The Stormtrooper Family
THE STORMTROOPER FAMILY : HOW SEXUALITY , S PIRITUALITY , AND COMMUNITY SHAPED THE HAMBURG SA A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Andrew Wackerfuss, M.A. Washington, DC December 15, 2008 Copyright 2008 by Andrew Wackerfuss All Rights Reserved ii THE STORMTROOPER FAMILY : HOW SEXUALITY , SPIRITUALITY , AND COMMUNITY SHAPED THE HAMBURG SA Andrew Wackerfuss, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Roger Chickering, Ph.D. ABSTRACT The dissertation explains the attraction of the stormtroopers ( Sturmabteilung ; SA), the Nazis’ paramilitary band of “political soldiers” in the city of Hamburg. It argues that social networks and personal relationships – including family ties, religious affiliations, and sexual bonds among stormtroopers – represented the primary means of recruiting and integrating new members into the Nazi movement. The SA emphasized the social, emotional, and political benefits that young men could accrue by joining the group, which established an array of social welfare systems during the dismal days of the depression. In return for food and housing, male camaraderie, a sense of ersatz family, and the promise of social and economic integration into the local community, young stormtroopers became the Party’s foot soldiers. SA pubs and barracks were simultaneously places of refuge and sites of violence, where the stormtroopers were taught to strive for a sacrificial death that Party propagandists could use to argue for Nazi heroism, Communist criminality, and republican inability to maintain order in the German state. Hamburg’s stormtroopers claimed to defend their communities and families.
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