R & A No. 3113.7 / Principal Nazi Organizations Involved in the ...

- .190 •SBCKET
took seriously the tena "socialist" in the National Socialist Party
title, and believed in the revolutionary character and aim of the
Hitler movement.f^Bven prior to the seizure of power, ^fn 1930-1931,)
these elements in the Berlin SA had revolted against the growing
"bureaucratizatlan" of the NSDAP and against the "bourgeois" tendencies
1
of its leadership. Otto Stressor (who separated from the NSDAP in
1930), Walter Stennes (leader of the Berlin SA, who^SUSt to China
around 1935), and the former Supreme Commander of the S*, Franz Pfeffer,
were the chief exponents of the radical tendencies in the SA. Although
the early revolt was quelled, the Nazi leadership and its conservative
supporters among business and tlie ftshrmacht remained apprehensive
of the danger of SA radicalism. Not until the Rchm purge of 1934
was this danger removed once and for all and the SA made an obedient
instrument in the hands o^ihe new lirmly consolidated and bureaucrat! zed
Hazi leadership»
This change was »ccsrjpanied by a decline in the functions of tie
the SA, The SA during this period became what the official Nazi hand­
books describe it to have been from the beginning» chiefly an organiza­
tion for ideological, political, pre-military, and physical training
in the spirit of Nazism,
young
"In the SA, the ^SÄB? German, ..is being strengthened ideologically
and in his character, and trained to be the bearer of National
Socialist philosophy and id«a3. Moreover, it is the task of the
SA to promote the military cpirit (jehr^eAjt) through the
practicing of soldierly virtues ... and to prepare tae individual
I, See especially Otto Stressor, fflpftnteraegsel oder Revolution? Berlin
1930, and his later writings.
SBCBKI