by Ian Kershaw
8. Most of the demonstrators, supporters of the Majority Social Democrats, had headed into the city centre, following a speech by their leader, Erhard Auer. The Independents, far smaller in number, had stayed behind to listen to Eisner, before heading for the barracks to win the support of the troops in the Munich garrison (Joachimsthaler, 180).
9. Abelshauser, Faust and Petzina (eds.), Deutsche Sozialgeschichte 1914–1945, 247.
10. Monologe, 64 (21 September 1941).
11. Hitler himself recognized this – though it was not convenient for him to admit until a much later date that he distinguished between the Social Democrats and more radical forces during the 1918 revolution (Monologe, 248 (1 February 1942)).
12. An immediate bloody reaction to the news of Eisner’s assassination occurred when a number of left-radical workers forced their way into the Bavarian Landtag, killing two members of the parliament and severely wounding through pistol shots the Bavarian Minister of the Interior and opponent of Eisner, Erhard Auer (Wilhelm Hoegner, Die verratene Republik, Munich, 1979, 87; Spindler, i.425–6). As conditions deteriorated, the Bavarian government and Landtag fled to Bamberg, leaving Munich to the radical forces which, on 7 April, proclaimed the Räterepublik.
13. Toller, 151.
14. Spindler, i.429; Gerhard Schmolze (ed.), Revolution und Räterepublik in München 1918/19 in Augenzeugenberichten, Düsseldorf, 1969, 263–71; Allan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria 1918–1919. The Eisner Regime and the Soviet Republic, Princeton, 1965, 299–311.
15. Heinrich August Winkler, Weimar 1918–1933. Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie, Munich, 1993, 80. See also Joachimsthaler, 299 n.675; Schmolze, 298ff.; Mitchell, 317–19.
16. The above account draws on Spindler, i.430–34; Schmolze, 349–98; Mitchell, 329–31; Joachimsthaler, 219–20; Toller, 191ff.; and Ernst Deuerlein (ed.), Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Augenzeugenberichten, Munich, 1974, 54–5. There are some discrepancies in the numbers given of those killed and injured.
17. Josef Karl (ed.), Die Schreckensherrschaft in München und Spartakus im bayrischen Oberland 19 19. Tagebuchblätter und Ereignisse aus der Zeit der ‘bayrischen Räterepublik’ und der Münchner Kommune im Frühjahr 1919, Munich, n.d. (1919?), 45–8 (entry for 19 April 1919).
18. The title of Josef Karl’s book.
19. Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 3 May 1919.
20. See Hoegner, 87.
21. See Hoegner, 109ff. for the so-called ‘Ordnungszelle Bayern’.
22. Joachimsthaler, 14, 184.
23. Joachimsthaler, 187, 189–90, where it is pointed out that the deputation to Traunstein followed a regimental order. But this does not rule out the likelihood that volunteers to serve at Traunstein were sought within the regiment.
24. Heinz, 89.
25. Cit. Joachimsthaler, 192.
26. Heinz, 90; Joachimsthaler, 193.
27. MK, 226; Joachimsthaler, 193–4.
28. See Bessel, Germany after the First World War, chs.2–7, and Bessel, ‘Unemployment and Demobilisation’.
29. Joachimsthaler, 224.
30. Joachimsthaler, 198–9.
31. Heinz, 90.
32. Joachimsthaler, 195.
33. BHStA, Abt.IV, 2.I.R., Batl. Anordnungen, Bl.1504. The meeting which Hitler attended was to discuss ‘the socialization in Bavaria and in Germany’ and ‘the existence of the councils’ (Bl.1503). Hitler’s involvement as a battalion representative was brought to light by Joachimsthaler, 200–204, 211. See 188 for the establishment of battalion representatives in December 1918. Hitler’s name appears in regimental records as ‘Hittler’, ‘Hüttler’, and ‘Hietler’, but from the ‘Gesamtregister’ of the 2nd Demobilization Company for this period it is plain that the same person is meant by the variable spellings (Joachimsthaler, 213, 217, 223, 296 n.641).
34. BHStA, Abt.IV, 2.I.R., Batl. Anordnungen, BI.1505, 1516; Joachimsthaler, 212–13, 217.
35. Cit. Joachimsthaler, 201–2, 204.
36. See Joachimsthaler, 205–6, for references to comments in the Berliner Tagblatt, 20 October 1930 and Westdeutsche Arbeiterzeitung, 12 March 1932.
37. Toller, 256. Hitler, he said, had been silent during the revolution. Toller had not heard his name at that time.
38. Heiden, Hitler, 54; Joachimsthaler, 203. According to Deuerlein, Hitler, 41, the Münchener Post later reported that Hitler had thought about entering the SPD in the winter of 1918–19, but neither reference nor any supportive evidence for the assertion is provided. Hitler’s cautious opportunism, and his reluctance in pre-war Vienna and Munich to commit himself to any political party or organization, pose grounds for scepticism about the rumours that he tried to join the Majority SPD in the revolutionary period.
39. JK, 448.
40. Joachimsthaler, 189.
41. Walter Görlitz and Herbert A. Quint, Adolf Hitler. Eine Biographie, Stuttgart, 1952, 120; Robert Wistrich, Wer war wer im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1983, 66. Esser had worked on the Allgäuer Volkswacht.
42. Albrecht Tyrell, Vom ‘Trommler’ zum ‘Führer’, Munich, 1975, 23.
43. Brandmayer, 114–15.
44. This seems the implication of Joachimsthaler, 184–5, 200–206. Elsewhere, however, Joachimsthaler advances the more probable suggestion of a release of latent feelings of hatred through the events of 1918–19. See 179–80, 200, 234, 240.
45. See Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler. Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs, Hamburg/Leamington Spa/New York, 1987, 22–6.
46. Heiden, Hitler, 35, repeated in Heiden, Der Führer, 75.
47. Joachimsthaler, 188, 197–8, 215; Maser, Hitler, 159; Maser, Ende der Führer-Legende, 263 n. (citing remarks made to him in the early 1950s by Otto Strasser and Hermann Esser); Eitner, 66.
48. Joachimsthaler, 189; Deuerlein, Hitler, 41 (without source).
49. Heiden, Hitler, 54.
50. Heinz, 92.
51. BHStA, Abt.IV, 2.I.R., Batl. Anordnungen, Bl.1516; Joachimsthaler, 213, 217.
52. Joachimsthaler, 201, 214, 221.
53. Maser, Hitler, 159.
54. BHStA, Abt.IV, 2.1.R., Batl. Anordnungen, BI.1535; Regt. Anordnungen, Stadtkommandatur München, ‘Auflösung der Garnison’, 7 May 1919, Zusätze des Regiments zur Stadtkommandaturverfügung, 9 May 1919; Joachimsthaler, 221, 223.
55. Joachimsthaler, 224.
56. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 178.
57. See Oswald Spengler’s description of the city centre in Deuerlein, Aufstieg, 83.
58. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 178; Joachimsthaler, 224–8.
59. Over 500 officers and men attended the first three courses, according to a summary report compiled on 25 July 1919 by the course leader Karl Graf von Bothmer: BHStA, Abt.IV, Bd.307. The report, though with some omissions (including the reference to the numbers involved), is printed in Joachimsthaler, 235–40.
60. Helmuth Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre und die Münchener Gesellschaft 1919–1923’, VfZ, 25 (1977), 1–45, here 18.
61. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 179; Joachimsthaler, 228, 304 n.744; Ernst Röhm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters, 2nd edn, Munich, 1930, 99–101.
62. Karl Mayr (= Anon.), ‘I Was Hitler’s Boss’, Current History, Vol.1 N0.3 (Nov. 1941), 193.
63. Deuerlein,’Hitlers Eintritt’, 179–80, 182 and n.19, 191–2; Joachimsthaler, 230— 34, 242; MK, 228–9, 232–5; and see Albrecht Tyrell, ‘Gottfried Feder and the NSDAP’, in Peter Stachura (ed.), The Shaping of the Nazi State, London, 1978, 49–87, esp. 54–5.
64. Karl Alexander von Müller, Mars und Venus. Erinnerungen 1914–1919, Stuttgart, 1954, 338–9.
65. MK, 235; Joachimsthaler, 229–30, 250.
66. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 179, 182–3, 194, 196;Joachimsthaler, 241. The instructors were provided with a mass of anti-Bolshevik pamphlets to assist them in their ‘educational’ task.
67. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 197–200; Joachimsthaler, 247; JK, 87–8. He also lectured on capitalism
.
68. MK, 235 (trans., MK Watt, 196). Hitler repeated the same stylized description of discovering that he could ‘speak’ in relation to his first notable success as a speaker for the DAP (MK, 390).
69. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 200. The reports are contained in BHStA, Abt. IV, RW GrKdo 4, Nr 309.
70. For antisemitism in the army in early 1920, see Joachimsthaler, 248. The cited comments from reports on the popular mood are contained in BHStA, Abt.IV, RW GrKdo 4, Bd.204, ‘Judenhetze’.
71. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 199; Joachimsthaler, 247; JK, 88.
72. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 184–5, 2.01–2; Joachimsthaler, 243–7. Mayr addressed Hitler as ‘sehr verehrter Herr Hitler’, an unusually respectful form of address from a captain to a corporal.
73. JK, 88–90; Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 185, 202–5; Joachimsthaler, 243–9. Hitler’s letter survives in typed copy, signed by him (BHStA, Abt.IV, RW GrKdo 4, Nr 314). Whether the original was handwritten or dictated is not known. Mayr approved of Hitler’s reply, apart from some reservations about his interpretation of the ‘interest problem’.
74. Tyrell, Trommler, 25–6.
75. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 186, 205.
76. Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 187. The V-Men wrote their reports under a code number. None from Hitler has survived, but numerous reports on early DAP meetings, including those addressed by Hitler, are in the files (BHStA, Abt.IV, RW GrKdo 4, Nr 287). Those concerning the DAP/NSDAP were printed by Deuerlein, ‘Hitlers Eintritt’, 205–27, and JK, 129–298.
77. Tyrell, Trommler, 195 n.77. On subsequent occasions, too, as Tyrell points out, he was accompanied by other military personnel and evidently did not go alone, as he implied in Mein Kampf, 236–7. The attendance list for 12 September 1919 contains thirty-nine names; Hitler gave a figure of between twenty and twenty-five as present.
78. MK, 237–8. See Tyrell, Trommler, 195 n.77, for a discussion of this first meeting on the basis of the early attendance lists. Baumann did not attend on 12 September according to those lists, though the dating was attached later and may be incorrect. The lists are part of the file on the early records of the DAP/NSDAP, 1919–1926, in the BDC, and in BAK, 26/80.
79. Cit. Georg Franz-Willing, Die Hitlerbewegung. Der Ursprung 1919–1922, Hamburg/Berlin, 1962, 66–7, reporting a comment to him by Michael Lotter, one of the original members of the DAP; see also Tyrell, Trommler, 196 n.99. Lotter’s earlier version, from 1935, which he sent to the NSDAP-Hauptarchiv, runs along similar lines, though with slightly different wording (IfZ, Fa 88/Fasz.78, ‘Vortrag des Gründungsmitglied der D.A.P. und 1. Schriftführer des politischen Arbeiterzirkels Michael Lotter am 19. Oktober 1935 vor der “Sterneckergruppe” im Leiberzimmer des “Sterneckers”’ (also HA, 3/78), Fol.6). In this account, Lotter says Drexler requested Hitler to come back ‘because we could use such people’. According to this account, Drexler went on to say: ‘Now we have an Austrian. He’s got such a gob’ (‘Jetzt haben wir einen Österreicher, der hat eine solche Goschen’) (Lotter, Fol. 6; partly reproduced in Joachimsthaler, 251–2). Drexler himself, in a letter he composed but did not send to Hitler in 1940, spoke of pressing a copy of his pamphlet Mein politisches Erwachen into Hitler’s hand, following his intervention in the discussion at the meeting ‘attended by at least 80 persons’, and urging him most strongly ‘to join our party, because we needed to make use of such people’ (dringendst bat, sich doch unserer Partei anzuschließen, denn solche Leute könnten wir notwendig gebrauchen) (BHStA, Abt.V, P3071, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, Abschrift, Drexler to Hitler, ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 1–2). Hitler’s own version (MK, 238) says nothing about Drexler urging him to come back and join the party.
80. Lotter gives the date of Hitler’s entry to the party as 16 September 1919 (IfZ, Fa 88/Fasz.78, Lotter Vortrag, 19 October 1935, Fol. 6). Drexler claimed he asked Hitler to return in eight days, i.e. by 20 September. Hitler’s own account suggests that something like a week and a half elapsed between his initial attendance at the party meeting and going to the committee meeting, and that some further days followed thereafter before he finally made up his mind to join the party (MK, 239–44; Joachimsthaler, 251–2).
81. MK, 240. Max Amann spoke after the war in testimony to the denazification court of meeting Hitler in early 1920 and being told that Hitler was keen to establish his own party, to be called ‘The Party of Social Revolutionaries’ to win over the workers from Bolshevism (Joachimsthaler, 230–31, 252–3). That this was the case in spring 1920, after Hitler had launched the party programme of the DAP (now renamed NSDAP), can be dismissed. Probably Amann, speaking so many years later, was postdating Hitler’s remarks (which he may well have taken from Mein Kampf). Hitler himself wrote of having such ideas in summer 1919, following the Munich course, which makes better chronological sense (MK, 227).
82. MK, 241 (trans., MK Watt, 201).
83. MK, 243 (trans., MK Watt, 202–3).
84. MK, 244. See Maser, Hitler, 173, 553 n.225. The precise date on which Hitler joined the party’s steering committee cannot be determined (Tyrell, Trommler, 198 n.118).
85. BHStA, Abt.V, P3071, Slg. Personen, Anton Drexler, Abschrift, Drexler to Hitler, ‘Ende Januar 1940’, 2, partly printed in Deuerlein (ed.), Aufstieg, 97–8. And see the letter to the NSDAP HauPtarchiv of Michael Lotter, first secretary of the DAP, dated 17 October 1941, pointing out that-for ‘image’ reasons-the membership numbers began at number 501 and were then alphabetically assigned. Lotter confirmed that a membership card number 7 did not exist. He took it that the number 7 referred to Hitler’s membership of the ‘Politischer Arbeiterzirkel’ (to which he himself belonged), but did not know who had given him the number 7 membership certificate (Mitgliedschein) (IfZ, Fa 88/Fasz.78, F0l.11–12 (and HA 3/78); Joachimsthaler, 252). Rudolf Schüssler recalled, so he wrote in 1941, Hitler receiving a small card in September 1919 registering him as the seventh member of the committee (Arbeitsausschuß), but distinguished this from his membership card no. 555 of the DAP (IfZ, MA-747, letter to NSDAP-Hauptarchiv, 20 November 1941). Schüssler had been in the same regiment as Hitler in the first half of 1919, and became the first ‘business manager’ (Geschäftsführer) of the infant DAP (Tyrell, Trommler, 28, 33; Joachimsthaler, 301 n.705).
86. Mayr, 195. Documents 62 and 64 in JK, 90–91, purporting to relate to Hitler’s request of 19 October 1919 to join the DAP, after reporting on a meeting of the party on 3 October, are, according to information kindly provided by Prof. Eberhard Jäckel, to be regarded as forgeries.
87. Joachimsthaler, 255.
88. Joachimsthaler, 14.
CHAPTER 5: THE BEERHALL AGITATOR
1. MK, 388.
2. Tyrell, Trommler, 274 n. 151.
3. Hoffmann, 46.
4. This strategic framework is broadly encapsulated in MK, 364–88; see also Tyrell, Trommler, 171; and Tyrell, ‘Wie er der “Führer” wurde’, 27–30.
5. Text of the letter in JK, 88–90.
6. For sharply differing views on this point, see the contributions by Klaus Hildebrand and Hans Mommsen on ‘Nationalsozialismus oder Hitlerismus?’, to Bosch (ed.), Persönlichkeit und Struktur in der Geschichte, 55–71.
7. Stern, Hitler, 12.
8. Tyrell, Trommler, 19–20.
9. Whiteside, esp. ch.5; and see Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, Harmondsworth, 1973, 74–80.
10. Hitler-Prozeß, 19; JK, 1062; and see Tyrell, Trommler, 187–8 n.29.
11. RSA, II, 49, Dok.24 and n.2; Bracher, 80; the background is outlined in Bruce F. Pauley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis. A History of Austrian National Socialism, London/Basingstoke, 1981, ch.3.
12. See esp. Mosse, Crisis of German Ideology, pt.I; and George L. Mosse, Germans and Jews, London, 1971, Introduction.
13. See Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik, 3rd edn, Munich, 1992, esp. ch.II and Mosse, Crisis of German Ideology, ch.16.
14. See Sontheimer, 271–2.
15. Weimar coalition parties won only 44.6 per cent (205 seats out of 459) of the vote compared with over 78 per cent (331 seats out of 423) in the National Assembly elections of 1919 (Kolb, Die Weimarer Republik, 41).
16. MK, esp. 415–24; and see Martin Broszat, Der Nationalsozialismus. Weltanschauung, Programm und Wirklichkeit, Stuttgart, 1960, 29.
17. Broszat, Nationalsozialismus, 23.
18. Tyrell, Trommler, 191 n.53. A good description of the atmosphere in Munich at the time Hitler was stepping on to the political stage is provided by Large, Where Ghosts Walked, ch.4.
19. Helmuth Auerbach, ‘Nationalsozialismus vor Hitler’, in Wolfgang Benz, Hans Buchheim and Hans Mommsen (eds.), Der Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Ideologie und Herrschaft, Frankfurt am Main, 1993, 13–28, here 26; Jeremy Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, 1921–1933, Oxford, 1971, 9. A comprehensive exploration of the organization is provided by Uwe Lohalm, Völkischer Radikalismus. Die Geschichte des Deutschvölkischen Schutz-und Trutz-Bundes, 1919–1923, Hamburg, 1970.
20. Noakes, Nazi Party, 9–10.
21. Lohalm, 89–90; Noakes, Nazi Party, 11.
22. Tyrell, Trommler, 20, 186 n.21; Lohalm, 283–302.
23. For the following see Tyrell, Trommler, 72–89; and Noakes, Nazi Party, 12–13.
24. Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 6–8. Lehmann is one of the central subjects of the study of Gary D. Stark, Entrepreneurs of Ideology. Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890–1933, Chapel Hill, 1981.
25. See Rudolf von Sebottendorff, Bevor Hitler kam, 2nd edn, Munich, 1934 (the account by the Society’s leading figure); the scholarly analysis by Reginald H. Phelps, ‘“Before Hitler Came”: Thule Society and Germanen Orden’, Journal of Modern History, 35 (1963), 245–61; Goodrick-Clarke, 135–52; also Tyrell, Trommler, 22 and 188–9 n.38; Auerbach, ‘Hitlers politische Lehrjahre’, 8–9; and Noakes, Nazi Party, 13. The Thule Society took its name from that given by the ancient Greeks to the northernmost land they knew. The name had mystical significance for Nordic cultists.