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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2013
In July 1933, an official at Joseph Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry gave an influential speech concerning the “cultural-political tasks of the German press.” 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 pronounced by the cultural representatives of many new regimes. 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.
1 Bade, Wilfrid, Kulturpolitische Aufgaben der deutschen Presse (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1933), 15.Google Scholar
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., 30.
4 Härtel, Christian, Stromlinien. Wilfrid Bade. Eine Karriere im Dritten Reich (Berlin: be.bra wissenschaft verlag, 2004), 47.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., 51.
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 Baird, Jay, Hitler's War Poets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 7.Google Scholar
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.
12 Zöberlein, for instance, was pleasantly shocked to learn that his works were being taught at the University of Munich. See ibid., 106.
13 Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten, Völkisch-nationale und nationalsozialistische Literatur in Deutschland 1890–1945 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1976), 83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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 Berglund, Gisela, Der Kampf um den Leser im Dritten Reich. Die Literaturpolitik der “Neuen Literatur” (Will Vesper) und der “Nationalsozialistischen Monatshefte” (Worms: Heinz, 1980)Google Scholar. Vesper's case fascinates because he first enjoyed the regime's favor, then suffered its sanction.
15 Barbian, Jan-Pieter, Literaturpolitik im NS-Staat. Von der “Gleichschaltung” bis zum Ruin (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2010), 170–171.Google Scholar
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.”
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 Lokatis, Siegfried, Hanseatische Verlaganstalt. Politisches Buchmarketing im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt am Main: Buchhändler-Vereinigung GmbH, 1992), 79.Google Scholar
19 National Archives Captured German Records Group, A3341 SA Kartei 089A.
20 Baird, Hitler's War Poets, 15.
21 Ibid., 26–7, 96.
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 Inglis, K. S., “Entombing Unknown Soldiers: From London and Paris to Baghdad,” History & Memory 5, no. 2 (1993): 7–31Google Scholar, as well as the comprehensive work by Wittmann, Laura, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning, and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011)Google Scholar. Scholars who have described the French Unknown Soldier include Ackerman, Volker, “‘Ceux qui sont pieusement morts pour la France . . .’ Die Identität des unbekannten Soldaten,” Francia 18, no. 3 (1991): 25–54Google Scholar; Becker, Annette, “Les Soldats Inconnus,” Historiens et Géographes 89, no. 364 (1998): 135–139Google Scholar; Gorman, Keith Phelan, “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): 307–314Google Scholar. Steven Palmer described a similar South American figure, the héroe anómino, in Palmer, Steven, “Getting to Know the Unknown Soldier: Official Nationalism in Liberal Costa Rica, 1880–1900,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25, no. 1 (1993): 45–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mosse, George, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 7Google Scholar; and Baird, War Poets, 258–9.
24 Basmajin, Haig A., “The Use of the Symbol ‘Unknown’ in Nazi Persuasion,” Folklore 77, no. 2 (1966): 116–122Google Scholar. 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. Schmitz-Berning, Cornelia, Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998), 554.Google Scholar
25 See, for example, Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen's statement that “a literary-historical research program worthy of the name does not yet exist.” Ketelsen, Uwe-Karsten, Literatur und Drittes Reich (Schernfeld: SH Verlag, 1992), 45Google Scholar. 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 Theweleit's, KlausMale Fantasies, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987 and 1989)Google Scholar, 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. Cuomo, Glenn R. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995).Google Scholar
26 Connelly, John, Review of Richard Overy's “The Dictators,” Kritika 7, no. 4 (2006): 927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Redman, Jennifer, “‘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.Google Scholar
28 J. K. Ritchie notes that “novels which turned worker into SA man” were among the most successful Nazi types. His discussion of the genre, however, remains cursory. Ritchie, J. K., German Literature under National Socialism (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1983), 94.Google Scholar
29 Mosse, George, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1964)Google Scholar. Mosse also provided a primary source reader that excerpts several works of SA writing; Mosse, George, Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural, and Social Life in the Third Reich (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966).Google Scholar
30 Baird, Jay W., To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Franke, Manfred, Schlageter: Der erster Soldat des 3. Reiches. Die Entmythologisierung eines Helden (Cologne: Prometh Verlag, 1980)Google Scholar; Kershaw, Ian, The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar. Hermand, Jost, Old Dreams of a New Reich: Volkisch Utopias and National Socialism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1992).Google Scholar
31 White, Hayden, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 8–9Google Scholar. See also White's, HaydenThe Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
32 On historicism's methods, assumptions, and politics, see Chickering, Roger, Karl Lamprecht: A German Academic Life (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993), 24–34Google Scholar; and Iggers, Georg, 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.Google Scholar
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 Franzen's, Allen J.Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).Google Scholar
34 Treitschke, Heinrich von, The Origins of Prussianism: The Teutonic Knights (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1942), 19Google Scholar. 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 Baird, Jay, “Goebbels, Horst Wessel, and the Myth of Resurrection and Return,” Journal of Contemporary History 17, no. 4 (1982): 633–650.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36 Stelzner, Fritz, Schicksal SA. Die Deutung eines grossen Geschehens, von einem, der es selbst erlebte (Munich: Franz Eher Nachf., 1936).Google Scholar
37 Befehl Deutschland. Ein Tagebuch vom Kampf um Berlin. Ad copy from back matter of Anonymous, Männer gegen Schüffler (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937).Google Scholar
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Zöberlein, Hans, Der Befehl des Gewissens (Munich: Franz Eher, 1936)Google Scholar. 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 Witthuhn, Julius, Gotthard Kraft (Hannover: NS-Kulturverlag, [1932]), 5.Google Scholar
43 Ibid., 54.
44 Ibid., 102 and 65.
45 Lohmann, Heinz, SA räumt auf (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1935), 7Google Scholar. 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 Bade, Wilfrid, Trommlerbub unterm Hackenkreuz (Stuttgart: Loewes, 1934), 9, 15, 33, 39, 51, 57, 71, 93, and 97.Google Scholar
48 Koch, Karl, Das Ehrenbuch der SA (Düsseldorf: Floeder, 1934), 70.Google Scholar
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. Wang, Jennifer Hyland, “A Struggle of Contending Stories: Race, Gender, and Political Memory in ‘Forrest Gump’” Cinema Journal 39, no. 3 (Spring 2000): 92–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50 Bade, Wilfrid, SA erobert Berlin. Ein Tatsachenbericht (Munich: Knorr & Hirth, 1933), 102–104Google Scholar. For an historical account of the meeting and its disturbance, see Reuth, Ralf-Georg, Goebbels (Munich: Piper, 1991), 120.Google Scholar
51 Bade, SA erobert Berlin, 107–109.
52 Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1933), 60.Google Scholar
53 Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 133–135; Voss, Berhard, Willi Dickkopp. Aus dem Tagebuch eines unbekannten SA-Mannes, 4th ed. (Rostok: Selbstverlag, [undated]), 31.Google Scholar
54 Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 4–38.
55 Ibid., 47.
56 Hof, Walter, Der Weg zum heroischen Realismus. Pessimismus und Nihilismus in der deutschen Literatur von Hammerling bis Benn (Tübingen: Verlag Lothar Rotsch, 1974), 240.Google Scholar
57 Ernst Jünger's In Stahlgewittern (1920) was and remains the prototypical Freikorpsmann autobiography. 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 Jones, Nigel, Hitler's Heralds: The Story of the Freikorps 1918–1923 (London: John Murray, 1987), 273–275Google Scholar. An interesting post-World War II counterpoint to the literature of both Freikorps and SA can be found in Elford's, GeorgeThe Devil's Guard (St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer Publishing, 1971)Google Scholar. 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.
59 Mali, Joseph, Mythistory: The Making of Modern Historiography (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003)Google Scholar; McNeill, William, Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986).Google Scholar
60 Eliade, Mircea, Myth and Reality (New York: Harper and Roe, 1963), 19Google Scholar. See also Ellwood, Robert, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), 79–97Google Scholar; and Rennie, Bryan, Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996).Google Scholar
61 Sternhell, Zeev, The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Ellwood, The Politics of Myth, 32–33.
62 Arthur Böckenhauer, 10 Jahre SA Hamburg in Bildern mit verbindendem Text (Hamburg, 1932).
63 Cf. Bennecke, Heinrich, “Die Memoiren Ernst Röhm. Ein Vergleich der verschiedenen Ausgaben und Auflagen,” Politische Studien 14, no. 148 (1963): 179–188.Google Scholar
64 Baird, “Goebbels,” 633–650.
65 Ewers, Hanns Heinz, Horst Wessel. Ein deutsches Schicksal (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1932)Google Scholar, on which the later film Hans Westmar was based, and Reitmann, Erwin, Horst Wessel. Leben und Sterben (Berlin: Steuben-Verlag, 1932)Google Scholar, 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 Czech-Jochburg, Erich, Das Jugendbuch von Horst Wessel (Stuttgart: Union deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1933)Google Scholar; Daum, Fritz, SA-Sturmführer Horst Wessel. Ein Lebensbild von Opfertreue. Für Deutschlands Jugend (Reutlingen: Ensslin & Laiblin, 1933)Google Scholar; Lindemann, Frido, Horst Wessel und sein Lied (Berlin: Neuer Berliner Buchvertrieb, 1934)Google Scholar; Malitus, Erich, Horst Wessel, 4th ed. (Breslau, 1934)Google Scholar; Steihler, Annemarie, Horst Wessel. Eine Geschichte aus der Kampfzeit (Frankfurt am Main: M. Diesterweg, 1937)Google Scholar; and Zaum, Karl, Deutsche Helden. Horst Wessel (Berlin: Beenken o.J., 1933)Google Scholar. Wessel, Ingeborg, Horst Wessel. Sein Lebensweg nach Lichtbilden zusammengestellt (Munich: F. Eher Nachf., 1933)Google Scholar; and Wessel, Ingeborg, Mein Bruder Horst. Ein Vermächtnis (Munich: F. Eher Nachf., 1934).Google Scholar
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 Steigmann-Gall, Richard, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bärsch, Claus-Ekkehard, Die politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1998), especially 26–31 and 107–130Google Scholar; Bärsch, Claus-Ekkehard, Erlösung und Vernichtung. Dr. Phil. Joseph Goebbels (Munich: Klaus Boer Verlag, 1987), 171–194 and 282–296.Google Scholar
71 The best and most serious work on this subject is Sünner's, RüdigerSchwarze Sonne. Entfesselung und Missbrauch der Mythen in Nationalsozialismus und rechter Esoterik (Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1999)Google Scholar, which debunks the many flawed popular studies of this topic. A good example of the sensational and mystical approach can be found in Ravenscroft's, TrevorThe Spear of Destiny (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weisner Books, 1982)Google Scholar. This work argued, based on “evidence” gained through astral projection, that Hitler's rise was assisted by his acquisition of the titular magic spear.
72 Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 9.
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 Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 46.
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 Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 102.
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 Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 44.
88 Bade, Trommlerbub, 30.
89 Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 69.
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.
92 Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 238.
93 Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 82.
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 Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 20.
98 Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 33.
99 Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 25.
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).
104 Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 70.
105 See Ritchie's similar read of this “national socialist love story.” Ritchie, German Literature, 100.
106 Streiter, Gudrun, Dem Tod so nah . . . Tagebuchblätter einer SA-Mannes Braut (Diessen vor München: Jos. C. Hubert, undated [ca. 1932]), 14Google Scholar. Streiter—the name fits the male naming conventions 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.
107 Ibid., 40.
108 Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 16.
109 Witthuhn, Gotthard Kraft, 10; Lohmann, SA räumt auf, 118 and 139; Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 58.
110 Anonymous, 10 Jahre unbekannter SA Mann, 12.
111 Ibid., 97; Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 106.
112 Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 63–64.
113 Ibid., 106.
114 Ibid., 64.
115 Bade, Trommlerbub, 58–59.
116 Voss, Willi Dickkopp, 68.
117 Ibid., 106–109.
118 Barbian, Literaturpolitik im NS-Staat, 182.
