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

THE REICHSTAG FIRE 565occasionally looted Jewish shops; 'borrowed' private cars, expropriatedJewish firms, to which they appointed so-called 'commissar managers';for the most part this was done according to individual vvhim and nocomprehensive plan. The regularity and uniformity of procedure arosefrom the lust for loot and pillage which for years had been nourished inthese masses. Since the regular authorities had no legal basis for actionagainst the arrested leaders of the Left parties, the S.A. established itsown prisons, which it called 'concentration camps'; at first these wereunoccupied factories or warehouses. The S.A. had learned the simplestrule of police repression: that the will of an imprisoned mass must firstbe broken by the most loathsome cruelty. Every arrest consequentlybegan with a severe beating, and life in a concentration camp,particularly in times of overcrowding, was for most prisoners amonotonous series of kicks and blows; a coat improperly buttoned, aspot on one's clothing, a wrinkled bedcovering, inevitably meant a blowfrom the inspecting officer. Years of incitement from above had taughtthe S.A. a bestial lust for torture and murder; many who may have beengood-natured human beings when they began their service in theconcentration camps were gradually turned into torturers and murderersby the routine.Trade-union leaders went to Papen and reported the excesses, submittingproofs and statements by witnesses. Papen threw up his armsand cried that he simply could not believe such things. But he need onlyhave read the newspapers with a little care. Many of the murders couldnot be kept secret; the official reports of the Brown auxiliary police thenstated with cynical regularity that the victim had been 'shot while tryingto escape.' It became a favorite practice to hurl the victims from highwindows, because this could easily be represented as suicide. AnEnglish newspaper wrote: 'The habit of jumping out of the window inan unguarded moment has cost many political prisoners in Germanytheir lives in the past weeks.'Franz von Papen must have known these things. But after March 5those forces gathered around the person and the legend of Hindenburgcould no longer part company with Hitler. For after the defeat ofCommunism, another danger, which had hovered over Germany forsome time, assumed serious forms: South German