Manufacturing a Martyr

Authoritarian regimes create mythic martyrs to fan hatred against internal enemies

Horst Wessel was not a household name in Germany when he was alive. He was a young member of the Nazi paramilitary—the Sturmabteilung, or SA—living in a poor Berlin neighborhood. He made speeches, wrote pamphlets, and got into fights with communists. But he wasn’t famous.

What made him famous was his death.

In 1930, Wessel had a dispute with his landlady …