The importance of the work of the SA in the early days of the Movement was indicated by Goebbels in a speech which appeared in Das Archiv, October 1935. This is our Document 3211-PS, Exhibit Number USA-419. It is on the first page of the English translation:
“The inner-political opponents did not disappear due to mysterious unknown reasons, but because the Movement possessed a strong arm within its organization; and the strongest arm of the movement is the SA. The Jewish question will not be solved separately but by laws which we enact, for we are an anti-Jewish government.”
Specific evidence of the activities of the SA during the early period of the Nazi movement, from 1922 to 1931, is found in a series of articles appearing in Der SA-Mann entitled, “SA Battle Experiences Which We Will Never Forget.” Each of these articles is an account of a street or a meeting-hall battle waged by the SA against a group of political opponents in the early days of the Nazi struggle for power. These articles demonstrate that during this period it was the function of the SA to employ physical violence in order to destroy and subvert all forms of thought and expression which might be considered hostile to the Nazi aims or philosophy.
A number of such articles have been translated, and the titles are sufficiently descriptive to constitute evidence of the activities of the SA in the early stages of the movement. I should like to quote from a few of these titles by giving the page reference of this big newspaper volume.
Here is one of 24 February 1934, Page 4—the title: “We Subdue the Red Terror.” From the 8th of September 1934, Page 12; the article is entitled: “Nightly Street Battles on the Czech Border.” From 6th of October 1934, Page 5: “Street Battle in Chemnitz.” Another one of 20 October 1934, Page 7—the title: “Victorious SA.” I will skip several of them. Here is one of 26 January 1935, Page 7—the title: “The SA Conquers Rastenburg.” Another on 23 February 1935, Page 5: “Company 88 Receives Its Baptism of Fire.” One of 20 October 1934, Page 7—the article is: “SA against Sub-humanity.” Finally, I mention the one of 10 August 1935, Page 10—the title is: “The Blood Sunday of Berlin.” And then there is a portrait in the article of 11 September 1937, Page 1, which symbolizes the SA man as the master of the streets.
For an example of the nature of these articles, one appeared in the Franken edition of the SA-Mann for 30 October 1937, Page 3. It is entitled: “9 November 1923 in Nuremberg,” and I should like to quote from Pages 14 and 15 of Document 3050-PS, which is an English translation of this article:
“We stayed overnight in the Colosseum (that means Nuremberg). Then in the morning we found out what had happened in Munich. ‘Now a revolution will also be made in Nuremberg’, we said. All of a sudden the police came from the Maxtor police station and told us that we should go home, that the Putsch in Munich had failed. We did not believe that and we did not go home. Then came the State Police with fixed bayonets and drove us out of the hall. One of us then shouted: ‘Let’s go to the Cafe Habsburg!’ By the time we arrived, however, the police again had everything surrounded. Some shouted then, ‘The Jewish place will be stormed. . . . Out with the Jews!’ Then the police started to beat us up. Then we divided into small groups and roamed through the town, and wherever we caught a Red or a Jew we knew, blows ensued.
“Then in the evening we marched, although the police had forbidden it, to a meeting in Fürth. In the Hornschuch promenade the police again attempted to stop us. It was all the same to us. In the next moment we attacked the police in our anger so that they were forced to flee. We marched on to Geissmann Hall. There again they tried to stop us. But the Landsturm, which was also there, attacked the policemen like persons possessed and drove them from the streets. After the meeting we dissolved and went to the edge of town. From there we marched in close column back to Nuremberg. In Willstrasse, at the Plärrer, the police came again. We simply shoved them aside. They did not trust themselves to attack, for that would have meant a blood bath. We decided beforehand not to take anything from anyone. In Fürth, too, they had already noticed that we were up to no good. A large mass of people accompanied us on the march. We marched with unrolled flags and sang so that the streets resounded: Comrade reach me your hand; we want to stand together; even though they have false impressions, the spirit must not die; swastika on the steel helmet, black-white-red armband; we are known as Storm Troop (SA) Hitler!”
I now skip to the use of the SA to consolidate the power of the Party. The third function of the SA was to carry out various programs designed to consolidate Nazi control of the German State, including particularly the dissolution of the trade unions and the Jewish persecutions.