Stennes revolt

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Walter Stennes, the Berlin chief of the Sturmabteilung, was the leader of the Stennes revolt. Bundesarchiv Bild 119-2608, Walther Hinkler-Stennes.jpg
Walter Stennes, the Berlin chief of the Sturmabteilung , was the leader of the Stennes revolt.

The Stennes revolt (German : Stennes-Putsch) was a revolt within the Nazi Party by the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1930 and 1931.

Contents

Members of the SA led by Berlin chief Walter Stennes, unsatisified with the role and restrictions placed on them by Adolf Hitler, began to rebel against the Nazi Party leadership. [1] Stennes issued a number of demands about the status of the SA and Nazi Party policy which were rejected by Hitler. Stennes ransacked the offices of the Berlin Gau twice as a show of force, which led to Stennes and his supporters being expelled from the SA and the Nazi Party.

The Stennes revolt led to a temporary return of control of the SA by the Nazi Party leadership, and Hitler's appointment of Ernst Röhm as SA Chief. Many of the issues within the SA that provoked the revolt were not solved and contributed to the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. The revolt was one of the first major actions of the Schutzstaffel which earned them the confidence of Hitler. There is some evidence suggesting that Stennes may have been paid by the government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, with the intention of causing conflict within and destabilizing the Nazi movement. [2]

Background

Status of the SA

The exact role and purpose of the Sturmabteilung (SA) within the Nazi movement was still unsettled in 1930. [3] Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler viewed the SA as serving strictly political purposes: a subordinate body whose function was to foster Nazi expansion and development. The SA's proper functions, in Hitler's view, were political ones such as protecting Nazi meetings from disruption by protesters, disrupting meetings of Nazi adversaries, distributing propaganda, recruiting, marching in the streets to propagandize by showing support for the Nazi cause, political campaigning, and brawling with Communist Party and its Rotfrontkämpferbund in the streets. Hitler did not advocate the SA's functioning as a military or paramilitary organization, which would contradict his announced "policy of legality" since the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 in which the Nazis would obtain power through purely legal means. [4]

Many in the SA itself — including the leadership — held a contrary, and more glorious, view of the SA's role. To them, the SA was a nascent military organization: the basis for a future citizen army on the Napoleonic model, an army which would, ideally, absorb the Reichswehr and displace its "outmoded" Prussian concepts with "modern" Nazi ideals. [5]

1928 and 1930 elections

The Reichstag elections in 1928 were a disaster for the Nazi Party, winning just 12 seats out of a total of 491 with less than 3% of the popular vote, becoming the ninth-largest party in parliament. [6] Although the election saw losse for the political right and centre in general, the performance of the Nazi Party was so poor that some commentators believed that it was the beginning of the end for the Nazi movement. Some within the SA were energised as they believed Hitler might abandon his policy of obtaining power through strictly legal means. In March 1930, the Second Müller cabinet headed by Hermann Müller of the Social Democratic Party implodedover the issue of the amount of employer contributions to unemployment insurance, under pressure from the Great Depression. [7] [8] Its successor, the First Brüning cabinet headed by Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party was unable to obtain a parliamentary majority for its own financial reform bill, which was rejected by the Reichstag on 16 July 1930. [9] Brüning asked President Paul von Hindenburg to invoke Article 48 in order to promulgate the bill as an emergency decree. Hindenburg did so and the Reichstag promptly repudiated the bill on 18 July 1930, thereby invalidating the presidential decree under the Weimar Constitution. Brüning thereupon asked Hindenburg to dissolve parliament and call for new elections, which were scheduled for 14 September 1930. [10] This presented an opportunity for the Nazis to improve their representation in the Reichstag two years earlier than expected.

SA demands of August 1930

Members of the SA in Berlin, led by Walter Stennes, had for some time been voicing objections to the policies and purposes of the SA as defined by Hitler. [11] [12] [13] These SA members saw their organization as a revolutionary vanguard of a National Socialist order that would overthrow the hated Weimar Republic by force. Stennes complained that advancement within the SA was improperly based upon cronyism and favoritism rather than upon merit, and objected to the general law-abiding approach. He and his men chafed under Hitler's order to terminate street attacks upon Communists and Jews, sarcastically referring to him as "Adolf Legalité." [14] [15]

The SA had developed a list of seven ambitious demands, including denunciations of capitalism and Catholicism (just before an election in a country with a substantial Catholic population), an end to corruption and bureaucratization in the Nazi Party, the removal of Gauleiter power over SA men, the administration of SA independent of party administration, and a fixed appropriation from party funds to be earmarked for the SA. [16] On 7 August 1930, Joseph Goebbels, the Gauleiter (Nazi regional leader) of Berlin, met with Stennes and other SA officers in Berlin. . [17] The SA also wanted three secure places on the party's list for the upcoming Reichstag elections. In addition, he complained that the SA members under his command were not being paid sufficiently. [18]

On 7 August 1930, Joseph Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin, met with Stennes and other SA officers in Berlin. Stennes demanded the three ballot slots and threatened a "palace revolution" otherwise, claiming that he would resign and take 80% of Berlin SA (some 15,000 men) with him. [19] Hitler had already heard the SA demands from Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, the SA's supreme commander, and had rejected the demands outright. Hitler had told Pfeffer to "get lost" and had called him a "mutineer." [20] Hitler ignored the Stennes initiative and did not grant Stennes an audience when Stennes came to Munich to try to meet with him. [21] The request for the ballot slots was consistently denied. [22]

On 27 August, Stennes threatened Goebbels again: he wanted the three Reichstag seats, more money for the SA, and more political power in the movement. Hitler again refused to take it seriously. Pfeffer had resigned by this time, and Hitler assured Goebbels he would send the SA Chief of Staff, Otto Wagener, to fix things in the SA.

First ransack

Stennes decided that action was needed to make a statement. Accordingly, on 30 August 1930, the Berlin SA refused to provide protection for Goebbels at his Sportpalast speech, and instead held a parade in Wittenbergplatz. Goebbels turned to the Schutzstaffel (SS), who provided the necessary security for the speech and then assigned to protect the office of the Berlin Gau on Hedemannstrasse. The SA then stormed the Gau office, injuring the SS men and wrecking the premises. Goebbels was shocked at the extent of the damage done and notified Hitler, who left the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth and flew immediately to Berlin. [23] Hitler talked to Stennes and groups of SA the next day, urging them to follow his leadership. He redefined the issue in different and simpler terms: Was the SA entirely loyal to Hitler under the Führerprinzip , or not? Then on the following day, he convened a meeting of some 2000 SA and announced he was personally taking over as Supreme Leader of the SA. [24] [25] The SA cheered and were delighted that their leader was finally giving them the recognition they felt they deserved. Hitler also had Stennes read a declaration increasing SA funding, and also promised free legal representation for SA men arrested in the line of duty. [26] A special levy (20 pfennig) would be made on party dues to pay for it. [27]

The crisis was over for the time being. The SA members, it appeared, did not truly want to fight with Hitler or contest his leadership, but only sought treatment that they considered correct in light of their mission and the overall mission of the NSDAP. [15] However, Hitler's effort would not suffice to remove the underlying structural issue that conditioned the Party-SA relationship: What was the SA's role and, in particular, what would that role be if the party actually succeeded in gaining the political power it sought? [28] In the 1930 German federal election, the Nazi Party achieved an astonishing victory winning 95 seats and 18% of the popular vote, becoming the second-largest party in the Reichstag.

Spring 1931

Hitler had made himself Supreme Commander of the SA, though he had no interest in running the organization. He summoned Ernst Röhm, who was in self-imposed exile in South America, and offered him effective command of the SA as its Chief of Staff. Röhm returned to Germany and promptly reorganized the SA, removing control of Silesia from Stennes. Meanwhile, Stennes continued to complain; he noted that the SA in Breslau were not able to turn out for inspection in February 1931 because they lacked footwear. [29] He also complained about Röhm's return to run the SA, objecting to the Chief of Staff's homosexuality. [22] Even more troubling, the strategy of taking power by force was advocated by Stennes in February articles published in Der Angriff. This was disturbing to the Nazi leadership as it contravened Hitler's strategy of gaining power through constitutional means only and forswearing violence as a means to power. And Hitler had very publicly announced his "reliance on legality only" in the Leipzig trial of three young Reichswehr officers for "treasonous activities" in September 1930. This was in perfect timing for the autumn elections and with an eye towards the attendant propaganda value, and he had sworn on the witness stand and under oath that the party had forsaken violent and illegal means as a path to power. [30]

On 20 February 1931, Hitler issued a decree making the SA subordinate to the party organization at the Gau level. Stennes mildly protested to Röhm by letter, raising also the plight of unemployed SA men. On 26 February, Röhm forbade the SA from taking part in street battles and also forbade its leaders from speaking in public. [31]

On 28 March 1931, Brüning, employing Hindenburg's emergency powers under Article 48, issued an emergency decree requiring all political meetings to be registered and requiring all posters and political handouts to be subject to censorship. The decree also delegated wide powers to Brüning to curb "political excesses." Of course, the SA objected to the decree. Nevertheless, Hitler — whose "policy of legality" appeared to be paying dividends after the 1930 election — ordered strict compliance.

Second ransack

Stennes refused to obey Hitler's orders and rebelled again. [32] On the night of March 31, the SA once again stormed the Berlin Gau offices and took physical control of them. In addition, the SA took over the offices of Der Angriff, with pro-Stennes versions of the newspaper appearing on 1 April and 2 April. [26] Hitler instructed Goebbels to take whatever means were necessary to put down the revolt. This time, the Berlin Police were called to expel the SA intruders from the party's offices. Goebbels and Hermann Göring purged around 500 SA men in Berlin and the surrounding areas. [33] Since all money for SA was dispensed through the Gau headquarters, it was a simple matter to cut this off and the lack of funding caused the rebellion to collapse. In an article in the Völkischer Beobachter , Hitler justified Stennes' expulsion, referring to him as a "salon socialist" and demanding that all SA men choose between Stennes and Hitler, declaring that the mutinous Stennes was a conspirator against National Socialism. The Nazi Party leadership appeared to have regained control over the SA.

Aftermath

The Stennes revolt was defeated but the underlying structural problems within the SA simply remained dormant for several years. The inherent tensions between the party and SA only grew under the able leadership of Röhm, whose ambitions certainly were higher than those of Stennes. The revolt illustrate Hitler's consistent approach to solving intraparty frictions: resorting to the Führerprinzip rather than address the underlying problems which motivated the tension. A resolution to the dilemma had to wait until the Reichswehr forced the issue in the summer of 1934 when, with the SA growing restless and Hindenburg on his deathbed, Hitler responded with the murderous Night of the Long Knives. [34]

Stennes had a following among the leftist oriented SA in Berlin, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and Silesia, founding the National Socialist Fighting League of Germany (Nationalsozialistische Kampfbewegung Deutschlands). He made connection with Otto Strasser, as well as Hermann Ehrhardt, ex-leader of the defunct Viking League (Bund Wiking). He recruited about 2000 SA men from Berlin and elsewhere along with 2000 Ehrhardt followers, and the leaders protested that the "NSDAP has abandoned the revolutionary course of true national socialism" and will become "just another coalition party." [35] Stennes left Germany in 1933, working as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek until 1949, when he returned years after the fall of the Nazi regime.

Hitler was impressed by the SS and demonstrated his confidence in them by replacing Stennes with an SS man, Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger. [36] The SS adopted their motto Meine Ehre heißt Treue ("My honor is [called] loyalty") from a letter Hitler had wrote to congratulate the SS men for their actions in Stennes revolt.

Conservative businessmen gained more confidence in Hitler after seeing the repression of the more radical Stennes element and Hitler's attendant adherence to "legality." [37] As Collier notes:

Ironically the Stennes revolt may have assisted the Nazi rise to power, in that more moderate elements in the German right observed Hitler's adherence to his strategy of legality and gained confidence that he was accordingly "law-abiding." [31]

Stennes (played by Hanno Koffler) and his 1931 revolt are depicted in season 4 of Babylon Berlin .

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References

Notes

  1. ↑ See generally Toland, pp. 248-52; Kershaw, pp. 347-51; Machtan, pp. 81-83; Read, pp. 199-211; Fest, pp. 281-82; Lemmons, pp. 81-82; and Grant, pp. 51-89 for general descriptions of the Stennes Revolt.
  2. ↑ Evans, Richard J. (2003) The Coming of the Third Reich . New York: Penguin Press. p.273. ISBN   0-14-303469-3
  3. ↑ The SA was an "alien" body which had not been integrated into the party in 1930. Mommsen, p. 337.
  4. ↑ See e.g. Toland, pp. 210-211 (April 1925 conflict between Hitler and Ernst Röhm over proper purpose of SA, leading to Röhm's resignation; p. 220 (Hitler's later selection of Pfeffer von Salomon as SA chief of staff to preside over a legitimate, non-military organization consistent with Hitler's announced "policy of legality" following the Beer Hall Putsch; and pp. 248-251 (tension between SA leaders seeking military function and Hitler's desire for strictly political function).
  5. ↑ Fischer, p. 85. Of course this was Röhm's view, both before his 1925 resignation from the party and after his return from South America at Hitler's request to lead the SA in 1931 -- a view which eventually led to his murder in The Night of the Long Knives.
  6. ↑ In the Reichstag election of May 1928, the Nazis had won just 12 seats out of a total of 491. As a consequence, they were only the ninth largest party in the Reichstag, and had less than one-fourth the seats held by the Communists, who made substantial gains in 1928 and who came to control 54 seats through the 1928 election. The parties of the Left (Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Communist Party (KPD)) were the main winners in 1928 and jointly controlled 226 seats as a result of the 1928 elections; if they could jointly muster a coalition of only 246 seats, the coalition would be a parliamentary majority. See 1928 election results. The NSDAP's pitiful showing (less than 3% of the 1928 popular vote) "appeared to confirm the correctness of those commentators who for years had been preaching the end of Hitler and his Movement," Kershaw, p. 302. In the cities, the results were awful for the Nazis; in Berlin, the NSDAP received 1.57% of the vote. Kershaw, p. 303. Some within the party even came to believe that Hitler would be forced to repudiate his plan to obtain power strictly through legal means, instead of by putsch, and he authorized the Nazi press in June of 1928 to reaffirm his commitment to constitutional procedures as the path to power. Kershaw, p. 304.
  7. ↑ Müller, a Social Democrat, headed the so-called "Grand Coalition," which included members of the SPD (153 seats), German Democratic Party (25 seats), German People's Party (DVP, 45 seats), Catholic Center Party, (Zentrum, 61 seats) and Bavarian People's Party (17 seats). Any combination of 246 seats would create a majority. Kershaw, p. 304; Collier, p. 39.
  8. ↑ The coalition parties failed to cope with the issues raised by the Great Depression and by their mutual intransigence, and refusals to compromise, assisted the Weimar Republic in its suicide and facilitated the rise of the Nazis.
    Germany was strained by the obligation, enacted in 1927, to pay a fixed benefit to the unemployed. In 1927 with only 1.3 million unemployed in Germany, the procedure was quite workable; however, when unemployment rose with the depression, the Reich Institution responsible for benefit payment was forced to borrow from the general government, and the debt of some 350 million Reichsmarks by the end of 1929 strained the government's budget.
    The SPD wanted to increase the employer contribution from 3.5 to 4.0 percent; the DVP wanted instead to cut benefits; and the Center, trying to make peace, tried to negotiate a compromise wherein all parties would defer consideration of the issue until the autumn of 1930. The SPD refused the Center's proposed deal and the Müller government was consequently stymied. Müller, faced with crisis, sought President Paul von Hindenburg's help, asking for power to rule by decree pursuant to Article 48 -- a power that had been granted in 1923 to Chancellor Gustav Stresemann by President Friedrich Ebert in economic crises and that would soon be granted by Hindenburg to each of Müller's successors as Chancellor. The haughty, aristocratic and thoroughly anti-democratic Hindenburg, having no use for any Social Democrat, refused, having decided earlier to use the opportunity to oust the SPD from its position of power in the government; he relished the chance to have formed an anti-parliamentary and anti-Marxist government. Kershaw pp. 323-324. The result was, in accordance with Hindenburg's plan, the appointment of Heinrich Brüning of the Center Party as Chancellor with no SPD members in his cabinet. Ibid; Collier p. 41.
  9. ↑ The Brüning program generally sought to cut government spending in a time of severe deflation and depression.
  10. ↑ See Article 48 (Weimar Constitution) for references and detail.
  11. ↑ Machtan (pp. 182-183) notes that while Berlin was the major focus of discontent, similar incidents of dissatisfaction were percolating throughout the SA in Germany
  12. ↑ Stennes had been a regular army officer in the Reichswehr , a police captain and a Freikorps leader as well as an arms racketeer. He was OSAF Stellvertreter Ost (Deputy Supreme SA Leader East) in the SA and one of Pfeffer's seven regional deputies. See Green, Hoffman, p. 15. Stennes had replaced Daluege in Berlin. Read, pp. 199-221.
  13. ↑ Stennes had also been insubordinate: he had disobeyed directives and had formed ties with the German National People's Party (DNV) and the Stahlhelm. Grant also notes that the complaints from Stennes had been voiced since at least May 1930; the more explicit protest in August was thus no surprise, and it is characteristic of Hitler's penchant for procrastination and disorderliness that he did nothing for months. Grant.
  14. ↑ Some in the SA sarcastically referred to the Führer as "Adolf Legalité."
  15. 1 2 Toland, p. 248.
  16. ↑ These included the issuance of strident denunciations of Catholicism and capitalism (hardly a propos just before an election in a country with a substantial Catholic population), an end to corruption and bureaucratization in the NSDAP, the removal of Gauleiter power over SA men, the administration of SA independent of party administration and a fixed appropriation from party funds to be earmarked for the SA. Grant, p. 63.
  17. ↑ These included the issuance of strident denunciations of Catholicism and capitalism (hardly a propos just before an election in a country with a substantial Catholic population), an end to corruption and bureaucratization in the NSDAP, the removal of Gauleiter power over SA men, the administration of SA independent of party administration and a fixed appropriation from party funds to be earmarked for the SA. Grant, p. 63.
  18. ↑ The real problems were bossism and favoritism, and poor pay. They were peaved that the Political Organization lived in "luxury" while the SA men worked late until exhaustion. Fest p. 282. Stennes severely criticized Hitler for spending so much on the Brown House in Munich, while the SA men were underpaid. Grant, pp. 62-63. See also Machtan pp. 182-83 (while poor pay and the parliament seats were the ostensible reasons offered by Stennes, the main objection was the emphasis by Hitler on the "legality" approach).
  19. ↑ Read, p. 199
  20. ↑ Pfeffer demanded (at a Nazi leadership conference held on 2 and 3 August 1930) that SA be represented on the NSDAP electoral list and that it be granted three secure seats in the Reichstag. Hitler naturally refused. The two men obviously had fundamental disagreements about the nature of the SA. Pfeffer saw the SA as a military institution that would help in overthrow of the Weimar Republic. Hitler wanted a legal seizure of power and a political SA: the SA's job was to further the party's propaganda efforts and to provide guard duty for rallies and, when necessary, to battle ruffians of the Left. Pfeffer resigned on 12 August, to take effect 1 September. Lemmons p. 80
  21. ↑ Green
  22. 1 2 Fischer, p. 86
  23. ↑ Fest
  24. ↑ Hoffman, pp. 17-19.
  25. ↑ The SS was merely a subordinate unit of the SA at this time, not yet under independent leadership.
  26. 1 2 Lemmons, p. 80
  27. ↑ Fest p. 283. Hitler also promised free legal representation for SA men arrested in the line of duty. Fest, p. 283
  28. ↑ See Kershaw; Lemmons, pp. 82-83 (while Hitler's personal appeal to the SA men was "enormous," and while it could solve the immediate problem, it did not address the underlying issue, which was the subordination vel non ('or not') of the SA to Hitler's purely political goals).
  29. ↑ Fischer, pp. 85-87. Displaying the characteristic failure of a paramilitary adventurer to grasp political reality, Stennes even complained that the strategy of legality was shown to be a failure because the Party failed to win the 1930 Reichstag elections outright with a clear majority. Fischer. p. 86
  30. ↑ Kershaw, p. 217
  31. 1 2 Collier, p. 174.
  32. ↑ Goebbels noted in his diary that the party might even face another ban, since the Brüning Emergency Decree of March 28 had given the Chancellor express power to contend with "political excesses." Such a ban would be disaster in the wake of the Nazi political victory in September 1930. Kershaw, p. 217
  33. ↑ In all some 500 SA men were purged. The rest returned. Kershaw
  34. ↑ See, e.g., Evans, p. 274
  35. ↑ Hoffman, pp. 19-22; Carsten pp. 140-43; Nyomarkay pp. 117-121; Lemmons p. 52
  36. ↑ Friedrich-Wilhelm Kruger was given Stennes' position as Gruppenführer East and Hitler wrote to congratulate the SS men, stating "SS-Mann, deine Ehre heisst Treue." The motto of the SS -- was thereby born. Grant, p. 52
  37. ↑ Evans, p. 274.

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