My Kingdom for a Horst! Trivia Quiz

Answer: He was involved in several far-right groups before joining the Nazis

Horst Wessel's first step into politics began at age 15 when he joined the Bismarckjugend (Bismarck Youth), a conservative youth group that matched his father's right-wing beliefs. However, Wessel quickly grew bored with peaceful political meetings and wanted more direct action.

By 1923, he joined a violent anti-government group called the Viking League, which openly wanted to overthrow Germany's democracy and replace it with a dictatorship. This early involvement in radical street fighting directly paved the way for him to join Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party just a few years later.

Answer: Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels

Horst Wessel's primary boss and the leader he directly answered to in Berlin was Joseph Goebbels. While the SA technically had its own internal military chain of command, Goebbels was the Gauleiter (regional party boss) of Greater Berlin and personally managed Wessel, even sending him on special assignments to Vienna to study organizational tactics. Because Wessel's local unit (Sturm 5) was designated as an independent section, he answered directly to the top Nazi leadership in Berlin

Answer: A songwriter

In addition to being a violent street fighter and a popular public speaker, Horst Wessel was a poet, lyricist, and amateur musician who used music as a powerful weapon for the Nazi movement. He realized that catchy songs could boost his men's morale during street fights and easily attract new, young recruits in working-class neighborhoods.

Wessel even organized a specialized SA brass band to play music during political marches through the streets of Berlin. His most significant musical act happened in 1929 when he wrote the words to a marching song that, after his death, was renamed the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" and legally became Germany's co-national anthem under Adolf Hitler.

Answer: A rent dispute

Horst Wessel's killing was prompted by a messy, escalating dispute over unpaid rent and loud behavior, rather than a planned political assassination. Wessel was living in a sublet apartment with his girlfriend, a former prostitute, which angered his landlady, Elisabeth Salm. Wessel refused to pay extra rent for his girlfriend and constantly held loud, disruptive Nazi meetings late into the night.

Unable to get help from the police, the landlady turned to her late husband's friends in the local Communist Party to help evict Wessel. A group of armed Communists, led by a local gangster named Albrecht "Ali" Höhler, confronted Wessel at his doorstep on January 14, 1930, where Höhler shot him in the face during the argument

Answer: He was taken from his cell and executed

After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took national power in 1933, Albrecht "Ali" Höhler was kidnapped from prison and executed by the SA as an act of political revenge. On Hitler's direct orders, SA leaders and the head of the Gestapo took Höhler out of his prison cell under false pretenses on September 20, 1933.

They drove him into a forest outside Berlin, where several high-ranking Nazi stormtroopers shot him to death. To cover up the crime, the police falsely reported that an unknown mob had intercepted the transport vehicle on the street and stolen the prisoner

Answer: Plushies of Horst for children

The most important propaganda tool Joseph Goebbels created was turning Wessel's marching song, the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" (The Horst Wessel Song), into the official anthem of the Nazi Party. Goebbels completely erased Wessel's messy personal life and recast him as a heroic, holy martyr who died for Germany.

When Adolf Hitler took full power in 1933, the song was legally made a co-national anthem for the entire country. It was played at every public event, and all German citizens were required by law to stand at attention and give a rigid Nazi salute whenever it was performed. By plastering Wessel's name on songs, streets, and squares, Goebbels successfully used his memory to brainwash millions of citizens into showing blind loyalty to the regime. Luckily, no children had to fall asleep next to a Horst plushie.

Answer: The Communists were forced to open meetings by singing it

While the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" became a mandatory fixture of daily life in Nazi Germany, it was never used to force political opposition to sing along. Instead, the Nazi regime completely destroyed the Communist Party, arresting its leaders and sending them to early concentration camps.

The anthem was used to brainwash the general public, finding its way into classrooms every morning and even into religious services where pro-Nazi pastors twisted church traditions to match Hitler's ideology. It was also used heavily in state-sponsored media, serving as the dramatic musical climax to famous propaganda films like Triumph of the Will to project an image of total national unity.

Answer: True

Officially recognized by law on May 19, 1933, the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" served as the co-national anthem of Nazi Germany alongside the traditional "Deutschlandlied". Together, these two pieces were paired at all state ceremonies and were collectively referred to as the "Lieder der Nation" (Songs of the Nation).

While the older "Deutschlandlied" represented the traditional German state, Wessel's song symbolized the total takeover of that state by the Nazi Party. This dual-anthem system lasted for twelve years until the fall of the Third Reich in May 1945, after which the Allied powers permanently banned the song's lyrics and melody.

Answer: Duing the announcement of Hitler's death on state radio

The last time the "Horst Wessel Song" was played officially was in May 1945, during the final days of World War II in Europe. Its last official broadcast happened on state radio on May 1, 1945, right after the government announced to the public that Adolf Hitler was dead. Within days, the Nazi regime completely collapsed and surrendered to the Allied powers, which stripped the song of its national anthem status.

The Allies immediately banned the song along with all other Nazi symbols, and it remains completely illegal to sing, play, or perform the song in Germany today.

Answer: Inglourious Basterds

Released in December 1933, "Hans Westmar" was one of the very first fictionalized propaganda films made by the Nazi state to turn Horst Wessel into a political saint. Decades later, director Quentin Tarantino used the history of these early Nazi films to inspire his 2009 movie "Inglourious Basterds".

In Tarantino's film, the entire plot revolves around a Parisian movie theater hosting a heavily hyped premiere for a fictional Nazi hero movie called "Nation's Pride". Just like the real audience that watched "Hans Westmar" in 1933, the characters in "Inglourious Basterds" gather at the cinema to watch state-sponsored media designed to brainwash the public and celebrate violence.