Joining the Nazi Stormtroopers Despite

Joining the Nazi Stormtroopers

Despite what many people think of Adolf Hitler and the problems that he caused for so many people throughout Germany and the world, he was also one of the greatest movers and shakers of the twentieth century. He was a great man with big ideas and the burning desire to carry them out, no matter what the cost. He had a vision for Germany -- a great nation, superior to all others, with a population of healthy, well-adjusted people of the Aryan race who would live long and multiply fruitfully. All others should be removed from the country through their deaths. This would stop the infiltration of any other religion or any unsavory genetics. The people of Germany would become the master race. Certainly, no other human being has disrupted so many lives or caused so much hatred. However, for a long time, myself and a large number of the rest of the German people were behind him and his cause.

We would have done anything for him, and most of us chose to join the Nazi Stormtroopers (SA) as a show of our support. In Hitler's Germany, anti-Semitism was a way of life. He used anti-Semitism to define his political philosophy and to pursue the power that he sought (Gogerly, 2003). One of the most significant issues that people think of when Hitler is mentioned is the Holocaust, which happened in Nazi Germany. Hitler decided that the Jewish people were an inferior race and they needed to be eradicated. Jewish people were forced to wear yellow or white stars to show that they were Jewish. They were also worked, sometimes literally to death, and they were tortured and beaten. Many died in the gas chambers, or as a result of experiments (Gogerly, 2003; Dufner, 2003).

It might seem cruel to kill people in this way, but what people failed to understand is that Hitler had a great vision for his country…a vision that included healthy, beautiful people and a strong nation. If I would not have gone to his rallies and heard his speeches I might never have known this. If I would have only listened to those who were against him, I might have turned against him, as well. He made a persuasive argument, though, about the strength of Germany at that time and what the country could have in the future. All leaders want power, or they would not have moved themselves into leadership positions. Those who serve under that leader want to see their fortunes made better. Hitler could give this to Germany, and the message that he could do so was very clear in the strength and sincerity of his speeches.

I gave my full support to Hitler and joined the Nazi Stormtroopers because of many of the arguments that he made in his speeches. I believed in his vision for the country. I did not join just because everyone else was doing it or because I felt I had to or I would face punishment. Not every German supported Hitler, and most of them who did not just kept quiet about it or pretended like they supported him so they could go on with their lives and not be bothered. Open rebellion was definitely not tolerated. Friends of mine were killed for their beliefs. Of course, by that time I had distanced myself from them because our beliefs no longer matched, and talking with them about the great country that Hitler was going to create had become uncomfortable. So I put on the brown uniform of the SA and joined fellow Germans in doing everything we could to ensure that Hitler's dream of what Germany could be would become a reality in the near future.

One of the reasons that I and the rest of the SA admired Hitler so much was because of his childhood. He was frequently whipped by his father and mistreated, but he did not become defeated because of it; he instead grew stronger and more determined (Nardo, 2002). With that being the case, it was easy to see how the adversity that he would face as a leader would also help him to become stronger, making the country stronger as well. People who did not understand Hitler's philosophy like the SA often thought that he was cruel, but he was trying to help his beloved country recover from the loss in WWI, and from political and economic instability that had made Germany weaker than it ever had been on the international stage. He wanted to save his country and make it whole again, and I admired that. So did many other Germans, because the ranks of the SA were huge. We were all more rough-and-tumble than the SS, not as cultured, and we got away with more because of it.