Ben Wilson

This was a huge break with Ernst Röhm, who had been building the SA into something far more ambitious.

And actually, it would go back and forth.

So once they take power, the SA does once again kind of become a paramilitary force.

But Hitler, again, he's committed to this legal path, and he's trying to show the national government, hey, don't ban us as a party.

We're good Boy Scouts.

We got this SA, but they're just an athletic club.

They like boxing, and they provide some bouncing services every now and then.

But

These people are not dangerous.

They're not a paramilitary force, right?

Another strategic move that he makes is he finishes off Lutendorf.

You know, once he realizes that he is actually the leader of this movement, it's kind of awkward to have the old guy hanging around.

And so in a move that can only be described as political cruelty, he encourages the old general to run for president in 1925, knowing full well that the German National Socialist Party has no chance of winning, that Ludendorff has no popular base outside a narrow slice of the nationalist right.

And so Lutendorf, who just a decade before had been like this huge national hero who everyone loved, he receives a humiliating 1.1% of the vote.

And after that, he is finished as a national political figure.

And so with that move, by encouraging Lutendorf to run for president, he neutralizes the one man who might have the credibility to outrank him on the German right.

And, uh, and now he's gone.

He doesn't have to be worried about anymore.

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