Stormtroopers and Crisis in the Nazi Movement: Activism, Ideology and Dissolution

Hitler's seizure of power in January 1933, in the eyes of some historians, was the culmination of an unstoppable march. Yet the final months of the Weimar Republic saw the Nazis sliding into ever deeper trouble. In particular, the Sturmabteilung or 'SA' - activist heart of the Nazi movement was showing signs of breakage. This book scrutinizes two sets of hitherto understudied records. SA morale reports in the US National Archive show what Nazi leaders themselves knew about their radical paramilitary wing. Police reports on the stormtroopers, from the former DDR state archive in Potsdam, show what Republican authorities knew.Stormtroopers and Crisis in the Nazi Movementcasts fresh light on the crisis that beset Nazism during the final months of Germany's first republic.

Thomas D. Grant is a Fellow of Wolfson College and the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge.