GÖRING: Either the end of October or the beginning of November 1922.
DR. STAHMER: And then you officially entered the Party?
GÖRING: Yes, that was the same date. Just a few days after that I signed up.
DR. STAHMER: What tasks did Hitler then give you, that is, say, until November 1923?
GÖRING: The tasks arose from my position, which at that time had the title “Commander of the SA.” At first it was important to weld the SA into a stable organization, to discipline it, and to make of it a completely reliable unit which had to carry out the orders which I or Adolf Hitler should give it. Up to that point it had been just a club which had been very active, but which still lacked the necessary construction and discipline.
I strove from the beginning to bring into the SA those members of the Party who were young and idealistic enough to devote their free time and their entire energies to it. For at that time things were very difficult for these good men. We were very small in number and our opponents were far more numerous. Even in those days these men were exposed to very considerable annoyances and had to suffer all sorts of things.
In the second place I tried to find recruits among workmen, for I knew that among workmen particularly I should enroll many members for the SA.
At the same time we had naturally to see to it that the meetings of the Party, which generally were limited at that time to Munich, Upper Bavaria and Franconia, could actually be carried through in a satisfactory manner, and disturbances prevented. In most cases we succeeded. But sometimes we had a strong party of our opponents present. One side or the other still had weapons from the war and sometimes critical situations arose, and in some cases we had to send the SA as reinforcements to other localities.
In the course of the year 1923 the contrast between Bavaria and the Reich became even stronger. One could see that the Bavarian Government of that time wanted to go a different way to that of the Reich Government. The Reich Government was influenced strongly by Marxism, but the Bavarian Government was free from that, it was bourgeois.
Then suddenly the Bavarian Government was completely transformed when a governor general—I believe he was called that—or something of the sort, was appointed for Bavaria. It was Von Kahr, to whom the Bavarian Government was subordinate and to whom the Bavarian Government delegated all authority. Shortly after that the Reichswehr conflict developed. The 7th Reichswehr Division, which was stationed in Bavaria, was released from its oath to the Reich, which it had sworn to the Reich Constitution—I do not know its name any longer—that is to Von Kahr. This led to the conflict of the Generals Von Seeckt and Lossow. The same thing happened with the Bavarian police.