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

THE REICHSTAG FIRE 549On February 17, Goring issued an order to all police authorities,stating 'that the police must under all circumstances avoid so much as anappearance of hostility toward the S.A. and the Stahlhelm'; on thecontrary, the police must with all its strength support this private armyof the government 'in every activity for national aims.' This meant thatthe police should help the S.A. in its attacks on political opponents, givethem the freedom of the streets, and come to their rescue if they weregetting beaten. Goring also made it clear that the police 'must opposewith the sharpest means the activities of organizations hostile to thestate.' The mass of police officers were not National Socialists; theywere none too enthusiastic over this order. Goring intimidated hissubordinates by dire threats and compelled them to commit acts ofbloodshed to which many of them were surely opposed: 'Police officerswho make use of firearms in the exercise of their duties will, regardlessof the consequences of this use of firearms, benefit by my protection;those, however, who, through misplaced leniency, fail in their duty willface disciplinary consequences. . . . Every officer must always bear inmind that failure to take a measure is a graver offense than mistakesmade in exercise of the measure.' This order for ruthless firing on thenon-National Socialist people was the first unmistakable blow of the'outwardly legal' counter-revolution. These blows were calculated withextreme skill; always hard enough that the enemy should feel them;never so hard that the weapon was in danger of breaking.It is still unknown what decisions were reached in the conversationsheld in those days between Hitler, Goring, and von Blomberg, the newReichswehr Minister. But it is here that Germany's future course musthave been decided. The wish, formulated again and again by Seeckt,Groener, Schleicher, that the Reichswehr should not be drawn intobloody street battles, may have dispelled all other considerations inBlomberg's mind; the danger in the Rhineland surely made animpression on the Reichswehr Minister. In any event, he consented tothe arming of the S.A.This was the decisive revolutionary act of the National Socialists. Thestorm troops became police; they themselves became the Herr President,by whose permission the revolution would be made.