Conquering Berlin

TRANSLATOR’S

FOREWORD

History is written by the victors. A phrase uttered by many, hinting at a kernel of truth. And despite all of its shortcomings, this short sentence affords an interesting perspective on the book at hand.

At first glance, Conquering Berlin appears as a clear attempt to write history from the winning side, claiming seven years of political struggle in the German capital for the National Socialist movement and its paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA). Originally published in 1933, the year of the final National Socialist election victories, the book was written by an ambitious young staff member in the newly founded Reich Propaganda Ministry, who also appears as the author of a short Joseph Goebbels biography, published in the same year. The book would go on to become a moderate success, reaching its eighth edition in 1943. For many a contemporary observer, this should suffice to condemn the notion of Bade’s novel as a pure propaganda piece, a mere cash-in on a political victory, no longer of interest to the modern reader.

But while Conquering Berlin is clearly associated with the politics of the propaganda ministry, it still offers a relevant view into the daily life of the interwar period in Germany, its colloquial ductus covering layers of meaning and insight all but lost to modern historians. Bade’s narrative exhibits a clear focus on the years of 1926–1930, the fighting years of the movement, when the NSDAP’s success was still far from certain. This is particularly true for Berlin, a left-wing stronghold with one of the lowest electoral outcomes for the National Socialists in the entire Reich throughout the final years of the Weimar Republic. In this urban environment dominated by hostile left-wing paramilitary groups and an establishment police force, provocative campaigns by the newly appointed Gauleiter (a regional party leader) Joseph Goebbels were bound to create not only attention, but friction as well. This friction would lead to a multitude of clashes between SA, other political paramilitaries, and the police, frequently claiming lives on all sides.

Chronically underfunded, repeatedly outlawed, and under constant physical attacks by left-wing groups, the conquest of Berlin is portrayed as an arduous struggle by working-class or unemployed men for visibility, support of the local populace, and, most importantly, against violent crowds of communist thugs. This is in remarkable contrast to modern renditions, which tend to cast SA men as violent brutes, while giving their left-wing counterparts that unmistakeable halo of the heroic revolutionary.

Although its original German title Die SA erobert Berlin: Ein Tatsachenbericht (The SA conquers Berlin: A factual report) might suggest otherwise, Conquering Berlin is clearly a piece of historical fiction. It is highly unlikely that Bade himself took part in the street fights—while he did join the NSDAP in 1930, he was never a member of the SA, nor a particularly good fit for its target demographic of the unemployed, working-class, and veterans as Bade was working as a journalist after university studies in history and politics. However, it is entirely reasonable to assume that he had direct access to SA men with first-hand experience of SA activities during the late 1920s and early 1930s. In fact, many of the events recounted within this novel did take place, such as the incidents at the Lichterfelde train station, protest actions against All Quiet on the Western Front, or the various brawls in assembly halls.

But while these occurrences are well-documented in police reports and other documents, Conquering Berlin introduces the reader to a relatively unique perspective, generally favorable to the National Socialist and SA side of things. Considering this perspective is vital, as no truly objective sources on these events are widely available today. The degree to which hostile political and establishment sources can twist a narrative should be well known to the twenty-first century reader. As such, the only way we can try to approach an objective reading of history is by comparing multiple perspectives, both against each other and against our own experiences. Conquering Berlin offers the other end of the spectrum, a counterweight against mainstream historical and political narratives, helping us to sound the misty depths of the past.

Perhaps history really is written by the victors. But as the short-lived German National Socialist experiment shows us, victory itself can be fleeting. Yesterday’s victors may easily turn into tomorrow’s vanquished. History can always be reconquered.

Theodor Runen

March 2nd, 2021

1

STROLL

The worker Schulz slowly strolls through Potsdamer Straße. He doesn’t care much for strolling, and he isn’t particularly fond of Potsdamer Straße either—he might just as well go for a walk somewhere else. It’s lunchtime on a warm autumn day, but he doesn’t care much about that either, except that he’s glad he can still walk without a coat. Because the worker Schulz doesn’t own a coat. Matter of fact, he doesn’t own anything at all, because he has been out of work for a long while.

So he has an infinite amount of time.

He can get up when he wants and sleep when it suits him. He has time to wait around at the unemployment office, he has enough time to listen to the endless debates going on there, and he has plenty of time to think about everything he hears in those debates.

He is a thoughtful person and by no means stupid. On his long walks he thinks about everything he sees and hears. He looks at the shops with their splendid displays of things which he never has been and never will be able to buy.

This does not upset him. The only time he becomes slightly disgruntled is when he takes a relaxed look at the posh, luxurious places where already at this time of day certain figures are sitting about, figures who make him sick to his stomach. He never cared about the Jewish question, not a bit. But he cannot help but notice a bad feeling rising up in him when he sees these faces, many of which are Jewish. He can’t explain this feeling to himself, and he doesn’t want to anyway. He can’t stand these people, and that’s that.

Close to his sleeping spot in Zoffenerstraße there is a strange place, a secretive pub that is crawling with this kind at night.

Without meaning to, he has acquired a lot of knowledge about such places on his walks, but it has not yet crossed his mind to get furious about them.

Sometimes he modestly thinks that he should really be entitled to some kind of work at least. Those three years on the Western front, he thinks, might have given him that right. He hadn’t exactly been a big shot there, but if a superior had told him to go somewhere, he had gone there, and if another had told him to hold a position, he had held that position. Like many hundreds of thousands of others, he had been a simple, obedient, and faithful soldier, he had received his two wounds and recovered, and again he went into battle, humble, obedient, and faithful—but all that was over and forgotten. Probably the whole world had forgotten about it, and so there was no point in dwelling on it any longer.

Now he strolls across the Potsdam Bridge. Here is another one of those strange places. Schulz knows its particular secret. At this time of day it is a solid, middle-class inn where one can have an entirely decent lunch for one mark and fifty pfennig. But if you have enough money and want to have a good time, you can also go there after ten o’clock in the evening to drink and eat and also buy some cocaine if you are so inclined—because this is a headquarters of the Berlin coke dealer association.

The worker Schulz has no idea how much fun he could have snorting coke. But even if he only wanted to go there in the evening to have a glass of wine, they wouldn’t let him in. Impossible! Dear God! A man in battered, striped black trousers, a cheap green shirt and an old leather jacket? Such a guest would not even make it to the door. Nah, that’s nothing for his kind. At best, his kind is allowed to play lookout if the gentlemen do not want to be disturbed.

Oh dammit, thinks Schulz bitterly, it’s all such nonsense! What kind of a republic is this anyway? Black, red, and gold and freedom, huh? So what was that revolution all about back then? About the worker, dear Schulz, wasn’t it?

Of course, Schulz thinks, and that’s why I now have so much time to stroll through Berlin. It’s been a quarter year now. Schulz reaches for the last cigarette butt in his breast pocket. He doesn’t have a lighter. What does he have anyway, honestly? And somewhat resignedly he stops a man coming towards him.

Hello, comrade. Can I have a light? Schulz asks as he looks into two strangely bright grey eyes.

Sure, says the other. You’re smoking butts. Unemployed, eh?

Obviously, Schulz replied uninterested.

You saying you’re not? On the dole as well, huh?

Meanwhile Schulz holds his poor stub to the other man’s burning cigarette.

Slowly, Grey Eyes asks, You’re not doing anything else tonight, are you?

No, replies Schulz in surprise, feeling strange. No, I don’t have anything planned. Why?

The other one takes the stump out of Schulz’s mouth, reaches into his pocket and offers him a package. Have a whole one for a change. Butts don’t taste too good.

Schulz grabs it in surprise, quickly rolling the cigarette between his fingers for a quick assessment. Sixers! Six-Pfennig cigarettes! That’s something. The boy must be doing well.

Well, Grey Eyes slowly repeats, if you’re not going anywhere, you can tag along.

Schulz has become suspicious. Where to? he asks somewhat brusquely. Who does that guy think he is to just ask him? He does not like that kind of thing. Unsure, the worker Schulz keeps turning the expensive cigarette between his fingers.

Don’t worry about the cigarette, Grey Eyes explains with a smile. They’re from my old man. He owns a coal shop and I took that box for the PCs. He won’t mind.

PC? Schulz asks, purely out of politeness because of the free cigarette. PC? What’s that? Some kind of new thing? He looks the man straight in the face.

He answers calmly, PC is short for Party Comrade, and the whole thing is called NSDAP, meaning National Socialist German Workers’ Party. And that’s a good thing; you can count on that.

The worker Schulz grins fiercely. "Workers’ Party? Sounds like we got a big shot here! Workers’ Party is a good one, man. I can’t stand that stuff. No, sir, I’ve had enough of the SPD.¹ Way too many Workers’ Parties and no work! I always hear them going on about Workers’ Parties! It is a party for workers, correct? So what have they done for the workers? Nothing, my good man. You have done nothing at all. We go on the dole, we have nothing to eat, nothing to wear, nowhere to stay–"

And then Schulz suddenly reflects, his eyebrows raising themselves high on his forehead. Oh, man... Right... Now I remember. You are the fascists, right? Nah... You’re not workers at all... Man, just wait until us workers really get going...

Grey Eyes calmly lets him finish his thought, looking at him attentively in the meantime. Now he speaks in his slow, insistent way, "You’re the real deal, I can see that. Once you workers get to marching, you say? Didn’t you march in 1918?² Well? Of course you did! And what did you accomplish? You tore away the officer’s epaulets and that felt great to you, didn’t it? And you made a great racket everywhere, imagining that you had killed everything that was rotten, didn’t you? Good heavens, but who did you actually get rid of? The capitalists? Nope! The Jews? No! The exploiter? No, no. So what? You got a job now? No! You don’t even have a cigarette. What do you have anyway? Where is the peace? Where’s the Rhineland? Where is Upper Silesia? Do you know what you’ve got? You got the corridor and tributes and you still have the capitalists."

Schulz is speechless. Gently, gently, he growls excitedly. "That’s too fierce. Now I get it. You’re a right-winger! Don’t act all high and mighty. So what have you done? A coup with generals, the Reichswehr³ and all of that nonsense. Screw yourself, man! Did that do any good? No. Let me tell you something. I know all about it. The worker today, he’s no longer human. If you’re tired of him, you can just throw him out. If your profits start to dwindle, what do you do? Just kick the worker out, then you don’t have to pay him a salary. The farmer is taken care of. He won’t starve. He’s always got potatoes and a bit of bread. Definitely. He always has something to chew on. But all us workers have is a hand on our necks, holding us up above the abyss. And we can’t do anything. If it suits the hand, it lets go. Then we get drowned, right into the abyss, and the infighting starts. That’s the way it is, and you won’t change that with a coup.

We have to bring about something completely different. That hand has to come off. We workers have to be grounded somewhere instead of always hovering over the abyss, you know? But you can’t do that with parties. That is education. The worker is a human being too. He’s not supposed to be that prole, which the lofty citizens make him out to be. He is just as important as them. Work does not defile. Nonsense, it certainly defiles when it is for those bourgeois gentlemen. And as long as that hasn’t ended, hasn’t changed, your parties can bite me.

The other one has continued to give the angry man his calm and attentive looks. Now he hands him the whole packet. Here. Take this. And I want to tell you one more thing: Why in God’s name don’t you do something about it yourself?

And with that, Grey Eyes calmly continues down the street, leaving the worker Schulz to his problems. Schulz feels like he just got punched right in the gut. Somewhat stunned, he walks on, absently looking at the shop windows every now and then, but neither his eyes nor his heart are really in it.

Then suddenly he growls to himself, Why don’t you do something about it?

He is thinking hard about it.

* * *

Grey Eyes has disappeared into the entrance of an old, dark house on Potsdamer Straße.

He walks quickly across the courtyard, his eyebrows tightly drawn together, until he turns left into an entrance that looks like the mouth of a cave. A sign reads:

NSDAP Berlin—Branch Office.

He enters a truly gloomy room. Plaster is coming off the walls, and there is an off mix of smells—dust, sweat, and cold beer. The office is made up of two rooms. Each room contains a table and a few chairs. The tables are littered with papers and sandwiches.

There is an old, half-opened cabinet, a scraped brown shirt hanging about, a file folder lying on the floor with a pair of army boots next to it. A revolver is resting peacefully on a chair right next to a worn, bitten pen.

In the back room Grey Eyes hears three people arguing. He smiles to himself, a tired little smile. Actually, why shouldn’t the three of them argue, he thinks, when the