The SA of the NSDAP

Histories of Nazism have concentrated frequently on the Nazi party itself, which stood at the centre of the movement's conquest and subsequent exercise of state power. The party was distinguished from many of its right-wing contemporaries in Germany by an aggressive dynamism which is especially characteristic of fascism in general, and this dynamism was manifested most prominently through paramilitary activism. Indeed, it is widely recognized that the Nazi movement's paramilitary wing, the Storm Troops (Sturmabteilungen), or SA, contributed substantially not only to its successful struggle for power, but also to the consolidation of this power during the initial, turbulent months of Nazi rule.2 The SA itself was conscious that it, above all else, lent substance to Nazism's radical, activist, anti-Marxist and anti-parliamentarian stance. Thus the SA served to distinguish the Nazi movement from the conventional Weimar parties, which, in the view of the radical right, provided through their commitment to party politics no effective answer to the challenge of revolutionary Marxism3 which, like Nazism, was prepared to use force in the attainment of its ends. Nazi propagandists seized on this asset, propagating the image of the dedicated SA warrior, prepared to suffer injury, or even death

Ideology · Political science · Politics · Rank (graph theory · European history and politics · German legal, social, and political studies · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Mathematics

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