of them was clubbed with one ; indeed, it has occurred not infrequently in history that the greatest leaders have come to a bad end by the hand of some diminutive helot. They did not regard violence as an aim, but they desired to protect those who proclaimed the great ideal aim against being overpowered by violence. They realized also that it was not their duty to undertake protection of a State which was not pro¬ tecting the nation, but that they were there to protect the nation against those who threatened to destroy nation and State.
The Storm Detachment, as they were called, is but one section of the Movement, just as propaganda, the press, the scientific institute, etc., are simply sections of the Party.
The idea underlying the formation of the Storm Detachment was the intention, side by side with high bodily training, to make it into an absolutely convinced defender of the National Socialist idea and to perfect its discipline. It was to have nothing in common with any defence organization, in the bourgeois sense, nor yet with any secret organization.
My reason for guarding strictly at that time against allowing the Storm Detachments of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party to be raised as a so-called defence association was as follows :
For every practical reason the defence of a nation cannot be carried out by private defence associations, unless backed up by all the forces of the State. It is utterly out of the question to form organizations with any military value for a definite purpose with so-called “voluntary discipline”. The main support for getting orders carried out is lacking, namely, the power of inflicting punishment. In the spring of 1919 it was possible to raise “volunteer corps”, simply because most of the men had fought at the front and had been through the school of the old Army. That spirit is entirely wanting in the “defence organizations” of to-day.
Assuming that, in spite of all difficulties, some association were to be successful in converting a definite number of Germans into men, true in