Editing Kurt Daluege (section)

===Early Nazi career===
After World War I, Daluege became leader of ''Selbstschutz Oberschlesien'' (SSOS) - Upper Silesian Self Defense  — an Upper Silesian veterans' organization engaged in combat with the Poles in that region. In 1921, he also became active in the Freikorps Rossbach while studying engineering at the Technical University in Berlin, where he eventually earned a civil engineering degree.

Two years later he joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and was assigned Party number 31,981. He also joined the Greater German Workers' Party in the same year. From 1924, he helped to organize the Berlin Frontbann, largely a front organization for the Nazi ''[[Sturmabteilung]]'' (SA), since it and the Nazi Party were banned in Prussia at that time. In 1926 he joined the SA directly, eventually becoming both the leader of Berlin's SA and [[Joseph Goebbels]]' deputy (''Gauleiter'', or Party leader) in Berlin. Throughout the period of 1926—1929, Daluege led the Berlin-Brandenburg division of the SA.

In July 1930, in accordance with [[Hitler]]'s wishes, Daluege resigned from the SA and joined the ''[[Schutzstaffel]]'' with the rank of SS-Oberführer and membership number 1,119. His main responsibility was to spy on the SA and political opponents of the Nazi Party. Berlin SS headquarters was strategically placed at the corner of Lützowstrasse and Potsdamerstrasse, opposite the SA headquarters.

In August 1930, when Berlin SA leader Walter Stennes had his men attack the Berlin Party headquarters, it was Daluege's SS men who defended it and put the attack down. Sometime afterwards in an open letter to Daluege, Adolf Hitler proclaimed "SS Mann, deine Ehre heißt Treue!" ("SS man, your honour is loyalty"). Then, the slogan "Meine Ehre heißt Treue" (My honour is loyalty) was duly adopted by the SS as its motto.

Hitler promoted both Daluege and [[Heinrich Himmler]] to SS-Obergruppenführer, with Daluege the SS leader of northern Germany while Himmler controlled the southern SS units out of Munich in addition to serving as national leader for the entire SS. In 1932 Daluege became a Nazi Party delegate in the Prussian state Parliament, and in November 1932 was elected to the Reichstag representing the Berlin East electoral district, a seat he retained until 1945. At the same time, [[Hermann Göring]] moved Daluege to the Prussian Interior Ministry, where he took over the nonpolitical police with the rank of General der Polizei. 

Intrigues created by Göring, Himmler and [[Reinhard Heydrich]] surrounding [[Ernst Röhm]] led to Daluege's playing an important role in the infamous "[[Night of the Long Knives]]". In that operation Röhm along with other leading members of the SA were killed between 30 June and 2 July 1934, thus neutralizing the SA and shifting the balance of power within the party to the SS.

Evidence of Daluege's ruthlessness goes beyond his intrigue against his former SA comrades, and is discernible in his remarks about anyone he considered a threat to society. He once argued that "the consciously asocial enemies of the people (Volksfeinde)" must be eliminated by state intervention "if it hopes to prevent the outbreak of complete moral degeneration.

By November 1934, Daluege's authority over the uniformed police was extended beyond Prussia to include all of Germany. That meant he commanded municipal police forces, the rural gendarmerie, traffic police, the coastguard, the railway police, the postal protection service, fire brigades, the air-raid services, the emergency technical service, the broadcasting police, the factory protection police, building regulations enforcement, and the commercial police.