blinded by "Jewish-Marxist agitators" and that orders are always binding and have to be carried out even against personal interests. Franz Lang is finally content with this explanation and when his former comrade later tries to flee, he shoots him. After the dissolution of the Freikorps Lang finds a job as a construction worker. He uses his first wage in order to pay his debts to his comrades, and so he has hardly any money left to live off. In addition, he is overwhelmed by the physical effort so much that he, under the impression that he isn't able to fulfill his obligation, despairs. Lang decides to end his own life on his own terms. Before he shoots himself with his Mauser pistol, one of his fellow construction workers visits him: He instantly guesses what Lang is about to do and warns him to stay loyal to Germany and that he is burdened with the responsibility for this country, even though he may no longer be a soldier. Lang's colleague, whom Lang suspects to be a member of the NSDAP, leaves him with a pamphlet called Völkischer Beobachter. Impressed by the fighting talk used in the pamphlet, Franz Lang decides to join the NSDAP, too. In 1922 Franz Lang visits a (Sturmlokal) belonging to the local SA: He tells the SA-Obersturmführer that he wants to have responsibility and help Germany rise to power again. As he is filling in the form required for a member ID card and admission, the 'Obersturmführer' explains to him that he has been accepted into the SA and that he would receive a preliminary ID card, as he is related to Roßbach. Lang assures him that he absolved all the combat missions after the war. However, he couldn't afford a SA-Uniform. The SA leader in response to this leaves him with the uniform of a SA man who was shot. As a member of the NSDAP and SA, Franz Lang responds to a call for a group of soldiers, from a couple of landlords who want their land protected. Franz Lang is stationed there, together with a couple of his comrades, when the former treasurer of the Freikorps appears in town. He had stolen the free corps funds several years earlier, run off, but now appeared in Mecklenburg. During a drinking session Franz Lang uncovers the alleged Communist Party of Germany|KPD membership of one former free corps comrade. The free corps members present at the meeting abduct and beat up the alleged traitor in a forest and Franz Lang shoots him. One frightened person involved in the murders reveals the crime to the authorities and in 1924 Franz Lang is sentenced to ten years in prison. In prison he reads Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and becomes a fanatic Nazi. After almost five years, Lang is released in 1928 as a result of an Amnesty. In his social reintegration the NSDAP helps him in finding employment on the land of a party friend: the former colonel Baron of Jeseritz. He is soon very impressed by Lang's services and supports him further: He leaves him with a neglected farm that he may autonomously administer and advises him to marry Else, who was chosen by the baron himself, because she conforms to Aryan female standards. Lang does as he is told and marries Else. At a party held later at the farm he meets Heinrich Himmler, who claims to have heard of Lang's reliability and organisational skills. Franz Lang receives an order from Himmler himself to organise a cavalry division, which is later to become the Schutzstaffel. When the