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A review by swaggle
The Making of a Stormtrooper by Peter H. Merkl
4.0
In this book Professor of Political Science Peter H. Merkl critically examines the Stormtroopers (SA) of Weimar Germany from multiple facets including class-based analysis, psychology, sociological factors, history and political influences and even religion. He repeatedly refers to the 581 autobiographical statements of early Nazis collected by Theodor Abel, the principle and primary source for this work. This source allows us to understand the motivations "straight from the horse's mouth" if we can believe these Nazis had no reason to lie. Merkl at one point brings this up, stating that many of the testimonies are so blunt about certain things that it almost seems ridiculous to believe they might omit something in their testimony, I think the example he used was regarding their antisemitism being a motivating factor for joining the SA (which according to the data extrapolated from the Abel group, these numbers were surprisingly not high on the priority list for these young Nazi street fighters, usually instead they claimed it was the allure of camaraderie, cult surrounding Hitler or the "utopian" visions of Nazi ideology which drew them in.)
This book highlighted a number of key things about the SA for me:
Members of the SA were on multiple occasions former members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
Many of the people interviewed in the Abel group were part of Youth groups as children (more than 80%) ranging from extreme left like Communist Youth (KJVD) or Rote Jungfront to nationalist right wing voelkisch groups like Jungstalhelm or Kyffhaeuserjungend, which were youth associations of prominent veterans leagues, and many Organized Catholic youth groups. "Whole generations of Weimar youth had been politically mobilized without developing a democratic political consciousness" (p. 70)
The SA was a diverse group of individuals ranging from blue collar rural-to-urban sons of farmers and agriculturalists, to socially respectable sons of merchants, former veterans of WWI and poorly educated troubled youth who grew up without the presence of fathers in the home looking for any way to legitimize their violent urges or tendencies.
It seems like for a lot of these young men, they often decided to join and continued being part of the SA despite whatever negative consequences would occur as a result. (getting in fights, losing contact with former friends/family, sometimes even their jobs, although Merkl seems to raise an eyebrow at this last point.)
Merkl concludes their is really not one easy "monocausal" explanation for the motivations of a Stormtrooper, rather a complex mixture of "causes" is often at play and what is emphasized in one may not be for another. Those who lived in the French-occupied Rhineland cited that as a motivation, others cited red scare and opposition to international bolshevism, young people who had nationalistic/voelkisch parents or teachers, or a hyper-patriotic German youth who felt veterans of WWI were treated poorly. Some people saw the party as a potential career and chance at social mobility in a time where the Great Depression severely affected the country, "a good one-third of them...were unemployed, bankrupt, or otherwise suffered severe damage by the Depression." (p. 191) Merkl ends on the note that "reconstructing the world of meaning as the stormtroopers saw it goes a long way towards explaining their decision to march and fight and proselytize, as long as we remember that it was still their free decision to join and work for the movement." (p. 308)
This book highlighted a number of key things about the SA for me:
Members of the SA were on multiple occasions former members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
Many of the people interviewed in the Abel group were part of Youth groups as children (more than 80%) ranging from extreme left like Communist Youth (KJVD) or Rote Jungfront to nationalist right wing voelkisch groups like Jungstalhelm or Kyffhaeuserjungend, which were youth associations of prominent veterans leagues, and many Organized Catholic youth groups. "Whole generations of Weimar youth had been politically mobilized without developing a democratic political consciousness" (p. 70)
The SA was a diverse group of individuals ranging from blue collar rural-to-urban sons of farmers and agriculturalists, to socially respectable sons of merchants, former veterans of WWI and poorly educated troubled youth who grew up without the presence of fathers in the home looking for any way to legitimize their violent urges or tendencies.
It seems like for a lot of these young men, they often decided to join and continued being part of the SA despite whatever negative consequences would occur as a result. (getting in fights, losing contact with former friends/family, sometimes even their jobs, although Merkl seems to raise an eyebrow at this last point.)
Merkl concludes their is really not one easy "monocausal" explanation for the motivations of a Stormtrooper, rather a complex mixture of "causes" is often at play and what is emphasized in one may not be for another. Those who lived in the French-occupied Rhineland cited that as a motivation, others cited red scare and opposition to international bolshevism, young people who had nationalistic/voelkisch parents or teachers, or a hyper-patriotic German youth who felt veterans of WWI were treated poorly. Some people saw the party as a potential career and chance at social mobility in a time where the Great Depression severely affected the country, "a good one-third of them...were unemployed, bankrupt, or otherwise suffered severe damage by the Depression." (p. 191) Merkl ends on the note that "reconstructing the world of meaning as the stormtroopers saw it goes a long way towards explaining their decision to march and fight and proselytize, as long as we remember that it was still their free decision to join and work for the movement." (p. 308)