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

742 DER FUEHRERits hands on the geographical key points of government authority(government office buildings, centers of communication), wouldthereby enjoy the benefits of securing legality and power and draw themasses to its side. For that reason the National Socialist leaders had socalled'staff-guards' around them. Hitler had his 'bodyguard'; Goringkept a particularly formidable group near Berlin half-concealed in abuilding where he had been trained as an officer in his youth: this was apolice group of several thousand men, formed 'for special services,' andcalled the Landes-Polizeigruppe General Goring. They werecommanded by a certain Major Wecke who was quartered in the formerCadet School at Lichterfelde.All these groups were silently supervised by a kind of armed 'blackcabinet' which constantly kept the entire movement under control; itwas composed of the most unostentatious high party officials and wascompletely in Hitler's hands. The leading personalities in this groupwere Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, and former Major Walter Buch,chairman of the Party's Control Committee.Since 1920, when Hess joined Hitler, his job had been to spy on theparty and keep it in order. For the supervision of the S.A. he had aparticularly suitable human instrument, a certain Martin Bormann, an'old fighter,' who was endowed with all the qualities and experience ofthe armed bohemians, including a year spent in prison for participationin a political murder. Bormann had been Captain von Pfeffer's righthand when the latter was the supreme leader of the SA. When in 1930,Pfeffer was crowded out by Rohm's clique, Bormann left the leadershipof the S.A., but remained director of the 'Relief Fund,' an institutionwhich could also be called the bribe fund. At its headquarters thelamentations and grievances of the malcontents which the leadershipwould not listen to were loudly reiterated; and Bormann, full of bitterresentment against the 'gang of fairies' around Rohm, collected heaps ofmaterial. Its content was communicated to Hess; and Hess began to dininto Hitler's ears that the conditions created by Rohm's male haremwithin the S.A. were gradually becoming unbearable. A similarcomplaint was brought by Walter Buch: he claimed that Rohm had builtup around himself a peculiar staff, completely de-