Reads like a very stuffy, textbook.

While the average reader might look at this work and think, sigh, more Nazis, it's ironic that this was the author's reaction too when his publisher pitched the notion of writing a modern history of the SA to him. With as much as has been written about the Third Reich though this book fills a real gap, as the SA tends to become a topic consigned to History's circular file in the aftermath of the "Night of Long Knives" and Hitler's purge of his real competition for mass power in the aftermath of the fall of the Weimar Republic.

Be that as it may, Siemens essentially identifies three main periods in the history of the SA. One, the period through the Beer Hall Putsch when they were mostly just another paramilitary organization jockeying for bodies, money and weapons. Two, the period 1924-1934 when the SA became a mass movement capable of breaking the weak foundations of the German Republic. Finally, there is the post-Rohm SA, which while decapitated as a power center then became the institution that was the crucible for socializing German men into what it meant to be a good Nazi, besides being the foot soldiers in "defending" the social boundaries between the German people and the many enemies perceived to threaten this "racial" community.

While the book kind of fades out more than comes to a climax, Siemens leaves one with several notions for further thought. One, while there is often bemusement at the desperate defense of Germany in 1944-45 when it seemed that some sort of negotiated settlement might have made logical sense, the SA embodied the concept that the only reason Germany lost in the Great War was due to failing to keep fighting and in the end there was usually some authority either led by the SA or indoctrinated by the SA who so long as they had a clear enemy (or a clear traitor to deal with) were willing to keep on fighting.

There is also the matter of how the SA tended to be treated rather lightly in the post-1945 war-crimes crusade, despite the fact that SA men were the backbone of Nazi racial and political oppression. Partly this is due to organization being seen as something of a hapless zombie after the rise of Himmler's SS to predominance but also due to the sense that if there was anything good about the Nazi movement it was about the social equality that the SA claimed to espouse; even if it was mostly the equality of everyone not in the SA to go to hell. To put it another way, if the SS was the alibi for a nation the SA arguably was the nation!

Highly recommended. ( )