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. The stormtroopers’ justifications for their violence are unintelligible outside this local context, which in Hamburg often featured appeals to Hanseatic independence, economic iii autonomy, and gendered authority for aspiring merchant men over their families and neighborhoods. Stormtroopers claimed altruistic motivations and heroic self-sacrifice, but their main concern was with keeping their own threatened places in the local hierarchy. SA men mobilized political, racial, and gendered arguments for their own authority, worked to align differing organizations behind a common Nazi banner, and built structures that sheltered them from the inherent clash between their ideas and reality. The stormtroopers’ political mobilization was thus a quest for local personal status carried out in the context of a national political struggle. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………… iii TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………………… v DEDICATION …………………………………………………………… viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………… ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS …………………………………………………… xiii INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………… 1 CHAPTER I THE ORIGINS OF THE HAMBURG SA (1922-1929) ……………….. 37 “Hansastadt Hamburg”: Political Culture in a Free City ..………………………… 38 Hamburg After the First World War: Social and Political Change ……………………………… 46 From Vereinsleben to SA Violence: The Transformation of Nazi Politics ……………………… 54 “Boss System” vs. “Front-soldier Spirit”: The Re-Founded NSDAP and Rising SA …………….. 75 CHAPTER II T HE BATTLE OF STERNSCHANZE : V IOLENCE AND SELF -REPRESENTATION IN THE HAMBURG MEDIA (1930) … 95 “Storm Column”: The Nazi New Media in Hamburg ………………………. 97 The “neighborhood offensive”: SA Violence and Public Presence, 1925-1930 …….. 101 “The Battle of Sternschanze”: September 7, 1930 ……………………………………. 104 CHAPTER III RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN THE SA (1930-1932) ……………. 131 v Alfred Conn: Stormtrooper General and Pagan Intellectual …………… 138 Franz Tügel: Pastor to the Stormtroopers …………………………… 157 CHAPTER IV SONS , B ROTHERS , C OMRADES , AND LOVERS : THE MEN OF THE SA (1930-1932) …………………….. 177 “An essentially healthy society”: Masculinity and German Politics to 1918 ………………... 180 “What kind of guy are you?”: Stormtrooper Masculinity in Theory and Practice ……….. 193 The stormtrooper body: Physical Prowess in Political Context ……………………. 195 Convex Mirrors: Constructing Jewish Men as Stormtrooper Countertypes … 200 Comrades or “Criminals”?: Homophobia as Political and Psychological Defense Mechanism ……………………………………. 206 CHAPTER V FAMILY LIFE AND LIVING SPACES : THE POLITICS OF DOMESTICITY IN THE SA (1930-1932) .. 226 “Over Hard Streets”: Economic Depression and Family Instability as Engines of SA Growth .……………………………. 226 SA Homes and Kitchens: Social Assistance and Ideological Conditioning in the SA Subculture …………………………………….. 241 Love and Marriage: The State of the Stormtrooper Family ……………………. 259 Mothers, Wives, and Girlfriends: Women and the SA …………………………………….. 262 vi CHAPTER VI THE MARCH TO POWER (1931-1933) …………………………… 274 From Word to Deed: The SA Subculture as School for Violence ……………. 274 “The Victims are Guilty!”: Conflict and Sympathy Between SA and Police ………. 290 “In Public They Play the Innocents!”: Cycles of Restraint and Overreach in SA Violence …….. 296 “A Whole City in Unrest”: Altona Bloody Sunday and the Fall of the Republic …… 310 CHAPTER VII THE REWARDS OF VICTORY (1933-1934) …………………… 322 From Hansastadt to Führerstadt : The Nazi Takeover of Hamburg ………………….. 323 “Nothing for Ourselves”?: The Stormtroopers Seek Reward …………………… 329 “Old fighters” and Opportunists: The Triumphant SA’s Identity Crisis …………………… 357 “Nicht vergemeinschaftend ”: Frustration and Backlash Against the Unrestrained SA …. 367 CHAPTER VIII DEFEAT AND DOWNFALL (1934-1935) …………………….. 376 June 30, 1934: The Night of the Long Knives ……………………. 378 Justifying the Purge: The Mobilization of Homophobic Panic ……………. 380 “Cleansing the SA”: Expulsion from Public Life on Private Grounds …… 390 Epilogue: The Tamed SA in the Nazi State …………………… 401 CONCLUSION : T HE STORMTROOPERS ’ L EGACY ..…………………………. 416 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………. 423 vii TO MY FAMILY viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This analysis of the stormtroopers’ social networks and personal relationships would not have been possible had I not myself enjoyed such strong systems of support from the many family members, friends, mentors, and institutions who have helped me along the way. At Georgetown, both the history department and the BMW Center for German and European Studies provided me with the formal training, informal support, and financial backing needed to pursue the long quest now completed. Much of the credit for this dissertation must therefore accrue to the faculty and staff in these two departments. First among equals stands Roger Chickering, whose broad mentorship and fine editorial hand subtlely and ably guided this project from its opening stages to its final phases. Richard Stites’ constant vitality, exuberance, and encyclopedic knowledge of history’s amusing corners encouraged me to plumb the depths of Nazi culture in ways I had not previously considered. Katrin Sieg provided a rigorous theoretical background and a much-needed historiographical perspective on fascism’s struggles with gender, masculinity, and sexuality. Geoffrey Giles, of the University of Florida, has long been a fierce supporter, a trenchant critic, and source of personal inspiration. His specific expertise in the history of Nazi sexuality, as well as Hamburg history, was invaluable. I must also thank Peter Hayes, of Northwestern University, who long ago gave me a model of professional poise and intellectual accomplishment that lit the way for all I have done ix since. This work could not have reached its completion without the support, encouragement, and perspective of these and many other scholars. Of the institutions that gave financial and intellectual support, I must first thank the Fulbright Commission, whose generous grant made possible my primary research in Hamburg, from 2003 to 2004. During this time and in the years afterward, the Brunst family of Hoheluft, Katrin Johnson, Dennis Beier, Heiko Rabenalt, and Marcel Werth welcomed me with a warmth and generosity that should put forever to rest the fallacy of North Germans as cold and distant. In the archives, my efforts would have been in vain without the knowledge and assistance of professionals in the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte, and Geschichtswerkstatt Eimsbüttel. Heino Rose of the Staatsarchiv proved a tireless investigator of police and judicial records, successfully finding many of the names on the seemingly endless lists I regularly sent him. The Staatsarchiv’s Reiner Hering and Helga Wunderlich also provided significant reference assistance, as did the Forschungsstelle’s Axel Schildt, who hosted my research abroad. I have also been fortunate to enjoy the local presence of Washington DC’s German Historical Institute. Its staff members, library, and frequent hosting of the best international scholars of German history have offered an invaluable resource just minutes from home. Within the GHI, Richard Wetzell’s tireless organization of the Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar and Young Scholars’ Forum introduced me to peers on both sides of the Atlantic. Special thanks must go to the participants in the 2006 TDS in Freiburg, who pushed me to explain and contextualize my work in new and challenging ways. Similarly, the GHI and Forschungsstelle’s jointly sponsored 2007 conference “Reading Hamburg” x was an invaluable setting in which to meet many Anglo-American scholars of the Hansastadt whose work I had long admired. Their warm engagement and trenchant commentary greatly improved my work.