participation in secret societies, and I took care that the Storm
Detachment should not assume such a character. During those
years I kept the National Socialist Movement away from those
experiments which were being undertaken by young Germans
who for the most part were inspired with a sublime idealism but
who became the victims of their own deeds, because they could
not ameliorate the lot of their fatherland to the slightest degree.
If then the Storm Detachment must not be either a military
defence organization or a secret society, the following
conclusions must result:
1. Its training must not be organized from the military standpoint
but from the standpoint of what is most practical for party
purposes. Seeing that its members must undergo a good physical
training, the place of chief importance must not be given to
military drill but rather to the practice of sports. I have always
considered boxing and jujitsu more important than some kind of
bad, because mediocre, training in rifleshooting. If the German
nation were presented with a body of young men who had been
perfectly trained in athletic sports, who were imbued with an
ardent love for their country and a readiness to take the initiative
in a fight, then the national State could make an army out of that
body within less than two years if it were necessary, provided the
cadres already existed. In the actual state of affairs only the
Reichswehr could furnish the cadres and not a defence
organization that was neither one thing nor the other. Bodily
efficiency would develop in the individual a conviction of his
superiority and would give him that confidence which is always
based only on the consciousness of one's own powers. They must
also develop that athletic agility which can be employed as a
defensive weapon in the service of the Movement.
2. In order to safeguard the Storm Detachment against any
tendency towards secrecy, not only must the uniform be such that
it can immediately be recognized by everybody, but the large
number of its effectives show the direction in which the
Movement is going and which must be known to the whole
public. The members of the Storm Detachment must not hold
secret gatherings but must march in the open and thus, by their
actions, put an end to all legends about a secret organization. In
order to keep them away from all temptations towards finding an
outlet for their activities in small conspiracies, from the very
beginning we had to inculcate in their minds the great idea of the
Movement and educate them so thoroughly to the task of
defending this idea that their horizon became enlarged and that
the individual no longer considered it his mission to remove from
circulation some rascal or other, whether big or small, but to
devote himself entirely to the task of bringing about the
establishment of a new National Socialist People's State. In this
way the struggle against the present State was placed on a higher
plane than that of petty revenge and small conspiracies. It was
elevated to the level of a spiritual struggle on behalf of a
philosophical war, for the destruction of Marxism in all its
shapes and forms.
3. The form of organization adopted for the Storm Detachment,
as well as its uniform and equipment, had to follow different
models from those of the old Army. They had to be specially
suited to the requirements of the task that was assigned to the
Storm Detachment.
These were the ideas I followed in 1920 and 1921. I endeavoured
to instil them gradually into the members of the young
organization. And the result was that by the midsummer of 1922
we had a goodly number of formations which consisted of a
hundred men each. By the late autumn of that year these
formations received their distinctive uniforms. There were three
events which turned out to be of supreme importance for the
subsequent development of the Storm Detachment.
1. The great mass demonstration against the Law for the
Protection of the Republic. This demonstration was held in the
late summer of 1922 on the Königsplatz in Munich, by all the
patriotic societies. The National Socialist Movement also