(Mirror.)

In the last months of the Weimar Republic the SA (and SS) increasingly took on the rôle of a police force (for a short while after 1933 they became an official ancillary force). On the 31st January and the 11/12th March 1933, the SA troops left their various bases in the Altstadt (as elsewhere in Altona and Hamburg) and set about putting up control checkpoints throughout the area. At the town hall they repeated this strategy. The police, according to press reports, were either demoralised or actually assisted the SA/SS in their actions. In the Altstadt they gave their full co-operation in the closing-off and policing of the inhabitants; they rode on horseback or sped through the narrow, wintry, grey streets in open armoured cars. For many of the socialist and communist residents this confirmed a suspicion they had long held: that the police had been conniving with the [Fascists] in their rise to power by putting down the working class at every opportunity.