Postcards Collection – The SA

Part I

The Reich in Photos – The Life in the Reich - Part II – Berlin

These photos are provided by Stumrfurie

 

Adolf Hitler – proclamation for the 23-th anniversary of the N.S.D.A.P.

(read by Hermann Esser)

Führer Headquarters, February 24, 1943

Party Comrades!

Party comrade Adolf Wagner, who conveyed my greetings to you in the past year, has been seriously ill for many months and is unable to attend the present rally. I have therefore asked party comrade Esser, who as one of my first comrades in arms attended the foundation assembly of the movement, to tell you in my name what I, because of the circumstances, am unable to tell you for the second time now.

The German Wehrmacht, which fought excellently this winter, as it has done since the beginning of this war, is involved in a bitter struggle against the danger to the world instigated by the banking houses of New York and London together with the Bolshevik Jews in Moscow.

I myself am in the east and therefore unable to join you on this day.

Nevertheless, my thoughts are with you, more so this year than ever before.

After all, what fate would have awaited our Volk and all of Europe, had not those theories of the National Socialist revolution been proclaimed in this hall on February 24, 1920, theories which took hold of the German Volk and gave it the necessary force not only to restrain the Jewish danger to the world today, but also to crush it in the end! The Sturmlied of our unforgettable, dear old Dietrich Eckart is again proving to be a trumpet-call in these months. It can wake up people, open their eyes to the fate that would await all of us in the present and our children in the future-and beyond this, all European people-if we do not succeed in bringing about the failure of the devilish plan of the Jewish international criminals.

You are all aware of the circumstances, which allowed the enemy in the east, similar to the forces of nature last winter, to reverse in the course of this winter a part of those successes secured by the heroism of our soldiers in the summer. However, you also know that the path along which our party has traveled has likewise not been a secure or comfortable way to success. Instead, we suffered countless difficulties and setbacks, which the same enemies dealt to us and against whom we must fight today-against the whole world.

As I proclaimed the party program in this hall in the year 1920 and my resolution to destroy with zealousness the enemies of our Volk, I was a lonely and unknown man. Germany had suffered its most profound humiliation. The number of those who believed in its restoration was negligible, and there were even fewer who still hoped for this to happen in our generation.

The few followers who joined me at the time were opposed by the almost crushing superiority of the enemy. For every hundred National Socialists, there were millions of opponents, partly blinded, partly seething with hatred. And that is not to count those men of little faith who always wait first for the success in order to march then on the victorious side with a brave heart.

What a difference compared with the struggle of today! No matter how great the coalition of our enemies is, as a power it is less than the strength of the alliance of those people who oppose the Bolshevik-plutocratic destruction.

The struggle of the National Socialist movement was often in a position in which only the most fanatical of its faithful could still believe in a victory, while its otherwise shrewd opponents were already firmly convinced that they had killed the idea and the party. Nevertheless, our movement was born again each time; it overcame every setback and emerged stronger than before from every crisis. The party was always upheld by the unbending decision not to capitulate under any circumstances and not to give up the fight in any case, until the conspiracy of our enemies at home was crushed and eliminated.

My party comrades! I taught you this fanaticism. Please rest assured that I am today inspired by the same fanaticism, which will never leave me as long as I live. You also received this faith from me, and rest assured that this faith is stronger in me today than ever before. We will break and crush the power of the Jewish international coalition. Mankind in its struggle for its freedom, life, and daily bread, will gain the final victory in this struggle.

Just as in the time of our struggle for power, every attack by our enemies and every one of their apparent successes made me more dogged in my determination not to stray from the path that sooner or later had to lead to the victory, so too I am today suffused by the same will to persevere to the bitter end in the task which destiny has given me.

I have a right to believe that Providence has chosen me to fulfill this task.

For without its blessings, I, as an unknown man, would never have been able to set out on the path leading from this hall across so many hurdles and through so many attacks to the takeover of power and, finally, to this struggle which has been crowned by victories the like of which have never been seen in world history, but who has also been weighed down by many worries which would have broken many weaker characters.

However, I was blessed by Providence in having a sworn community around me in such hours, a community which in devoted faithfulness always regarded the common fate as its own and which always stood loyally by me, as its Fuhrer in this struggle, and will always stand by me.

As I address this message to you, I do so out of the same profound gratitude as in the past year. In you, my dear party comrades, I have found not only the first representatives of the National Socialist ideology but also of the National Socialist attitude, an attitude which has proved its worth in such an unheard-of manner in particular in times of great trial. The bourgeois opportunists failed to understand this as did the masses of our old parties, indoctrinated by Jewry.

Why should this be different today? There is only one difference: today, the gigantic throng of the German Volk stands behind the new Reich. The Volk is unconditionally determined to accept the new Reich idea, which is inspired by the National Socialist world of thought. The party has become the unshakable incarnation of this power.

Today it is the internal guarantor not only of victory, but also of the preservation of our Volk in the future. It must fulfill its second great historic task-especially during these months and perhaps in the coming years, too- which is to shake up the German nation constantly, make it aware of the magnitude of the danger, reinforce the sacred faith that will overcome, give strength to weaklings and mercilessly destroy saboteurs. It will work to enlighten in those cases where enlightenment is desired, break terror with tentimes- greater terror, exterminate traitors no matter who they might be and what disguise they are using to realize their intentions against the people (volksfeindliche Absichten).

Even if the elite of the National Socialist movement’s men confronts the enemy today and fulfills its duty as soldiers in an exemplary fashion, the old fighters remain the strongest zealots in the assertion of the German will to life.

Year after year, they are joined by a new age group from Germany’s youth, totally educated in accordance with National Socialist principles, forged together by the ideas of our Volksgemeinschaft, and willing to move against anyone who should dare to sin against our fight for freedom. And just as in the time of the party’s struggle for power, our female party comrades, our German women and girls, were the most reliable supports of the movement, so now again the multitude of our women and girls form the strongest element in the struggle for the preservation of our Volk.

After all, thank God, not only the Jews in London and New York but also those in Moscow made clear what fate might be in store for the German Volk.

We are determined to be no less clear in our answer. This fight will not end with the planned annihilation of the Aryan but with the extermination of the Jew in Europe. Beyond this, thanks to this fight, our movement’s world of thought will become the common heritage of all people, even of our enemies.

State after state will be forced, in the course of its fight against us, to apply National Socialist theories in waging this war that was provoked by them. And in so doing, it will become aware of the curse that the criminal work of Jewry has laid over all people, especially through this war.

As our enemies thought in 1923 that the National Socialist Party was defeated for good and that I was finished with in the eyes of the German Volk because of my trial, so they actually helped National Socialist ideology to spread like wildfire through the entire German Volk and convey the essence of Jewry to so many million men, as we ourselves would never have been able to do under normal circumstances. In the same manner international Jewry, which instigated this new war, will find out that nation after nation engrosses itself more and more in this question to become finally aware of the great danger presented by this international problem.

Above all, this war proves the irrefutable identity of plutocracy and Bolshevism, and the common ambition of all Jews to exploit nations and make them the slaves of their international guild of criminals.

The same alliance we once faced as our common enemies in Germany, an alliance between the stock exchange in Frankfurt and the “Red Flag” in Berlin, now again exists between the Jewish banking houses in New York, the Jewishplutocratic class of leaders in London, and the Jews in the Kremlin in Moscow.

Just as the German Volk successfully fought the Jewish enemy at home as a consequence of this realization and is now about to finish it off for good, the other nations will increasingly find themselves again in the course of this war.

Together, they will make a stand against that race that is seeking to destroy all of them.

Just as the Jews rejoiced about each supposed setback that we suffered during our struggle within the Reich, and just as they confused their feverish hopes with the hard facts, so they believe today, just as they did last winter, that they will shortly reach their thousand-year-old goal. However, just as they did last year, they will also suffer a terrible disappointment this time. On the contrary, the German Volk will now all the more summon and deploy its forces to a degree never before seen for a war in the history of mankind.

We will not hesitate one second to ask for contributions in this fateful struggle from those countries responsible for the outbreak of this war. We regard it as a matter of course that foreign lives cannot be spared at a time that demands so many difficult sacrifices of our own lives. In indissoluble, loyal association with our allies, we will carry out a mobilization of the spiritual and material values of Europe, the like of which our continent has never seen before in its millennia-old history. This is necessary in order to secure an independent ethnic life for all of Europe, a life which has been the basis not only for our great shared culture but also for the material existence of this continent.

My old party comrades, I greet you as always with an overflowing heart. I thank you for having made it possible for me at the time to start out successfully on the path that was a prerequisite for the salvation of the German Reich and for all of Europe. My thoughts are with you at this hour, just as they always are. During these months, weeks, and days, my duty forces me constantly to think and work, and prepare the coming turn of events for those who as the fighters of our Volk, together with our allies, are fashioning the fate of the world: our brothers and comrades, the German soldiers especially at the front in the east, where the future of Germany and Europe will be decided. The outcome must and will be our victory!

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 554 – 16 April 1941

Afrika Korps Units Capture Agheila and Benghazi;

Combat in Croatia and Slovenia;

Waffen SS Units Approach Belgrade;

Metaxas Line Breached in Greece;

Key Port of Salonica Taken by German Troops;

The Responsibilities of the SA

 

Just like the army which not only sustains itself in military leadership but at the same time has the responsibility to educate, train and shape the whole nation according to its military mission, it is the responsibility of a political party not only to be the supporting organization of the political leadership but to incessantly train and educate the nation according to its military opinion . As a result the party has to integrate in the inner union of the organization, all those fellow Germans who are called upon by fate to take a leading role.

VIKTOR LUTZE, 12 March 1939

The SA is the party’s instrument of education and instruction in order to strengthen and secure the defense community of Germany.

After pre-military training of the Hitler Jugend it is the duty of the SA to instruct all those men who did not join the the NSKK or the NSFK. Primarily, the men must be educated in a military spirit. They should develop physical strength and become representatives and fighters for the National Socialist idea. Through systematic physical training the German man is prepared to serve in the armed forces. Before he can join the armed forces it is a man’s duty to acquire the SA military badge, founded by the Führer.

Of equal importance is the post-military training and education of those SA members who have completed their active duty. In the SA Military Association they keep their soul, mind and body ready and fit for combat. SA members regardless of their background, profession or social position, are welded together to a firmly united community of comradeship, unselfish devotion and a spirit of sacrifice.

The individual is evaluated exclusively by his attitude and performance. The Leadership Corps, constantly promotes through education and training and guarantees that the tasks given to the SA by the Führer are carried out. Moreover, this Leadership Corps is called upon to provide qualified SA members to substitute for the Führer in political leadership.

SA members are volunteers. It was clear with the beginning of the war when the major part of SA members, including 80% of the SA Leadership Corps, enlisted for service in the armed forces. Since then, numerous SA leaders and SA members were decorated with the Knight’s Cross and the German Cross in Gold. The sacrifices of the SA show its readiness through action. SA leaders and the last SA member fight in the front line together with their comrades of the armed forces. Numerous Obergruppenführer and Gruppenführer and a large number of SA leaders and members gave their utmost for the future of our Reich.

When the war broke out compact SA units were engaged in the fights for Danzig, Ost-Oberschlesien and Southern Poland, and they performed great deeds. A major part of the SA Standarte Feldherrnhalle which is under arms in times of peace, voluntarily formed a unit with the paratroopers. The performance of these men who fought in the Netherlands, in Belgium and Greece already went down in history. The rest of the Standarte Feldherrnhalle formed an infantry battalion that proved its excellent worth in France, when they broke through the Maginot Line, as well as in many crucial combats at focal points in the East. In the traditional spirit of the SA these men will continue their victorious fight under the name Infantry Regiment Feldherrnhalle. In this way the SA once again, just like in the past fight over the political power in Germany, proves its worth fighting in the first line on all fronts. Here and everywhere, the men of the SA, political and armed soldiers, are the Storm Troops of the Führer.

It is not the half-hearted and neutral who go down in history, but those who take on the fight.

ADOLF HITLER

German Political Profiles - Dr. Robert Ley

 

A successful labour leader must have a practical knowledge of the conditions under which the workman lives and works, and also of his outlook on life, his ideas, his speech etc. The workman’s difficulties and cares cannot be learned at the office desk of the leader. The latter must have experienced all these in his own person.

Though Dr. Robert Ley, the Leader of the German Labour Front, is a university man, he is also a man of the world, a man of everyday common-sense and practical ability, neither a bureaucrat nor an abstract theorist, a man who is simple and straightforward in his speech and in his ways. The German Labour Front, which has been created by Dr. Ley, embraces all Germans who are engaged in productive labour, whether physical or mental. This Labour Front is not a maze of offices and exchanges packed with people who are looking for jobs. It is a living organism in which each individual element is active. It has superseded the old trade-unions, which operated on the assumption that the interests of Capital and Labour must be in eternal opposition to one another. Dr. Ley’s vast organization embraces all German employers as well as the workers. Its members number about twenty millions. Its chief purpose is to promote and maintain peaceful cooperation between employers and employees by inculcating in the minds of the employers a sympathetic understanding for the just claims and rights of the employees and, on the side of the employees, a reciprocal understanding of the conditions under which a business has to be managed and the possibilities on which the payment of wages etc., depend. In this way it has been possible to put an end to the fruitless contentions of the old trade-unions and establish a fair balance of give-and-take in each business. Inasmuch as the German Labour Front not only took over the trade-unions but expanded them into a cooperative organization which embraces all Germans actively engaged in productive work whether as directors or subordinate officials or ordinary workers, including also the hitherto independent trades and professions, we have here a veritable national community which embraces all productive effort for the welfare of the nation as a whole.

This community has its own social departments, the most important of which is known as the “Strength Through Joy” organization. This enables every German worker to share in the general amenities of life at a nominal cost. Thus he can visit the best theatres, go on excursion trips at home and abroad, take part in all kinds of sports etc.

Within the Party framework Dr. Ley is also Reich Director of the Political Organization of the National Socialist Party. This organization is something more than a mere administrative mechanism under Party direction. The political leaders of the organization are the trustees not merely of the individual Party members but are also the intermediaries between the people as a whole and the supreme leadership. The Reich Director of the Political Organization is also responsible for the training of future Party leaders at various political colleges.

Dr. Ley is a native of the Rhineland and is the son of a peasant farmer. He was born in 1890. He studied food chemistry and after the War, in which he served as a volunteer, he took a post in one of the biggest chemical works in Germany. Owing to his political activities, he was several times arrested and finally lost his position on that account.

Private Colour footage from the German City of Breslau (1939)

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 553 – 09 April 1941

Second Anniversary of Bohemia and Moravia Celebrated in Prague;

President Tiso Reviews Slovak Army Parade;

Ethnic Germans Flee Yugoslavia;

First Enlisted Man Decorated with a Knight's Cross;

Afrika Korps on the Offensive in North Africa;

German Shipyards Launch New Submarines;

Germany Attacks Yugoslavia and Greece;

Adolf Hitler - speech in Schwerin at the funeral of Wilhelm Gustloff

February 12, 1936

My German Volksgenossen! National Socialists!

My dear deceased Party Comrade!

It is a painful path the peoples must take to find their fortunes. The milestones along the way have always been graves, graves in which their best men lie buried. Movements, too, can reach the goal of their desires-if truly worth striving for-only by way of this same painful path. Happiness cannot be had for nothing in this world. Everything must be hard-won and bitterly earned, and every fight will require sacrifices and result in victims. The fact that these victims are witnesses of the holy conviction upon which such a fight is based makes them guarantors of victory, success and fulfillment! Our own National Socialist Movement did not begin by demanding sacrifices from others. Back then we stood in the front lines of the World War as soldiers, and there did our duty for Germany. And when this Germany was delivered a lethal stab at home in those November days of 1918, we attempted to convert those who, at that time, were the tools of a terrible supranational power. We were not the ones who victimized our Volksgenossen who rose up against Germany. During those November days the bloody red terror began to rage openly in Germany for the first time. In Berlin and many other places, German men were murdered: not because they had done anything wrong - no, only because they were devoted to Germany and wanted to remain devoted to it. In the heavy fighting of the first quarter of 1919, German men everywhere sank to the ground, struck by the bullets of their own Volksgenossen.

They did not die because they harbored any hatred for these Volksgenossen, but merely because of their love for Germany. Because they refused to believe that a free and honorable Germany had come to an end, because they wanted to devote themselves to the future of this German Volk; that is why they were shot, stabbed, murdered by mad, blind people! Yet behind this mad blindness we see at every turn the same power, at every turn the same phenomenon which led these people on and stirred them up and finally equipped them with rifles, pistols, or daggers! The victims multiplied. The soviet republic broke out in the south of the Reich, and for the first time now we are seeing victims who had already made an inner, albeit unconscious, choice to take the path leading to National Socialism. These hundreds who were murdered back then in their drive to help Germany and to save Germany have now been joined by eleven Volksgenossen, ten men and one woman, who consciously supported a new idea, who had never harmed a single opponent, who knew but one ideal, the ideal of a new and purified, better Volksgemeinschaft: the members of the Thule Society. They were savagely slaughtered in Munich as hostages. We know who the principals are. They too were members of this disastrous power which was and continues to be responsible for the fratricide in our Volk.

Then the National Socialist Movement set out on its path, and I must put one thing straight here: on this, the path of our Movement, lies not a single opponent murdered by us, not a single assassination. We rejected that from the very first day onwards. We have never fought with these weapons. However, we were just as determined not to spare our own lives, but to defend the life of the German Volk and the German Reich, and to protect it from those who would not shrink from the most treacherous murder, as history has so often taught us.

Then comes an infinitely long list of murdered National Socialists, murdered by cowards, nearly always ambushed and beaten to death, stabbed or shot. But behind every murder stood the same power which is responsible for this murder: behind the harmless, insignificant, indoctrinated Volksgenossen who were driven to sedition stands the hate-filled power of our Jewish foe, a foe to whom we had done no harm but who attempted to subjugate and make of our German Volk its slave, who is responsible for all the misfortune which came upon us in November 1918 and responsible for the misfortune which plagued Germany in the years thereafter! They all died, these party comrades and good comrades, and so were others, too, to die; many hundreds have survived as cripples or badly wounded; many have lost their power of sight, are paralyzed; more than 40,000 others were injured. Among them were so many loyal men whom we all knew who were dear and close to us, of whom we knew they were incapable of doing harm to anyone and who never had done harm to anyone but been guilty of a single crime, namely, of having devoted themselves to Germany. One who stood in the ranks of these victims was Horst Wessel, the singer who gave the Movement its song, never suspecting that he too would join the spirits who march with us now and have marched with us in the past.

Thus National Socialism has now registered its first conscious martyr (Blutzeuge) abroad. A man who did nothing but stand up for Germany-which is not only his sacred right, but also his duty in this world; who did nothing but be mindful of his homeland and loyally pledge himself to it. He too was murdered exactly as were so many others. We know this method. Even as we took power three years ago on January 30, exactly the same incidents were taking place in Germany: in Frankfurt an der Oder, then again in Kopenick, and again in Brunswick. The same procedure was used each tune: a few men appear, call the man to come out of his house, and then stab him to death or shoot him down.

That is no coincidence; a guiding hand organized these crimes and will continue to do so. Now, for the first time, the party responsible for these deeds has become visible. For the first time this party has not employed a harmless German Volksgenosse. It is a glorious chapter for Switzerland and for our own Germans in Switzerland that no one let himself be hired to do this deed, thereby forcing the spiritual author to himself become the perpetrator. Thus our Party Comrade was struck down by the power which is waging a fanatical battle not only against our German Volk, but against every free, autonomous, and independent people. We understand the declaration of war, and we will respond! My dear Party Comrade, your death is not in vain! Our dead have all come back to life. They are marching with us not only in spirit; they are alive, too. And one of those who will accompany us into the most distant future will be this dead man. May that be our sacred vow in this hour, that we wish to ensure that this dead man take his place in the ranks of our Volk’s immortal martyrs. From his death shall hence come forth life a millionfold for our Volk. That Jewish murderer did not suspect or foresee that, by killing one, he would awaken millions upon millions of comrades to a truly German lifelong into the most distant future. Just as it was formerly impossible to hinder the triumphant march of our Movement by means of such deeds, for the opposite was the case-these dead became the banner bearers of our idea- so shall this deed too in no way hinder Germans abroad from belonging to our Movement and to the German Fatherland. Quite the contrary, now every Ortsgruppe abroad has a National Socialist patron, a sacred martyr for the Movement and for our idea. From now on his picture will hang in every headquarters. His name will be engraved upon every heart, and he will nevermore be forgotten for all time to come.

That is our pledge. This deed will fall back upon its doer. It is not Germany that will be weakened by it, but the power which committed this crime.

  

The German Volk has lost one of its living in the year 1936, but has gained an immortal for the future!

Die Braune Kompanie

Ich bin noch jung an Jahren,
Ich bin noch weit vom Tod,
Und hab' doch schon erfahren
Des Volkes bitt're Not.
Und ob mein Glück mich freue,
Mein Herz vergißt dich nie.
|: Ich diene dir in Treue,
Du braune Kompanie! :|

Schon mancher ist gefallen
Von unserm Hitlerkorps;
Die Glocken hör ich schallen
Und heb' den Arm empor.
Ich schwöre und erneue
Den Schwur, den Wessel schrie:
|: Ich diene dir in Treue,
Du braune Kompanie! :|

So will ich wacker streiten
Bis an das blut'ge End,
Daß einst in fernen Zeiten
Mein Deutschland Fried fänd',
Und daß einst Rosen streue
Der Sieg, den Gott uns lieh.
|: Drum dien' ich dir in Treue,
Du braune Kompanie! :|

English Translation

I am still of young years,

I am still far from death,

And yet I have already experienced

Severe distress of the people.

And whether I will be happy or not,

My heart will never forget you.

|: I serve you in loyalty,

You Brown Company! :|

Some have already fallen

From our Hitler Corps;

I hear the ringing of bells

And raise my arm upwards.

I swear and renew

The oath that Wessel shouted:

|: I serve you in loyalty,

You Brown Company! :|

So I want to stride bravely

Till the bloody end,

So that one day in the distant future

My Germany would find peace,

That one day victory is spread with roses,

Victory lent us by God.

|: Therefore I serve you in loyalty,

You Brown Company! :|