Source
On Monday or Tuesday, the Ministers of the Interior of the
states are coming to a meeting about the SA. I have no doubt that we
will master it – one way or the other. I think we have already drawn its
poisonous fangs. One can made good tactical use of the endless
declarations of legality made by the SA leaders, which they have handed
to me in thick volumes. The SA is thereby undermining its credibility.
But there are still difficult weeks of political maneuvering until the
various Landtag elections are over.
Then, one will have to start working towards making the Nazis acceptable
as participants in a government because the movement, which will
certainly grow, can no longer be suppressed by force. Of course the
Nazis must not be allowed to form a government of their own anywhere,
let alone in the Reich. But in the states an attempt will have to be
made here and there to harness them in a coalition and to cure them of
their utopias by constructive government work. I can see no better way,
for the idea of trying to destroy the Party through an anti-Nazi law on
the lines of the old anti-Socialist law I would regard as a very
unfortunate undertaking. With the SA of course it is different. They
must be eliminated in any event, and ideally the so-called Iron Front as
well. […]
Source of English translation: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. 1,The Rise to Power 1919-1934. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998, pp. 98-99.
Source of original German text: R.G. Phelps, "Aus den Groener Dokumenten," Deutsche Rundschau 76 (1950), p. 1019ff. Excerpt from letter to Alarich von Gleich, April 2, 1932.