Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

398 DER FUEHRERwar. It was absurd, said Scheringer, to regard the Reichswehr as a firespittingbody of a hundred thousand chosen ruffians and warriors.'People think the old staff corporal is an impassioned soldier. They don'tbother to ask where he is to get passion after ten or twelve years' servicein the barracks. . . . They know nothing of the tragedy of the four words:twelve years as subalterns. . . . Let the old men be silent. They havetheir lives behind them, ours are just beginning. A lost war, an impotentstate, a hopeless system, an enslavement enduring fifty-nine years, aReich at the brink of the abyss, that is our life. And they are to blame....Consequently, we have the right to fight with all means for our freedomand that of our children. The world may be sure that we are determinedto do so, and we shall be victorious just as surely as France is a dyingnation.'There it was again — the struggle of the lieutenants against thegenerals. Shortly before his electoral victory in September, 1930, Hitlerdelivered a speech full of strange extravagant hopes. A NationalSocialist, he said, would have to be entrusted with the ReichswehrMinistry. This was about the worst threat he could make to theReichswehr: to be ruled by a political party, and the party of the formerReichswehr spy at that. But this was necessary, said Hitler, using anargument familiar to the generals; because 'we want to be in a positionto guarantee that our people will assume a form of government whichwill make a second November, 1918, impossible in the foreseeablefuture.'Rohm named the various 'standards,' as the units (about the size of aregiment) of the S.A., the 'Brown People's Army,' were called, after theregiments of the old German army stationed in the same localities. Itwas really a people's troop. In his service regulation, Rohm based thewhole gigantic organization on a tiny unit, the so-called 'schar (squad);such a squad was formed when somewhere a leader arose of his ownaccord 'and set up the squad.' The squad, according to the regulations,should 'consist of comrades who join together from a commonconviction and a common bond, based on childhood friendship, schoolcamaraderie, or similar working conditions' — with a straight faceRohm forbade the admission of hard drinkers, dope addicts, andhomosexuals. Once the squad was