Harrington Park Press

“Detailed, well informed, and highly readable — an important and most welcome contribution to the still relatively small number of SA histories, and Wackerfuss has undertaken a huge amount of research into local primary sources.”
Daniel Siemens, University College London

“A fascinating picture of the private lives of the SA, both as individuals and in their close-knit groups. Many studies concentrate on the SA leadership and its trials and tribulations, but Wackerfuss shines a light on individual units, which were by no means a united front but sometimes fraught with infighting. Beyond that, he peers into the life and minds of individual SA men to see what motivated them to join this violent organization and how it became instrumental in winning support for Adolf Hitler.”
Geoffrey Giles, University of Florida

“Stormtrooper Families is a much needed addition to the vast collection of books on the Third Reich and its history.”
Books by Meri

“Stormtroopers Families charts the step-by-step process of how an initially precarious coexistence of homosexuality and Nazi paramilitary culture came to an end in 1934. Making use of local archives Wackerfuss provides a window into the private life stories of men who joined the stormtroopers and the intimate subculture of the SA.

While interrogating the complicated relationship between the SA and more generally of the Nazi leadership’s relationship to homosexuality, Wackerfuss’s narrative moves seamlessly between larger political history, local social history, and individual psychosocial history. It is an engaging and immensely readable book that should find its way to scholars, students, and the general public interested in the early years of the Nazi movement and the Nazi state.”
Anita Kurimay, Bryn Mawr College

“Andrew Wackerfuss’ new book is a felicitous combination of thorough archival research and engaging writing. Indeed, the narrative is absolutely absorbing. Stormtrooper Families is a useful contribution to the literature on the SA in particular and Nazi Germany in general, as well as to the history of gender and sexuality. This book deserves a wide readership.”
Nancy Wingfield, Presidential Research Professor, Northern Illinois University

“After decades of misinformation, Stormtrooper Families offers a much-needed historical reckoning against [gay Nazi] falsehoods, bringing lucid scholarship to a neglected area in the history of the Nazi regime.
Karl Wolff, New York Journal of Books [read entire review here]