Hitler had been as good as his word in suppressing communists, socialists and trade unions, but the SA was filling the vacuum as an anti-capital, anti-landholding, anti-bourgeois, anti-tradition mass movement, and Hitler appeared unwilling or powerless to curb it. Goebbels at the Propaganda Ministry actively incited it. The excesses of SA street rowdies continued: no business manager could feel free from the threat of extortion; no ordinary citizen could pass by an SA collecting box without having to dip one hand in his pocket and raise the other in the Hitler salute; no social event was
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