Hitler

by Joachim C. Fest

  I had the impression that the Reichswehr officers were dissatisfied too, because the march on Berlin was being held up. They were saying: Hitler is a fraud just like the rest of them. You are not attacking. It makes no difference to us who strikes first; we are going along. And I myself told Hitler: one of these days I will not be able to hold the men back. Unless something happens now, the men will take off on you. We had many unemployed in the ranks, fellows who had sacrificed their last pair of shoes, their last suit of clothing, their last penny for their training and who thought: soon things will get under way and we’ll be taken into the Reichswehr and be out of this mess.46

  In a discussion with Seisser at the beginning of November, Hitler himself said that something had to be done immediately or the troops of the Kampfbund would be driven by economic necessity into the Communist camp.

  Hitler had not only to worry about the morale of his troops; the mere passage of time also had its dangers. The revolutionary discontent threatened to evaporate; it had been strained far too long. Meanwhile, the end of the struggle for the Ruhr and the defeat of the Left had brought a turn toward normality. Even the inflation seemed about to be checked, and the spirit of revolution seemed to be vanishing along with the crisis. There was no question that Hitler’s effectiveness was entirely bound up with national distress. So to hesitate now would be fatal, even if certain pledges he had made stood in his way. These did not trouble him so much as a flaw in the plan: contrary to his principles he would have to venture on the revolution without the approval of the Prime Minister of Bavaria.

  Nevertheless, he hoped that sufficient boldness on his part would extort this approval, and even the Prime Minister’s participation. “We were convinced that action would only come if desire were backed up by will,” Hitler later told the court. The sum total of significant reasons for action was thus counterweighed only by the risk that the coup might fail to ignite the courage of the triumvirate. It would seem that Hitler gave little thought to this danger, for he felt that he would only be forcing the triumvirate into something it had been planning in any case. In the end the entire undertaking foundered on this one point. The episode showed up the weakness of Hitler’s sense of reality. He himself, to be sure, never accepted this charge; on the contrary, he was always somewhat proud of his disdain for reality. He quoted Lossow’s statement that he would take part in a coup d’état only if the odds were 51 to 49 for a successful outcome as an example of hopeless enslavement to reality.

  Yet there were other reasons besides the calculable ones that spoke in favor of action; in fact, the course of history has shown Hitler to have been right in a broader sense. For the undertaking that ended in debacle nevertheless turned out to be the decisive breakthrough on Hitler’s way to power.

  At the end of September, in the midst of all the hectic preparations and maneuverings for position, Hitler had staged a “German Day” in Bayreuth and used the occasion to present himself at Wahnfried, the home of the Wagners. Deeply moved, he had gone through the rooms, sought out the Master’s study, and stood a long time before the grave in the garden. Then he was introduced to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who had married one of Richard Wagner’s daughters and through his books had been a formative influence on Hitler. It was a poor sort of interview with the partially paralyzed, speechless old man; yet Chamberlain sensed the quality of the visitor. Writing to him a week later, on October 7, he lauded Hitler not as the precursor for someone greater, but as the savior himself, the key figure of the German counterrevolution. He had expected to meet a fanatic, he wrote, but now his instinct told him that Hitler was of a higher order, more creative and, despite his palpable force of will, not a man of violence. The meeting, Chamberlain added, had set his soul at rest, for “the fact that in the hour of her greatest need Germany should produce a Hitler is a sign that she is yet alive.”47

  To the demagogue at that very moment facing a crucial decision, those words came as the answer to his doubts, as a benediction from the Bayreuth Master himself.

  The Putsch

  And then a voice shouted, “There they come, Heil Hitler!”

  Eyewitness account, November 9, 1923

  The two days leading up to November 8 were filled with nervous activity. Everyone negotiated with everyone else, Munich reverberated with warlike preparations and rumors. The Kampfbund’s original plan called for staging a major night maneuver north of Munich on November 10; the next morning they would march into the city, still pretending to be an ordinary parade, and on reaching the center would proclaim the nationalist dictatorship, thus forcing Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser to commit themselves. While consultations were still going on, it was learned that Kahr was planning to deliver an important address on the evening of November 8 in the Bürgerbraukeller; the cabinet, Lossow, Seisser, the heads of all the government agencies, industrial leaders and directors of the patriotic organizations were invited. Fearing that Kahr might get the jump on him, Hitler revised all his plans at the last moment and decided to act the following day. The SA and the Kampfbund units were mobilized in great haste, and the stage was set.

  The meeting was to begin at 8:15 P.M. Dressed in a black dress suit, wearing his Iron Cross, Hitler drove to the Bürgerbraukeller. Next to him in the recently acquired red Mercedes sat Alfred Rosenberg and Ulrich Graf, as well as the unsuspecting Anton Drexler, for whom this was to be the last appearance with Hitler’s coterie. For reasons of secrecy he had been told that the group was driving out to the country for a meeting. When Hitler now revealed that he was going to strike at 8:30, Drexler replied shortly and testily that he wished Hitler luck in his undertaking but he himself would have nothing to do with it.

  A large crowd was milling about in front of the Bürgerbraukeller, so large that Hitler feared he might be unable to storm the meeting, which was already under way. Hitler summarily ordered the police officer on duty to clear the area. Kahr was well into his speech, evoking the image of the “new man” as the “moral justification for dictatorship,” when Hitler appeared in the door of the beer hall. According to eyewitness accounts, he was extremely agitated. In a moment some trucks full of SA men roared up, and the troops swarmed out to cordon off the building in good warlike style. With his typical love for the theatrical gesture, Hitler held up a beer stein, and as a heavy machine gun made its appearance at his side, he took a dramatic swallow, then dashed the stein to the floor, and with a pistol in his raised hand stormed into the middle of the hall at the head of an armed squad. As steins crashed onto the floor and chairs toppled, Hitler leaped up on a table, fired his famous shot into the ceiling to catch the crowd’s attention, and forced his way through the dumfounded throng to the podium. “The national revolution has begun,” he cried. “The hall is surrounded by 600 heavily armed men. No one may leave the premises. Unless quiet is restored immediately, I shall have a machine gun placed in the gallery. The Bavarian government and the national government have been overthrown, and a provisional national government is being formed. The barracks of the Reichswehr and the state police have been occupied; the Reichswehr and the state police are already approaching under the swastika flag.” He then told Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser “in a harsh tone of command,” the account goes, to follow him into the next room. The crowd inside the hall began calming down, only spluttering now and then, “Playacting!” or “South America!” The SA, however, suppressed such remarks in its own special fashion. Meanwhile, Hitler, in a bizarre scene, attempted to win the reluctant representatives of state power over to his side.

  Despite the contradictions and obscurities, the basic outlines of events are fairly plain. Gesturing wildly with his pistol, Hitler first threatened the three men that not one of them would leave the room alive, then excused himself with considerable formality for having had to create a fait accompli in such an unusual manner. He had only wanted to make it easier for the gentlemen to assume their new posts. To be sure, their only choice was to co-operate: Pöhner had been named the Bavarian Prime Mini
ster with dictatorial powers; Kahr was to be state administrator; he himself was taking over the presidency of the new national government. Ludendorff was to command the national army in its march on Berlin, and Seisser had been appointed minister of police. In mounting excitement he exclaimed, “I know that you gentlemen find this step difficult, but the step must be taken. I shall have to make it easier for you to get set for the leap. Each of you must assume his allotted position; whoever fails to do so has forfeited his right to exist. You must fight with me, triumph with me—or die with me. If things go wrong I have four bullets in this pistol: three for my collaborators should they desert me, and the last bullet for myself.” To emphasize his point he theatrically pressed the pistol against his forehead and swore: “If I am not victorious by tomorrow afternoon, I am a dead man.”

  To Hitler’s astonishment his three prisoners hardly seemed impressed. Kahr especially proved equal to the situation. With visible distaste for this whole melodrama, he replied, “Herr Hitler, you can have me shot, you can shoot me yourself. But whether or not I die is of no consequence to me.” Seisser upbraided Hitler for having broken his word of honor. Lossow said nothing. Meanwhile, Hitler’s henchmen stood at all the doors and windows and occasionally gestured menacingly with their rifles.

  For a moment it seemed as though the calm indifference of the three might spell the doom of the entire operation. Meanwhile, Scheubner-Richter had dashed off in the Mercedes to fetch Ludendorff, who had not been let in on the secret. Hitler now hoped that Ludendorff, with his authority, would turn the trick. Nervous and somewhat shaken by his failure to convince Kahr and the other two, Hitler returned to the crowd, where he felt surer of himself. The historian Karl Alexander von Muller was present and has described the indignation of the prominent people in the audience at being trapped in the hall and bullied by the crude SA men. And now the leader was forcing his way through to the podium, a pretentious young man of obscure origins who seemed somewhat cracked and yet had some sort of appeal for the common man. There he stood, ludicrous in his tail coat, looking much like a waiter by contrast with the urbane, complacent notables in the audience—and in a masterly speech he turned “the mood of the meeting completely inside out… like a glove, with just a few words. I have seldom experienced anything of the kind. When he stepped up to the podium, the noise was so great that he could not be heard. He fired a shot. I can still see the gesture. He took the Browning out of his rear pocket…. He had actually come in to apologize for taking so long, for he had promised that people would be free to go in ten minutes.” But no sooner was he standing before the crowd and noting how the faces all turned his way, expecting something from him, and the voices subsided, than he regained his self-confidence.

  In actual fact he did not have much to tell the gathering. In a peremptory tone he simply announced what up to then had been largely his own fantasy: the new names, the new offices, and a series of proposals. “The task of the provisional German national government is to muster the entire might of this province and the additional help of all the German states for the march on that sinful Babylon, Berlin, for the German people must be saved. I will now put the question before you: out there are three men, Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser. The decision to act has cost them severe inner struggle. Are you in agreement with this solution of the German question? You can see that what guides us is not self-interest, not egotism. Rather, we wish to take up the cudgels for our German fatherland, at the eleventh hour. We want to rebuild Germany as a federation in which Bavaria shall receive her rightful due. Tomorrow morning will either find Germany with a German nationalist government—or us dead!” Hitler’s persuasiveness as well as his clever trick of implying that Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser were already won over created what the eyewitness calls a complete turnabout; Hitler left the hall “with the authorization of the gathering to tell Kahr that the whole assembly would stand behind him if he joined in.”

  In the meantime, Ludendorff had arrived, testy at Hitler’s elaborate secrecy as well as at not having been consulted when posts were assigned, so that he had received only command of the army. Without preliminaries, he launched into speech, urging the three men to shake hands on the coup; he himself had also been taken by surprise, but a great historical event hung in the balance. Only now, under the personal sway of the legendary national figure did the men begin to give in, one by one. Lossow, like a good soldier, took Ludendorff’s recommendation as a command; Seisser followed his lead; and only Kahr stubbornly refused. When Hitler offered Kahr, as the supreme inducement, the promise that “the people will kneel down before you,” Kahr replied dryly that such a thing meant nothing to him. This little exchange between the two men points up all the difference between Hitler’s hunger for stagy triumphs and the experienced politician with his sober grasp of power relationships.

  But in the end Kahr yielded to the pressures from all around him and submitted. The five returned to the hall to put on a show of brotherhood. The semblance of unity was enough to fire the audience. As the spectators climbed up on chairs and applauded tumultuously, the actors shook hands. Ludendorff and Kahr appeared pale and stiff, while Hitler seemed to be “glowing with joy,” as the report tells us, “blissful… that he had succeeded in persuading Kahr to co-operate.” For a short, precious moment the thing he had long dreamed of seemed achieved. He had come so far! Here he stood, the focal point of cheers, flanked by dignitaries whose approval gave him such satisfaction after all he had suffered in Vienna. At his side stood Kahr and the other most powerful men in the country, as well as the great General Ludendorff. And he, as the national dictator designate, towered above them all—he, Hitler, the man without a profession, the failure. “It will seem like a fairy tale to later ages,” he was fond of saying, amazed himself at the bold upturn in his fortunes. In fact he could rightly say that no matter how this putsch gamble turned out, he would no longer be performing on provincial stages; he had stepped out on the great national stage. With great emotion, he concluded, “Now I am going to carry out what I swore to myself five years ago today when I lay blind and crippled in the army hospital: neither to rest nor to sleep until the November criminals have been hurled to the ground, until on the ruins of the present pitiful Germany has been raised a Germany of power and greatness, of freedom and glory. Amen!” And as the crowd shouted and applauded, the others, too, had each to give a short speech. Kahr muttered a few vague phrases of allegiance to the monarchy, the Bavarian homeland, and the German fatherland. Ludendorff spoke of a turning point in history and, though still infuriated by Hitler’s behavior, assured the assemblage: “Deeply moved by the majesty of this moment and taken by surprise, I place myself of my own accord at the disposal of the German national government.”

  As the meeting broke up, Prime Minister von Knilling, the ministers present, and the police commissioner were arrested. The leader of the SA student company, Rudolf Hess, took charge of transferring the prisoners to the villa of the rightist publisher Julius Lehmann. Meanwhile, Hitler was called away to deal with some minor crisis outside the barracks of the engineers. As soon as he left the room, at about 10:30 P.M., Lossow, Kahr, and Seisser said comradely good-byes to Ludendorff and disappeared. When Scheubner-Richter and Hitler returned, they immediately expressed suspicion. But Ludendorff snapped that he forbade them” to doubt a German officer’s word of honor. Some two hours earlier, Seisser had protested that Hitler in launching the putsch had broken his word of honor. Honor was certainly a fetish with these people. They were crippled by their high principles, while Hitler, the new man, respected nothing but the pragmatics of power. For years he had been piously using these bourgeois principles and platitudes of honor, solemnly invoking rules that he despised, at the same time recognizing their erosion. This gave him a great advantage vis-à-vis a class unable to free itself from principles in which it no longer believed. But on this night Hitler had run into “opponents who answered breach of faith with breach of faith, and won the game.”48

 
All the same, it was a great night for Hitler, rich in the elements he loved best: drama, cheering, defiance, the euphoria of action, and the supreme ecstasy that comes of half-realized dreams, an ecstasy that no reality can yield. In the anniversary ceremony he was to stage in later years, he would attempt to recapture the momentousness of this evening. “Now better times are coming,” he said extravagantly to Röhm as he embraced him. “We shall all work day and night on the great task of rescuing Germany from shame and suffering.” He issued a proclamation to the German people and two decrees establishing a special tribunal to try political crimes, and declaring “the scoundrels who engineered the betrayal of November 9, 1918,” outlaws from this day: it was every citizen’s duty “to deliver them dead or alive into the hands of the völkisch national government.”

  In the meantime countermeasures were already under way. Lossow had met with his officers. They greeted him with the rather menacing remark that they assumed the show of solidarity with Hitler had been sheer bluff. Whatever the vacillating general’s real position may have been, in the face of his outraged officers he abandoned any thoughts he may have had of really undertaking a putsch. Shortly afterward, Kahr issued a proclamation rescinding his statements in the Bürgerbräukeller; they had been wrung from him at gunpoint, he claimed. He declared the National Socialist Party as well as the Kampfbund dissolved. Hitler, all unsuspecting and reveling in his role, was mobilizing his forces for the great march on Berlin. The state commissioner general had already given orders that no Hitler followers should be allowed to enter Munich. One SA shock troop, carried away by revolutionary fervor, smashed the premises of the Münchener Post, the Social Democratic newspaper. Other units were rampaging, taking hostages, and looting a bit at random, while Röhm seized control of the District Army Command headquarters on Schónfeldstrasse. Once that was done, no one quite knew what to do next. A light, wet snow began to fall. Midnight came, and still Hitler had no word from Kahr and Lossow. He began to grow uneasy. Messengers were sent out but failed to return. Frick seemed to have been arrested, and somewhat later Pöhner could not be found. Hitler began to realize that he had been tricked.