Stormtroopers
A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts

One of the few English-language studies of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Brownshirts whose street violence and ideological fervor enabled Hitler's rise to power in '20s and '30s Germany. During the Weimar era, they evolved from a fragmented group of far-right militias into a unified paramilitary......more

Daniel Siemens has done an excellent job looking at the history of the SA, the militant wing of the Nazi Party. His book has examined the membership and role of the Stormtroopers from its inception to the end of the war, and goes beyond the two-dimensional truths taught in "routine" histories of the......more

I wanted to read stormtroopers for awhile and then finally got around to reading it. And I started off well learning about the first years of the brown shirts but, as the book wore on I was not sure I wanted to finish reading it. I was about to make it to about page 320 and then I just skimmed the l......more

A very clear and well detailed study of the SA beyond the 'Night of the Long Knives.' Siemens does go into the early history of the movement but has done a lot of research on the post 34 SA especially looking at it's social, political and military role in both the old and the new Reich. It has chang......more

Perhaps it only deserved 3 stars for its poor investigation of Ernst Rohm. He was the heart and soul of the SA. Still, it was a good, if a dry reading of the SA putting it in the context of German society and not simply the Nazis. Definitely worth a read by students of the Historical Third Reich.......more