by Ian Kershaw
At the meetings during the rally, Hitler could once more appear self-confident, certain of success, to the masses of his supporters. The whole rally had been devised in the form of a ritual homage-paying to the ‘leader of the German freedom-movement’.149 The leadership cult, consciously devised to sustain maximum cohesion within the party, was taking off. According to a newspaper report, Hitler was greeted ‘like a saviour’ when he entered the Festsaal of the Hofbräuhaus during one of his twelve speeches in the evening of 27 January.150 In-the feverish atmosphere in the Löwenbräukeller the same evening, he was given a similar hero’s welcome as he entered the hall, deliberately late, shielded by his bodyguard, arm outstretched in the salute – probably borrowed from the Italian Fascists (and by them from Imperial Rome) – which would become standard in the Movement by 1926.151 It was an unrecognizable Hitler, noted Karl Alexander von Müller, to the diffident individual he had encountered in private gatherings.152
Hitler’s near-exclusive concentration on propaganda was not Röhm’s approach, while the latter’s emphasis on the paramilitary posed a latent threat to Hitler’s authority.153 At the beginning of February, directly after breaking with Pittinger, Röhm founded a ‘Working Community of the Patriotic Fighting Associations’ (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Vaterländischen Kampfverbände) comprising, alongside the SA, the Bund Oberland, Reichsflagge, Wikingbund, and Kampfverband Niederbayern.154 The direct military control was in the hands of retired Oberstleutnant Hermann Kriebel, previously a chief of staff in the Bavarian Einwohnerwehr and Organisation Escherich (or Orgesch).155 The formations were trained by the Bavarian Reichswehr – not for incorporation in any defence against further inroads by the French and Belgians (the threat of which was by this time plainly receding), but evidently for the eventuality of conflict with Berlin.156 Once subsumed in this umbrella organization, the SA was far from the biggest paramilitary grouping and there was little to distinguish it from the other bodies.157 In a purely military organization, it had only a subordinate role.158 The conversion of the S A to a paramilitary organization now not directly or solely under his own control was not to Hitler’s liking. But there was nothing he could do about it.159 However, Hitler was pushed by Röhm into the foreground of the political leadership of the ‘Working Community’. He it was who was asked by Röhm to define the political aims of the ‘Working Community’.160 He was now moving in high circles indeed. In early 1923 he was brought into contact by Röhm with no less than the Chief of the Army Command (Chef der Heeresleitung) of the Reichswehr, General Hans von Seeckt (who remained, however, distinctly unimpressed by the Munich demagogue, and unprepared to commit himself to the demands for radical action in the Ruhr conflict for which Hitler was pressing).161 Röhm also insisted to the new Bavarian Commander, Lossow, that Hitler’s movement, with its aim of winning over the workers to the national cause, offered the best potential for building a ‘patriotic fighting front’ to upturn the November Revolution.162
Connected with all the strands of nationalist paramilitary politics, if openly directing none, was the figure of General Ludendorff, regarded generally as the symbolic leader of the radical nationalist Right. The former war-hero had returned to Germany from his Swedish exile in February 1919, taking up residence in Munich. His radical völkisch nationalism, detestation of the new Republic, and prominent advocacy of the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend, had already taken him effortlessly into the slipstream of the Pan-Germans, brought him fringe participation in the Kapp Putsch, and now led to his close involvement with the counter-revolutionary extreme Right, for whom his reputation and standing were a notable asset. The hotbed of Munich’s völkisch and paramilitary politics provided the setting within which, remarkably, the famous Quartermaster-General, virtual dictator of Germany and chief driving-force of the war effort between 1916 and 1918, could come into close contact and direct collaboration with the former army corporal, Adolf Hitler. Even more remarkable was the rapidity with which, in the new world of rabble-rousing politics to which General Ludendorff was ill-attuned, the ex-corporal would come to eclipse the one-time military commander as the leading spokesman of the radical Right.
Hitler had been first brought to Ludendorff’s attention by Rudolf Heß in May 1921, since when the general’s name had opened up a number of doors for him.163 At a meeting in Berlin on 26 February Ludendorff now brought the leaders of the north German paramilitary organizations together with Hitler and Röhm’s spokesman for his ‘Working Community’, Captain Heiß, leader of the Reichsflagge. Ludendorff, thinking a strike against the French imminent, demanded support for Seeckt and the Cuno government. Despite his public stance, Hitler did not demur. Only one group, the Jungdeutscher Orden, rejected the suggestion to place the paramilitary organizations at the behest of the Reichswehr for training.164 Hitler came away nevertheless sorely disappointed from his four-hour meeting with a non-committal Seeckt in March, and at an audience with the Bavarian head of the Reichswehr, Lossow, angrily rejected the conclusion drawn by the latter that Bavaria should then go its own way and consider separation from the Reich.165 Nevertheless, the military training of the S A by the Reichswehr which Hitler had agreed with Lossow in January proceeded. The SA, along with other paramilitary bands, handed its weapons over to the army in preparation for mobilization against the French.166
The paramilitary politics of spring 1923, in the wake of the French occupation of the Ruhr, were confused and riddled with conflict and intrigue. But, largely through Röhm’s manoeuvrings, Hitler, the beerhall agitator, had been brought into the arena of top-level discussions with the highest military as well as paramilitary leadership, not just in Bavaria, but in the Reich. He was now a player for big stakes. But he could not control the moves of other, more powerful, players with their own agendas. His constant agitation could mobilize support for a time. But it could not be held at fever-pitch indefinitely. It demanded action. Hitler’s impatience, his ‘all-or-nothing’ stance, was not simply a matter of temperament. He described the military training of the S A in spring 1923 as possessing solely the ‘motive of absolute attack’ against the French. ‘This was one of the factors that finally forced a decision. For it was not possible to keep on restraining people whose heads were exclusively filled in the barracks night after night, morning after morning, with the idea of war. They asked, “When’s it going to happen, when are we finally going to fight and chuck that lot (die Bande) out?” The people could not be held back week in and week out, and that was one of the reasons for what we later brought about (unseres späteren Auswirkens) and at the same time one of the reasons why this necessarily had at some time to make itself felt (sich auswirken mußten):’167
The direct result was the next major confrontation with the Bavarian government on May Day 1923 – and this time a serious loss of face for Hitler. The trade union programme for a parade of the socialists through the streets of Munich on 1 May, which had been approved by the police, was seen by the nationalist Right as an outright provocation. In Munich, May Day was not only for the Left the symbolic day of socialism. It was for the Right the commemoration of the ‘liberation’ of the city from the detested Räterepublik (Councils Republic), the short-lived Soviet-style takeover in Munich in April 1919. Serious trouble could, therefore, be expected if Left and Right clashed. And such a clash seemed very likely. The climate was already tense. There had been a serious shooting incident in one district of Munich between Communists and National Socialists on 26 April, leaving four wounded.168 In addition, the Social Democrats had again tried to have the stormtroops banned, though their proposal, put to the Bavarian Landtag on 24–5 April, had been duly defeated. But above all, the radical Right were spoiling for a fight. As Georg Escherich, the former Einwohnerwehr leader, noted, ‘The right Radicals in Munich are looking eagerly for every opportunity for “deeds”.’169
Activists, as Hitler later acknowledged, could not be kept in a state of tension indefinitely without some release. He proposed a national demonstration on May Da
y, and an armed attack on the ‘Reds’.170 Increasingly alarmed by the prospect of serious disturbances, the Munich police revoked its permission for the Left’s street-parade, and now confined permission only to the holding of a limited demonstration on the spacious Theresien-wiese near the city centre. Rumours of a putsch from the Left, almost certainly set into circulation by the Right, served as a pretext for a ‘defence’ by the paramilitary bodies.171 They demanded ‘their’ weapons back from safe keeping under the control of the Reichswehr. But on the afternoon of 30 April, at a meeting with paramilitary leaders, Lossow, concerned about the danger of a putsch from the Right, refused to hand over the armaments. Hitler, in a blind rage, accused Lossow of breach of trust.172 But there was nothing to be done. Hitler had been overconfident. And this time, for once, the state authorities had remained firm. All that could be salvaged was a gathering the following morning of around 2,000 men from the paramilitary formations – about 1,300 from the National Socialists – on the Oberwiesen-feld in the barracks area north of the city, well away from the May Day demonstration and firmly ringed by a cordon of police. Tame exercises carried out with arms distributed from Röhm’s arsenal were no substitute for the planned assault on the Left. After standing around for much of the time since dawn holding their rifles and facing the police, the men handed back their arms around two o’clock and dispersed. Many had left already. There were one or two skirmishes reported in the city. In the most serious, a group of workers on their way home from the left-wing demonstration were set upon and beaten up by SA men leaving the Oberwiesenfeld. The police did not intervene.173 Compared with the bloodshed that might have taken place, it was of minor significance. The May Day rally on the Theresien-wiese, with its 25,000 participants, had ended without incident around midday.
Most of those taking part had already left to attend the May Day celebrations in the Hirschgarten, a large beer-garden two or three miles to the west of the city centre, that afternoon. Attended by an estimated 30,000 socialists, these passed without incident.174 Hitler made virtue out of necessity at a packed meeting that evening in the Circus Krone. He announced to huge applause that the day had been a special one in bringing about an alliance of National Socialists with Bund Oberland, Bund Blücher, Reichsflagge, and Wikingbund. Otherwise he had to resort to his usual attacks on Jews, socialists and the International, appealing, according to a police report, to the basest instincts of the masses in such an antisemitic tirade – denouncing the Jews as ‘racial tuberculosis’ – that it prompted a ‘pogrom mood’.175 That was Hitler’s way of rebounding from a setback. It fooled few people outside Nazi fanatics. Most recognized the events of May Day to have been a severe embarrassment for Hitler and his followers. The Württemberg ambassador reported the frequently expressed view that Hitler’s star was now on the wane.176
The Bavarian Minister President, Eugen von Knilling, had commented in April that ‘the enemy stands Left, but the danger [stands] on the Right’.177 The remark typified the hopeless attempt by the ΒVP-led government to steer a middling course in the crisis. Its weak and vacillating stance was, as Knilling’s comment suggests, based upon the need to head off the menace of a right-wing putsch, but at the same time on a rooted fear of the Left – even of the moderate Majority Social Democrats. The May Day affair ought to have shown the government that firm and resolute action could defeat Hitler. But by this time, the Bavarian government had long since ruled out any potential for working together with the democratic forces on the Left. It was permanently at loggerheads with the Reich government. And it had no effective control over its own army leaders, who were playing their own game. It was little wonder in this context that it was buffeted in all directions. Incapable of tackling the problem of the radical Right because both will and power were ultimately lacking to do so, it allowed the Hitler movement the space to recover from the temporary setback of 1 May.178
But above all, the lesson of 1 May was that Hitler was powerless without the support of the Reichswehr. In January, when the Party Rally had been initially banned, then allowed to go ahead, Lossow’s permission had given Hitler the chance to escape the blow to his prestige. Now, on 1 May, Lossow’s refusal had prevented Hitler’s planned propaganda triumph. Deprived of his lifeblood – regular outlets for his propaganda – the main base of Hitler’s effectiveness would have been undermined. But the Bavarian Reichswehr was to remain largely an independent variable in the equation of Bavarian politics in the latter part of 1923. And the part accommodating, part vacillating attitude of the Bavarian authorities to the radical Right, driven by fierce anti-socialism linked to its antagonism towards Berlin, ensured that the momentum of Hitler’s movement was not seriously checked by the May Day events.179 Hitler could, in fact, have been taken out of circulation altogether for up to two years, had charges of breach of the peace, arising from the May Day incidents, been pressed. But the Bavarian Justice Minister Franz Gürtner saw to it that the inquiries never came to formal charges – after Hitler had threatened to reveal details of Reichswehr complicity in the training and arming of the paramilitaries in preparation for a war against France – and the matter was quietly dropped.180
For his part, Hitler continued unabated his relentless agitation against the ‘November criminals’ during the summer of 1923. The fierce animosity towards Berlin, now as before providing a bond between the otherwise competing sections of the Right, ensured that his message of hatred and revenge towards internal as well as external enemies would not be short of an audience.181 He alone remained able to fill the cavernous Circus Krone. Between May and the beginning of August he addressed five overfilled meetings there, and also spoke at another ten party meetings elsewhere in Bavaria.182 Relations with the Bavarian authorities, for all their tolerance towards the NSDAP, remained tense. Unlike the leaders of some of the paramilitary organizations, Hitler refused to let the SA serve as auxiliary police. That would have been to compromise his freedom of action towards the Bavarian state.183 At the Deutsches Turnfest (Rally of German Gymnastic Organizations) in Munich on 14 July, it came to violent clashes between the SA and the police as the Nazi formations, leaving the meeting at the Circus Krone, disobeyed police orders prohibiting the display of party banners.184 Such confrontations – and rumours started by Nazi leaders themselves of alleged assassination threats against Hitler185 – certainly served their purpose of keeping the NSDAP and its leader in the public eye. But Hitler was aware that agitation without action could not be sustained indefinitely. Outside observers were of the same opinion. ‘A party so attuned to activism to which so many adventurers belong, must lose appeal if it does not come to action within a certain time,’ reported the Württemberg ambassador in Munich on 30 August 1923.186 But Hitler could not act alone. He needed most of all the support of the Reichswehr. But he also needed the cooperation of the other paramilitary organizations. And in the realm of paramilitary politics, he was not a free agent. Certainly, new members continued to pour into the S A during the summer.187 But after the embarrassment of 1 May, Hitler was for some time less prominent, even retreating at the end of May for a while to stay with Dietrich Eckart in a small hotel at Berchtesgaden.188 Among the members of the various branches of the ‘patriotic associations’, Ludendorff, not Hitler, was regarded as the symbol of the ‘national struggle’. Hitler was in this forum only one of a number of spokesmen. In the case of disagreement, he too had to bow to Ludendorff’s superiority.189
The former World War hero took centre stage at the Deutscher Tag (German Day) in Nuremberg on 1–2 September 1923, a massive rally – the police reckoned 100,000 were present – of nationalist paramilitary forces and veterans’ associations scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the German victory over France at the battle of Sedan in 1870.190 Along with the Reichsflagge, the National Socialists were particularly well represented.191 The enormous propaganda spectacular enabled Hitler, the most effective of the speakers, to repair the damage his reputation had suffered in May. At the two-hour march-p
ast of the formations, he stood together with General Ludendorff, Prinz Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavaria, and the military head of the ‘patriotic associations’, Oberstleutnant Kriebel, on the podium.192
What came out of the rally was the uniting of the NSDAP, the Bund Oberland, and the Reichsflagge in the newly formed Deutscher Kampfbund (German Combat League). While Kriebel took over the military leadership, Hitler’s man Scheubner-Richter was made business manager.193 Three weeks later, thanks to Röhm’s machinations, Hitler was given, with the agreement of the heads of the other paramilitary organizations, the ‘political leadership’ of the Kampfbund.194
What this meant in practice was not altogether clear. Hitler was no dictator in the umbrella organization. And so far as there were specific notions about a future dictator in the ‘coming Germany’, that position was envisaged as Ludendorff’s.195 For Hitler, ‘political leadership’ seems to have indicated the subordination of paramilitary politics to the building of a revolutionary mass movement through nationalist propaganda and agitation. But for the leaders of the formations, the ‘primacy of the soldier’ – the professionals like Röhm and Kriebel – was what still counted. Hitler was seen as a type of ‘political instructor’.196 He could whip up the feelings of the masses like no one else. But beyond that he had no clear idea of the mechanics of attaining power. Cooler heads were needed for that. As an ‘Action Programme’ of the Kampfbund drawn up by Scheubner-Richter on 24 September made plain, the ‘national revolution’ in Bavaria had to follow, not precede, the winning over of the army and police, the forces that sustained the power of the state. Scheubner-Richter concluded that it was necessary to take over the police in a formally legal fashion by placing Kampfbund leaders in charge of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior and the Munich police.197 Hitler, like his partners in the Kampfbund, knew that an attempt at a putsch in the teeth of opposition from the forces of the military and police in Bavaria stood little chance of success.198 But for the time being his approach, as ever, was to go on a frontal propaganda offensive against the Bavarian government. His position within the Kampfbund now ensured that the pressure to act – even without a clear strategy for the practical steps needed to gain control of the state – would not relent.