Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE ARMED INTELLECTUALS 27certtain Colonel von Epp. But from this modest post he established, indefiance of the law and against the will of every minister in Berlin andMunich, a volunteer army of a hundred thousand men, callingthemselves modestly the Einwohnerwehr (citizens' defense) . When thisarmed mass was finally disbanded by orders from above, he formed newnuclei. New organizations kept springing up, with all sorts of names,under constantly changing official leaders, all having ostensibly nothingto do with the Reichswehr. Actually all were an extension of theReichswehr, under the command of Rohm.Rohm was a professional soldier of petty-bourgeois origin. His fatherwas a middling railway official in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, where ErnstRohm was born on November 28, 1887. The boy became an excellentsoldier, the embodiment of personal bravery. In 1906 he joined thearmy, in 1908 became a lieutenant. Three times wounded in the war, hereturned each time to the front. Half his nose was shot away, he had abullet hole in his cheek; short, stocky, shot to tatters, and patched, hewas the outward image of a freebooter captain. He was more a soldierthan an officer. In his memoirs he condemns the cowardice, sensuality,and other vices of many comrades; his revelations were almost treasonagainst his own class.A gigantic arsenal had been left behind by the fallen German army. Inthe peace treaty Germany had promised to destroy it. The Alliessupervised the process by control commissions, sitting in the large citiesof Germany and traveling through the country. These arms had to besaved. In Bavaria Rohm undertook this task.He was able to persuade a few of the Allied officers that these oldarmored cars and rusty machine guns could be of no use in seriouswarfare, but would come in handy for combating the world revolutionwhich was moving, through Germany, toward the Rhine. This strangecollaboration with the Allied organs must have been very close; in hismemoirs Rohm indicates as much in passing, praising certain Britishofficers and mentioning an Italian, Major Grammacini. He succeeded insurrounding the Allied officials with a dense net of counter-spies; menwishing to report a secret arsenal were prevented from reaching theforeigners; they fell into the hands of a German, masquerading as anofficer of the