Autobiographies of Violence: The SA in its Own Words.

NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHE Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Sturmabteilung; NAZIS; JOB resumes; ANTISEMITISM; MIDDLE class; GERMAN autobiographies; ANTI-communist movements; TWENTIETH century; PSYCHOLOGY; HISTORY; HISTORY of antisemitism

What was the moral horizon of ordinary SA men? What did they think, what did they believe, and what were their ideals? These are hard questions to answer even when they concern people still alive and events still going on. To pose them some eighty years after the fact is to admit that no answer can be definitive. Yet a fresh look at some well-known contemporary sources can at least allow some tentative, suggestive answers. They demonstrate, above all, an emphasis on frenetic activism, combined with a sense of personal suffering and sacrifice. They stress key National Socialist values, such as antisemitism, criticism of the bourgeoisie, and a commitment to an idealized national community, or Volksgemeinschaft. And yet, they also reflect, to a certain extent, pre-Nazi middle-class values. Beyond this, they show men trying desperately to rewrite themselves as ideal SA men and Nazis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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