[...]
He encouraged rivalries among his collaborators (divide as a mean to rule) this would allow him to play the role of mediator. He separates the Party and the State. One had its head-office in Münich, the other in Berlin. Even inside the Party, there were rival organizations competing with one another. The unity of the whole lay in the person of Adolf Hitler. But the principle of scattering the authority shows a system and a leader that are much less sure of themselves than was apparent. Genghis Khan was strong enough not to resort to such tactics. Hitler's tactical virtuosity though is demonstrated in the way he breaks the army through the S.A. and the S.A. with the help of the army. [...]
I would also contrast SA with the SS. The SS was extremely cruel - it led the mass murder in the Third Reich. Its forerunner was the "Stosstrupp Hitler" which was founded in 1923. The task was to protect Adolf Hitler. From this unit the SS (Schutzstaffel) was formed in 1925 in the same time the SA existed. The SS would wear black uniforms and the SA brown uniforms. The SA leader was Ernst Roehm and he had his own plans.
The SS was disciplined and did everything what Adolf Hitler wanted; the SA was undisciplined and there were disputes between SA leaders and Hitler. Because of the discipline the SS was an elite unit, while the SA was often called a "beater" troop. Communists, for instance, were brutally beaten by the SA -- you see, SA were like those dogs that wandered all day (and night) long in the streets. Not the SS -- they were brutal, of course, but very systematic. While they would go out to do "field work," they did so on "special occassions" and when it was absolutely necessary. The boss of the SS was Heinrich Himmler. Now you all have heard about Himmler -- systematic, rigid, controlled, and blocked of affect. His character structure was of the obsessive-compulsive schizoid type, meaning, withdrawn emotionally from the external world and existing in a repressed internal psychic world. This guy liked very much indeed to write, damn it! -- he would use his diary to guard against feelings rather than to express them. The period 1919-22 was marked by acute identity diffusion. His sexual, social, vocational, and religious identities were in flux. The diary shows gender role confusion, a desire to emigrate from Germany, vacillation between animal husbandry and a bourgeois vocation, and strong conflict on the issue of dueling, which contravened his Roman Catholic faith. Oh, and BTW, the guy was fascinated by astrology and was a strong believer in the occult! Phew!
Anyway, I am not going to make it look like Himmler and the SS were some kind of ridiculous group, for they clearly were not. By the way, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Theodor Eicke was resposible for the concentration camps and for the Totenkopfverbaende of the SS (skull troops of the SS). SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head unit) as an elite within the elite structure of the SS. This concept grew from the fact that the most dangerous political enemies of the state were incarcerated in the concentration camps and Hitler had given sole responsibility for guarding and running the camps to the SS-Totenkopfverbände.
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