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NEWS DESK : MICHAEL WALSH, 21th June 2001
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A TRIBUTE TO THE SA MAN "Mightier than the tread of marching armies Is the
power of an idea whose time has come."
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"Just as the Unknown Soldier of the battlefields of World War 1, the unknown SA man faithfully did his duty for his fatherland.
He did not ask for any reward and did not do his duty in order to gain praise; he merely did it because the leader and the fatherland had called him.
To be an SA man means to suffer deprivation, to endure sacrifices. It means to buy the brown shirt from the little money earned, it means to go several nights without sleep, to march through ice and snow, rain and fog, and terrible heat.
To be an SA man means to put his life on the line every day and every hour. The SA man must always be ready to follow orders. He must distribute posters and leaflets, sell newspapers and protect meetings. He must march for countless hours, perform office duties, and ride on a truck for twenty hours at a time. He may be arrested any moment, he cannot enjoy family life. He always had to do one thing: fight.
The SA man is an outlaw. Every Communist may shoot him, every prosecutor accuse him, and every Jewish newspaper may smear him. The Red press may publish his name and molest his family.
To be an SA man means to be without a regular job and to sacrifice everything, not for himself, but for the entire people.
His way leads through prisons, police stations and hospitals, and into open graves.
Those who served as SA men during those ten years deserve all the praise and all the honour.
The nation has to thank these fighters in the brown shirts, because these men who performed their hard duty day and night saved so many lives.
Their casualty list is long, many being killed between November 9th 1923 and January 30th 1933.
Many times the Party banners displayed the mourning crepe.
SA men never boasted about their deeds publicly, occasionally telling about their adventures only when they were sitting together. The nation does not know about their sacrifices, seeing only their successes.
Where would Germany be without the SA?
Hitler’s political soldiers fought battles, won victories, and protected the Party.
Honour to them, the unknown heroes.
The nation shows her deep gratitude to the unknown SA man." - Translated from Germany Awakes, Fight and Victory of the NSDAP, Germany 1933
THE BIRTH OF THE SA. AND THE SS
Both organizations were formed on 3rd August 1921 to keep order at meetings and to educate the masses in the principles of the Party. After the NSDAP's coming to power and the Roehm purge its role was modified. Principally the SA (Sturmabteilungen - Storm Sections acted as an instrument of political and physical education. The SS. (Schutzstaffel - Political Police) was formed in 1923 to substitute the post-Putsch banning of the SA.
ADOLF HITLER PAYS TRIBUTE
"I can say with pride, comrades of the SA. and SS., that if the whole German people now was possessed of the spirit which is in us and in you, then Germany would be indestructible. Even without arms, Germany would represent an unheard of strength through this inner will tempered by steel. It is true that the equality that is realised in you was realised only at the cost of that freedom of which others spoke. We have, too, adopted the principle of leadership, the conception of authority.
That was a heavy sacrifice at a time when the whole people was running after the illusion of democracy and parliamentarianism, when millions believed that the majority was the source of a right decision.
It was at this time that we began resolutely to build up an organisation in which there was not one dictator but ten thousand. When our opponents say: 'It is easy for you: you are a dictator' - we answer them, 'No, gentlemen, you are wrong: there is no single dictator, but ten thousand each in his own place.' And even the highest authority in the hierarchy itself has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible.
We have in our Movement developed this loyalty in following the leader, the blind obedience of which all the others know nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount everything." – Adolf Hitler Speech to the SA Berlin, 8th April 1933
"My heart overflowed with joy when I saw the first reports of those trials (November 8th, 1923 Putsch), when I read in the Munich Post, 'The men of the Shock Troops are just as insolent and shameless as was their lord and master.' Then I knew that Germany was not lost! That spirit would gnaw its way through anything. Such a spirit they can no longer destroy. And out of these Shock-Troop men and these SA. men were later formed the greatest organisations of the German Movement - the SA. and the SS. And the spirit has remained: it has ever and again proved itself ten thousand - a hundred thousand-fold." - Munich, 8th November 1935. Celebration of the 12th Anniversary of the November 1923 Putsch
"This struggle has not only demanded sacrifice in blood, but above all inner sacrifices of the spirit. How many of you had to endure for long years the life of outlaws in this Germany which none has loved more than you did! Many of you had to pay the cost of this struggle with the loss of your position and your daily bread. And for years you have had ranged against you not only the brutal violence of the organised mob, you have had against you, too, the authority of the State, the ally of this mob. There hardly seemed any prospect that you could succeed against this conspiracy of baseness, of unreason and of power . . . and yet today Germany has in truth risen again and risen again as our work." - Adolf Hitler Speech to the 'political soldiers of the Movement’, Nuremberg Party Day, September 1937
ERNST ROEHM
"In spite of their numerical strength of about 2,500,000 men, the Storm Troops are not concentrated in barracks and rationed in common, as is the case with all formations belonging to any military system in neighbouring states. They are not paid and are not provided with service clothing. Today, as in the past, service in the Storm Troops is based on the absolutely voluntary system. The Storm Trooper pursues his civil vocation, and merely devotes his leisure hours, in the evening and at night, to Storm Troop service.
The Storm Troops were created as a protective and fighting force for dealing with the political opponents of National Socialism, namely Communism and Marxism. For fourteen years the Storm Troops waged the moral fight to obtain power in the state. Their prime task is now to secure the victory of the National-Socialist revolution.
The Storm Trooper is the exponent of the National-Socialist conception of human existence and its apostle who conveys the principles of National Socialism to the remotest cottage and to all his fellow countrymen without exception.
In the course of the years of struggle the Storm Troops with enormous sacrifice, have given convincing proof of their absolute loyalty to their Leader and to the movement, and thus showed themselves qualified for the task. It will always be a glorious page in the history of Germany that in times of greatest need hundreds of thousands of men came forward who were ready, from pure idealism and absolutely voluntarily, to defend their principles to the last.
As there is a fondness abroad for pointing out that these associations receive military drill, I must expressly emphasise that this is a means and not an end. From the very Start Adolf Hitler’s objective was to regenerate Germany on the basis of well-tried discipline and order. Large masses and, above all, the exponents of a revolutionary conception of human existence, cannot be held together without the strictest discipline and absolute order and without the absolute authority of the leaders and discipline on the part of their followers.
Do you believe that the German revolution would have been carried out so bloodlessly if all the fighters had not been imbued with this iron discipline?
And it is just because the German nation wishes for the well-ordered and peaceful construction of its new state that the discipline and order which foreign countries fear under the name of ‘military drill’ is the best guarantee against the Bolshevisation not only of Germany but also of the whole of Europe.
So far it was simply and solely due to the fact that the Storm Troops in the heart of Europe stood for years with consciously anti-Bolshevist aims as a bulwark protecting peace and order in the world, that Bolshevism was unable to lay its hands on the western European countries as well. Hence it is absolutely in the interest of foreign countries to see order and discipline firmly established in the German nation. The world ought to be thankful for that, instead of distorting the facts and representing the Storm Troops as a threat to peace.
The uniform clothing is also constantly used as an excuse for representing Germany to the world as ready and determined for war. But the brown shirt, both as regards material and cut, is completely unsuitable as service dress. It affords no protection against inclement weather. I do not believe that an unprejudiced military expert in any army in the world can honestly describe the brown shirt as serviceable in wartime. Besides, I have so far not heard that anyone has objected to the wearing of uniform by the numerous men’s and women’s associations in neighbouring countries. And yet, at the present time, nearly the whole of the young people of England, France, Italy, the United States, Poland and Russia, are not only dressed in uniform which resembles that of their armies in cut and colour, but they are even trained quite openly in the use of arms for war service by military men on the active and reserved lists.
The service shirt of the Storm Troops, on the other hand, is not suited to render its wearer invisible against a natural background, as is required in the case of a service uniform. But it is intended, on the contrary, owing to the unusual luminosity of its colour, to distinguish him from his surroundings and to enable friend and foe to recognise him as the exponent of the National-Socialist conception of human existence." – Ernst Roehm, Addressing the Diplomatic Corps, Berlin, December 7 1933.
HEINRICH HIMMLER, REICHS-LEADER, SS
In the catechism of the SS. (Schutzstaefel) the SS man professes his faith in 'a Lord God' :
" You may rest assured that we could not have formed this corps sworn to unity if we had not had the conviction of and faith in a Lord God Who stands above us, Who has created us and our Fatherland, our people and this earth, and Who has sent us our Leader." - Heinrich Himmler, Reichs-Leader, SS