and protecting German
workers, leaders, engineers and high-ranking OT officers, and the
supervision and control of forced workers and slave-labourers on and
off building sites.
For these various training purposes, a new branch of the SA, known
as SA-Wehrmannschaften (defence teams), was created in January 1939.
The SA Wehrmannschaften were composed of all able-bodied males other
than those who were already members of the SS, NSKK or NSFK, and who
had completed their two years’ military service. These units were
also assigned as auxiliary military police and some of them, in 1942,
were organised as anti-partisan forces in Yugoslavia. By that time,
the SA-Werhmannschaften were also responsible for overseeing the
allocation of men and support to the Heimatflak (Home anti-aircraft
artillery), Stadwacht (Auxiliary Urban Police) and Landwacht
(Auxiliary Rural Police).
SA units were among the first in the occupation of Austria in
March 1938. The SA supplied many of the men and a large part of the
equipment, which composed the Sudeten Freikorps of Konrad Henlein
(the Czechoslovak pro-Nazi, pan-Germanic nationalist leader),
although it appears that the corps was under the jurisdiction of SS
during its operations in Czechoslovakia.
A very little known unit deriving from the SA was the Verstärkter
Grenzaufsichtsdienst (VGAD, Reinforced Border Surveillance Service)
created in 1939 at Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland) from the SA
Brigade VI. As the title implies, the VGAD was intended as a
paramilitary unit for patrolling the frontiers around the Free City
of Danzig and as an extra defence against the Poles. Members of the
VGAD usually wore standard German army uniform with a black collar
displaying the SA collar patch and a sleeve title reading Grenzwacht
(Border Guard). During the invasion of Poland in September 1939
members of the VGAD fought as part of the Sonderverband Danzig
(Special Detachment Danzig), also named Brigade Eberhardt after its
commanding officer Generalmajor Friedrich Eberhardt. This unit is
principally remembered for capturing the central post office of
Danzig after heavy fighting.
When WW II broke out in September 1939, the strength of the SA was
greatly depleted, as many of its younger and fitter members were
drafted into the Wehrmacht . Unlike the SS, the SA did not establish
itself in the occupied territories, once several European nations
were defeated and occupied. From then on the SA was composed in
majority of partially disabled men or those deemed unfit for regular
military service, as well as older senior members of the Hitler
Youth, and older men not serving in the army reserve. After the
occupation of Poland, the SA Group Sudeten was used for escorting
prisoners of war. Units of the SA were employed in the guarding of
prisoners in Danzig, Posen, Silesia, and the Baltic States. Groups of
the SA were involved in the ill-treatment of Jews in the ghettos of
Vilna and Kaunas.
On 26 May 1943 SA commander-in-chief Obergruppenführer Viktor
Lutze, always a minor figure in the Nazi hierarchy, was killed in a
car crash while on a food-foraging expedition outside Berlin. Other
source asserts that he was murdered in a partisan ambush. Whatever
happened, he was replaced with the even more colourless and obedient
SA-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Schepmann (1894–1970).
