The Myth of The Unknown Storm Trooper-Selling SA Stories

Central European History 46 (2013), 298–324.
© Central European History Society of the American Historical

Association, 2013
doi:10.1017/S0008938913000629
The Myth of the Unknown Storm Trooper:

Selling SA Stories in the Third Reich
Andrew Wackerfuss
N July 1933, an official at Joseph Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry gave an
I influential speech concerning the “cultural-political tasks of the German

press.”1 The speaker, Wilfrid Bade, was himself an author and journalist
who had previously attracted little notice outside Nazi circles. He declared that
“a new Germany needs new authors”—an unsurprising sentiment, and one pro-
nounced by the cultural representatives of many new regimes.2 Bade went on,
however, to name a surprising group of candidates for this authorial duty: the
storm troopers, members of the Nazi’s paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung
(SA), whose violent thuggery had raged through German streets and helped to
push the decaying Weimar Republic over the edge.
To ardent Nazis, especially the oldest ones, they were heroes who represented
the movement’s deepest roots. The German people, Bade said, “want to hear
stories of those men who have been in the SA for ten years . . . bulletins of
blood and of the heart, which we will use to raise the German people anew, to
win back for them not only the political realm and the state, but also culture
and folklore [Volkstum].”3 Bade spoke these words in his official capacity in the
Propaganda Ministry, at a meeting that his biographer called the Third Reich’s
“first cultural-political press conference.”4 The talk established him as “a new
star” in the office, and set the path for his meteoric rise.5
Goebbels himself followed up on the themes Bade introduced in his speech
that November, during the ceremonial opening of the Reich Culture
Chamber. Here he declared with characteristic bombast that new Nazi literature
would be rooted in the Volk community, able to help its people overcome the
struggles of everyday life, and fearless in its rejection of the failed values of
the past. As part of the Nazis’ continued struggle against cultural modernity,
1
Wilfrid Bade, Kulturpolitische Aufgaben der deutschen Presse (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1933), 15.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid., 30.
4
Christian Härtel, Stromlinien. Wilfrid Bade. Eine Karriere im Dritten Reich (Berlin: be.bra wissenschaft
verlag, 2004), 47.
5
Ibid., 51.
298
THE MYTH OF THE UNKNOWN STORM TROOPER 299
Goebbels proclaimed that Nazi authors would write according to a “steel roman-
ticism,” which would stand in contrast to traditional German romanticism, as well
as “Jewish realism and intellectualism.”6 The new “steel romanticism” would be
simultaneously grandiose yet realistic, heroic yet ordinary, aggressive yet protec-
tive of the Volk.
Such a literary framework, which sought to imbue the everyday struggles of
present-day Germany with epic emotions better suited to heroic myths from
the past, perfectly matched the self-image long cultivated within the SA. For
the next several years, as Nazi newspapers trumpeted Goebbels’s and Bade’s argu-
ments, novels by storm troopers became a regular part of the Nazi regime’s pub-
lishing industry. Storm-trooper stories began with the authors themselves, who
were attempting to forge a new National Socialist literary genre. But book
making and marketing at this time also required the participation of traditional
publishers, who looked to capitalize on a rising demographic of Nazi supporters
and empowered old guardsmen after 1933.
Members of the German public who wished to demonstrate support for the SA
and the new Nazi state could do so by supporting its associated products, in this
case, its books. Indeed, the initiative for publication often came not from the
Propaganda Ministry, but from the authors and publishers who saw a chance to
earn easy money from a reading public hungry for Nazi adventures. Bade’s
own SA erobert Berlin ran serially in more than seventy newspapers, a level of
popularity that prompted its publication as a book a year later, and also encour-
aged other similar works to emerge.7 Bade’s work had sold more than 60,000
copies by 1938.8 Teachers read it aloud to students. Some readers mistook its
invented hero for a real person and sent him postcard greetings care of “his” pub-
lisher.9 Other fervent readers wrote Bade to request the novel’s translation into
local dialects such as Plattdeutsch, so that it might speak even more directly to
common experiences.10 Many of the works went into multiple editions with
print runs that totaled tens of thousands of copies. SA leader Hans Zöberlein’s
Command of Conscience sold 600,000 copies.11 Storm-trooper authors also won
acclaim in the form of local, regional, and national book prizes. Even if most
6
Both terms were used by Goebbels and other Nazi cultural figures and became such a common
watchword that a contemporary article in Time magazine reproduced the language. “Blood-thinking,”
Time, June 5, 1939. See also Jay Baird, Hitler’s War Poets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 7.
7
Härtel, Stromlinien, 104.
8
Ibid., 110 and 265.
9
Ibid., 107.
10
Ibid., 108. Bade declined this invitation despite his empathy for its goals. He did not wish to open
himself to criticism that he was using his position in the Ministry to broaden his publishing resume and
enrich his bank account—charges of which he was not entirely innocent. Ibid., 123–125.
11
Baird, Hitler’s War Poets, 98.
300 ANDREW WACKERFUSS
traditional academic and literary circles disdained storm-trooper writings, some

began to use them in academic seminars.12
These connections between traditional publishing, literary, and academic circles
support Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen’s observation that strong continuities persisted in
German literary production before and after 1933. As he wrote, Nazi literature
engaged in the same “cultural traditions of the Klein- and Bildungsbürgertum”; it
also employed many of the same “socioeconomic constellations of groups and
classes that took part in the production of literature.”13 Alongside extensive
attacks on both authors and publishing houses that the Propaganda Ministry
labeled degenerate or un-German, storm-trooper literature engaged with bourgeois
cultural traditions even as it criticized bourgeois politics.14 It also cooperated with
traditional publishing houses to offer new authors access to literary production. As
a result of this collaboration, both the Nazi literary establishment and a surprising
proportion of the German reading public took SA literature seriously. Many
readers greeted the books as historical documents, as vivid illustrations of the
storm-trooper mentality, as useful ideological tools, and as entertaining gifts for
family members or friends in the SA and other party organizations.
Naturally, much of the works’ popularity came from their status as favored prod-
ucts of the regime. Such sponsorship was not merely assumed, but also concret-
ized through the Nazis’ firm control over all cultural products that sought to
leverage the party’s new authority. In the case of storm-trooper myths, the
Official Party Commission for the Protection of National Socialist Literature
(PKK) had closely monitored their content since April 1934, when Rudolf
Hess created the office to oversee the booming field of Nazi “trend literature”
(Konjunktorschrifttum) spreading since the takeover.15 In a continuing battle with
several other Nazi literary offices, the PPK gained censorship powers to permit
or deny publication of would-be works about the SA and other Nazi subgroups.
Storm-trooper literature that the PPK permitted thus enjoyed official sanction
and assured popularity. Nazi newspapers and publishers’ catalogs heavily pro-
moted these works on lists of recommended reading for party members.16
12
Zöberlein, for instance, was pleasantly shocked to learn that his works were being taught at the
University of Munich. See ibid., 106.
13
Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen, Völkisch-nationale und nationalsozialistische Literatur in Deutschland
1890–1945 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1976), 83.
14
This article has described the “positive” or productive side of the Nazi literary campaign. For an
account that also focuses on the negative and persecutory elements, see Gisela Berglund, Der Kampf
um den Leser im Dritten Reich. Die Literaturpolitik der “Neuen Literatur” (Will Vesper) und der
“Nationalsozialistischen Monatshefte” (Worms: Heinz, 1980). Vesper’s case fascinates because he first
enjoyed the regime’s favor, then suffered its sanction.
15
Jan-Pieter Barbian, Literaturpolitik im NS-Staat. Von der “Gleichschaltung” bis zum Ruin (Frankfurt:
Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2010), 170–171.
16
See the glowing review of Gotthard Kraft in “Die Geschichte des unbekannten SA-Mannes,”
Hamburger Tageblatt, August 14, 1932, in which a Nazi member of parliament describes it as the
best of the “innumerable books of the movement [that] have gone through my hands.”
Book reviews in party papers advertised the ideological and literary merit of the
stories. Bookstores held promotions with uniformed storm troopers on site to
encourage sales. Some publishers promised—not always truthfully—to donate
a part of the proceeds to the SA.17 Other publishers gave free copies of their
storm-trooper novels to high-ranking SA leaders who in turn offered discounted
copies to their men.18
Though storm-trooper authors never came to dominate a Nazi publishing indus-
try that was surprisingly varied even while tightly controlled, they still retained an
ideological cachet that appealed to many insiders. At first glance, the storm troopers
may appear to be unlikely authors. But despite their reputation as anti-intellectual
thugs, they had in fact for many years produced works of literature, verse, and lyric.
Many of the most famous martyrs of the Kampfzeit were aspiring writers, including
Horst Wessel, whose poem “Die Fahne hoch” became the movement’s anthem. In
Hamburg, the mortally wounded SA man Paul Kessler used his final days to pen
two storm-trooper novellas, which he hoped would inspire his comrades after he
was gone.19 Another Hamburg storm trooper, Hermann Okrass, was a key
editor for that city’s Nazi newspaper. Similarly, Berlin Sturmführer Otto Paust
became one of the essential writers of Goebbels’s Der Angriff, whose pages he
filled with bloodthirsty accounts of local street fights.20 Meanwhile, in Munich,
SA Brigadeführer Hans Zöberlein’s writings received recognition from Hitler
himself as the best and most accurate recounting of the front soldier turned storm
trooper.21 SA journalists and writers also crafted content for the storm trooper-tar-
geted weekly feature pages, which appeared in Nazi newspapers under titles such as
the “Storm Column,” or “Soldat und Arbeiter.”
The Nazi Party and its SA, as the political and combat wings of the National
Socialist movement, did not always agree on tactics or ideology. Both organiza-
tions, however, agreed that storm-trooper authors were among the party’s most
valuable propaganda tools. The party considered their writing to be more au-
thentic and effective agents through which to propagandize the lower-middle
and working classes, while the storm troopers themselves gained a venue in
which they could assert their status as intellectuals. Storm-trooper authors
posed as peoples’ philosophers, whose wisdom came from experience and
struggle rather than from stale and decadent book learning. They became, in
other words, the intellectuals of an anti-intellectual movement.
17
The Hamburg publishing firm Quitmann & Lindermann used both of these techniques to
promote the 1933 work Das Schicksalbuch des deutschen Volkes. National Archives Captured German
Records Group, A3341 SA Kartei 039.
18
Siegfried Lokatis, Hanseatische Verlaganstalt. Politisches Buchmarketing im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt am
Main: Buchhändler-Vereinigung GmbH, 1992), 79.
19
National Archives Captured German Records Group, A3341 SA Kartei 089A.
20
Baird, Hitler’s War Poets, 15.
21
Ibid., 26–7, 96.
After the takeover of power and Goebbels’s proclamation of the Nazis’ literary
goals, storm troopers gained increased access to formal publishing mechanisms.
Their writing was part of a broader effort to create a new genre of National
Socialist literature (nationalsozialistische Schrifttum), which included exegeses of tra-
ditional literature; politicized works of history, anthropology, and other social scien-
tific subjects; histories of the SA struggle in various cities; and biographies of fallen
nationalist heroes such as Horst Wessel. These were in many respects the typical lit-
erary projects of a new regime, and they represented an ever-growing field in
German publishing under the Third Reich. Among them counted the books by
SA men, which one column in the NSDAP’s Hamburg newspaper claimed
were the only ones that could properly count as Nazi literature:
Only in works such as these can it be made clear what we mean when we greet
with “Heil Hitler,” and what we call out, and what we confess, and what our
Führer challenges us to accomplish in the name of the brown fighters left
behind on the field, when we sing the song of the SA, the song of Horst
Wessel. Only books in which this spirit lives can be called National Socialist.22
Within this larger array of propaganda, the storm troopers made a unique contri-
bution: novels starring or dedicated to “dem unbekannten SA Mann,” or the
Unknown Storm Trooper.
The “unknown” moniker was consistent with the Nazis’ continued appropria-
tion of World War I—a process that George Mosse dubbed creating a “myth of
the war experience” that would inform postwar politics and thereby justify Nazi
violence.23 National Socialist propagandists habitually applied the “unknown”
moniker to groups they wished to honor, including the unknown worker, the
unknown speaker, and the unknown German woman.24 Yet only the
22
Helmuth Langenbucher, “Gibt es nationalsozialistische Schrifttum?,” Hamburger Tageblatt, August
15, 1934.
23
For a general overview of the Unknown Soldier as portrayed in post-World War I memorials, see
K. S. Inglis, “Entombing Unknown Soldiers: From London and Paris to Baghdad,” History & Memory
5, no. 2 (1993): 7–31, as well as the comprehensive work by Laura Wittmann, The Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier, Modern Mourning, and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2011). Scholars who have described the French Unknown Soldier include Volker Ackerman, “‘Ceux
qui sont pieusement morts pour la France . . .’ Die Identität des unbekannten Soldaten,” Francia 18, no.
3 (1991): 25–54; Annette Becker, “Les Soldats Inconnus,” Historiens et Géographes 89, no. 364 (1998):
135–139; Keith Phelan Gorman, “Resurrecting the Dead: Socialist Contestation for the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 21 (1994):
307–314. Steven Palmer described a similar South American figure, the héroe anómino, in Steven
Palmer, “Getting to Know the Unknown Soldier: Official Nationalism in Liberal Costa Rica,
1880–1900,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25, no. 1 (1993): 45–72. George Mosse, Fallen
Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1990), 7; and Baird, War Poets, 258–9.
24
Haig A. Basmajin, “The Use of the Symbol ‘Unknown’ in Nazi Persuasion,” Folklore 77, no. 2
(1966): 116–122. Cornelia Schmitz-Berning’s dictionary of Nazi phrases traced the term to a
Goebbels speech connected to the 1927 “Battle of Pharus Hall” in Berlin. Cornelia Schmitz-
Berning, Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 554.
unknown storm trooper produced his own literary genre, in which SA authors
repackaged the cross-cultural figure of the “unknown soldier” to paint their
own parochial adventures as more universal heroic deeds. These works formed
a distinct sub-genre of Nazi literature, and they eventually served an important
political purpose in attempting to bridge the increasing chasm between the
SA’s “old fighters” and the new regime they had helped to create, but which
they feared was now leaving them behind.
The myth of the unknown storm trooper has thus far been ignored by scholars
of Nazi literature, which itself has only recently become a legitimate topic of
study.25 For decades, contemporaries and later scholars dismissed most Nazi lit-
erary projects as crude propaganda. One typical dismissal recently scorned them
as “worse than unreadable: they are complete dead ends . . . nothing except
the crudest war stories.”26 These rejections, however, match neither the novels’
contemporary reception, nor the experience of modern classroom teachers
who have discovered that students who are “far removed from the Third
Reich . . . [have] still found themselves moved by the trials and tribulations of
the young Nazi heroes.”27 Despite the ideological and methodological prejudices
against Nazi literature, several excellent studies have emerged.28 Many of these
have concentrated on tracing Nazi literary themes and images back to their ante-
cedents.29 Others have studied both the ostensibly real—Nazi accounts of histori-
cal figures and events—and the obviously fantastic—Nazi utopias and works of
science fiction.30 But the myth of the unknown storm trooper has fallen into a
25
See, for example, Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen’s statement that “a literary-historical research program
worthy of the name does not yet exist.” Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen, Literatur und Drittes Reich
(Schernfeld: SH Verlag, 1992), 45. Ketelsen complained that most studies to date of Nazi literature
suffered from adherence to ideological critiques based either in Marxism or liberal antitotalitarianism.
The latter viewed Nazi literature as the cultural products of late-state capitalism, while the former saw
only instrumentalized works of antimodernist, totalitarian propaganda; 36–37. He discounted studies
such as Klaus Theweleit’s Male Fantasies, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1987 and 1989), as intriguing but ultimately more psychoanalytical rather than historical. Jan-Pieter
Barbian drew similar conclusions in his article “Literary Policy in the Third Reich,” in National
Socialist Cultural Policy, ed. Glenn R. Cuomo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).
26
John Connelly, Review of Richard Overy’s “The Dictators,” Kritika 7, no. 4 (2006): 927.
27
Jennifer Redman, “‘Lässt sich daraus was lernen?’ Children’s Literature, Education, and Ideology in
the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany,” Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German 31, no. 2 (1998):
132.
28
J. K. Ritchie notes that “novels which turned worker into SA man” were among the most success-
ful Nazi types. His discussion of the genre, however, remains cursory. J. K. Ritchie, German Literature
under National Socialism (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1983), 94.
29
George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York:
Howard Fertig, 1964). Mosse also provided a primary source reader that excerpts several works of
SA writing; George Mosse, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966).
30
Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1990); Manfred Franke, Schlageter: Der erster Soldat des 3. Reiches. Die
Entmythologisierung eines Helden (Cologne: Prometh Verlag, 1980); Ian Kershaw, The Hitler Myth:
Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Jost Hermand, Old
gap between these sub-genres. Too distant from reality to be evaluated as his-
tories, yet far more grounded in daily life and inspired by actual events than its
critics have been willing to grant, the storm-trooper myth has proven as difficult
a source for scholars as it was for contemporaries. This article will describe the
common features of these works, illustrate their popularity, and explain how
they tried—but ultimately failed—to help to mitigate the increasing tensions
between the SA and the Third Reich.
Outlines of the Storm-Trooper Myth

At least twenty-one novels written by or about storm troopers appeared between
1933 and 1939, a brief but productive period of storm-trooper literary output that
rose and fell in connection to the SA’s own struggles to find an enduring role in
the Nazi state. Works in this sub-genre followed the adventures of an anonymous
or pseudonymous storm trooper as he attempted to navigate the chaotic and
violent world of Weimar street politics. While each separate version of the
unknown storm trooper’s story offered a variation on the main theme, the
twenty-one novels that directly fit this category generally followed the same
basic plot structure.
The unknown storm trooper’s story begins in a domestic setting, usually in an
urban environment. If the hero is not already a storm trooper, the opening chap-
ters portray his discovery of National Socialism through his early encounters with
the songs and symbols of the movement. He simultaneously confronts poverty
and crime in his native city—social problems that the novels blame on the
Nazis’ political enemies. The unknown storm trooper then meets a friendly,
slightly older SA man who impresses the hero with his morality and courage.
This surrogate older brother encourages the hero to follow his convictions and
join the SA. In many cases, the unknown storm trooper’s father is either a
Social Democrat or Communist—a political and generational domestic conflict
that the women of the family try to mediate. The novel’s middle developments
positively associate the storm trooper with the family, the state, and the Christian
church—symbols that demonstrate his commitment to the foundational insti-
tutions of German society. These sources of support conflict with increasing
pressures to leave the SA, which most often come from his father, from teachers,
from Communist-dominated work environments, from girlfriends worried about
his safety, and from a constant threat of physical danger that periodically develops
into outright violence. The storm trooper therefore faces many dangers. In typical
Nazi fashion, however, these perils do not dissuade the storm trooper but instead
only further solidify his commitment to the cause. Furthermore, the plot structure
Dreams of a New Reich: Volkisch Utopias and National Socialism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University,
1992).
credits such episodes of violence with spreading support for the movement
beyond the storm troopers themselves, as each combat causes the citizens of the
town to distrust the SA’s political enemies and flock to its banners. Indeed,
during the story’s climax when these enemies often succeed in striking down
the storm trooper, his death brings the final victory of the Nazi movement and
its takeover of the German state. His blood sacrifice also solidifies his family’s per-
sonal loyalty to Nazism and converts the oppositional father into a loyal storm
trooper who takes up his son’s place in the ranks.
Given this basic narrative, the unknown storm-trooper genre belonged to a
thematic family that contained some of Germany’s most powerful founding
myths. In its general outlines, it belonged to the category Hayden White has
described as a romance:
[A] drama of self-identification symbolized by the hero’s transcendence of
the world of experience, his victory over it, and his final liberation from
it—the sort of drama associated with the Grail legend or the story of the res-
urrection of Christ in Christian mythology. It is a drama of the triumph of
good over evil, of virtue over vice, of light over darkness, and of the ultimate
transcendence of man over the world in which he was imprisoned by the
Fall.31
Narratives with this form described the journey of a hero whose innocence is,
through a series of bested trials and overcome adversaries, transformed into matu-
rity, strength, and an eventual, transcendent triumph. Preexisting German myths
of this type included the Parsifal story, in both Wolfram von Eschenbach’s original
epic poem and in the Wagner opera that was so popular within the SA, and in
wider circles of German society. The storm-trooper romance also tracked the pre-
dominant strain of nineteenth-century German historical writing, the historicism
of von Ranke and his disciplines. This influential “Prussian school” of history told
the tale of the German Empire as the culmination of a centuries-long historical,
moral, and spiritual process.32 One of the most vivid sub-myths in this tradition
can be found in Treitschke’s account of the Teutonic knights, in which the broth-
erhood’s blood sacrifice hallowed the Baltic lands for the German people and
their future state. Myths in the romantic mode often feature such sacrifices.33
31
Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore,
MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 8–9. See also Hayden White’s The
Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD, and London:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).
32
On historicism’s methods, assumptions, and politics, see Roger Chickering, Karl Lamprecht: A
German Academic Life (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), 24–34; and Georg Iggers,
The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), 6–13 and 90–123.
33
For the use of these myths in World War I, see Hermand, Old Dreams, for the German case, and
for a comparative perspective, see Allen J. Franzen’s Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
As Treitschke wrote, “A spell rises from the ground which was drenched with the
noblest German blood in the fight on behalf of the name of Germany and the
most sublime gifts of mankind.”34 The similarities of all these myths with that
of the storm troopers is clear.35
Stories of the unknown storm trooper thus recalled a much deeper German
historical and mythic tradition. They portrayed the storm troopers’ struggle as
the latest chapter of an eternal spiritual-historical crusade fought by such lumi-
naries as the Teutonic Knights, Parsifal, and even Christ himself. It was not neces-
sarily a cynical or calculated choice, since most SA men firmly believed in this
self-imagery. Their difficulty, during the Kampfzeit and after the takeover, was
to convince the larger public of their heroism. Novels starring an unknown
storm trooper promised to be quite useful in this endeavor, as they allowed the
SA to mobilize the universal power of an already accepted narrative in a way
that seemed grounded in an immediate, everyday reality.
Novels starring unknown storm troopers thus claimed to be more than myth,
adventure stories, or fictional tales. Instead, they gained argumentative power by
positioning themselves as true accounts of actual events. Many of the works
claimed, either in their subtitles or in dedication pages, to be “tales of great
events as told by one who lived it.”36 Advertising copy for Gerhard Pantel’s
Germany Commands: A Diary of the Battle for Berlin proclaimed that it “breathes
the spirit of days gone by, which it conveys to future generations.”37 The “anon-
ymous authors” (ungenannte Mitarbeiter) of The Unknown Storm Trooper: A Good
Comrade of Hitler’s Soldiers were said to have infused every sentence with the
“manly defiance and holy beliefs” they had formerly brought to the political
struggle.38 Both these works, according to Nazi advertising, were “Written by
men who have nothing in common with the dried-out wisdom of cloistered
attic-learning, by men who have stood and yet stand as members of the
Sturmabteilungen on the front lines of the daily political battle.”39 Their resulting
books thus remained true to “the fighting spirit of the SA.”40
Some titles proclaimed their reliability as works of history by presenting them-
selves as actual storm-trooper diaries. Such products included the aforementioned
34
Heinrich von Treitschke, The Origins of Prussianism: The Teutonic Knights (London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1942), 19. This edition’s introduction, written just after the Battle of Britain in July 1941,
painted Treitschke as a “forerunner of Nazism” and urged that his “Utopian” conclusions be seen in an
ironic light.
35
Jay Baird, “Goebbels, Horst Wessel, and the Myth of Resurrection and Return,” Journal of
Contemporary History 17, no. 4 (1982): 633–650.
36
Fritz Stelzner, Schicksal SA. Die Deutung eines grossen Geschehens, von einem, der es selbst erlebte
(Munich: Franz Eher Nachf., 1936).
37
Befehl Deutschland. Ein Tagebuch vom Kampf um Berlin. Ad copy from back matter of Anonymous,
Männer gegen Schüffler (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937).
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
Germany Commands, as well as Standarte X: Diary Pages from a Rural SA-Standard,
Willi Dickkopp: Out of the Diary of an Unknown SA Man, and—in the only version
from a woman’s perspective—With Death so Near: Diary Pages from an SA Man’s
Bride. Other works quoted letters supposedly sent between the hero and his
family members. Gotthard Kraft, Julius Witthuhn’s colorfully titled storm-
trooper myth, reproduced one such exchange between the eponymous hero
and his loyal girlfriend, an epistolary approach with deep roots in modern litera-
ture as a technique to enhance a sense of reality. The pseudo-documentary base
made fiction seem more like reality.
As can be seen from the titles already listed, the novels’ claims to truth existed
alongside an impulse to universalize the story through the lens of an anon-
ymous everyman. Rather than a specific SA-Standarte, readers followed
“Standarte X.” Rather than an actual Hamburg storm trooper, Willi
Dickkopp starred an SA man with a charming and evocative name. Prolific
storm-trooper author Hans Zöberlein presented his autobiographical
account of coming to the SA, Command of Conscience, through an idealized
authorial surrogate named “Hans Kraft.”41 Witthuhn, the self-styled “poet”
who wrote Gotthard Kraft, began his story with a dedication to a specific
SA-Mann whom Communists had killed in 1931. But Witthuhn denied
writing a straight biography and said instead that he intended to show not
how this one storm trooper had “bled for the movement,” but how people
like him had done the same.42
For this reason Witthuhn also refused to ground his story in a specific location.
Instead, his action took place in a “big city” made anonymous as H ____.43
Gotthard’s SA-unit, “Sturm Nr. __,” marched to “the friendly Kreisstadt
W___,” not to a specific town.44 With this approach, readers from any
number of towns could imagine that the story took place in their own backyard.
Heinz Lohmann’s SA räumt auf took the storm trooper’s anonymity to a higher
level. Lohmann often rejected first-person narration altogether, which would
have limited the story to mere autobiography. Instead he used the collective
“we” to speak of SA activities. Lohmann claimed in the introduction that “I
did not write this book of my own will alone,” and that “I speak for every
41
Hans Zöberlein, Der Befehl des Gewissens (Munich: Franz Eher, 1936). See also Baird, Hitler’s War
Poets, 106–110, for a contextualization of this novel in Zöberlein’s larger body of work. Present-day
literary critics have coined the term “Mary Sue” for such self-flattering authorial surrogates. A “Mary
Sue” (or “Marty Stu” for the male version) represents an idealized and unrealistic self-image of the
author as an admired and all-conquering key player in important events. It often represents an
attempt to insert an autobiographical character into preexisting adventure stories. See “Marty Stu”
at http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MartyStu (accessed February 5, 2013).
42
Julius Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft (Hannover: NS-Kulturverlag, [1932]), 5.
43
Ibid., 54.
44
Ibid., 102 and 65.
comrade. Even when I speak of myself, there lies within the feelings of thousands
upon thousands of Adolf Hitler’s unknown soldiers.”45
Visuals included in these mythic accounts also reflected a shift over time away
from identifiable, historical individuals. Bade’s SA erobert Berlin contained a fron-
tispiece photograph allegedly of its hero, an “SA-Mann Shultz.” Yet Schulz was
Bade’s invented everyman. The photograph so confused readers that Bade had to
answer correspondence addressed to his character; he also had to battle legal
threats when a real SA-Mann Schultz turned up claiming to have inspired the
story.46 Bade’s next work, Trommlerbub unterm Hakenkreuz, a novel of the
Hitler Youth in which unknown storm troopers played key supporting roles as
surrogate older brothers, avoided this problem by illustrating with drawings
rather than photographs. Moreover, the visuals now usually obscured the
young heroes’ faces—by showing them from behind, hiding their features
under caps, or inking deep shadows over their features. Nine of fifteen illustrations
in Trommlerbub concealed the heroes’ faces in this way.47 The remaining six all
depicted an argument, confrontation, or dispute: almost as if these young men
could gain identities only through struggle. SA men themselves appeared in
none of the illustrations despite their prominence in the narrative, and they there-
fore retained a double anonymity—without names and without faces.
This technique reinforced the novels’ emphasis on universal characters, an
approach also seen in the lack of specific physical descriptions of the anonymous
hero. The Ehrenbuch der SA, a kind of collective biography of unknown storm troop-
ers that featured many different examples of the type, wrote of one Hamburg SA
man:
He was not a weakling, but also not a strong man; he was somewhat under
medium height and was thoroughly and in every aspect unnoticeable. He
went over streets where thousands of others go, without making the least
impression on anyone. He distinguished himself in no way, other than
perhaps by his indistinguishableness . . . He was quite simply a young
German man.48
An unknown storm trooper thus had little personality or character of his own. In
his deeds, he often possessed a quality akin to a Zelig or Forrest Gump.49 His story
45
Heinz Lohmann, SA räumt auf (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1935), 7. Lohamnn
claimed to have written the story in summer 1933, and the eventual book bore a 1933 copyright.
But the foreword includes a 1935 date, indicating its later publication or reissue.
46
Härtel, Stromlinien, 107.
47
Wilfrid Bade, Trommlerbub unterm Hackenkreuz (Stuttgart: Loewes, 1934), 9, 15, 33, 39, 51, 57, 71,
93, and 97.
48
Karl Koch, Das Ehrenbuch der SA (Düsseldorf: Floeder, 1934), 70.
49
The 1994 film Forrest Gump also corresponds with several ideological tropes displayed in Nazi
myths: specifically, an anti-intellectual rejection of civil rights and antiwar movements as misguided,
naïve, and ultimately harmful to the home country. Jennifer Hyland Wang, “A Struggle of
often placed him at the center of the most important events of local party history,
and it associated him with all the party’s brightest stars. Bade, for instance, por-
trayed his SA-Mann Schulz as being the first to defend Goebbels’s honor in
“the Battle of Pharus Hall”—a brawl in 1927 with Communists who had
mocked the Little Doctor during a speech.50 Schulz’s alleged role in this fight
thus assigned him agency in one of the key events in the history of the Berlin
NSDAP, a tavern brawl that caused a consequent Parteiverbot.51 The unknown
storm trooper of 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann was even more tightly integrated
into the highlight reel of Nazism’s greatest moments. He began his story in
Frankfurt as a participant in the passive resistance against the French occupation
in 1923—at the time, the central front of the nationalist struggle. He then
moved to Berlin just as Goebbels took over as Gauleiter.52 From here, the
unknown storm trooper attended all major Hitler rallies and party events,
formed a close working relationship with Goebbels (“Our Doktor”), and
became intimate friends with a series of famous SA martyrs—Hans Maikowski,
Herbert Gatschke, Peter Geminder, and, most importantly, both Horst and
Werner Wessel. The relationships were so intimate that these luminaries shared
with the unknown storm trooper their personal as well as their political lives.
Horst Wessel, unsurprisingly, proved of particular importance to unknown
storm-trooper stories no matter the setting: Lohmann’s SA räumf auf! placed
him in Vienna, while other versions conjured Wessel in a variety of towns in
which he personally instructed local SA troops in his party anthem.53 In the
Rhineland, nationalist martyr Albert Leo Schlageter appeared with similar fre-
quency. Some of the descriptions proved simply impossible, as with an episode
in Lohmann’s story where Goebbels rallies a small band of storm troopers—at a
date before he had even joined the party.54 Even when technically possible,
the connection to so many famous party figures and events was unlikely for
any real person. They were standard, however, for an unknown storm trooper.
Some stories of the unknown storm trooper stated explicitly the agenda served
by summoning nationalist legends in this way. Such figures, according to
Lohmann’s SA räumt auf, served as mythic, ever-living examples of virtue. As
Lohmann’s unknown storm trooper observed concerning Schlageter, “We
youth then cared nothing for the whole Iliad and Odyssey stuff. Our pantheon
Contending Stories: Race, Gender, and Political Memory in ‘Forrest Gump’” Cinema Journal 39, no. 3
(Spring 2000): 92–115.
50
Wilfrid Bade, SA erobert Berlin. Ein Tatsachenbericht (Munich: Knorr & Hirth, 1933), 102–104. For
an historical account of the meeting and its disturbance, see Ralf-Georg Reuth, Goebbels (Munich:
Piper, 1991), 120.
51
Bade, SA erobert Berlin, 107–109.
52
Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1933), 60.
53
Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 133–135; Berhard Voss, Willi Dickkopp. Aus dem Tagebuch eines unbekann-
ten SA-Mannes, 4th ed. (Rostok: Selbstverlag, [undated]), 31.
54
Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 4–38.
was the Freikorps fighters. They were the daily bread of our hearts. Often the
names—of men, of units—were already legends.”55 These Freikorps men had
become nationalist legends in part because of their own literary output, a
mostly autobiographical genre that Werner Best described in 1930 as “heroic
realism.”56 Best first used the phrase to refer to Ernst Jünger’s War and Warriors,
itself not strictly a Freikorps-story but still firmly within the “heroic realist” tra-
dition, which valorized an author’s experiences of World War I and the
postwar border skirmishes as part of a long heritage of productive violence.57
The tradition reached back from Jünger to Nietzsche, and further back into
the most traditional mythic stories. What tied them all together was a “joy in
adventure” (Abenteuerfreudigkeit) that welcomed conflict as an opportunity to
achieve personal transcendence.58
The unknown storm trooper now took his place as the latest member of a
pantheon of legendary heroes. Yet he remained as distant in some ways as these
ancient idols. Achilles in his rage or Odysseus with his schemes in fact had
more psychological depth than the unknown storm trooper. Unknown storm-
trooper novels seemed intimate, but were ultimately impersonal. By filtering
the narrative through a single heroic cipher, they invented credible details to dis-
tract from their improbability and therefore to fulfill their real purpose, which was
to immunize the Nazis’ historical claims against refutation by competing facts.
Nazi Publishing’s Shift from History to Myth

Novels about the unknown storm trooper must therefore be seen as part of the
Nazis’ ongoing historiographical project. An unknown storm-trooper story
shared many traits with traditional histories, with cynical works of propaganda,
and with adventure fiction. Yet it transcended them all in its political utility. Its
ideological claims were more plausible for being integrated into the personal
story of a recognizable everyman, while its use of traditional heroic tropes encour-
aged readers to interpret storm troopers as the latest representative of a respected
55
Ibid., 47.
56
Walter Hof, Der Weg zum heroischen Realismus. Pessimismus und Nihilismus in der deutschen Literatur
von Hammerling bis Benn (Tübingen: Verlag Lothar Rotsch, 1974), 240.
57
Ernst Jünger’s In Stahlgewittern (1920) was and remains the prototypical Freikorpsmann autobi-
ography. Two other popular autobiographies were written by Freikorps fighters who later became
SA officers, Ernst von Salomon’s Die Geächten (1931) and Manfred von Killinger’s Das waren Kerle
(1944). A bibliographical review of Freikorps literature can be found in Nigel Jones, Hitler’s
Heralds: The Story of the Freikorps 1918–1923 (London: John Murray, 1987), 273–275. An interesting
post-World War II counterpoint to the literature of both Freikorps and SA can be found in George
Elford’s The Devil’s Guard (St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer Publishing, 1971). The author claims the
work is a true account, disguised by pseudonyms, of a band of 300 SS veterans who escaped the
Russians, joined the French Foreign Legion, and continued their battle against communism in
Indochina.
58
Hof, Der Weg zum heroischen Realismus, 257.
lineage. By casting Nazi ideological themes in the traditional form of the heroic
narrative, SA novelists connected National Socialism to the respected institutions
of German society: family, religion, and the state. Finally, and perhaps most
importantly, an unknown storm trooper’s story was more difficult to undermine
than fact-based narrative. Indeed, the problems encountered by several early Nazi
efforts at history and biography explain the origins of this genre, and its rapid
growth as a subset of Nazi publishing in the first few years after the takeover of
power.
The political utility of the myth of the unknown storm trooper was based on a
fundamental difference between evidence-based histories and accounts that
eschewed such intellectual honesty. Simply put, claims made by the former
were open to scholarly and popular debate, while the mythic assertions of the
latter were not. More straightforward Nazi histories were, of course, also attempts
at mythmaking. Generally speaking, both histories and myths served the same
purpose: to provide a foundational legend that legitimized the present—in this
case, the new regime—by rooting it in a momentous past.59 Yet myths, as
opposed to histories, are irrefutable. They take place in a zone that Mircea
Eliade, the famous mid-century scholar of myth and religion who was himself
linked to Romania’s fascist Iron Guard movement, has called illud tempus: primor-
dial time, a time outside and immune to historical analysis or refutation.60 The
Nazis’ use of myth therefore reflected a flight from fact itself, different even
from biased and ideological histories. The influential precursor of fascism,
Georges Sorel, agreed. Sorel emphasized the transformative power of myth,
and he claimed that myths should not be judged on their truth or accuracy,
but on their power to motivate action.61
Trends in early Nazi publishing illustrate the differing political utility of history
and myth. Additionally, the Nazis’ struggles with historical writing show why
they saw such promise in the storm-trooper myth. At first, official Nazi histories
of the party’s struggle for power seemed to be written according to a more or less
traditional method. While they were ideologically slanted, they documented real
political events in an urban environment: elections, rallies, and the most lethal
incidents of political violence. Histories of local party and SA chapters sometimes
reproduced the documents on which they were based, in an attempt to establish
their objectivity. But this reliance on documentation was problematic—especially
59
Joseph Mali, Mythistory: The Making of Modern Historiography (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2003); William McNeill, Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 1986).
60
Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York: Harper and Roe, 1963), 19. See also Robert
Ellwood, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), 79–97; and Bryan Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade:
Making Sense of Religion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996).
61
Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); and
Ellwood, The Politics of Myth, 32–33.
since the Nazis shared with their Stalinist adversaries a tendency to edit, falsify, and
even forge documentary evidence. Histories of the Hamburg SA showed this ten-
dency with some extremity: they retouched photographs to add more storm
troopers in an image, increase the size of an audience, or intensify the flames of
an SA bonfire.62 The publishers seemed unable to resist these additions, which
they may have hoped their audiences would accept as literary flourishes. Yet if
audiences considered the alterations forgeries, or if they somehow discovered
alterations in the documents, it would undermine the political message of the
work as a whole.
The Nazis experienced this problem early on with the reception of works that
venerated the two most prominent members of the SA, its leader Ernst Röhm and
its greatest martyr Horst Wessel. Röhm’s autobiography, Geschichte eines
Hochverräters, underwent several revisions resulting from the Eher Verlag’s
desire to coordinate each new edition’s content with the party’s shifting messages.
Few contemporaries would have compared the editions and noticed the contra-
dictions.63 But Röhm’s public image nevertheless experienced an unpleasant
exposure to documentary evidence in April 1931 and March 1932 when the
Munich Post published a series of his personal letters that outed him as a homosex-
ual. In the Röhm case, the SA saw how quickly its assertions—in this case, its
hypermasculine self-stylings—could quickly come under attack through the dis-
covery of a few documents.
Nazi attempts to enshrine Horst Wessel as the prototypical storm-trooper
martyr were similarly problematic. In some respects, these efforts were far more
effective and comprehensive than those surrounding any other figure in the
party, aside from Hitler himself.64 In 1932, the first two Wessel biographies
appeared, followed after the takeover of power by at least thirteen more, including
two authored by Wessel’s sister.65 Yet none of these accounts could establish
62
Arthur Böckenhauer, 10 Jahre SA Hamburg in Bildern mit verbindendem Text (Hamburg, 1932).
63
Cf. Heinrich Bennecke, “Die Memoiren Ernst Röhm. Ein Vergleich der verschiedenen
Ausgaben und Auflagen,” Politische Studien 14, no. 148 (1963): 179–188.
64
Baird, “Goebbels,” 633–650.
65
Hanns Heinz Ewers, Horst Wessel. Ein deutsches Schicksal (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1932), on
which the later film Hans Westmar was based, and Erwin Reitmann, Horst Wessel. Leben und Sterben
(Berlin: Steuben-Verlag, 1932), written by one of Wessel’s SA comrades. Appearing in 1933 under
the title Horst Wessel were works by Friedrich Avemarie, Wilhelm Ernst Balk, Ernst Günter
Dickmann, Max Kullack, and Walter Schönknecht. Other works included Erich Czech-Jochburg,
Das Jugendbuch von Horst Wessel (Stuttgart: Union deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1933); Fritz Daum,
SA-Sturmführer Horst Wessel. Ein Lebensbild von Opfertreue. Für Deutschlands Jugend (Reutlingen:
Ensslin & Laiblin, 1933); Frido Lindemann, Horst Wessel und sein Lied (Berlin: Neuer Berliner
Buchvertrieb, 1934); Erich Malitus, Horst Wessel, 4th ed. (Breslau, 1934); Annemarie Steihler, Horst
Wessel. Eine Geschichte aus der Kampfzeit (Frankfurt am Main: M. Diesterweg, 1937); and Karl
Zaum, Deutsche Helden. Horst Wessel (Berlin: Beenken o.J., 1933). Ingeborg Wessel, Horst Wessel.
Sein Lebensweg nach Lichtbilden zusammengestellt (Munich: F. Eher Nachf., 1933); and Ingeborg
Wessel, Mein Bruder Horst. Ein Vermächtnis (Munich: F. Eher Nachf., 1934).
beyond doubt the party’s official version of his life and death.66 The Nazis’ Wessel
story was widespread and effective, but it was nevertheless flawed because it was
based on a historical person and dealt with facts that could be challenged, under-
mined, or refuted. The Nazis solved this problem by retreating from the historical
itself, a development that can be seen in both literature and film—consider, for
instance, the 1933 film’s modification of Horst Wessel’s story into the pseudon-
ymous Hans Westmar. With a translation of real figures into mythic ones, the story
became irrefutable: no letters could emerge to sully the hero’s public image, no
newspapers could offer contrary versions of the same event.
The Mythic Style of Argumentation

Instead of flawed factual accounts, storm-trooper myths made symbolic claims
that, like all myths, aligned their heroes with an assumed natural and social
order. Weather imagery, for example, linked the storm troopers to the land
itself, a romantic technique of projecting a hero’s inner turmoil onto the physical
landscape. In many versions of the storm-trooper myth, storms—“Hitler
weather,” in Gotthard Kraft—preceded or accompanied moments of recognition
by the hero of his place in the Nazi fighting pantheon.67 The young boys of
Bade’s Trommlerbub first met their new Nazi friends when they were driven into
an SA tavern to take shelter from a sudden violent storm.68 But as frighteningly
as the novels portrayed dangerous weather, they emphasized its quality as a
source of energy like that within the storm trooper himself. As the anonymous
hero of 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann stated, “The raging of the elements
matched us well. It was akin to the excitement in our hearts.”69 But if weather
imagery proved the storm troopers’ primal connection to the German land,
their myth also linked the hero to the German soul. This, the storm troopers
believed, reflected three main pillars of German society: the Christian religion,
the state, and the family. In all cases, the myth implied that the National
Socialists and their SA had earned their hold on power through their commitment
to defending these vital spheres of German life from internal and external enemies.
The vast majority of Germans defined German spirituality in Christian terms;
most Nazi propaganda therefore sought to associate the movement with
Christianity. This association was not, as is often assumed, propaganda calculated
to mask fact. As recent studies have shown, Nazi rhetoric claimed strong roots in
Christianity, and many National Socialists were dedicated Christians.70 Despite
66
Baird, “Goebbels,” 638–639.
67
Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 62.
68
Bade, Trommlerbub, 40.
69
Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 37, as well as 35, 52, and 65.
70
Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity 1919–1945
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Die politische Religion des
Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1998), especially 26–31 and 107–130;
the regime’s later growing comfort with paganism, it was in the Christian God
that many National Socialists trusted—if not in church institutions.71 The
unknown storm-trooper myth evoked this connection through three techniques.
It focused on Sundays as a day of community and missionary work; it alluded to
biblical episodes that cast the storm troopers as Christlike figures; and it high-
lighted Christian storm troopers or allies while painting the Communists as
enemies of religion.
Gotthard Kraft began with its hero perched on his windowsill on a Sunday
morning, listening to the call of church bells.72 Other accounts began with
Sunday marches or camping trips to the countryside, as in Bade’s Trommlerbub.
The unknown storm trooper did his best work on Sunday. Like his factual
counterparts, he held his largest marches on this day, especially those that involved
multiple SA units.73 Practical reasons lay behind this pattern: storm troopers who
were employed could attend a Sunday march, not ones during the week. Yet the
mythic accounts encouraged a religious understanding of these Sunday activities,
which they painted with missionary tones. On Sundays, unknown storm troopers
spread the good word about their movement, marching through their own cities
or to small neighboring towns that had not yet been evangelized.74 They also sold
newspapers in higher volumes on Sunday than on any other day.75 In all these
activities, the unknown storm trooper self-consciously took up the missionary’s
cross of hardship and responsibility. As Willi Dickkopp reflected, “One question
plagued me: should I give up this preaching and live my life in bourgeois peace, or
should I take up the challenge and further pursue the truth?”76
Unlike many actual storm troopers, the unknown storm trooper was always
careful not to appear irreligious. He regularly attended church.77 But he was
more than a simple Christian: he was also a Christlike figure who sacrificed his
blood for the renewal of the people. Willi Dickkopp resolved to bear the
Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Erlösung und Vernichtung. Dr. Phil. Joseph Goebbels (Munich: Klaus Boer
Verlag, 1987), 171–194 and 282–296.
71
The best and most serious work on this subject is Rüdiger Sünner’s Schwarze Sonne. Entfesselung
und Missbrauch der Mythen in Nationalsozialismus und rechter Esoterik (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1999),
which debunks the many flawed popular studies of this topic. A good example of the sensational
and mystical approach can be found in Trevor Ravenscroft’s The Spear of Destiny (York Beach, ME:
Samuel Weisner Books, 1982). This work argued, based on “evidence” gained through astral projec-
tion, that Hitler’s rise was assisted by his acquisition of the titular magic spear.
72
73
Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 32, 65, and 90; Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekanner SA Mann, 143–144.
Examples of actual Sunday marches in Hamburg, for example, can not only be found in the
various newspapers of the city, but also in a collection of march routes and schedules kept by
Standartenführer Alfred Conn. Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte (Hamburg) 11C1 Alfred Conn.
74
Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 45.
75
Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 27, 29.
76
Ibid., 16.
77
“jealousy and hate” of the workers’ neighborhoods to bring to them the light of
Nazism, and he compared the SA’s forceful protection of Nazi meetings to
Christ’s ejection of money changers from the temple.78 SA räumt auf emphasized
the blood of a storm trooper who was wounded with a knife on Christmas night.79
In all these instances, holding true to how Goebbels portrayed Wessel’s famous mar-
tyrdom, the storm trooper’s wounds and death only sped the movement’s ultimate
triumph. The most powerful and extended treatment of this concept came at the
end of Gotthard Kraft. Gotthard spent the novel fighting for the “holy movement,”
saluting “the holy swastika-flag,” and affixing “the holy swastika-badge” to his
coat.80 In the end, having been shot by Communists like many of the unknown
storm troopers, he lay in his hospital bed “like a picture of Christ.”81 The pastor
who delivered his funeral oration invoked the words of John 15:13—“Greater
love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”82
The appearance of the pastor signified another way in which the myth associ-
ated the storm trooper with Christianity: it placed religious figures alongside him.
Pastors marched in SA columns, spoke at funerals, and highlighted enemies as false
or nonbelievers. Willi Dickkopp’s SA troop, for example, included a theology
student whom they ironically called “Rabbi.”83 Gotthard’s pastor promised
that his murderer “will face God’s law in heaven!”84 The storm trooper’s
enemies, on the other hand, included only atheists and fraudulent clerics
among their ranks. The hero of 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann encountered a
former seminary student who had been thrown out of his seminary for chronic
drunkenness. When a fight broke out at a speech by Goebbels, the SA attempted
to rescue him from the melée. This “pastor”—always mentioned with quotation
marks around his title—rewarded them with ingratitude and brought a lawsuit
against Goebbels himself.85 The storm trooper’s enemies mocked Christian mo-
rality, attacked the SA on Sundays, on Christmas day, and at church.86 In the most
extreme violation of religious codes, these enemies—including, in one case, a
corrupt Catholic priest—denied a Christian burial to the fallen storm trooper
Peter Geminder. Geminder, a “no lip-service Christian” (“kein Lippenchrist),”
had been an upright, moral, and pious figure, yet in death the enemies of the
SA treated him with a blasphemous contempt that echoed Achilles’s desecration
of Hector’s corpse.87 The unknown storm trooper and his comrades opposed the
78
Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 20 and 40.
79
Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 55.
80
Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 32, 101, 107, and 64.
81
Ibid., 94.
82
Ibid., 100.
83
Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 53.
84
85
Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 75–77.
86
Ibid., 62 (Sunday); Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 55 (Christmas day) and 233 (at church).
87
moral decay promoted by their enemies. Sometimes, the search for God—“for
something great”—had drawn him to the SA in the first place.88 The
unknown storm trooper spread a gospel of salvation and sacrificed his blood for
national renewal, and his actions were supported by religious leaders within the
ranks. In contrast to his enemies, who sought to destroy traditional religion in
Germany, he heralded its renewal.
Stories of unknown storm troopers laid symbolic claim to secular as well as
spiritual sanction. But associating the Nazis—and particularly the storm troop-
ers—with the traditional German state was even more difficult than associating
them with Christianity. The storm troopers fought not only against other para-
military groups, but also against the police and justice system. The myth dissolved
this conflict in two ways. More commonly, they linked the storm troopers to
symbols of the German state other than the police and courts: particularly to sol-
diers, national heroes, university professors, and teachers. The myth sometimes
showed university professors—who were themselves state employees—as storm
troopers. When Willi Dickkopp’s storm-trooper brother encountered one in a
marching column, the scholar laughed off the brother’s formal address to him
and replied with the informal, “Du, now I’m an SA-Mann and a comrade, not
doctor.”89 The scholar compared the situation to his own wartime experience,
when he encountered a former professor of his own in the trenches, who told
him, “My dear boy . . . the professor hasn’t gone to war . . . He who stands
before you is soldier and comrade—nothing more. Today I may pull you up
out of the mud, and tomorrow you’ll do the same for me. Now wipe that
stupid look off your face and give me a cigarette.”90
To emphasize the SA’s ultimate loyalty to the German state (if not the German
republic), unknown storm-trooper myths also featured marches and demon-
strations with veterans’ associations. During a visit by Hindenburg to the
Rhineland in 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, storm troopers, members of the
Stahlhelm and other veterans’ associations, and civilians stood shoulder to shoulder
to greet the war hero and new president. As Hindenburg’s car drove by, he looked
the unknown storm trooper in the eyes, moving the latter to exclaim spon-
taneously, “Oh, God, let him guide Germany’s destiny so that our Führer’s
goal can be reached: that young, strong, German men can work openly and
without shame for Germany’s rebirth!”91
Yet even the mythic genre could not deny the tension with the state—
especially the SA’s recurring conflicts with the police and the courts. Like all his-
tories and newspaper accounts of the SA struggle, the myth chronicled courtroom
88
Bade, Trommlerbub, 30.
89
90
Ibid. The professor in the trenches used du and dir as well.
91
Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 54. Other examples of soldiers cooperating with the
SA in this source can be found on 19, 29–30, and 49–50.
prosecutions—which it saw as persecutions. It also alleged police favoritism for
the left-wing paramilitaries. Behind the generally unfriendly face of a supposedly
corrupt justice system, however, the myth of the unknown storm trooper claimed
that loyal functionaries awaited the chance to help true German patriots.
Sometimes, storm troopers found support among individual police officers. In
Lohmann’s SA räumt auf, the storm trooper, who was visiting a small
Mecklenburg town, found himself accused of shooting at Communists near a
church—a particularly enraging false accusation, for the irreligious Communists
had in fact done the deed. Warned not to leave town while the case was being
investigated, the storm trooper packed his bags but decided not to risk evading
the police guards outside. Suddenly, a policeman appeared at his door, com-
manded him to get into a car, and helped him escape. Before parting ways, the
storm trooper dared finally to clarify matters:
Rather than simply vanish into the shadows, I couldn’t let things go without
asking my mysterious benefactor [the policeman] for an explanation . . .
“I still don’t know why you’re doing this.”
“Well, my boy, then I’ll say one last word to you.”
With that my secretive friend opened the lapel of his coat slightly, and showed
me that on the inside he wore a badge I couldn’t fail to recognize. Then he
made to leave. I’m sure you can think of what his last words were:
“Heil Hitler!”92
Such stories sought to prove that policemen had been compelled to hide their
Nazi sympathies during the Weimar Republic and only waited for a chance to
show their true colors.
Elsewhere, storm troopers such as Gotthard Kraft encountered policemen who
could be persuaded past their stereotypes about the brownshirts. Gotthard’s con-
version of one such official, a relative of his girlfriend who served as a police
captain in Berlin, featured one of the genre’s most extended intellectual
debates. Throughout the scene, the author emphasized not only the similarity
in the viewpoints and arguments of storm trooper and policemen, but also
their physical connection. Storm trooper and policeman looked each other in
the eye, laid hands on each others’ shoulders, and in the end clasped hands and
swore their friendship. The policeman then declared his conversion in religious
tones that echoed the spiritual, “Amazing Grace”: “I rejoice in this hour,
which has taught me to see and again believe! [Ich freue mich dieser Stunde, die
mich sehen und wieder glauben gelehrt hat!]”93
Among soldiers, teachers, policemen, and judges, the unknown storm trooper
of myth continually discovered allies within the state system. By showing these
men as no more loyal to the Weimar Republic than the storm trooper was,
92
93
myth reconciled SA criminality and disloyalty: though the storm troopers had
fought the law under the Weimar Republic, the republic itself violated a
higher conception of the German state. The SA, the NSDAP, and the sympa-
thetic state officials who appeared in the myth thus served true Germany,
which was destined to rise again as the Third Reich.
Stories of unknown storm troopers often portrayed state officials as paternalis-
tic. The storm trooper thus stood in a familial relationship to these men, whose
approval overwrote the conflict with natural fathers who disapproved of their
sons’ political activism. The unknown storm trooper was often the black sheep
of his family, who had defied the father’s wishes to abandon politics in favor of
university studies or professional advancement, or opposed his father’s conserva-
tism, communism, or socialism.94 The storm trooper recognized that he could be
accused of placing party before family. He admitted that the SA cared for its com-
rades like family members, and acknowledged that time spent in party service
meant time away from the family.95 The myth of the unknown storm trooper
did not deny the strains placed on the family by party life; instead, it recast the
strains as the product of noble sacrifice, a form of “silent heroism”:
Families torn apart, because adolescents chose to pursue other goals than
those the father tried to give them; siblings who had no contact with each
other anymore, because one had signed himself up with Adolf Hitler and
the other had chosen an easier life. Who knows how many tears were
shed by mothers over their sons and daughters, because they stood for
Germany?96
These tears and divisions were very real problems for the SA in its struggles to
win and retain young men for the movement—and, after the takeover, retroac-
tively to portray themselves as loyal to the families they had torn asunder in the
pursuit of power. The myth thus minimized the friction between the storm
trooper and the German by depoliticizing family members’ objections to the
storm trooper’s lifestyle. Myths provided supportive testimonials from family
members, especially women, who objected less to the SA man’s ideological
goals than to the personal risk he assumed. For fear of Willi’s safety, his wife
cried half the night into her pillow upon hearing news of his recruitment.97
Gotthard’s mother prayed to God to protect her boy, but she always supported
his actions.98 In other cases, the storm trooper’s parents tried to convince him
to quit the group after his first injury in combat with the Communists.99 But
94
Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 11, 109, and 29; Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 11; Bade, Trommlerbub, 58–59;
Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 57–60.
95
Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 20 and 48.
96
Ibid., 126.
97
98
99
the storm trooper usually persuaded parents, wives, and girlfriends that the reward
was worth the risk. SA-Mann Brand, the hero of the film, parried his mother’s
concerns with just such arguments, while Lohmann’s storm trooper used them
to win over both his parents and his girlfriend. When the girlfriend suggested
that he devote more time to his medical studies, he convinced her that selfish
devotion to one’s profession mattered less than exertion for the greater good:
“Now you’re going away again. A new semester. And then another. And
another. How many more until you’re finished, boy?”
“I can’t say.”
“But you should be able to reckon it.”
“Not me, child! You know that I don’t just live for studying, but also for
the movement.”
“And I? Am I nothing?”
“Everything, love! Everything! But an extra semester or not doesn’t
matter anyway; in the end it will just mean there’s one more unemployed
doctor without a practice.”
“Maybe. But when I think what could happen if you took all the energy,
all the time and strength that you put into the movement, and used it for
your own personal advancement in your studies and your profession, then
I know that despite the troubled times you could secure an existence for
yourself. Not just you, rather—for us.”100
It took the storm trooper days to think up his answer to her “clever” and
“brave” arguments, but after serious thought he finally told her, “Child, you
must think as if it’s war. . . . And instead of the trenches, it’s the SA that’s the
only way to save lives. It’s war right now, war for our Volk.” Her reply:
“Really? When you say it that way, then I start to believe it.”101
Unknown storm-trooper stories emphasized the special fondness that women
and children supposedly had for the SA. These two groups were the most
immune to lies spread about the storm troopers by their enemies.102 Women
also at times took concrete action to support their storm-trooper kin. Women
sent letters of moral support, served meals, bound wounds, and repaired uni-
forms.103 Sometimes, the wife competed with her storm-trooper husband in
party activism. In one story, during the preparations for Hitler’s first major
speech in the Berlin Sportpalast, all party members scurried to make sure that
the hall was filled. The storm trooper’s wife was as busy as anyone else. She felt
100
Ibid., 150.
101
Ibid., 151.
102
Ibid., 64.
103
Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 55–56 (letters) and 10–11 (meals); Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter
SA Mann, 61 (meals); Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 25, 177 (wounds); and Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 52
(uniforms).
such deep commitment to her husband’s ideals that she even neglected her duty
to make him supper:
Often when I came home I found a note on the table instead of food:
“There’s tea under the counter. I’ve hurried off to a family whose address
I’ve just learned. Cross your fingers that they take some tickets!” When
later in the evening she made some sandwiches, the conversation was
only about the coming meeting in the Sportpalast, when we could finally
hear Hitler again.104
SA women performed these duties not only out of love for the storm trooper,
but also out of their own ideological commitment. Indeed, myths that featured
relatively equal partnerships of storm troopers and their women developed
political and romantic allegiance in tandem. Zöberlein’s Command of Conscience
structurally connected increasing political engagement with major steps forward
in the romantic relationship. In this work, Hans Kraft’s engagement with his
Freikorps served as a precondition for the introduction of a proper female
partner. Next, the couple’s encounters with sexually predatory Jews intensified
their ideological and personal commitments; finally, they consummated the
relationship against the backdrop of the Hitler Putsch.105
This parallel structure of political and personal union formed the major plotline
of the only version of the myth with a female heroine: Dem Tod so nah . . .
Tagebuchblätter einer SA-Mannes Braut. The anonymous diarist met her storm-
trooper fiancée, Wolfgang, through their work for the party, and when he
asked her to marry him, they both thought of the movement. As she wrote:
“Before you give me your affirmation,” he continued, “think that to be an
SA man’s wife demands sacrifice and doing without. Can you promise me
that you’ll never put limits on my duties for the Hitler movement, that
you’re ready at any time to give your last and dearest for your fatherland?”
Never was God so near to me as at this hour. I felt fate’s hand burning in
my soul. I knew that hard tests lay before me. Love for the fatherland
burned within by heart. But I never felt so strong as in the moment I
gave my affirmation to this man, whom I loved with my entire soul, and
swore to him to sacrifice everything for the fatherland.106
The bride’s words proved prophetic when Wolfgang was shot and killed just
before they could marry. The pastor who was to marry them helped to maintain
104
105
See Ritchie’s similar read of this “national socialist love story.” Ritchie, German Literature, 100.
106
Gudrun Streiter, Dem Tod so nah . . . Tagebuchblätter einer SA-Mannes Braut (Diessen vor
München: Jos. C. Hubert, undated [ca. 1932]), 14. Streiter—the name fits the male naming conven-
tions of the genre, and is thus probably a pseudonym—purported to have been given the diary pages by
an old school friend, who wanted her to read them and understand the woman’s side of the storm-
trooper struggle. Streiter published the diary with a foreword supposedly written by the unnamed
bride’s pastor.
her strength by reminding her that she was to be an SA man’s bride. She thus
attended the funeral in full support of the movement.
Not in black garments of mourning was I clad. No, I walked as the bride of
an SA man, as a Hitlermädchen behind the hearse, in Hitler’s brown garment.
I will not dress in clothes of mourning. Only my brown Hitler dress, my
fighting dress will I wear. I will not disappear in my pain. I need my strength
for the fight. Nothing will separate me from Wolfgang. Our souls are forever
united.107
The storm troopers’ women bore pain and anguish for their common move-
ment. Yet the risk to the storm trooper, and his dependents, paled in comparison
with the horrors the genre claimed awaited them should the SA’s enemies
triumph. The myth portrayed the threat in both economic and moral terms.
Willi Dickkopp witnessed both. Having sailed to Russia while working with
the Hamburg-America Line, he saw firsthand the effects of the “Soviet paradise”
on young girls there, who prostituted themselves to German sailors to stave off
hunger.
I got the most terrible impression from the eleven- and twelve-year-old girls
who often came on board and contaminated through and through any sailor
who shared their company. Misery and hunger were so great that it sent a
cold shudder down our spines when we thought that such a thing could
happen, too, in our Germany.108
The storm trooper saw the economic dangers of socialism that were already
occurring in Germany. The Weimar Republic had ruined the German family
through unemployment and financial hardship, so storm troopers in SA Mann
Brand, Gotthard Kraft, SA räumt auf, and 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann were the
sole providers for their families, the fathers having failed in this capacity.109 Yet
the storm trooper concerned himself more with a gendered, moral problem.
Communists in the myth sought to entice German women into participating in
“Asiatic orgies.”110 They physically attacked women and children, both on the
street and at home.111 Willi Dickkopp’s son and three-year-old daughter had to
be taken to the hospital when they were poisoned by a Communist who gave
them a tainted bottle of milk.112 His daughter woke up terrified in the middle of
the night, yelling “Mommy, mommy—the Communists are coming!”113
107
Ibid., 40.
108
109
Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 10; Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 118 and 139; Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbe-
kannter SA Mann, 58.
110
111
Ibid., 97; Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 106.
112
Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 63–64.
113
Ibid., 106.
These attacks on women and children justified SA violence. As Willi said,

“These were the tactics used against us. What were we supposed to do to
counter them? Wasn’t it understandable that here and there in the middle of
this struggle someone transgressed [Nazi] Party discipline and got into a fight
with one of these ruffians?”114 Communists attacked German children in
Trommlerbub as well. When the protagonists were exposed as Nazis to their
working-class community, it formed a mob that sought either to reclaim them
or kill them. “I am a Communist!,” one of their fathers exclaimed, “and I will
not allow my son to be stolen away by those fascists! Cursed band! I’ll break
every bone in that boy’s body! I am a Communist, and my boy is also a
Communist, or I’ll beat him dead!”115 Fortunately for the youths in question,
storm troopers protected them. But the Communists in other stories were so
unscrupulous that they used a storm trooper’s chivalry against him.
Communists instructed their own women to cry out in distress from dark alleys
while they lay in hiding to ambush storm troopers who came to her rescue.116
To the threatened German family of unknown storm trooper stories, the party
offered the best solution. In Willi’s case, it helped his family move out of the
Communist neighborhood. But it also presented a more lasting solution: like
most works in this genre, Willi’s story ended with Hitler’s appointment as chan-
cellor and the founding of the Third Reich.117
The case for the storm trooper as protector of the German family, state, and
religion could be made in mythic form far better than through reference to
facts. As discussed in turn, each of these associations carried problematic
aspects, and a historical or evidentiary assertion of the link could have been weak-
ened with countering facts and anecdotes. In the myth, on the other hand, the
storm troopers could be trusted to protect and defend these institutions from
internal and external enemies. Unknown storm-trooper stories thus implanted
the idea that the storm troopers were, despite popular images of their violence
and brutality, simply fervent defenders of all that Germans held dear.
The Decline of the Storm-Trooper Myth

This collection of powerful symbols combined to form a persuasive and appealing
product. The relationship between storm-trooper novels and the SA itself was
therefore quite close—emotionally as well as financially and politically. But
astute observers would have questioned whether this loud support in the
public sphere served to distract from the growing resentment many storm troopers
held that the Nazi Party was failing to provide them direct, material support
114
Ibid., 64.
115
Bade, Trommlerbub, 58–59.
116
117
Ibid., 106–109.
commensurate with the SA’s deeds in pursuit of Nazi power. Given the great ten-
sions between the party and SA concerning how the spoils of victory should be
distributed, party support of storm-trooper myths represented an important way
in which the party could reward the victorious storm trooper with prestige, fame,
and honor—without running afoul of the military and economic factions whose
interests a reformist SA would threaten. If, as the storm troopers increasingly com-
plained, the party could not or would not reward its oldest fighters with jobs and
social welfare, it could at least celebrate their struggle and burnish their image in
the public eye. Stories of unknown storm troopers accomplished this task quite
well, but they could not solve the lingering tensions between the party and the
SA. Indeed, disagreements over the future role of the SA in the Nazi state led
to violent conflict in June 1934, which saw Röhm’s murder, the purge of the
SA leadership, and the end of its hopes for a major role in military affairs. After
the purge, storm-trooper myths retained their importance as a way for the
party to show its debt without having to deliver any concrete rewards.
Ironically, therefore, half of the unknown storm-trooper novels appeared after
the SA’s decimation. Though many of the “old fighters” had been pushed
aside and the “political soldiers” demobilized, the literary trend continued. If any-
thing, it became even more mythic in its setting of Weimar street fights and tavern
living, which now portrayed a lost world, an Urzeit, that the storm troopers had
long ago lived but that now belonged to an age of legend. This continued literary
affection shown to the hobbled organization was akin to the attention American
culture paid to American Indians only after their defeat, or the British adoption of
Scottish cultural trappings only once that northern threat had been tamed. As
European and American audiences then and now appreciate, lost worlds can be
inherently more interesting and romantic than present-day settings. They can
also serve surprisingly effective and popular political purposes.
Storm-trooper novels thus lived on even after the purge. Their time, however,
faded as the Third Reich focused its attention on the war it planned soon to begin.
All the authors of storm-trooper novels who continued to write after 1937
switched to more straightforward war stories, either from World War I or,
once it began, World War II. Eventually, even war stories became difficult to
publish. When paper rationing grew stricter after 1941, man power further
shifted into the armaments industry, and material shortages across the economy
grew extreme, literary production of all types increasingly shut down.118 Some
storm-trooper authors thereafter signed on with SS units as battlefield reporters,
where they found the heroic death whose merits they had long advocated.
The rise and fall of storm-trooper mythic literature therefore mirrors the place
of the SA in the Nazi regime itself. Early on, the Nazi Party strongly supported the
use of storm-trooper experiences and perspectives to win converts through
118
Barbian, Literaturpolitik im NS-Staat, 182.
the appropriation of heroic tropes held dear by many Germans who otherwise
might not have sympathized with Nazi claims. After 1934, the works contributed
to the continued public honors given to the otherwise-unrewarded SA. In the
conduct of war, SA novels, like the SA itself, retained the essential function of
inculcating in young German men a psychological readiness for violent defense
of a threatened homeland. As the Nazi state stepped up its military training in
the late 1930s, the SA story again found a prominent role. On the eve of the
war, tales from the Kampfzeit gave young soldiers perspective on the larger
struggle in which they were engaged. Their struggle, like that of any myth,
was timeless: they were merely the most recent generation to rise to its challenge.
Eventually, however, as the war machine absorbed the storm troopers, their
literary outputs then transferred to that experience. They therefore left behind
many elements that had previously been so important to their story: a sense of
locality, an immersion in the rituals and support systems of daily urban life, and
a grounding in family that had justified their violent adventures. If these
themes continued into war literature, they appeared only as distant objects of
longing or vague justifications for a larger war beyond their control. That war
therefore eventually destroyed SA literature as a separate genre, just as surely as
it slaughtered many of the remaining former storm troopers. In every chapter
of its development, SA literature was exactly what its storm-trooper authors
had always proclaimed: true to their experiences and fates in the service of the
Nazi Party. The myth, however, proved tragic rather than transcendent—not
only for their many victims, but also for themselves.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
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Central European History 46 (2013), 298–324.

© Central European History Society of the American Historical

The Myth of the Unknown Storm Trooper:

N July 1933, an official at Joseph Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry gave an

I influential speech concerning the “cultural-political tasks of the German

traditional academic and literary circles disdained storm-trooper writings, some

Outlines of the Storm-Trooper Myth

Nazi Publishing’s Shift from History to Myth

The Mythic Style of Argumentation

These attacks on women and children justified SA violence. As Willi said,

The Decline of the Storm-Trooper Myth

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