The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany

by Richard J. Evans

A particularly graphic, though by no means untypical account of stormtrooper activities was provided by a schoolteacher, born in 1898, who had fought in the war and, after far-right activities in the early 1920s, joined the Nazis in 1929. He was called up one evening with his brownshirt group to defend a Nazi rally in a nearby town against the ‘reds’: We all gathered at the entrance of the town and put on white armbands, and then you could hear the thundering marching of our column of about 250 men. Without weapons, without sticks, but with clenched fists, we marched in strict order and iron discipline into the catcalls and screaming of the crowds before the meeting-hall. They had sticks and fence-boards in their hands. It was 10 o’clock at night. With a few manoeuvres in the middle of the street, we pushed the crowd against the walls to clear the street. Just at that moment, a carpenter drove through with a small truck and a black coffin in it. As he went by, one of us said: ‘Well, let’s see whom we can put in there.’ The screams, cries, whistles and howls grew ever more intense. The two rows of our column stood still, charged up with energy. A signal, and we go marching into the hall, where a few hundred rioters are trying to shut up our speaker. We came just in time, marching in step along the walls until we had closed the ring around them, leaving an opening only at the entrance. A whistle sounds. We tighten the ring. Ten minutes later … we had put them out into the fr...