Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts by Daniel Siemens (review)

A "community of action" based on loyalty and commitment, the SA gave "political orientation, job opportunities, and diverse outlets for male sociability" to young men in search of worth, belonging, and power when male identity seemed under modernity's attack (331). In the third part of the book, Siemens tackles the least understood and least studied years of the SA. He shows that between 1934 and 1945 the SA was a heterogeneous mass organization that reached far beyond the strictly faithful and significantly contributed to the Nazification and militarization of society—for example, by infiltrating bastions of hometown middle-class respectability such as riding clubs and shooting associations. Equally important is the author's focus on the various roles the SA played in German-occupied territories, which he curiously describes as the SA's "transnational" dimension, and his insights into the various roles violence played: for the men themselves, for the organization at different points of its existence and in different locations, and for the society in which the SA functioned.